Bruce Miles

Thanks for posting a link. I guess I'm underwhelmed by these deals. Thanks for all the info you have shared with us. I think its pretty cool that someone in the media still posts on a message board and leaves themselves open to critizism. In your opinion, what would you like to have seen the Cubs do? Thanks Ben I wouldn't have given Walker away for one thing. I would have gone the "prospect" route with Maddux, provided they were the right prospects. I just don't see this trade as making a big, positive impact. Izturis is probably OK in the right spot in the right lineup, but how many times have we seen that with this outfit?

Who ISN'T in sports journalism? Ugh. By saying idiot, I mean a real moron. So do I. There are intelligent writers. Downey happens to be a complete and utter moron. He sounds like a White Sox homer. What writers are you thinking of? Phil Rogers. Paul Sullivan. Mike Kiley. Rozner. etc. All morons. I can only think of two that I respect... Bruce Miles and Rob Neyer. Thanks for clearing that up. I was beginning to get my feelings hurt. In the shameless plug department, I'll direct you to today's Daily Herald, where in my Maddux trade story, I point out the red flags, and the term "on-base percentage" or OBP is mentioned early and often. Take a look at the game story, too, where I say that the Cubs just might want to look into this power thing.

Thanks for posting a link. I guess I'm underwhelmed by these deals.

The guy who wrote the story, Adam Rittenberg, does a very nice job for us.

Lineups Cubs Pierre, CF Walker, 2B Ramirez, 3B Jones, RF Barrett, C Mabry, 1B Pagan, LF Cedeno, SS Prior, P Mets Reyes, SS Chavez, LF Beltran, CF Delgado, 1B Wright, 3B Valentin, 2B Nady, RF Castro, C Maine, P

Fixed. Might be more entertaining as Mets vs. Mets. But with Z pitching, Cubs could actually win a series vs. a good team on the road.

Lineups Cubs Pierre, CF Walker, 2B Ramirez, 3B Nevin, 1B Murton, LF Jones, RF Blanco, C Cedeno, SS Zambrano, P Mets Reyes, SS Lo Duca, C Beltran, CF Delgado, 1B Wright, 3B Floyd, LF Valentin, 2B Chavez, RF Glavine, P

Bruce, is Walker done in Chicago? Chances are better than even that he is.

Lineups Cubs Pierre, CF Perez, 2B Ramirez, 3B Lee, 1B Jones, RF Barrett, C Pagan, LF Cedeno, SS Marmol, P Gnats Soriano, LF Lopez, SS Zimmerman, 3B Johnson, 1B Kearns, RF Anderson, 2B Church, CF Schneider, C Armas, P

Not a good indicator. I'll bet every team has a similar record when trialing by 3 or more after 7.

Lineups Cubs Pierre, CF Perez, 2B Ramirez, 3B Mabry, 1B Jones, RF Nevin, LF Cedeno, SS Blanco, C Marshall, P Gnats Soriano, LF Lopez, SS Zimmerman, 3B Johnson, 1B Kearns, RF Matos, CF Anderson, 2B Fick, C Hernandez, P Have at it.

91-93 on the fastball

It was indeed a joke. That's Maddux.

FWIW, Nevin is 0-for-14 vs. Astacio; Mabry is 7-for-20. Again, FWIW.

Not bad.....since Lee is out. However, I'd prefer to see Walker at 1b and Theriot at 2b. Theriot to Iowa with Prior coming off the DL; Lee probably won't play until Sunday.

The old built-in advantage of being here. :D

Lineups Cubs Pierre, CF Walker, 2B Barrett, C Ramirez, 3B Jones, RF Mabry, 1B Murton, LF Cedeno, SS Prior, P Gnats Soriano, LF Anderson, 2B Zimmerman, 3B Johnson, 1B Escobar, CF Kearns, RF Schneider, C Lopez, SS Astacio, P

First, I appreciate your willingness to come to the board and discuss this. Second, there is almost no way that a single player would change the outcome of 5 games that the Cubs lost by 3 runs or more. Sure, it's possible that those particular games Barrett would have gone 4-4 and drove in the 4, 5, 6, or 7 runs necessary to win each game, but HIGHLY unlikely. Maybe Barrett makes a significant difference in 2-3 games, but we lost 7 games during the suspension, 1 by 1 run, 1 by 2, the rest by 3 or more. Third, I'm pretty surprised that you're using 6 handpicked ABs to support this claim. Blanco hit .341 with 3 HRs in the 13 games Barrett missed; he had an OPS over 1.000 in June (15 total games, so only 2 games other than these 13). Yes, you can handpick a handful of situations where he didn't succeed, but I'm positive that I can find 6 games this season in which Barrett didn't get a hit with guys on base or whatever. That's really not a strong argument. The fact that Blanco stranded 1 runner in an 8-1 loss means Barrett's absence was a significant cause in the team being 20 games under .500 at the break? Finally, and this is probably the biggest issue with laying blame on Barrett, I think the Cubs were 27-42 when Barrett's suspension was enforced. They were already 15 games below .500. I don't know how many games back that was, but they were out of the race. They were 3/10 without Barrett, but they were only playing .390 ball with him. So even if you want to say his being out cost us 2 games (we'd play .500 ball w/ him) or even all 7 games we lost - we'd still be 13 games under .500. Our team has been terrible and Barrett has been very good and steadily playing well all year, I just don't understand why you'd want to blame him for this mess. Maddux has sucked since April. Z sucked in April when he was supposed to be the ace. Walker struggled in May and was horrible in June. If you want another player, I think there's a long line in front of our C with the now .903 OPS. Those are all great points. I'm glad we can come here and discuss them civilly. You're right. When a team is 34-54, you've got plenty of candidates.

You also have to assume Barrett wouldn't have been in any of those situations, because he wouldn't have hit in the same spot of the order as Blanco. Of course. But the entire lineup dynamic (if you can use "dynamic" with anything involving the Cubs) would have been different with Barrett in there.

No one counted on Blanco's performance, but we got it. So losing Barrett for 10 days meant equal production at the plate and probably better defense at C. If you can find any evidence at all that suggests that Barrett's absence actually cost us any games or kept us from contending this year, I'd like to see it. But I don't think you can. No, it wasn't wise of Barrett to punch AJP, but it cost the Cubs nothing. Not a thing. Same offensive production, better D, and the 24-man roster argument doesn't hold water (see my earlier post about Guzman). The problem w/ our team sucking is we go hunting for scapegoats. Barrett isn't one - he's been solid to very good all year. He's one of the few and maybe the only one who can say that (Z sucked for the first month). I have to admit that that punch to AJ was the only dark side to Barrett this year so far. And when I saw how high his OBP is, I thought that was great. But who could've guessed Blanco would've done so well? No one, but if we're looking back and saying "who is to blame for getting us here" - how can you say Barrett at all? Solid, one of the top offensive Cs all year, and his replacement for 10 games played as well as Barrett ever has in his best 10 games. At the time, maybe we all thought "crap w/o MB, our offense will be really bad." I sure did. But Blanco played incredible. If you want to say the punch was dumb or whatever, I can respect that opinion. If you want to say Barrett is anywhere on a list of players to blame for this season, you'll need to come up w/ some evidence b/c right now he's been the MVP of the 1st half for us. Some have played better for a month or two - no one has been this good day in/day out all season. As I said, it's precisely because Barrett is such a good offensive player that he's on my list. They Cubs missed him: June 20: Blanco flies out with a man on in the seventh and groundes out to end the game with a man on second. Indians 4, Cubs 2. June 23: Blanco strikes out with a man on base. Twins 7, Cubs 2 June 24: Blanco grounds into a double play with two men on base and goes 0-for-3. Twins 3, Cubs 0 June 25: Blanco leaves to runners stranded in the second inning. He does drive in a run with a ninth-inning single. Twins 8, Cubs 1. Does his early at-bat change things? Who knows? June 26: Blanco goes 0-for-3. Brewers 6, Cubs 0. June 27: Blanco doubles but leaves a man stranded in the sixth and flies out with two on in the eighth. Brewers 8, Cubs 5 Yes, Blanco played as well as could have been expected and maybe a little better at times. Would Barrett's presence have changed things in the above games? Maybe. Maybe not. But the Cubs were not as good an offensive team with Blanco in there over Barrett.

I spoke to Hendry as well. There was never any intent on his part to fire anybody during the all-star break. What he said was he was going to "evaluate everything." That means he's evaluating manager, coaches, players, minor leagues, trade possibilities. A lot of people made the leap that Hendry firing Baker during the break was a done deal. Not so. If, as somebody said above, the Cubs get off to a start of losing 8 in a row or 12 of 15, then I think you'll see a change.

And sadly, what they did spend was not spent wisely. True enough. I've got to spend some quality time with the family, so I'll let you guys have at it. Thanks for reading. I respect all the opinions here.

If you're saying what I think you're saying, I disagree Bruce. Our payroll, in and of itself, is not the problem. We've given too much money to the wrong people, I know . . . but spending $26 million more isn't going to make problems go away, especially if you're just trying to catch an AL team in the Payroll Standings. But, really, other than that, great article. I've always said you have to spend wisely. But for an outfit such as the Tribune Co. to self-impose these type of limits is indeed a problem. I'm a little disappointed with the payroll, but is it the Trib, or Hendry and his annual "we're saving some for the trading deadline" talk? The trib has raised the payroll substantially for several years, until this year. And now that the team is playing so poorly, there's no reason to raise it higher to get more players. Has the trib gone gun shy after seeing the results of Hendry's poor spending habits? Or have they made the funds available and the Cubs powers that be just haven't decided to spend them yet? I'm thinking it's a little bit of both. You're right. At this point, there's no sense of throwing good money after bad. Last winter, I believe substantially more money was available than what the Cubs spent. They chose not to spend it.

I figured with Hendry and Dusty owning my top two spots, it was time to lay some blame on the players. Too often, we want to blame others for people's failings. Don't get me wrong, the coaches bear their share of the blame around here, but with my totally arbitrary look at five things, I thought 60 percent should go to the players, balancing that by giving Hendry and Dusty the gold and silver medals.

I agree, that is until the last few paragraphs. Michael Barrett is in no way one of the 5 biggest culprits for this season. I just can't even begin to believe that. He OPS'd .860 in April, near .800 in May, and over 1.000 in June - he's been solid all year. He didn't disappear when Lee went down. Yes, he punched AJP in the face. At that point, the Cubs were already out of it. They had a 5 game losing streak when he was gone for 10 - true. But they lost 6 in a row earlier while he was playing. Not only that, but during the 13 games Barrett was out for his back & the suspension, Blanco played the best offensive baseball of his life. He OPS'd 1.055 in June (over 15 games, 13 of which were during Barrett's absence). What are the chances Barrett plays any better than that 1.055 during those 13 games? I'd say pretty frickin small. So whatever we lost by having Barrett miss 10 games for punching AJP, we gained by Blanco having a career 2 weeks. Finally, I think a different team would use that punch as a rallying point. Barrett was clearly frustrated and got pissed and showed he wasn't giving up on the year. I was hoping the team would rally behind him and run off a string of Ws. Didn't happen, but I'm still ok w/ the punch. Not a great idea, but certainly not one of the reasons behind our team sucking. It's precisely because of Barrett's strong numbers that I cited him. It doesn't matter if the Cubs were out of the race or not. His act was ill-timed and selfish. It also cost the Cubs a roster spot, forcing them to play with 24 men.