Rob

Here's the important thing. Of Ryno, Bob, and Alan... we know for a fact that Ryno and Bob still want to do very stupid things, and do them very often. Alan may be as bad as them, but he'd be hard pressed to be much worse... and maybe, just maybe, he'll be better.

Where did I say publicly announce candidates? I'm saying that before you fire Hendry, you call up a few teams and ask if they'd be willing to let us interview their guys should we decide to make a change. Put a feeler out to some out of work GMs. This isn't "being cautious to the point of paralysis"... it's doing your homework.

Who cares? It's not cheating.

I don't think this should be overlooked. Hendry was in a similar situation with Hundley when he took the job and he turned it into two good contributors - Karros and Grudzielanek. He's also worked positive trades for guys like Jacque Jones, Neifi Perez and others who many fans didn't think had much value at all. Hendry has proven to be very good at making trades (with a few exceptions, of course). Jacque Jones was a free agent signing. And how was Neifi Perez a positive? Chris Robinson was our AAA all-star this year.

So what supposed benefit do we get from firing Hendry without figuring out whether we can do better or not? Bottom line, firing Jim Hendry doesn't automatically make our team better. I could give a [expletive] whether or not he deserves to be fired. I'm concerned with the team going forward, and would like to see somebody better lined up to take the job before I risk backing myself into a corner by firing Hendry without a viable replacement. It's not being scared. It's being able to look past my own nose.

Nobody's said that. I haven't said it in this thread, but I have said something that could be misconstrued for that if one were really, really dumb. Namely, that firing Hendry for the sake of firing him doesn't do us any good if don't hire a better GM. I wouldn't really see the point of firing Hendry if the best replacement we can muster is Jim Bowden, for instance.

How would Soriano playing better defense justify getting a worse player in RF? Always always always get the best player you can at each position. (And just for the record, before this season and the knee injury, Soriano had been quite a good defender for us in left. Well above average)

Downgrading at two positions and getting more expensive? Where do I sign? Brad Hawpe is a downgrade over MB? Hawpe is great. He's actually hit more HR away from Coors this season, and his home/road splits for his career are virtually identical. He'd be a great addition to the Cubs, and far greater than Milton Bradley. We downgrade at 1B on a purely production #'s standpoint. Helton's power is zapped, but he is still a guy who will get on base at a .400+ OBP. He'd be a good #2 guy in the lineup. But we'd lose a big bat in Lee, and Helton costs way too much, even if he does get on base at a good clip. I don't think you understand just how atrocious Hawpe's defense really is. Bradley's value was significantly higher this year even despite the fact it was a huge down year for him and Hawpe put up a near .900 OPS in 140 games.

Rowand is sitting right around his 40th percentile projection according to PECOTA. He's not under performing expectations by much at all.

Well it wouldn't count against him if you're an AL GM, but a DH doesn't help much if you're a NL GM. The fact that he's only once been a fulltime DH shouldn't really count against him. He was healthy in the field this year. Except that his VERY BEST offensive season, that netted him the bloated contract he's currently in, was primarily as a DH. The guy's a part-time player. You pay MB 2/3 of what you pay Rowand, because on average he plays about 2/3 of the games. You guys continue to compare rate stats like its apples and apples. If I travel 55 mph for 10 hours, and you travel 70 mph for 7 hours, I'm still gonna go farther even though I'm traveling slower... And yet nobody brings up the damage he's caused in the clubhouse and media with his BS. You keep acting like if Bradley isn't playing, we don't have somebody else out there.

Why because you disagree with my opinion? As others have pointed out, putting in a sub for Bradley for 200+ AB certainly lowers the production from RF whereas Rowand's 500 AB covers most of the season. My original point was that Rowand was a better choice of bad contracts (Burrell, Perez, etc.) rather than paying Bradley's contract to play elsewhere. As a hitter: Cameron>Bradley>Rowand As a position player:Cameron>Rowand>>>>>Bradley No, because you expect people to take you seriously when posting stuff like... And for the record, Bradley is closer in defensive value to Rowand than Rowand is to Cameron. Except that they play different positions. Pretty sure he was taking position into account. I absolutely was.

Why because you disagree with my opinion? As others have pointed out, putting in a sub for Bradley for 200+ AB certainly lowers the production from RF whereas Rowand's 500 AB covers most of the season. My original point was that Rowand was a better choice of bad contracts (Burrell, Perez, etc.) rather than paying Bradley's contract to play elsewhere. As a hitter: Cameron>Bradley>Rowand As a position player:Cameron>Rowand>>>>>Bradley No, because you expect people to take you seriously when posting stuff like... And for the record, Bradley is closer in defensive value to Rowand than Rowand is to Cameron.

Bradley (2009) .257/.378/.397/.775 Rowand (2009) .264/.320/.428/.748 Bradley (career) .277/.371/.450/.821 Rowand (career) .281/.340/.450/.790 Did I cherry pick the wrong stats? Do you see any significant difference except OBP? Factor in (as pointed out by hossdriver) Bradley plays worse defense, is a clubhouse cancer, and misses a ton of games each year and I don't see how "they're not close". As I pointed out before, I'm sure there are more obscure stats somewhere to prove your point. It's not about using obscure stats. Career numbers for 10-year veterans is a flawed method, though, because both Bradley and Rowand are different now than they were 10 years ago, yet partial season numbers when the players were 22-24 are counted equally to when the players hit their prime. This is the worst year Bradley has had in a while, whereas Rowand has had a number of .700-something OPS years. This is Bradley's first season in the past six years where he's had an OPS below .800. Rowand has now had four. Bradley's best offensive seasons have also been significantly better than Rowand's. Bradley has a much better recent track record of success and that bodes better going forward. I doubt Bradley will get close to his past two years worth of numbers (.900+ OPS), but he's more likely than Rowand of putting up an .800+ OPS. Rowand plays better defense, but Bradley has the advantage of being paid of being under contract for one less season. You are correct that career numbers are a flawed method of comparing players especially when one player has spent the 10 years as an OF (Rowand) and the other has spent the 10 years as a part-time DH/part-time OF/part-time DL member/full-time jerk. The one year (before 2009) that Bradley played in the field over 100 games was 2004 when he hit .267/.362/.424/.786. So I guess I'll concede that Bradley is a better hitter than Rowand as long as you want a DH who will get 300-350 AB per year instead of an OF who will get 500 AB per year. Unfortunately, the Cubs have no use for a DH posing as an OF. You do realize how silly you're making yourself look, right?

Hey, I stick to the exact same methodologies. If somebody were to use them to prove I was wrong about something, I'd concede it.

Oh, and I would legitimately start Sam Fuld over Aaron Rowand even if the Giants were willing to pick up half of Rowand's 12 mil per year.

Back to the Lowe conversation for a moment, there's a good deal to be concerned about. His groundball rate is way down. His walk rate is up. His strikeout rate is down. Now I don't have the pitch fx data handy, but his contact rate on swings on pitches out of the zone is way up. It could be random fluctuation, but at his age I'd be more inclined to believe he's losing a bit off his pitches All that said, he's gonna be worth pretty damn close to $15 mil this year. Depending on the money changing hands, he may be worth looking at.

The Cubs went 16-10 in the starts with Koyie Hill behind the dish when Geovany Soto went down in July. Koyie hit .194/.262/.258 and did nothing to help the team... (interesting side note - soriano hit .337/.412/.558 during that span and actually did carry the team) Moral of the story, there are too many people on the team to make any "record with in or out of the lineup" comparisons almost completely useless.

Shawn Chacon attacked Ed Wade (the GM) in Houston, and if memory serves he still got paid.

I'm at my parent's house at the moment and don't have access to the vast majority of my books, but I seem to recall a study that implied consistency was actually a bad thing... that being "streaky" would result in more runs than a team that scored a preset number of runs per game. I want to say it was in "The Book" by Tom Tango, but I could be way off base.

Given his obvious talents, it's likely he latches on somewhere. But he's losing a buuunch of money.

Something tells me you don't understand the logic if you are trying to extend it to those guys. actually i understand it perfectly. the logic is good. the argument is poor. i don't think you understand how vacuous the argument is. it doesn't make sense to say that player x was brought in to help win this year. by that definition EVERY player who is brought in by teams are brought in to help win this year. the argument should be to help make us better. and by that definition, he's failed. he's played enough games to have a fairly good sample size to look at. with the exception of hits, runs, base on balls, and on base percentages, according to yahoo sports as of today before the game, mike fontenot is the same player as milton bradley statistically with 30 less at bats. their slugging pecentages differ by 7 hundreths of a point. bradley has 3 more home runs. fontenot hits better from the left side than bradley. we are paying $10 for slightly better than mike fontenot numbers this year. and yahoo doesn't list other stats like average with runners on or in scoring position where we know what that number is for bradley. i see people on this message board talk about possibly shipping off fontenot in trade opportunities. when talking strictly what he has done on the field, by this logic talks about trading bradley are equally as valid. i have pretty much stated as much in this thread. i don't want bradley around because he doesn't help any to the offense. these numbers don't lie. and with no one really hitting other than lee and ramirez this year bradley adds as much to the offense as mike fontenot. getting on base means nothing if no one brings you in. You know, normally I'd just launch headlong into this and point out exactly what's wrong with the way you tried to evaluate Bradley. But just this once, before I go to the trouble let me ask you this. Do you want to learn how to properly evaluate a player statistically? We wouldn't even have to apply it to Bradley... we could just teach you some of the basics. Because you are obviously very confused.

A .292 EqA is worth about 90 EqR over 600 PA. A .279 is worth about 80 over 600 PA. Then factor in a 15-20 run lead for Cameron's defense, and then toss in an adjustment for playing CF instead of RF (and I'm not sure on this, but I want to say that was about 5 runs). If you think both players are gonna put up lines like that again next year, Cameron is the easy choice.

He played through elbow pain all of the 2008 season before finally getting TJS in the offseason. Even before that, he was on the DL in 2007 during his first stint at AA with a sore elbow. And as Outshined_One mentioned, he took a while to recover from the offseason TJS and concussion this season. He still played over his head in the second half of the season and is unlikely to sustain that level of play without improving his patience. So a little bit of both. Still sounds like an interesting guy to follow, if for no other reason it was an unusual gamble for Wilkin. Not really. It pretty much fits his drafting policies perfectly. Vitters was a bigger departure.

Wow. If our season still mattered, I'd be hitting the roof right about now.

Hill was a big part of the Aramis Ramirez deal too.