Cubzfan64

Hard to say whether I agree with you or disagree - I guess it all depends on how the players view him. If they like the fact that he says what's on his mind and is a "spokesman" for the team, then I don't have a problem with it - if they are as sick of it as some of the readers here, then I agree it's a detriment to the team. I sort of liken his "talking" to that of Kevin Millar on the Red Sox - they guy is the biggest "hick" blowhard I've ever heard speak, but his teammates (for the most part I think) like the fact that he takes the pressure off them to talk after the games. He sticks his foot in his mouth more often than not, but his teammates like that about him and he's been less productive this season than Walker. I'm torn on Walker for next year - I think his bat fits well with the team, but his defense is below average imho (especially as you said on the DP's). If there was a better option out there, I'd go for it - but not sure there is for the price.

Just to clarify, my definition of dominant has nothing to do with speed of pitches - I've seen Tim Wakefield look dominant in a number of games this season. It's probably more a matter of definition of dominant than anything else - I pretty much reserve "dominant" status for those 1 or 2 guys who are clearly above and beyond everyone else - a good example is Mariano Rivera this season - I consider that to be a dominant season. I guess I just have to agree to disagree about Joe and 2002/2003. He clearly had a very good 2003 season statistic-wise, but 2002 wasn't as great as it looks at first glance - if you check, you'll see he let alot of runners on base on average and teams had a very decent slugging percentage against him. 2003 was definitely his best year by far and I was more than happy to have him on the team, but I still ddn't consider him to be a dominant closer. I sure wish him the best of luck though - it's a damn shame he got hurt, he's a classy guy and impossible to root against!

I've noticed the same thing the last 2 years especially (without really seeing any stats that bear it out). The other thing that has really become irritating is the high pitch counts early in the games from our starters - if we have an excellent relief pen it wouldn't be such a big deal, but we routinely seem to have starters at 100+ pitches by the end of the 5th inning, even in games where we're ahead or low scoring games. I'd certainly like to see a change in pitching coaches personally.

I watched a TON of games pre-2004 and although Joe had good numbers overall, he was rarely if ever a dominant closer. I can recall many many games that he closed where he allowed a hit or two and a walk and a number of the outs were line drives at someone. Don't get me wrong, I really liked Joe Borowski - it's easy to like a guy who's toiled in the minors for a long time, worked hard to get to where he wanted to be and took advantage of it for as long as he could, it's just that I personally never felt he was a closer that struck fear in opposing batters hearts. He's a great guy and a super "underdog" pitcher to root for, but the term "smoke and mirrors" definitely applied to him many times.

no pun intended? :-) Seriously, this just feels like one of those situations where Corey needs a change of scenery.

I'd like to personally say thank you to the person who owns the site (Tim?) as well as those "veterans" here who've daily provided interesting statistics, first hand information on our minor league players, interviews etc.... I found this site during the last offseason when I was desperate for REAL discussions about my favorite team after being totally disheartened by other sites where I have to hear either "dood speak" or listen to juvenile (not necessarily in age) arguments and attitudes. Sometimes the discussions here get a bit carried away, and some people (myself included) take some disagreements personally, but overall this has been a Godsend of a website and forum for me to cheer, vent, educate myself etc... Thanks to everyone who's made this truly disappointing season bearable by giving me someplace to visit regularily. Great job and kudos for this site!

Sounds like a very good plan. I have been a HUGE fan of Hermida for awhile. He is such a great player. Gets on base a TON, walks more than he K's, runs the bases pretty good (23 SB, 2 CS in AAA this year). Just a real solid player who I think will be able to adjust very well to the majors. Miguel Cabrera now Jeremy Hermida??? Why don't we get this from our minor league positional players? Bad scouting? Bad developing? Whatever it is, it NEEDS to be fixed. I don't have an answer for why our farm system does not develop quality everyday players very often, but I wish I did. For years the Cubs did a terrible job of evaluating talent going into the draft often missing out on some real talent only to end up with guys who had short lived ML careers if any at all. I personally think there's too much of "giving an ex major leaguer a job" going on in baseball when it comes to hiring scouts and coaches. There are likely some excellent quality coaches and evaluators of talent spending time coaching high school and college teams, but they wouldn't ever get the time of day if they wanted a ML job - instead that job goes to over the hill, ex-players (often from within the organization) only because the teams feel they "owe" the players. I've been disappointed in our farm system for a long time.

I certainly wouldn't call it a bad year in comparison for Manny at all. He's going to end up only slightly below his yearly averages for almost all offensive categories from the looks of it. His average has been on the rise in the 2nd half and he's well on the way to moving it above .300 before the end of September. Ortiz is a real quality bat in that lineup, but you have to wonder how well he will/would do if Manny wasn't behind him in the lineup. Perhaps we'll find out next year.

He was also rumored to say "we can rebuild him.... we have the technology..... we can make him stronger, faster, able to leap small batters like Doug Dascenzo in a single bound." In all seriousness I'm glad to hear it seemed to go ok - I know it's just semantics, but I'm a little troubled by the comment "The Cubs hope he'll recover in time to start the 2006 season." If they were that worried about it, they should have closed him down a few weeks sooner and given him an extra month or so. I would much rather hear them have said "The Cubs expect he will recover in time to start the 2006 season." Oh well, get to work Kerry, and if you're still with us at the start of the 2006 season, let's try to change that "unlimited potential" label to one of "#1 Ace," shall we??

I think Baker certainly played his part in making a mockery of this season, but in all honesty, perhaps the team that played this season just isn't that talented. Our starting pitching has not lived up to our expectations - whether it be due to injuries or inconsistency Our relief corp. has been inconsistent all season as well - Dempster has been a bright sign, but can he continue? Barrett - is a better than average offensive catcher, but his defense and skill behind the plate are below average. Lee - had a phenomenal season Walker - Has a good bat, but doesn't provide alot of solid play defensively at 2B SS - Neifi actually filled in well for a 2nd string SS - problem is, we need a 1st string SS and as much as I love Nomar, he didn't come through for us this year and is beginning to live up to his "glass" body comparisons. 3B - Ramirez put together a solid offensive season but seemed to have aches and pains all season and it showed in his defensive lapses as well as some non-hustle. LF - I don't even want to talk about it - we tried just about everyone out there and hardly anything was even average. CF - another one I don't want to talk about - Corey regressed TERRIBLY RF - Burnitz was about what we should have all expected - nothing better than average All in all, talent wise, this just simply is NOT a playoff caliber team and the majority of people on this board (although trying to be optimistic) believed that when the season started. Baker did nothing to help the team's cause, but let's face it, we put together a pretty shoddy attempt to winning a division.

Enjoying shades of gray, Tim! I believe it was 35% Dusty, 35% players, and 30% Hendry. This season has been so horrendous that the blame for the failure has to be split between all parties like you said. Hendry didn't adequately address the teams deficiencies in the offseason, the players he DID assemble did not play up to what was expected of them as a team, and the coaches/manager did not make good decisions on a regular basis. All in all, this is one of the more disheartening seasons I can recall in the recent past. Cub fans have been teased in the last decade into truly believing we have a shot at a WS, only to have it yanked out from under us and seeing a team take this many steps backwards is tough to swallow.

Some of it could be due to going to the AL where opposition hitters haven't seen him, then again, maybe he just found a way to put it together again - who knows. We tend to think about all the guys who've left Chicago and gone on to do really well, but we forget about guys like Cruz and Remlinger who've done nothing. Sometimes you just can't figure out baseball - I guess that's one of the things that makes it fun.

True, but if it happens, you have to respect an organization that decides to "go for it all" when they have the chance. If they think Griffey will put them over the hump and get them a WS ring, thenas a fan I'd be hard pressed to complain about the deal if it has a potential affect on the future.

lol. Something went wrong with the parsing program there. :D Hehe - I was going to thank you as well :-) Somehow I get the feeling most of us wouldn't mind if it stopped working altogether :-)

I'm embarrased that with the payroll we have, that there is a legitimate chance we could end up in second to last place with the woeful Reds ahead of us. It's a very sad commentary on the entire season - no finger pointing here from me - the blame is shared equally amongst the players, manager, coaches and front office. It's inexcusable imho.

I would expect nothing less than Macias at 3B and Neifi at SS (as long as Nomar is out) with Cedeno being a bench guy getting the occassional pinch hit duty or maybe even a *gasp* spot start at SS every blue moon. Do any of you really think Cedeno will be put in the starting lineup regularily over Perez or Macias?

There is nothing meaningful to be gleaned from these numbers. The Cubs pitchers have a winning record when walking 3-7 batters in a game, but a losing record when walking 2 or fewer batters in a game. I disagree - enter the data into a spreadsheet with column A being walks from 0-12, column B as winning percentage for walks taken and column C being winning percentage for walks given. Plot the 2 curves and draw 2 trendlines - you'll quickly see that your winning percentage trends upwards the more walks you take and your winning percentage trends downwards the more walks you give up - it's not a coincidence and certainly not meaningless imho.

Interesting stats Fred! Thanks for coming up with those so fast! Looks like we have a .596 winning % when we clog the basepaths with 3 or more walks per game (leading to a 96 win season if we continued the pace). Adjust that to a .686 winning % when we really screw up and take 4 or more walks per game (leading to a 111 win season if we continued that pace). Granted the number of data points in the sample aren't tremendous, and I'm sure there are alot of other factors that come into play, nontheless it is an interesting trend eh?

If you came to the conclusion that you weren't close to winning with those players and/or didn't want to resign them when they become free agents. Unless the Cubs make massive improvements in at least 2 of the LF, CF, RF, SS positions, their chances will be slim. They also need significant improvement in the starting rotation, bullpen and bench. With a weak free agent class, and possibly very little on the trade market, a reasonable person could come to the conclusion that the Cubs cannot make the moves necessary to improve drastically by next year, therefore justifying trading off their best players. Likewise, if you didn't have a good chance to win next year, and one of your best players was going to be a free agent after the season (Lee) then it would not be unreasonable to deal him in order to better position yourself for the following season. I'm not advocating this strategy, but it's perfectly logical and a possibility that should not be ignored. Your logic is very eloquently written and expresses exactly why I would at the very least CONSIDER trading D Lee. It has nothing to do with not liking him or thinking he isn't a good player because I don't think either of those things. I just don't feel comfortable that we can position ourselves to have a championship team in 2006 and I'm nervous that we'll feel forced to overpay Lee both in years and $ making it that much more difficult to get what we need to compete in 2007 and beyond. I certainly don't advocate trading Lee for nothing, but a reasonable person has to put his name out there and see if there is someone who desperately wants him and is willing to overpay. At that point you simply have to hope the Cub organization can evaluate talent well enough to get more in return than they give up by trading him.

Imagine the RBI total Lee would have if he actually had OBP guys in front of him like he SHOULD have! Lee is just at the end of being "young" or maybe starting his "middle age" as a baseball player. He's certainly above average defensively if not outstanding and he provides very good power and a very decent avg. I don't see how anyone could NOT consider him one of the top 5 first basemen. That said, if you look around at MLB, there are a number of teams who will be in the market for 1B soon (either next year or in 2007). I've said it before and I truly believe that D Lee would be absolutely foolish to sign a 3-4 year contract with the Cubs without testing the free agent market - especially if he has an above average or even average offensive season for him next year. If I were in his shoes (and I can only WISH I were in his shoes!!), I would watch closely to see how committed the Cubs are to building a championship caliber team in 2006, and if things go badly I definitely test the free agent market at the end of the year and look to hook up with a top tier team in need of a 1B like Boston, Houston, NYY etc... All those reasons I state above are why I would seriously consider trading him this offseason if you can get someone desparate enough to overpay. The fact is, Lee is indeed having a career year and although there's little reason to think he'll drop down to being below average next year and thereafter, the Cubs need to learn to sell high and buy low.

I'm not absolutely certain on this, but I think Manny is owed ~$64 million for the 2006, 2007 & 2008 seasons. I've also heard that he is close to becoming a 10/5 player (10 years in the big league, 5 with the same club) which means he has the ability to veto any trade. Boston certainly has an incentive to trade him and lose that contract - especially if they should decide keeping Damon is a priority. If you look at the rumored deal the Red Sox had going with TB and the Mets, the Mets were willing to take on ALL of the remaining contract and give them Cameron and I believe 2 minor leaguers (one of which was a former #1 pick) and they would also have gotten Aubrey Huff. I'm not certain the Cubs have the talent to work a deal like that with Boston. That said, I'm fairly convinced that Manny will not be with the Red Sox next year and I'd guess the Mets are the first time that will be knocking on the Red Sox door after the season is over trying to work something out. If the Cubs could do it however, I would be very happy to have Manny in LF for the next few seasons. The Tribune has the money to put together a winning team and the fans (God help us) have deserved it for a very long time. Manny would certainly be a key offensive addition and it would take alot of the pressure off kids like Patterson and/or Cedeno to try to put up big numbers.

I'd sure love to see Aramis Ramirez put on a really good stretching and flexibility training program this offseason - in fact, to tell you the truth, I'd rather see many of our guys work on stretching and flexibility rather than pumping iron.

Anyone want to place bets that we see Jose Macias at 3B?

Yes I would trade Patterson, HIll and Pinto for Manny. No I don't think the Sox would do that, but who knows. They may not need as much young pitching as one would think - they have at least 2-3 young arms in the minors that project to be at least #3 starters and potentially better than that and I think a couple of those guys are less than a year away. My gut feeling is that it would take D Lee for us to get Manny, but again alot of it depends on how badly Boston wants to get out from under Manny's contract - perhaps we could get him cheapy as far as talent goes. Either way, I agree with you also that the downsides of getting Manny (average defense in LF and his additional "problems" he brings to the game like lack of hustle at times etc...) are far outweighed by the awesome production he would provide to this team. If the Cubs were rebuilding starting next year I don't think I would bother with Manny, but if we can get ourselves into a position with the rest of the team to SERIOUSLY contend next year, I'd make a push for Manny and let him be the back that we climb onto.

Considering the Yankees are freeing up $15M with Kevin Brown a free agent, and $8.5M with Bernie Williams a free agent, it's hard to see how the Yanks couldn't get Burnett. JMHO. I agree - the only thing I can even think of that might hold them back is that their signings of Johnson and Pavano didn't do what they expected and although George seems to like throwing money at problems, the Yankees may not be willing to tie up big money on Burnett for as long as some other team may be. That said, when you look at the Yankees this offseason and you realize 2 of their bigger needs are 1) a CF and 2) a starter, you have to think they will sign at least one of Damon or Burnett.