jjgman21

If he didn't suffer any major setbacks, and went to arbitration every year, he'd have made much more. no he wouldn't. he'd make slightly more. look at Morneau for instance. coming off the MVP and a 140 OPS+, he asked for 5M, the twins offered 4M, and they settled on the middle ground, 4.5M in his first year of eligability. Swisher will get 3.5M for his first year of eligibility. so if Swisher gets his stats to Morneau's level at the end of the season, and wins the MVP, it will save the A's about 1M. that's a big if. if Swisher matches or slighly improves on his stats from last year, he'd probably get about 4M. subtract the extra 300K they gave him for this year, and that's a grand savings of about 200K. you have to remember that the people that determine arbitration are not the people on this board and not people who appreciate the same things Billy Beane does. the panelist are traditional stats people. OBP doesn't mean much to them when his average is in the .250's. 35 HR is diminished by 95 RBI. no stolen bases is a ding against him. as I said, slight bargain. more pay than Jason Bay will get through his years of eligibility, with worse track record of production, yet I didn't see anyone declaring Littlefield a genius when that contract was signed.

the good thing about this for the A's is it locks up one year after he'd become FA eligible. other than that, it's like any long term contract to a young player, it's a slight bargain if he doesn't get hurt or flame out, in which case it's a bad contract. you can't just look at the raw numbers like a FA contract. you have to keep in mind that the player would have gone to arbitration, not the open market, to determine his salary over the next three years.

the initial question is a bit confusing, and I'm not sure it completely encompasses what the poster was getting at. are we talking about leadoff hitters or are we talking about obtaining OBP without walking? Yes, he's been a bad leadoff hitter because even though his OBP is decent without walks, his baserunning mistakes have been numerous enough as to make that OBP misleading. with those baserunning errors adjusted into OBP, he's probably about .320. OBP is most important to leading off, and walks are a component of that, but there's alot more to it. a leadoff hitter should see alot of pitches. Soriano sees very few. Soriano never should have batted lead off in his career, ever. the "his stats are so much better there" argument is silly, right out of Bull Durham's 'if he thinks he's winning because he isn't having sex, then he shouldn't have sex.' cause and effect have been mixed up considerably with this, and I hope the front office recognizes it soon. before his 2006 skewed his career line, he was just as capable of a 5 hole hitter than a leadoff hitter. put him where his skill set belongs. drop him down, give him some protection, and the Cubs will be much better off.

:D the thing about the payroll is it was Hendry who got the Cubs in the upper echelons of NL salary in the first place. I was actually just struck by the irony that the first point was "The bottom line". In so far as increasing the payroll goes, if spending more money didn't help than it can't be listed as an accomplishment. He spent a lot of that money on crappy bench players whose production could likely have been matched by cheaper options from the farm system. For example, what value does Henry Blanco bring to the team that they couldn't get out of Geovoni Soto? Why pay Neifi Perez 2 million to stink when Fontenot could have stunk for league minimum? as I said early on in my post, I don't like alot of the things he does, and over spending for replacement level players is one of them. but I think you know I am not talking about the Glendon Rusch's and Henry Blanco's. before Hendry, the Cubs assembled no talent. one, maybe two guys were big time players and paid as such. again, it's easy to say it doesn't mean anything, but assembling the talent on the rosters that Hendry has assembled simply did not happen pre-Hendry. there was ZERO legitimate hope before Hendry. before Hendry, there was pray for career years out of the entire roster. alot of people around here say that is still the case, but that's a load of BS. had the rosters Hendry assembled matched three year splits, or even come close, the playoffs would have been a regularity. as it turns out they did not, again mostly because of injuries. how about this. http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHC/1996.shtml you want to go back to those days? look at that crap. that was life as a Cub fan before Hendry.

This is what caught my eye in your post. Yes, the Cubs have had some injuries. Some were completely out of the teams control. However, there has been endless discussion that the organization itself was responsible for some of those injuries, including Prior, Wood and to a lesser extent, Chad Fox. I'm not saying they are innocent or guilty of ripping Wood and Prior's arms off of their sockets, but if you pretend for a moment that they were guilty of this, then can you really include those when viewing someone's overall performance as a GM? And if we pretended again that it was Dusty and not Hendry who kept running them out there way too long in games, Hendry was Dusty's boss. Hendry had the power to inform Dusty not to burn the starter's arms. people just assume this without any actual proof as to whether it is or is not the case. yes, Hendry was Dusty's boss, but generally GMs have a hands off policy when it comes to the use of players, and as the course of Dusty's tenure played out, I think it was blatantly obvious that Hendry had no input into the use of the players. it was Dusty's purview, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was contractual further, by the time the damage was allegedly done, it was too late. put yourself in Hendry's place. are you going to ring up Dusty in September and October 2003 and say "hey, let's not use Prior and Wood so much?" hell no. your eyes would be on the playoffs, and Prior and Wood was what would get you there.

It's possible to win with a minimal payroll on a consistent basis only if your GM makes better moves than those GMs with larger payrolls. You think the small or mid market payrolls inherited by Billy Beane, Mark Shapiro, and John Schuerholz don't have an impact on their performance? All of them have been forced to exploit the weaknesses of their fellow GMs in order not only to survive, but to thrive. Small payrolls make you an underdog. Larger payrolls are expected to produce results more consistently than small ones. Period. I'm not sure how Shapiro and Schuerholz belong in this argument. before 2007, Shapiro had one successful year, and still failed to make the playoffs. the Braves payroll has been reduced, but has been only slightly behind the Cubs each of the past few years. further, none of the three have made their mark by exploiting the weaknesses of fellow GMs. all three have succeeded primarily because of great farm systems. even Beane is overrated when it comes to this. on the current team, I can think of four significant players that came by trade, two were very good trades (Harren and Gaudin), one very meh (Kendall) and one he'd probably like to have back (Bradley). the larger myth that is developing here is that you don't need large payrolls to win. there are three teams that have found any recent success without spending alot of money, the A's, the Twins, and the Padres, and it's no longer 2002. they're all edging ever closer to the middle of the pack with each passing year. let's look at 2005 AL East - Yankees AL Central - White Sox AL West - LA Angels WC - Boston NL East - Mets NL Central - Cardinals NL West - Giants WC - Phillies that's not the standings, that's the top payroll in each division and the top non high payroll team in each league. 5 of the 8 made the playoffs. middle 10 payroll teams rarely make the playoffs, bottom ten are even rarer. I think maybe two teams made the playoffs with a bottom 10 payroll the past three years. all of them had several players that weren't even arbitration eligible as centerpieces of their team and were not far behind the median payroll. you don't need payroll, but without a minor league system churning out major leaguers every year and at least a payroll approaching middle of the pack to hang onto some of the 3-6 year guys, you won't have sustained success. payroll source http://asp.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/salaries/default.aspx

:D the thing about the payroll is it was Hendry who got the Cubs in the upper echelons of NL salary in the first place, if not in rank then in actual dollars spent. I don't want Hendry as the GM. there are alot of things he does and doesn't do that drives me nuts and are enough for me to want him gone. at the same time, I consider his tenure thus far with a large amount of sympathy. the a "GM's job is to win, period, bottom line" crap is crap. denying that there are a variety of things out of his control and that those things have lead to losing baseball is untenable and disengenuous. like it or not, a GMs job is primarily to assemble a good team on paper during the winter, and there is not much else that can be done about it. here's the equation. team on the field = team on paper - injured players. the vast majority of baseball transactions happen during the offseason. thus, the team you got on paper is generally the team you go with for most of the season. looking at things in a vacuum and saying 'he should have done something about it' when injuries happen is silly. it's not like he can snap his finger and have a .900+ OPS shortstop magically appear to replace the one lost for the season. there are no interns stepping into a phone booth and emerging as a #1a and a #1b starter. there is no foreseeing a squat little flee body checking your superstar or season ending scrotal contusions. few teams succeed losing one of their top players for the year, the Cubs have lost at least three of their top players each of the past two years, with many other good players lost for long stretches. other than teams with mind blowing salaries like the Yankees, RedSox and now the Mets ever have these types of injuries and find any kind of success. someone even had the gall to ding on the acquisition of Karros. need I remind you...Todd Hundley. enough said on that, but regarding the team assembled in 2003, the harsh critics can't complain, right? afterall, it's about success, right? I want more, but I do consider 5 outs from the WS success. so onto 2004. well, Hendry managed to assemble a team that, based on it's starting staff, most experts and projections had winning the WS. two of those starters didn't make it out of ST. closer goes down in May. so what's a guy to do? how about go out and get a borderline HOF shortstop to fill in at your biggest offensive hole? not bad. didn't work out. Cubs finish three games out of the WC. where would most teams have finished if there top two starters combined to miss 25 games? how about when there closer who was perfect in converting saves the year before goes down? how about both, and you throw in one of your best offensive players missing 35 games due to injury and suspension? probably not three games out of the WC. so onto 2005. ah, but you can't talk about 2005 without reflecting on 2004 which ended with your disgruntled and rapidly fading superstar walking out. let's face it guys, he had to go. now some of it may have been his fault for letting Baker let the clubhouse situation get to the point it got to, but that's such a minute area of his responsability, if at all, as to make that part of his failure pretty irrelevant. somehow, someway Hendry manages to get rid of Sosa. you can say bad move, but you think 2005 was bad, you should have seen it if Sosa showed up to Mesa with his boombox declaring it was his house. deny the effects of mood of a ballclub all you want, the media would have dug and dug and dug until the clubhouse was in complete disarray and the effects would have shown up on the field. as it worked out, the Cubs got better production out of right than Sosa would have provided, and for a few mill less. so with that said, onto 2005. not a good job assembling an outfield, but oh what an infield, and still a great starting staff. not so fast. subtract one of the aces completely, subtract a quarter of the infield, set another of the aces out for a few games completely, and a few more to get the stuff back. oh, the budding center fielder? complete regression. back to the minors for him. "he should have seen it coming and had a contingency plan!" you say. why? Wood made every start through the rotation from July 11 until the end of the season in 2004. Prior made every single June, July, August, and September start in 2004. there was no reason to have a contingency plan going into 2005. side bar...the contingency plan argument as it relates to the alleged mind blowing salary Hendry has had to work with. seems to me the Cubs have been writing checks that total high payroll, but not getting high payroll players on the field. two seasons in a row at least 25M in players have not played baseball even though they received checks. this is the type of thing the original poster is talking about. some say he's had this huge payroll, then turn around and say he should have spent even more for a contingency plan. it doesn't work that way in corporate America, which is exactly where Hendry operates. there's only one Roger Clemens tree, and it's fruit only falls in Texas and New York. there is no replacing Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, unless you spend 30M more, and that kind of dough is not falling out of Tribune tower any time soon. there is no replacing Nomar and Lee, nor is there much point in trying as losing that caliber of player results in his team losing 99% of the time. 2006 - a disaster, complete and total. I did not like the position players he assembled, and this is where he should have had a contingency plan for the pitching situation. but again, how is that possible? we're talking about 16M that you have to pay, and replacing two irreplacable baseball players. even so, this was IMO his only terrible year as a GM, mostly because of the lost opportunities created by riding the year out with Baker and the crap that was on the field. rebuilding should have started last June, not in December, and it lead to what I think was his second worst job, assembling the current team, which I think has a realistic shot at the playoffs, but will hamstring the organization for years because of the length of the Soriano deal. but what does that say? let's say the Cubs make the NLCS, but in 5 years are hamstrung because of the Soriano deal. that makes Hendry a success right? that is why viewing things in a vacuum is ridiculous. that is why the "winnging, bottom line, period" crap is crap. in summation, you can say "every team has to deal with injuries." very true. however, no team has had to deal with injuries to the extent Hendry and the Cubs have had to the past three years. none. plain and simple. end of story. leaving injuries out of the equation in evaluating Hendry is absolutely absurd. every person in every job has things in his control, things not in his control and a limited number of options to deal with those things which are not in his control. being held to blame when previously reliable employees suddenly stop performing forcing you to put less talented employees to work would suck for anybody managing anything. "bottom line is to win" is not the way things generally do, nor generally should, work. while most everyone is and should be held accountable to the bottom line, most everyone deserves the benefit of having proper process recognized even if it doesn't result in proper results, and sans injuries to many of the top employees in the Chicago Cubs organization, proper results were likely in 2004 and 2005. on Baker - I don't think hiring him was a big mistake. it served it's purpose, which was to pump some enthusiasm back into the fan base. the mistake was retaining Baker after 2004. he should have gone right along with the other 'malcontents.' as for his failure to curb the way Dusty managed the ballclub, that's not the way it generally works.

Just because you keep repeating it doesn't make it true. The Cubs lack of success is their own damn fault, quit with the excuses. QFT Doubled. don't care.

Just because you keep repeating it doesn't make it true. The Cubs lack of success is their own damn fault, quit with the excuses. just because you don't agree doesn't make your perspective true. Brenly wouldn't keep talking about it if it wasn't happening.

third pitch to Eckstein called a strike four times against the Cubs today, called a ball twice to him. offense has been sad guys, but this subtle ball/strike BS that's been so prevalent over the beginning of this season is killing us.

again, I'm not fond of Izturis, but all three were highly questionable strike calls.

Not really, what is his pitch count? Looper is at 35 through 3. funny this is brought up concurrently with a discussion about a batters job is to get a pitch he can hit and drive it. other than Izturis and Lilly, every batter before Lee either hit the ball hard, had a good AB otherwise (Jones), or was robbed (Floyd's FO to Duncan). so either the Cubs are doing their job right now under one definition (hitting ball hard) or playing terribly because they haven't taken enough pitches.

Yeah that looked like a strike. there's been several. I don't know why you are beefing with my complaints. it's been pretty obvious to most of us which way the borderline calls have gone today.

I don't like the guy, but he just took a pitch four inches off the plate and it was called a strike. the pitcher threw it there again. you have a choice, 0-2, or try to slap it by the thirdbasemen. it's easy to fault the Cubs for their offensive woes so far this year, but just look at that inning. the ump cost them one baserunner in Jacque's walk, a lined scorcher that will go down in the books as 0-1, and an ump taking away any chance a slapper like Izturis has to get on base. such is the life of a Cubs fan. The ump seems pretty consistent to me, so I don't think there is anything to complain about yet. so you think the pitch to Izturis was a strike, but the pitches to Rolen weren't? how about the outside corner pitch to Lee v. the two pitches called strikes on Jones? same can be said about a couple high strikes/balls today. go ahead and argue that I'm crazy that the corner calls all seem to go against the Cubs, but to argue the consistency of the zone today is absurd. i think you're just trying to find something to nitpick at. it's not that bad. such also is the life of a Cubs fan. a strikezone that is not that bad is acceptable. I guess when you compare to the Williams and Lohse games it isn't that bad, but that doesn't make it good, or what should be acceptable. you're right, but umps are so bad/inconsistent nowadays, as long as they are relatively the same for both teams (which i believe is the case today), it's not a big deal. it's frustrating, but not that big of a deal. nice timing on Flames part.

I don't like the guy, but he just took a pitch four inches off the plate and it was called a strike. the pitcher threw it there again. you have a choice, 0-2, or try to slap it by the thirdbasemen. it's easy to fault the Cubs for their offensive woes so far this year, but just look at that inning. the ump cost them one baserunner in Jacque's walk, a lined scorcher that will go down in the books as 0-1, and an ump taking away any chance a slapper like Izturis has to get on base. such is the life of a Cubs fan. The ump seems pretty consistent to me, so I don't think there is anything to complain about yet. so you think the pitch to Izturis was a strike, but the pitches to Rolen weren't? how about the outside corner pitch to Lee v. the two pitches called strikes on Jones? same can be said about a couple high strikes/balls today. go ahead and argue that I'm crazy that the corner calls all seem to go against the Cubs, but to argue the consistency of the zone today is absurd. i think you're just trying to find something to nitpick at. it's not that bad. such also is the life of a Cubs fan. a strikezone that is not that bad is acceptable. I guess when you compare to the Williams and Lohse games it isn't that bad, but that doesn't make it good, or what should be acceptable.

I don't like the guy, but he just took a pitch four inches off the plate and it was called a strike. the pitcher threw it there again. you have a choice, 0-2, or try to slap it by the thirdbasemen. it's easy to fault the Cubs for their offensive woes so far this year, but just look at that inning. the ump cost them one baserunner in Jacque's walk, a lined scorcher that will go down in the books as 0-1, and an ump taking away any chance a slapper like Izturis has to get on base. such is the life of a Cubs fan. The ump seems pretty consistent to me, so I don't think there is anything to complain about yet. so you think the pitch to Izturis was a strike, but the pitches to Rolen weren't? how about the outside corner pitch to Lee v. the two pitches called strikes on Jones? same can be said about a couple high strikes/balls today. go ahead and argue that I'm crazy that the corner calls all seem to go against the Cubs, but to argue the consistency of the zone today is absurd.

I don't like the guy, but he just took a pitch four inches off the plate and it was called a strike. the pitcher threw it there again. you have a choice, 0-2, or try to slap it by the thirdbasemen. it's easy to fault the Cubs for their offensive woes so far this year, but just look at that inning. the ump cost them one baserunner in Jacque's walk, a lined scorcher that will go down in the books as 0-1, and an ump taking away any chance a slapper like Izturis has to get on base. such is the life of a Cubs fan.

the count should be 5-1 on Jacque.

Does it matter if you miss the bag? I wonder what the rules say about running past first base if you miss it. I'm just saying his best bet was to hope for all the umps miss him not touching first.

throw was on homeplate side of first and wide. Pujols came off the bag and tried the swipe tag, but DeRosa deeked into foul territory and Pufols missed iwth the swipe. however, DeRosa couldn't get back to the bag. obviously a bunch of Cards started yelling about it and Pujols went to tag and DeRosa made a move to second and got tagged out.

just wander back to the bag and pretend like you touched it. why admit you didn't touch it by trying to get out of the way. it was obvious the first base ump didn't see him miss the bag, maybe the homeplate ump missed it too.

that's what I was talking about earlier though. DLee should be at third.

good to see that wasn't called a strike. I will readily admit DLee got a break. that was a strike.

that chick looked like Aardsma's girlfriend.

lol. oh you like that? damn near every borderline pitch going against you for a couple weeks will do that, as will floating strikezones.