nilodnayr

an invaluable website http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/ Esigned as a free agent 5/14/08 (Chicago pays pro-rated portion of $0.39M ML minimum - about $0.29M - with SD paying about $5.71M and St. Louis paying $2M) He'll be a FA after this season Edmonds is on the border of being a FA eligible for draft pick compensation but it doesn't matter because the cubs aren't going to offer him arbitration. The Cubs should not resign him.

the current regime signed all those backloaded deals because they knew that the team was going to be sold, so it was going to be someone elses problem

doesnt matter, we wouldnt offer him arbi anyway

.267 v .289 wOBA 346 v. 317

There are quite a few excellent prospects on the team. That's great... but what if our ACTUAL player played? Then we'd call it the WBC and get crushed?

He could with bad luck, but his peripherals show otherwise. Frankly, the year he is having is only lucky due to the absense of bad luck.

it's not that improbable but it's still unlikely. if he keeps his strikeout numbers down and maintains a solid walk rate, and stops hitting fly balls as frequently as he did this year, he can be a pretty productive hitter - assuming that he doesn't have horrible luck. and, while selling high isn't a bad idea, you have to remember that (a) the cubs don't have another shortstop ready to play, and (b) there isn't going to be a whole lot of money available to spend in the offseason. i just don't know that you're going to do better than a shortstop who can put up a .350-.370 OBP at just about the major league minimum. Frankly, "not improbable" means that its likely to happen at least once in his career and probably more. It'd be an interesting topic for Meph.

There are quite a few excellent prospects on the team.

Your avatar confuses me.

Its really a backhanded complement though. Yes, hes produced and been a nice surprise but I wouldn't say hes awesome. I would say hes having a fairly awesome year, but as the stat shows, its because hes pacing (and I do mean pacing) the league in batted balls that fall for singles. As you can see a lot of guys on that list are not great players. Guess who lead the NL in singles for all but two years since 2001 (he came in second those years)? You guessed it (or at least you should have), Juan Pierre. Now, Pierre had a 6.0% career K rate (to Theriot's 9.8%), which is how he did it all those years, but its a rare type of player who has the contact and utter and complete lack of power that can lead the league in singles year after year. How does Theriot's LD% compare to Pierre's? I always got the sense that Pierre's singles total was padded by weak grounders that he was able to outrun. Theriot doesn't have that speed and it seems like the majority of his hits are line drives over or between the infielders. *subjective memory bias disclaimer* Predictably, the answer is a bit all over the place. Pierre had a low of 19.3 LD% and a high of 25.5%, but he was mostly around 21% with a career average of 21.9%. Theriot's career is 22.4 LD% with a high of 26.6% in his insane partial 2006 (363 BABIP), had a 21% (289 BABIP) in a terrible 2007, and 23% (345 BABIP) in 2008. I would say that Theriot is probably a notch above Pierre in the LD department. But the real batted ball stat that we should look at with Theriot is his FB rate. In 2006 it was 23.9, in 2007 it shot up to 30.5, and in 2008 hes only hit 19.1% FBs. That 19.1% is lowest in the game in 2008 and in the Pierre, Ichiro, Jeter, Castillo level. Which, obviously leads to a huge GB%. It seems as thought Theriot has realized that he is no Fontenot and needs to put the ball on the ground/near the ground (and do it hard) if he wants to be a productive player. So, this is all good news in the "Theriot can repeat this year" side of the ledger...except for the underlying fact that ALL of this is that when you count on putting the ball in play without power a lot to have value, you are setting yourself up to be very very vulnerable to luck. A rough BABIP year like he had in 2006 is really not that improbable. A savvy GM would sell high on Theriot this offseason with the combination of having a good year and being really cheap.

Nope 2 years

Its really a backhanded complement though. Yes, hes produced and been a nice surprise but I wouldn't say hes awesome. I would say hes having a fairly awesome year, but as the stat shows, its because hes pacing (and I do mean pacing) the league in batted balls that fall for singles. As you can see a lot of guys on that list are not great players. Guess who lead the NL in singles for all but two years since 2001 (he came in second those years)? You guessed it (or at least you should have), Juan Pierre. Now, Pierre had a 6.0% career K rate (to Theriot's 9.8%), which is how he did it all those years, but its a rare type of player who has the contact and utter and complete lack of power that can lead the league in singles year after year.

I don't think that has much to do with Jimmy's comments. I think his have to do with the overall tone of the average Philly fan. They booed Santa Clause for crying out loud. Anyway, he probably should just be quiet, take his money, and play ball. (BTW> commas o.k.?) they should boo "santa clause", it was a bad movie and the sequels, from what i hear, were even worse. i'm from the philadelphia area and i can say that the fans there are very passionate and loyal to the local teams. they might loud, obnoxious and too passionate for their own good, but they're not frontrunners. when i think of a frontrunner, i think of a fan who latches onto any team that is good, regardless of geographical location. that really doesn't happen in philly. Yeah, jimmy was probably about to say another F-word to describe the fans and decided to tone it down. The booing Santa Claus, the throwing of batteries, the jail in the football stadium, the philly fans are a lot of things, but I wouldn't call them fairweather. The rest of his comments though are pretty accurate from what I've heard. Maybe they just seem fairweather because if you aren't doing well they'll jump all over you and be extremely abusive, which is basically what he said.

He also consistently works starters deeper into the count and contributes to them departing earlier, which helps the whole team. As far as the comment of 100 strikeouts over average costing half a win, he strikes out about 50 times more than the average player every 600 at bats...so can we call it a game every four seasons? His impact of working pitchers deep into counts isn't likely as damaging to the pitcher if he was more productive in the AB, therefore creating more runs and extending the pitchers' usage by not creating an out. Except, you know, that a a significant amount of those at bats are productive and end up in walks or hits...he does have a 500 OBP at a full count. Not really a significant amount of those Abs are productive, if they were, he'd be a much better hitter overall. With two strikes, his OPS is .578. About 30% of his 2 strike ABs are 3-2 counts, in those other 70% he has been bad, even for a hitter of lesser quality than him. He'd be a better hitter if he was more aggressive early in the count, IMO. Either that or he needs to become a better 2 strike hitter since 55% of his PAs are in two strike counts. Well that really has nothing to do with a conversation about going deep in a count, now does it? So, yeah, a significant amount of those at bats deep in a count are productive. But you are talking about something different.

He also consistently works starters deeper into the count and contributes to them departing earlier, which helps the whole team. As far as the comment of 100 strikeouts over average costing half a win, he strikes out about 50 times more than the average player every 600 at bats...so can we call it a game every four seasons? His impact of working pitchers deep into counts isn't likely as damaging to the pitcher if he was more productive in the AB, therefore creating more runs and extending the pitchers' usage by not creating an out. Except, you know, that a a significant amount of those at bats are productive and end up in walks or hits...he does have a 500 OBP at a full count.

Well can't PTBNLs be just anyone who isn't in the same league when the trade happens? So thats everyone on the Cubs, regardless of if they cleared waivers or not. They'd just have to be PTBNLs.

2008 Cubs wOBA Soriano= 357 Theriot= 347 Lee=354 ARam=368 Edmonds=408 (as a Cub) Soto=364 Fukudome=327 DeRosa=360 Fontenot is at 381 I made this comparison before, but the numbers work out really nicely today so it bears repeating...Jhonny Peralta is leading Theriot by 50 points in OPS (816 vs 766), however they have exactly the same wOBA. Theriot has 20 XBHs this year, Peralta has 56. That just shows how much OPS is not an ideal tool to use to compare because it weights SLG and OBP evenly. Now, I'm not advocating for Theriot because nearly all of his value comes from batting average, which is highly subject to luck, but I am saying that he has been very productive this year. If I were the GM, I'd sell high on Theriot this offseason.

thats really not a new development so it shouldnt be a problem. im sure its not terribly hard to work around.

We should be OK for tonight, but why not keep as many pitchers available as you can? Our next offday is Monday and then we have 16 in a row. Throw Shark an extra inning and give him an extra day off and you've saved yourself another BP arm for tonight, tomorrow, or the next day. Marshall will probably piggyback Harden again so at least we have another long man but still, we should be taking advantage of these low level situations to put us in a better position for the future.

If he throws Marmol instead of Howry then I will officially be very angry...anyone know whos warming up?

Why not throw Samardzija out there for a 3rd inning to conserve the pen?

Better, but I'd still take the draft picks. Really all depends on if Owings was hurt, which is a double edged sword. It would explain him sucking, but then hes hurt.

Supposedly the two PTBNLs are on the 40 man roster, one a MLB ready pitcher and one a position player http://thelotd.com/ctrent/blog/2008/08/11/players_to_be_named http://arizona.diamondbacks.mlb.com/team/roster_40man.jsp?c_id=ari Decent chance one of the PTBNLs is Owings or Scherzer.

I knew when they hired Bazasi (sp) it would be a good thing for us Cub fans. Bavasi

The only team in the playoff hunt that could've claimed him before Arizona was LA. Dunn's a Free Agent after the year. Does the team have to be in the playoff hunt to claim him? I thought any team could claim him but the team with the worst record gets him. Anybody could claim him, but what's the point of the Pirates paying him the remainder of his contract this year to finish last? Compensation picks.