nilodnayr

They are on a commercial right now, I'll post what I hear when they get back. Like I said, I just caught the very end of it.

I just caught the end of it, so Swordsman, if you caught it all correct me, but this is what I heard... Lou hasn't come out for the press conference yet and he'd usually have been out. Deal is in the works for Rich Harden, speculation is that its for some major leaguers as well as minor leaguers, most likely Gallagher and Cedeno. I just caught the end but it really sounded speculative to me and not definite.

Rich Harden!!!

Looking at what the Jays need, Cedeno would have to be a top target of theirs. Also, I'm sure Murton would be of interest. I wouldn't think they would really need a pitcher with Halladay, Marcum, McGowan, and Litsch, but who doesn't want pitching.

I've told this story a few times before, but I'll tell it again. A few years back I was in the bleachers for a game Burnett's last year in FLA. He was messing around with the bleacher-ites all batting practice. Then he disappeared into the innards of Wrigley and a couple minutes later walks right out the bleacher concourse and down the stairs in right-center and sits down next to some fans...still in complete uniform. Everyone was taking pictures with him and he was signing autographs and just chilling with fans for a good 10-15 minutes. He went back in and came out and while running back into the dugout from CF he turns around to the fans, points to his chest and then points to the field, signaling that he wants to play for the Cubs. It was really one of the coolest things I've seen. Evidently, he still feels the same way.

Man, I'd like to buy low in Swisher right now.

the MLB DOES have revenue sharing

home: 385/417/736/1.154 road: 289/338/508/846 Fixed my own statement Meh, you can't really draw a conclusion there. Its better to adjust stats by ballpark than to just throw them out. And triple slash stats are far from credible at this point in the year. If you want to play fun with home road splits, it hurts some of the cubs way more than Hamilton... Fukudome 1048 home OPS vs 576 road OPS DeRo 1064 home OPS vs 627 road OPS Sori 1063 home OPS vs 701 road OPS No wonder why we dominate at home and are below average on the road...

8 posts before a Chris Everett reference...that my friends is Puritantical restraint.

When I read between the lines, it kinda seems that Bruce is saying that A LOT of the problems with the past cubs teams were MacPhail and not Hendry. Obviously, without insider information, I would think the following COULD be MacPhail's fault: Spending on scouts Spending on scouts specifically in the Pac Rim Spending on the draft (aren't we pretty average/above average here) Spending on payroll (we spent plenty on payroll) what else? Hendry's problem has been that he makes terrible little moves that negate a lot of the value of his great big moves.

That seemed pretty tongue in cheek to me.

http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080523&content_id=2753251&vkey=draft2008&fext=.jsp On their home page it just says "Cubs aim to add another athletic player". But when you follow the link a picture of Tyler Colvin pops up. I threw up in my mouth a little bit. I look forward to the middle rounds of Wilkins draft.

Vazquez did out-FIP Lilly by .36 and was pitching in the harder league, so give him about another half of a run. I'm sure if you adjusted for parks, that difference would grow even more. Not to mention last year was Lillys best in his carrer (and better than his previous 3 years by a significant margin), whereas Vazquez's was in line with his career.

I don't see how his OBP would decline if he hit 15-20 homers. If his approach is patient line-drive hitting, attempting to hit more home runs would change that approach. It's not some for-certain thing, but it seems reasonable. Hasn't Ichiro also said the same thing...that he could hit for more homers but he'd overall be a less productive hitter. I believe he's put on quite some shows in BP. Guys with superb bat control and pitch recognition (not talking about race at all) like Ichiro and Fukudome probably could hit for more homers at will by lofting the ball more and swinging at pitches they could elevate. But fly balls are turned into outs much much more than liners and grounders and by having to be either more or less selective (based on what the pitcher is throwing them), there would definitely be an impact on OBP, as well as other stats.

Just so happens that I'm taking a client to the game on Tuesday night...score!

I'd argue that having a freakin hill and poles on the field is much worse than their drawing of the HR line.

you could do the same in wrigley and it could go into the well instead of basket

He really hasn't shown any more power than previously, and his patience has increased slightly. IsoD 2007=.060 2008=.076 BB% 2007=8.4% 2008=11.1% IsoP 2007=.080 2008=.083 However, on the bright side of things, he was really killed in BABIP last season. Using a modified formula that takes into account all batted ball types he should have been at 329 last year but was only at 289. Conversely, even though his BABIP is 358 this year, hes actually earning it as his eBABIP is 353. Not only is his LD% high (24.5%) (16th highest in the league), but his GB% is really high (50.3%) (34th highest in the league), resulting in a really low FB% (25.2%) (10th lowest in the league). Fly balls get turned into outs. For a guy who doesnt have homerun power, FBs are a killer. Maybe Theriot has realized that in order to get on base he needs to put the ball on the ground. His batted ball types are most likely going to regress some to the mean, but hes reached the point where LD% is over 50% credible, nearly reached the point where GB% is over 50% credible, and in 2 weeks will reach the point where FB% exceeds 50% credibiliity. Additionally, hes a 90% contact rate guy, so theres no reason why he shouldn't have a BA around 300. Theriot's problem is that BA is such a variable stat and pretty much the only thing he really brings to the table. One year he can have a BA of 266 and be a huge drain on the team, the next he can have a BA of be 325 and be a contributor. BLOT (or rather BLOB) he has below average skills outside of contact rate, which means that the only way he can be productive for a team is if he has a good BA and thats not something that can be very predictable.

But the allusion to Koufax is that he was one of the greatests who's career was cut short, not that he was just one of the greatest. Pedro pitched his last full season at age 33, Johnson pitched his at 38. Yowsers, I just noticed that Johnson places #1 of all time in Black Ink and HOF Monitor and #2 in grey ink (behind Cy Young) and HOF Standards (tied with Cy Young, behind Christie Mathewson).

Agree, especially for what is being proposed. There is probably a better chance of the Cubs trading Soto before the Giants trade Lincecum. They are not a small market team, they don't need to trade one of the 3 best young pitchers in the game for extra parts. It makes zero sense. Except when you realize who their GM is.

You know, except for the fact that he was nearly dealt to Toronto 6 months ago. It ended up that the Giants plugged the hole Rios was going to fill by signing Rowand. They only have 7 more position holes to plug!!! http://www.boxxet.com/Toronto_Blue_Jays/Giants_And_Jays_Talk_Rios_For_Lincecum.1d7c4r.d http://ballhype.com/story/rios_for_cain_or_lincecum/ http://majorleagueramblings.blogspot.com/2007/12/toronto-and-san-francisco-talking.html http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20071212&content_id=2324417&vkey=news_tor&fext=.jsp&c_id=tor http://blogs.nypost.com/sports/wm/archives/2007/12/payroll_concern.html http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071203.wsptblair3/GSStory/GlobeSportsBaseball/home I could keep on going but my Ctrl button might break.

So LLF got the single thing wrong, but puppy dogs right...hes batting .500!

I typically read every single comment on the player news page of rotoworld and can definitely say that they do this to all teams when deserved. Unfortunately, the cubs may deserve it more often than many teams.

At first I thought you were talking about Rich Hill and then saw the Johnson/Edmonds reference and realized that both our top young pitcher (well maybe I should say "young") and top young position player are in the minors with terrible veterans in their place and that made me a sad panda.

Well as I've said, I'd need to be looking at a smoking good deal. 09: $500K 10: $750K 11: $2M 12: $4M 13: $6M 14 thru whenever: team options in the $8-$13M range That'd be very similar to Longoria's deal, which he received after what? A week in the bigleagues? I'd be fine with offering that to a guy with 600 or whatever bigleague ABs of 900 OPS. I wouldn't expect Soto to accept, but that'd be my comfort zone on this thing. Tulo's deal really isn't far off from that: 2nd pre arb: 750K 3rd pre arb: 750K 1st arb: 3.5M 2nd arb: 5.5M 3rd arb: 8.5M 1st FA: 10M 2nd FA: 15M club option (3M buy out) And maybe an even more appropriate comparion would be McCann (need to adjust for inflation): 2nd pre arb: 500K 3rd pre arb: 800K 1st arb: 3.5M 2nd arb: 5.5M 3rd arb: 6.5M 1st FA: 8.5M 2nd FA: 12M club option (0.5M buy out) Hell, lets look at VMart's (more inflation adjustment needed): 2nd pre arb: 500K 3rd pre arb: 800K 1st arb: 3M 2nd arb: 4.25M 3rd arb: 5.7M 1st FA: 7M (250K buyout) If you adjust for 10% basebally salary inflation, all of these deals would roughly be 17-18M for arbi in Soto's years. Even guys who go year to year in arbi and stink up the joint like Joe Crede get roughly 13M in arbi (unadjusted for inflation). After your first arbi year the WORST you can do is take a 20% pay cut. Pretty good hitters (in non-defensive positions) make $4M in their first year of arbi (like Atkins and Hawpe). Meaning, even at the worst (well worst is you could non-tender them) you'd be paying them roughly 10M a year in arbi. And that doesn't even happen all that often, hell Prior resigned at 98%. So realistically, you are looking at a minimum of $12M in arbi. But the most important thing about most of these contracts is that it locks up the first couple years of free agency, which are the peak performance years of the player. Typically, if you let a player go through arbi and don't control him going into FA, then you have to shell out a large long term contract that covers a players decline years. And you are paying them the most $ during those decline years taboot.