nilodnayr

He was like 17 guys deep on their depth chart

That's not exactly true. Only 20% of a players UZR is based off of his UZR in previous years. That coupled with the fact that other defensive stats with similar methodology can often differ by 20 runs or more and you've got a grab-bag of stats that you shouldn't put hardly any stock into. Tree's right. It's much more magic rock than measuring tape. But thats not the argument.

Those "stats" are horrible. They are especially horrible for OF. If you've got better ones, feel free to volunteer them. *crickets* the fact that you don't have anything better than a magic rock to keep tigers away doesn't mean you should use the rock (and yes, i realize i've completely changed the context of the reference; i have no idea why this scenario came to mind, but it did) But along the spectrum of magic rock to measuring tape, UZR falls closer to measuring tape than magic rock. No one is saying its perfect, but horrible is a wee bit extreme.

They've been slumping lately (although they won last night.) We have a shot, a slim one but a shot. Don't forget, we've played one less game than the wings and in March/April we have 15 of 22 games at home. February is Detroits big month of home games so if we can keep the distance the same throughout February then IMO we have more than just a slim shot.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2009/01/yankees-reach-f.html

From what I've gathered reading between the lines from what the players have been saying, Campbell is the defacto captain of the team and Kane is an cocky little annoying kid, they didn't say it in so many words, but thats what the dynamic is.

shots...40-17

Are we really going to lean toward the idea that Lou is horrible? Sure he's not perfect, but he's had more success as Cubs manager than anyone I can remember. He dumps young guys he doesn't like. That may upset me some, but I also know that he's given some young/minors guys a chance that previous managers like Dusty never would have (Theriot, Fontenot to name a couple). An argument can be made that Lou saved Hendry's job, even. Maybe that's why he allows him more input (maybe more than he should). Thank you for making my point. Lou is wonderful because of the success that he's had, but Hendry is terrible because we lose in the playoffs. Who was the GM that assembled these successful Cub teams? As for Lou having more success as Cubs manager than anyone you can remember, how about Hendry has had more success as Cubs GM than anyone you can remember. Neither is perfect, but Hendry gets all the blame for things that go wrong while Lou gets all the credit when things go right. Also, how did Lou save Hendry's job? You must mean that he saved his job by taking the best team in the NL to the playoffs. I dont have a problem with lou, but isnt your logic that its not hendrys fault because hes just doing what lou wants? Well thats circular logic because hendry is the reason lous there. If its lou's team then its only because hendry brought him in and handed it over to him.

We keep it simple, 5 keepers, no funky rules or restrictions. If you do it online and have an odd amount of keepers remember to start your draft in the opposite order than its supposed to be so when it gets to your "real" first round, people are picking in the right order.

I understand that but he hires people to run it he doesn't run it for him. Yes a GM overseas it Step 1: bring the Cubs' farm system back to America. Actually, Pac Rim scouting is one of the Cubs positives. (I know you were making a joke)

The dodgers already offered a 2 yr @ 22.5M per

don't you hate pants

False, most of those prospects never had the value fans wanted to believe they had. Partly true, but it's more the people Hendry hired under him that have screwed up the farm. A GM can only do so much, and is often busy working on improving the big league team. He personally isn't gonna go scout young highschool or college players very often. So personally I never praise or bash a GM based on the farm, as his performance. That would be like calling Hendry a idiot because Dusty Baker was our manager. But you could say he's done a bad job in hiring people(like he did with Dusty), when it came to the minor leagues. When Hendry was incharge of the farm, our system was ranked towards the top in baseball, and when he first became GM. He used this minor league resources to get players like Ramirez/Lofton, Lee and Nomar. Over the last few years he's had some bad luck with top prospects, and good luck with average prospects. Overall he hasn't had all that much too work with in trades, and giving young players full-time roles. A Gm job is a 100 times easier when you have a good farm. Like I mentioned in the past compare good/bad contracts between Hendry/Theo Epstein, and it's very simliar. The difference is the Red Sox have gotten great production from the farm, and the Cubs haven't. FYI, the GM is in charge of the farm system too.

ok then, take your pick- Hendry: -has really mismanaged his prospects and how to get the best value for them over the last few yrs -has put together an absolutely piss-poor farm system, which with the resources he's had at hand, is downright indefensible at least one of the two statements is correct 3) Had a lot of really good prospects and got unlucky that few panned out. Not my opinion of the situation, but a defensible possibility. Honestly, all three of those play a big role. If I were to order them I'd say 2, 1, 3. I ranked 1 over 3 not because of his recent trades but because of non-trade mismanagement of guys like Patterson, Pie, and Cedeno. The Cubs handled each of those situations pretty poorly. It wasn't luck that they didn't blossom.

How can you keep players on your next year roster though? Do you just make a vow to not draft each others keepers? We run a live draft and undoubdtedly there's always a few people who miss it and run off pre-drafts and have no control over their picks at some point Yeah we run ours offline, it's more fun that way to make a day out of it watching college basketball, drinking and making fun of people for awful picks. Yahoo did add this year where our previous seasons results are archived through our league page, so maybe it's possible to run a keeper, I'm not sure, I don't run mine. BUT, if you have people spread all over the country, that won't work. We do keepers through Yahoo, and like you guessed, we just pick them all in the beginning of our online draft. But of course, everyone needs to be actually drafting OR if they are doing autodraft they can set their draft priority and just take out everyone elses keepers and list their keepers first, but we've never taken that risk. Everyone sends their keepers to the commish about 2 weeks before the draft and he sends them out to the league so you know whos keeping who.

Hendry hired Lou, so its still Hendry's fault.

He'll never pass through waivers, duh

only if the market gained six thousand points tomorrow (which can't happen)

Claimed him off waivers from the Indians last September...we have a A LOT of wasted space on the 40 man, we really didn't need to lose Veal if we didn't want to lose him.

Guzman was granted another medical exemption and has an option remaining. I know I've seen that here by the most reputable posters, you, Navin, etc, but its disheartening that even cubs.com disagrees. http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20081214&content_id=3717139&vkey=news_chc&fext=.jsp&c_id=chc&partnerId=rss_chc It is Muskat, but still...I haven't been able to find any links confirming Guzman was granted an extra option year. I checked with the Cubs today. Guzman is indeed out of options. Thanks Bruce!!!

Guzman was granted another medical exemption and has an option remaining. I know I've seen that here by the most reputable posters, you, Navin, etc, but its disheartening that even cubs.com disagrees. http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20081214&content_id=3717139&vkey=news_chc&fext=.jsp&c_id=chc&partnerId=rss_chc It is Muskat, but still...I haven't been able to find any links confirming Guzman was granted an extra option year.

Ok, so this is about the twelve thousandth place I've seen that Gooz is out of options...is everyone in the world wrong?

a guy you didnt list who would be a good fit for the cubs is wiggington

Except that job way way way beneath him. Yeah. Better than unemployment, right? Wow, I had no idea no one had picked him up.

Except that job way way way beneath him.