nilodnayr

I'm still holding out hope that if we don't get Roberts, he goes to the Indians, moving Cabrera across the bag and we can pick up Peralta.

Meph are you going to do this with one of the projection systems that are much better than James?

Thats what we did last year.

+1 on mock draft only being a mock draft.

Our system is so awesome that Veal is 8, Dope is 21, and Pawelek is 29!!! Oh wait, no, thats why our system sucks. I agree - not the strongest organization out there, but I might say it's stronger than it was last year. The main difference is we're getting much older. If appropriate ages are 24 in AAA, 23 in AA, 22 in A+, etc. then many of our prospects are now becoming old for their levels. I think the Cubs brass are banking on those guys who tend to "figure it out" later in their minor league careers (i.e. Geoff Jones, Kevin Hart, etc.). They also are showing an attraction to pitchers who have already had Tommy John surgery, making them a year and a half to two years behind schedule (i.e. Adam Harben, Ed Campusano, etc.). They have also drafted college kids more heavily than high school kids recently which keeps ages much higher than normal. In response to Veal, Dopirak, and Pawelek being in the top 30, my opinion is that players who are one year removed from huge seasons can't be completely forgotten: - Now I'm no expert in all those new age stats, but Donald Veal had a 1.67 ERA in 80.2 IP, striking out 88, with a WHIP of 1.09 at Daytona as a 22 year old (appropriate age) just a year ago (2006). It's too early to give up on him. He should be given a chance this year to make amends. - Dopirak had a pretty good season last year, was injured in 2006, had a bad 2005, and had a great 2004. 17 HRs in 347 AB's last year with a .277 AVG at Daytona shows some pop, but he was one year too old. 39 HR's in 541 AB's in 2004 at Lansing is outstanding. If he can sniff those numbers, he has a future in MLB. He's only 24 and should split the season between Tennessee and Iowa if he's successful. - Pawelek had a really tough year in 2007, which is why he is 29th on my list. But he is a 1st round pick only three seasons ago. He is only 21 and had two solid years out of three. It's not time to give up on him, but his mechanics and his stuff seem to be regressing. If the Cubs had a decent minor league pitching coordinator, he should be able to diagnose the problem and make suggestions to Pawelek to fix it. Once the mechanics are fixed, the stuff should come back. I didn't mean my comment as a slight against your list and I also firmly believe in the 2 year rule. What I did mean was that formerly very highly thought of prospects have not developed. Now this is true of every organization, but in the cubs case, these were guys with gigantic question marks that people just ignored. Veal can't throw it over the plate, Dope doesn't even know what the plate is and Pawelek hasn't seen a plate since South Bend. We don't have some magic farm system that is correcting these glaring errors. We just ignore them and cross our fingers that they'll develop.

He got by on his "funkiness." Once people figured him out, he was dead meat. Yeah, I specifically remember one sox game I was at (with a girl who had season tickets in the 7th row behind the visitors dugout) where Mauer took him deep. He used to throw this ridiculously slow pitch, but everyone realized that you could start swinging, stop, wait and then swing all over again and crank it. Here are the revelent stats 2004---5.78 H/9, 0.87 HR/9 2005---10.16 H/9, 2.57 HR/9 Yakult Swallows released him this offseason.

Enough so that you can say BR, and everyone knows what you're talking about. At least the first thing that popped into my mind was "baseball-reference"...I've tried to keep away from the Brian Roberts thread.

Disclaimer: Pitcher projects are much less accurate than hitter projections. PECOTA--yet to be posted ZIPS: Hill---181 IP, 9.4 K/9, 3 BB/9, ~1.22 WHIP, 3.88 ERA Bedard---Yet to be posted Bill James Hill-------206 IP, 9.74 K/9, 3.01 BB/9, 1.17 WHIP, 3.50 ERA Bedard---210 IP, 8.87 K/9, 3.34 BB/9, 1.30 WHIP, 3.69 ERA CHONE Hill-------186 IP, 8.56 K/9, 3.00 BB/9, 1.24 WHIP, 3.87 ERA Bedard---176 IP, 9.26 K/9, 3.22 BB/9, 1.28 WHIP, 3.50 ERA Marcel Hill-------165 IP, 8.02 K/9, 3.16 BB/9, 1.25 WHIP, 4.09 ERA Bedard---171 IP, 9.00 K/9, 3.16 BB/9, 1.26 WHIP, 3.56 ERA

He'd probably get $13 in arby over the next 2 years, they're getting his 1st FA season at $11M. It's a decent deal, but it's no steal. He's got to not suck to get that on the open market. They had a 1 year $6M deal in place before the extention. To think that he'd only get a $1M raise in his last year of arbi is not realistic. He probably would have been more like $9M in his second year (assuming he meets expectations), so basically they bought out a FA year for the same price as his last arbi year.

$11m. I'm not a fan of buying bullpens, but I really like dotel.

Matt Garza is the reason they got rid of Young, not the fact that he was an a-hole. As for Dukes, well no one is as bad as Dukes and at least the Rays got a decent prospect for him. Much better than the guy they gave up for Aybar.

Really depends on his health. If he is fully healthy I like him more than Leiber. He was actually pitching pretty well last season before he got hurt. Are you referring to his 2 starts in April?

His medical report was so bad that it scared off a bunch of teams and he was only able to get a 1-year deal with a $1 million base. This kind of garbage can probably be put to rest now. He plagarized it and only told San Diego the real story. Don't forget, and to spite the cubs he only signed for a meager salary.

Everyone keeps on talking about Zimmerman and the new park and so on, but shouldn't we be concerned about the wrist injury zapping some power?

Yeah dude, got to take a look at their RBI numbers.

Why are people complaining about the prices? Thats the cost (if not less than) if you were to buy those tickets individually.

Make sure you bring your sunglasses and a hat for any afternoon/night games. As the sun sets you are going to get blinded.

Our system is so awesome that Veal is 8, Dope is 21, and Pawelek is 29!!! Oh wait, no, thats why our system sucks.

Q: What would it take to pry Rafael Furcal away from LA? A: I think it would take 2 things (assuming they're going with an in-house replacement at SS): - take Juan Pierre off their hands - give them back a 3B If Crede can show he's healthy, I'd still like to see a deal where the Dodgers give Pierre, Furcal and some cash to the Sox for Crede, and then the Sox flip either Cabrera or Furcal to the Cubs for prospects. That only works if Konerko goes to LAA...otherwise no room for Swisher and Quentin. So far, all of the sox moves have been "win now" moves. I really only see them trading Crede for whoever they can get.

Meh. 5th starter numbers. High 4th if he meets the optimistic there. They're definitely worthy of 3.5 million in this market. Once again, I think people are being spoiled by the 03 rotation. Lieber's projection equates to a good 4th starter. How can it be 5th starter numbers if he puts up better numbers than the average starter (average starter has a 96 ERA+)? If he hits his optimistic projection, that's borderline #2/#3 numbers. Only 19 pitchers in the NL threw at least 165 innings and had an ERA of 4.11 or better. That's less than 1.5 starters per team. Add in a few people who threw over 100 innings but not quite 165, and you can see how those numbers would be borderline #2/#3. I absolutely agree, his projection is actually a good 4th/decent 3rd starter. I hate getting wrapped up in the 4th/5th/etc starter thing, but the fact still remains, when Lieber was on the mound he was an average/slightly better than average starter. The main question is, whether or not hes going to be on the mound and if you think there will be a precipitous drop off in his production. He is one of the only (if not the only) reclamation projects that didn't have arm injuries, so hes got that going for him.

I see the high reward with Veal, but I don't see it with Colvin.

What's that exactly? That Marquis and Dempster are going to have to compete for rotation spots with the Seans and Hart.

Unless you could flip him for a SS. Or use a package of Howry plus ???? (Murton) to get a SS. I smell a 3 team trade idea! :lol:

We bash Hendry for publically diminishing the trade value of some players that are on the trading block, and bash him for not saying things that would diminish the trade value of other players that are on the trading block.

yeah, that's not true at all. after all, he's not playing for free. also, i'd rather have marshall out there than lieber. so i'd say the worst case scenario is lieber sucks, steals $3.5 mil and the cubs lose games because a better pitcher loses starts. or, the cubs could trade marquis/dempster, lieber (predictably) gets hurt, and the cubs are thin in the rotation. Lieber is better than Marshall. at what? Pitching