Rob

An AFL MVP would work wonders towards Castro going from one of the great unheralded prospects to simply a top prospect.

I posted this elsewhere, but I think it needs pointed out again here. Roy Halladay's contract pays $15,750,000 next season. Vernon Wells' salary is "only" $12,500,000... but his contract stipulates his signing bonus was split into 3 $8,500,000 chunks, one of which is due this March. Even if we can get the Jays to pick up all of Bradly's contract, we cant add $26,416,667 to next years payroll... we can barely afford to pay the arbitration eligible players.

The easiest way to quantify a GM would be team salary minus league minimum x 25 divided by marginal wins over replacement. You should probably include investments into the farm system into that too, but that'd get messy. It might not be fair to some GMs who know they're overpaying for reasons other than baseball (i.e. Jeter's contract), but all in all it would do a good job of showing who does the best job of squeezing wins out of their money.

You really didn't get the point of that, did you? I'm saying it's possible. You're saying it's true... and not only did it have an effect, but it was a significant one. And you make this proclamation without any sort of proof. That's the crux of the argument. This isn't Cubs.com. Your opinions here have to be backed up with proof, and you have none.

Nobody is saying it has no effect. We're withholding judgment on the matter until some evidence is presented. You are the one passing judgment. You are the one with the burden of proof. If it's as obvious as you act like it is, you should have no problem finding a scientific study by a sports psychologist or even a stats guy who wants to crunch the numbers of individual players with Bradley there and without.

Who is debating the chemistry was worse? I'm just askng for some proof that bad chemistry negatively impacts team performance. And it'd be swell if somebody could give an estimate of how much of a difference it makes. Nobody has offered anything of the sort to back up their opinion that his attitude hurt us.

What bothers me are the people that continue to believe this game is played on their Xbox 360 and the players are robots or machines that will not be affected by any outside influences other than the 3 hours of the players play a baseball game. Where have I ever said anything of the sort? I'm saying that people need some sort of proof to back up their claims... especially the over the top ones by people like back2banks who have suggested that his performance on the field was totally wiped out by his negative attitude. If there's one thing I really truly pride myself on, it's the fact that I'm willing to look over all the evidence and admit when I'm wrong. All I've gotten to this point is flawed anecdotal evidence comparing baseball players to a bunch of white collar guys working in an office, or simply saying that Bradley keeps getting moved. There hasn't been a single person here who has been able to even prove that pissing off all the players in the locker room wasn't helpful, let alone that it actively detracted from the performance of the team. Has anybody linked to anything from a sports psychologist suggesting happy players play better than pissed off ones? No. Has anybody compared offensive performance of players on the same team as Bradley in years where he was there and years where he wasn't? No. Has anybody done anything at all to back up their opinion with fact? No. People are simply making up crap as they go along. Until people offer some degree of proof that his attitude impacted the performance of the team, the only rational thing to do is assume it made no noticeable impact at all.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I wouldn't begrudge anybody here if they said, "I know Bradley makes this team better, but I dislike him so much that I'd rather see this team lose an extra couple games if it means being rid of him." What bothers me are the people who are trying to rationalize their hatred of him by creating a fantasy world where he somehow negatively impacts our chances to win. They just cant stand the thought they're rooting for us to do something against the best interests of the team, and make up ridiculous claims to defend themselves. It's extremely dishonest.

Obviously it wasn't all the losing that effected the chemistry. It was Bradley.

And 25th in UZR. No kidding? Ouch. I wonder what on earth could cause that large of a disconnect.

B....b....but we might find someone worse!!! Every time I see your posts I think, "Well, he's really topped himself this time. He can't possibly get more useless from here." And you continually surprise me with your next post. There isn't a person on this board saying Hendry deserves to keep his job. Those of us who stress caution are simply more concerned with who our GM is rather than who it isn't. Hell, we aren't even saying don't fire him. We're saying get a line on somebody better first... But that's too logical, I suppose. Oh, how much better our team would be if we all made arbitrary decisions based on emotion like you seem to prefer.

The Cubs defense ranked 4th in the majors this year in defensive efficiency, behind only the Giants, Dodgers, and Mariners.

No, he really couldn't.

It says Johnson is 77.673 and Harden is 76.730. I'm working off a long day and 3 hours sleep. Leave me alone.

There's something fishy about that... It says Rich Harden has a higher score than Josh Johnson. But Johnson is listed as an A and Harden a B. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out Harden is an A.

Okay then, just plug in his career BABIP of .306. .265/.301/.353

In no way is this meant as a defense of the Aaron Miles signing. I was just as mortified as the rest of you to learn he'd be getting paid like he is. However, strange things can happen in 170 PA. LD% and BABIP year by year: 2004 - 18.1%, .313 2005 - 23.1%, .312 2006 - 20.1%, .286 2007 - 17.9%, .313 2008 - 21.0%, .342 2009 - 20.0%, .213 It's pretty obvious he ran into ridiculous amount of bad luck. It looks like he missed out on about 16 hits, which is just an absurdly high number for his 170 PA. With neutral luck, his line looks like .277/.312/.370. Is that good? No. But it's in line with reasonable preseason predictions and his career numbers. It's about what I'd expect out of him next season.

Branyan's .297 EqA would have put him behind only DLee and Aramis on the Cubs (at .319 and .303 respectively). It boggles the mind that he can't get consistent playing time anywhere... Yeah, I'm still bitter about how many times we've passed on him as a bench player. He'd have been a perfect fit for our team.

We could be worse is nonsense? Give me a [expletive] break. I guess I'm just more concerned with who IS our GM rather than who ISNT. If Ricketts loves Bill Bavasi or Jim Bowden or Steve Freaking Stone, I couldn't give a [expletive] whether or not Hendry deserves to keep his job (he doesn't). I want the Cubs to be in the best possible situation next year... and there's a very large amount of GM candidates on the market who would be actively taking this team a step backwards. And I think that's a pretty pathetic way of looking at things. They could be a heck of a lot better, and I'd like to see them do so. Hendry epitomizes mediocrity and I don't see why we should stick with that out of fear of failure. Where did I say stick with Hendry? I'm saying if we think we can get a White, Antonetti, Towers, DePodesta, Ng, one of Theo's boys out in Boston, etc... I'm all for firing Hendry. I'm not scared of giving some of those guys their shot. But there's work to be done beforehand. You call up the parent organizations and ask for permission to interview. You put out a feeler to Towers. You don't just fire Hendry and then start doing those things. That's how you end up [expletive] outta luck and find out your best option to replace Hendry is promoting Randy Bush or hiring Jim Bowden.

We could be worse is nonsense? Give me a [expletive] break. I guess I'm just more concerned with who IS our GM rather than who ISNT. If Ricketts loves Bill Bavasi or Jim Bowden or Steve Freaking Stone, I couldn't give a [expletive] whether or not Hendry deserves to keep his job (he doesn't). I want the Cubs to be in the best possible situation next year... and there's a very large amount of GM candidates on the market who would be actively taking this team a step backwards.

In other words, I don't want to make an excuse, but here's an excuse for you, and it's not even valid since the payroll went up during the sale process. The only thing the sale did was slow the rate at which Hendry could increase his throwing of good money after bad. He's the one who tied up all that cash longterm. Don't go whining about the sale and things being more difficult this year. You had a crap ton of financial resources and you blew it. Coletti, Bavasi, and Minaya. No one could possibly want any of those clowns running the team, yet some defend Hendry, who doles out bad contracts just as freely. I haven't seen a single person here defend Hendry in months. On occasion myself or others may point out that firing him may actually make the situation worse if we don't followup correctly, but that's hardly a defense of him.

I'm admittedly not a big statistician (though I like following some of the SABR stats), so 35 runs surrendered defensively just seems like an incredible number to give up. It may be accurate, it just seems really, really high. It's not a real number. It's a number in comparison to the mythical average player. It says he was pretty bad, I don't think it has any worth in quantifying just how bad to an exact degree. Also, UZR sucks and it sucks the worst for outfielders. So in conclusion, I wouldn't put much of anything in using the number for an argument. We all know Dunn is a pretty bad defender, I don't think anyone can tell how bad in relation to most of the league. Oh, this is gonna be interesting... Tell me, oh wise one. What exactly is mythical about average? I can understand having qualms with replacement level, but average? Also, why do you feel UZR sucks. And is there any reason you find it to be especially bad for outfielders (aside from the obvious, less chances = more yearly variation thing)?

He was at -28 runs last year, and that was (mostly) without adjusting to a new ballpark and a new position. Maybe UZR isn't giving him a fair shake, but from the admittedly low number of Nats games I saw (20-25), 35 runs doesn't seem far off the mark.

If somebody wants to get a start on the 2010 thread.... We have the following players under contract for the 2010 season (Signing bonuses prorated): Alfonso Soriano - $19,000,000 Carlos Zambrano - $18,875,000 Aramis Ramirez - $16,750,000 Kosuke Fukudome - $14,000,000 Ryan Demptster - $13,500,000 Derrek Lee - $13,000,000 Ted Lilly - $13,000,000 Milton Bradley - $10,333,333 Jeff Samardzija - $2,000,000 Subtotal - $120,458,333 We are also on the hook for Luis Vizcaino's $500,000 buyout for 2010 and $1,000,000 of Aaron Miles contract. Total - $121,958,333 Edited to reflect the Aaron Miles trade. Still waiting on contract details for Grabow.

Adam Dunn cost the Nats over 35 runs on defense this year (a feat he managed playing mostly LF and 1B) and his net contribution to the team was worth $5.4 million dollars. For anybody who doesn't remember, that's exactly how much Bradley was worth this season.