Rob

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.

Bradley talks crap about the Cubs fans and organizations... how much money do you think we lose? Bradley helps take the Cubs to the playoffs next season.... how much money do you think we gain? I'll give you a hint. One of these numbers is MUCH larger than the other. So now you are arguing with me on the point that I agree with you on? This thread is getting funny. Forgive me for not understanding that you tried to agree with part of my post... yours was kind of a mess of disjointed thoughts with no real coherence to it. Not to mention that the conclusions you are drawing from my post are absurd... Where did I try to say it was good business to alienate the fans? I just said winning was more important.

Something tells me you don't understand the logic if you are trying to extend it to those guys.

Bradley talks crap about the Cubs fans and organizations... how much money do you think we lose? Bradley helps take the Cubs to the playoffs next season.... how much money do you think we gain? I'll give you a hint. One of these numbers is MUCH larger than the other.

If you owned the team you'd have a different view. It's bad business to have anyone insulting your product. You have to have some kind of rules in place or your organization goes really bad in a hurry. The fact remains that Bradley was a bad business decision in every since of the word this year. It's absurd that you think insulting fans and the organization is acceptable behavior. In baseball, the fanbase is pretty much set already. The question is whether or not you can get them to pay attention. You know what accomplishes that? Winning. And like it or not, Bradley can help us win. I have a very hard time believing the millions upon millions he can help bring in if we get to the playoffs next year is really outweighed by a few inappropriate comments that probably wont have any effect upon revenues. That's not to say I agree with what Milton is doing. He's a jerk, and I don't much care for him on a personal level. But this kind of decision is bad on the business end and the baseball end. If you feel the need to stop him from making those comments, you need to find a better way to accomplish it. This wasn't productive.

The fans already booed him every step he took. The status quo was unacceptable. They couldn't just have Milton repeatedly insulting the organization and the fans, refusing to play and fighting with personel. It's a perfectly valid suspension and it's laughable that you think otherwise. Every team knew the Cubs/Milton relationship was growing sour, the fact that Hendry acknowledged it with a suspension is meaningless. Guys can't be given all the rope they want. At some point in time, you have to call them out. He didn't screw up a damn thing. Bradley could walk through Wrigley after every home game and personally flip off each and every single fan and I couldn't care less, just so long as he doesn't hurt himself walking up and down those stairs. He's paid for his production on the field. Likewise, Hendry isn't paid to have the happiest team in the league. Hendry's entire job consists of getting the best team out on the field. This suspension is counterproductive to that end. And for what? What possible gain is there to be had from this? It's not even as if Bradley was breaking any laws... oh, which reminds me. Players have not been suspended this long for beating on their wives. In what world is this punishment remotely fair or justifiable?

He handled it fine. In your opinion, and in our opinion he didnt. You have a ridiculous opinion. A repeat a-hole got suspended toward the end of a wasted season. BIG FREAKING DEAL. Jim doesn't want to talk about it with the media anymore. BIG FREAKING DEAL. I've been the biggest anti-Hendry person on this board for several years but there's nothing wrong with how he's handled this so far. If he dumps the guy for nothing and pays him to play elsewhere, that's a problem. But he hasn't done anything worth whining about in regards to the suspension. This is absurd. The fact that Bradley was suspended is Hendry handling the situation badly. That's all the proof that's needed. At best, Hendry doesn't screw up further by trading Milton, but even at that, he's turned the fans even further against a volatile player. At worst, he completely tanked Bradley's value and feels forced to ship him out of town for nothing to save face with the fanbase. There is absolutely no valid case for this suspension from business or baseball perspectives... and Hendry's job is managing those two interests. He screwed up badly. The fact that a handful of players on a non-playoff team are going to be happier for the final three weeks of the season does nothing to alleviate that.

Oh god no. We can all agree that Hendry is likely to trade him. It takes a lot of absurd rationalization to think that's the best thing for the team... crap like chemistry and pretending his production was counterproductive to the team (which is really only true of Soriano, Gregg, Miles, Cotts and maybe on a smaller scale a couple guys getting paid league minimum being a few runs below replacement.) No, the smart play is to try to salvage what we can from Bradley's contract.

Average defense.

And the burnout rate for pitchers was a lot higher "back in the day." Is it true that organizations may have gone overboard in "babying" pitchers? Sure. There are quite a few pitchers who can easily surpass the arbitrary 100 pitch mark without significantly increased injury risk. Young pitchers with an already huge jump in their workload though? Come on.

You may want to rethink that comment.

You def want the dude who doesn't know how to take a walk batting in front of Lee and Aram. Hopefully the thought was more "this season is toast and I'd like to get Colvin some extra at bats up there at the top" rather than "hey, he hits lefty with a line drive stroke!"

Bob really needs to lay off the Bradley hate.

So with that logic we just bench the entire team I guess? Nice. Many of them, sure. Why would you be opposed to letting Marmol, Z, and Ramirez, and Lilly take off early? because if I wanted to watch prospects play I'd go to a minor league game. As a business it does them no good to sit all their stars and recognizable names. As a business decision, they have to decide whether or not boosting attendance for the last few games they have this season is worth potentially injuring a player and hurting them next season... when they'll be aiming for big playoff bucks.

Quite well. 11.3 runs above average each of the last two years according to UZR... though he did that in a mere 119 games last year, so he's probably declining a bit.

One way or another, the Cubs had to pay Bradley. If it's an official suspension, the MLBPA would have stepped in and filed a grievance they would have easily won (considering the complete lack of precedent for such a stupid suspension). If it's an unofficial suspension, they have to pay him. Hell, even if Bradley came out and said he didn't deserve to get paid, the MLBPA still would have filed and won that grievance. They wont let there be a precedent set that will allow players to forgo guaranteed money.

^^ Two thumbs down to everyone that expects and anticipates injuries, just because it's a young pitcher/player. I'm not expecting it just because he's young. I'm expecting it because there's a very high risk associated with jumps in innings as high as he's had... Risk versus reward, folks. What do we stand to gain from running some of these players out there the rest of the season? Very little. And in some cases (pitchers with large jumps in their workload, other players who have a history of injury) the risk is too high to justify it.

Pros: - Less likely to injure his arm. - End his season on a good note. - Keeps trade value high. - Give other rookies valuable experience in the bigs. - As the potential replacements aren't as likely to perform so well, increased likelihood of losses could result in the Cubs getting a higher draft pick. Cons: - It sucks to watch the Cubs lose. Gee, this is a tough call.