BigbadB

Absolutely great news.

I think this is a conspiracy to break up the Diamond Jaxx. We can't have some dumb ole farm team showing up the big club. :D All kidding aside, I can't even form an opinion on this, because I don't understand it. Cedeno rips up Iowa to the tune of .377 and gets promoted to hold Neifi's jock. If Cedeno can't strip playing time away from a stone cold Neifi, ain't no way Murton steals time away from hot hitting Holly. I suppose the opportunity to play in the bigs is more exciting than playing in the all star game for Murton, but probably not if it's just to sit the bench. At 23, I think Murton's advanced enough to handle it. Adam is likely to be a 4th or 5th outfielder someday, so I'm fine with him as a back up, even now. I think I'd be frustrated if Pie was brought up this early. I suppose the injury was somewhat of a blessing. In the meantime, I sure hope Corey figures things out.

Very happy for Luis. I hope this will be a boost to his confidence and he can capitalize on this opportunity. He very much deserved the recognition for a fine first half. I'd like to see him advance to the next level. Isn't he in the outfield nowadays, also? AA replacement for Murton, maybe?

Granted (although I didn't know that, thanks), but there's hope that someone out there would have the guts to play the Moneyball philosophy with the Cubs. I think it would be a good match: the Trib is cheap (or, let's just say they want to squeeze all the ink they can out of a buck), and the philosophy has been proven to get a team to the playoffs practically perennially (see the AL West lately? The A's look poised for that second half surge). The rest is dumb luck (all right, the Cubs run short on that) and three good starting pitchers (which I think our staff has, at least when you put them all together). But why is DePo doing so poorly with LA? He was Beane's former number cruncher - thought he would do even better with a bigger payroll. It takes time to completely revamp a team. The difference between Epstein and Beane is that Epstein has money to bring in AND keep the key guys he wants. Beane has to give his away and hope he can replace them.

Bummer. My last trip to St. Louis for awhile ends on July 16th, or I would have pounced.

Burnitz - nobody wanted him this offseason. Wouldn't expect that to have changed much. He'd bring a AAAA body or two. Perez - Ditto, and even less. Hollandsworth - Ditto. Rusch - Some value, but probably won't bring back more than a warm body. Why give up a potentially decent lefty reliever for what will probably be a bench warmer? Remlinger - We would quite literally have to pay to move him. Would bring back somebody's second to last best prospect. Maddux - the only one with decent value, but he's been so spotty lately that he's killing his value. A 6 inning pitcher with a 5 ERA? Meh, nobody's going to give up much for that. So, trade all of them minus Maddux and we pick up some other team's Dubois, Wellemeyer and Macias. The biggest trade of our season was Hawkins. Landing two potential big league pitchers, both under 25, for him was the best haul we'll see, I think. It's not like we gave up a whole lot to get these guys, so what we get in return isn't really that big a deal to me. However, I will say that several of these players could draw a "decent" return given their value as bench players. Rusch is worth a good prospect, IMO. If we can get a half a dozen decent prospects that we can spin in a trade for something better, I'd be all for it.

They definitely won't trade him. However, he is a free agent at the end of this season. However again, I think he'll give San Diego a home town discount. However again, San Diego lowballed David Wells after a good season last year, and he left his home town to go to Boston. Also, the Pads are pretty much stuck with Nevin and Klesko for another season. Both have no trade clauses and exercise them every chance they get, which doesn't leave much room for Nady. Would the Padres lowball Giles next year knowing they have Nady to take his spot if he goes elsewhere? Knowing this team as well as I do, I wouldn't be surprised.

Make that a first pitch, go ahead, three-run homer. :P

Yeah, but at least they don't get shutout like we do. Injuries or not. Well, they are playing IN Colorado.

Was Andy Marte the prospect Atlanta called up today? If not, they still haven't called up their best prospect.

We also used to play a game called "500". One hitter, everyone else has a glove and collects points fighting for grounders and/or fly balls. Catching a ball on the fly was worth more points. First person to 500 points was the next person to get to hit. Everyone else started over with zero points. By the way, Pepper is what we called "running the bases" in Peoria/Bartonville.

Or, Gammons is full of beans. Either scenerio could work. Just looking at his OBP in a vacuum, Payton doesn't appear to be a prototypical Beane guy. He might be destined for San Diego. Well, that would make that horrible trade San Diego made to get Dave Roberts look a little better. (Jay Payton, Ramon Vazquez, minor leaguer and cash for Roberts) However, San Diego just got Eric Young back, so I don't think they will call on Payton.

8-5 Colorado now. :D

Can't Nick Swisher play center?

That's what I remember. Ughh. We agree on something. Is it too late to change my answer? :P

I've seen that, don't know what it's called. I thought pepper was a game where you practice rundowns. That's pickle. That's why it's called "getting in a pickle." I never heard it called "pickle". We always called it "pepper".

Interesting. We played what we called "pepper" as kids, but it was nothing like the above described situations. Our version basically involved 3 guys. Two with gloves and a third who would get between the guys with gloves and get a run down going. The objective for the runner was to get to one of the bases safely, while the two guys with gloves tossed it back and forth attempting to tag the runner out. Once the guy was tagged out, everyone switched places and started a new run down. Maybe "pepper" is defined as different versions of practicing in game situations?

Los Angeles Dodgers Hitters AB R H RBI BB SO LOB AVG O Robles SS 2 2 2 1 0 0 0 .353 J Repko CF 2 0 2 0 0 0 0 .217 J Werth LF 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 .265 O Saenz 1B 2 0 1 1 0 0 1 .301 A Perez 2B 2 0 0 0 0 0 3 .312 M Edwards 3B 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 .310 C Ross RF 2 1 1 1 0 1 0 .182 M Rose C 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 .185 D Lowe P 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 .188 This is the Dodgers line up today. Who are these guys?

Yeah, he has stated the reason. He basically threw curve ball after curve ball the year he won 25 games. It essentially ruined his arm and the rest of his career.

He's got a no trade clause. And if he waives it, I would predict he'll only waive it for a NL contending team. Furthermore, I predict that the only 3 teams I see him approving are San Diego, Atlanta and Arizona in that order. Hendry will have to pay at least $5M of the $9M owed to him in 2006, for either the Padres, Braves or D-Backs to take him on. I see the D-Backs having the most need for him, but they are a bubble team right now. I think the Cubs could pick up the remainder of his contract this year while only picking up about 3m next year and still be able to make a decent deal go down. I think San Diego is the only real destination for him. They have a huge hole in their rotation and they have a legitimate shot of winning their division. They also have money to spend, even if they say they don't.

Wouldn't any deal for Kotsay be centered around moving Patterson? What will you do with Patterson if he isn't in a deal for Kotsay? No, Rich Hill would not be involved in a deal for Kotsay if Mitre is already part of the deal. He's not cheap, and he'll most likely only be a rental. Isn't he a free agent at the end of the year? I'm not even dealing for Kotsay at this point, personally. I'd rather they go into sell mode at this point and hope that the team can start healthy and strong for next year. I'm not talking fire sale, but rather sensible trades that sell off veterans who are not part of the long term picture of this team. Maybe smart moves that will help the team next year will also help the team for the rest of this year as well. In other words, I would not trade for a rental guy. Period.

Sandberg played 2nd base. Joe Morgan believes that Joe Morgan was the only 2nd baseman that ever lived that deserves to be in the HOF.

But, then again, I'm also a believer that you don't offer a guy hitting .377 in AAA a season ticket sitting right next to Dusty Baker to watch the Cubs and Neifi Perez play baseball. Either leave him in AAA, or let him show what he can do in the big show.

That may be, but do you really think he's worse than Macias? I mean that's what were talking about here. Nobody is claiming that Grieve is some outstanding player. The point is, he's better than Macias. As is Kelton for that matter. It seems fairly obvious to me. But that's a different point than the fact that Grieve sucks - Macias sucks too, but Grive is not a big upgrade over Macias to me. Things like attitude, versatility, yes, even body-language, all these things count to the guys on the field. Is Grieve better than Macias, yes, but not by a significant amount IMHO and he still definitely sucks. Grieve can't even hit in AAA -all he can do is not make contact. All Macias can do is provide defensive versatility and that's more useful out of your 25th man to me. You are missing the point. As Sporrer recently pointed out, this is not a replace Macias with Grieve deal. Send down the extra pitcher and bring up Grieve. Grieve could be used as trade fodder or could provide extra punch off the bench. Some of you are focusing only on Grieve's current AVG, then stating he can't even hit minor league pitching. He has 12 HR's, which means he can hit. He also has good plate patience, something the Cubs offense lacks in the worst way. These are not horrible things, regardless of how passionately you dislike the BB. I will once again ask you all how many times we have watched our own team walk a guy at the beginning of an inning, and how many times have we watched the guy come around and score? Seems like it happens every time. May not seem like much, but how many 1 run games have we lost this year? How many of those games might have had a different outcome if we had a guy who showed a little more patience at the plate, drew an early inning walk, and came around to score? No one is saying Grieve is the savior of this team. He would just be another bat off the bench, the second biggest weakness this team currently has behind a weak hitting offense in the everyday line up. This offense needs all the help it can get. Dusty doesn't trust Dubois or Cedeno in any type of role, so bring up a veteran that can provide a little pop off the bench. There are no guys who will provide high AVG, high OBP and high OPS off the bench. If they had all that, they'd be playing everyday. While Hollandsworth is playing everyday, we need a comparable bat to Hollandsworth to fill in off the bench. And finally, Grieve is not replacing Macias. He's replacing a seldom used arm in the pen.

With Dusty at the helm, it would behoove Hendry to trade for any prospects at this time. Something else will need to happen first before any veteran for prospect trades go down. I think we all know what that something is.