Rob

I can see the Cubs moving Fukudome to RF and doing something absolutely asinine like getting Chone Figgins for CF. That's a lot smarter of a move than making Milton Bradley the focus of your offseason plans. Figgins is basically the same age as Bradley and is way, way worse at baseball Figgins at his peak is an OBP machine who has no power... or what Bradley was in a down season. But if we're picking up Bradleys contract to go after Figgins, we're effectively paying Figgins $20+ mil per season.

Really simple exercise. Go to fangraphs.com. Look up a player. See how much money they've been worth. Subtract that number from the average annual value of their contract. I didn't feel like doing the guys making under one million, or trying to divide Grabow's contract between Pittsburgh and us, or dealing with Samardzija's contract, since that was a major league deal signed out of college and doesn't seem quite the same... but here are the results. Note: I could be intellectually dishonest and point out that Bradley's salary is only $5 million this year, and he's been worth six. But that disregards signing bonuses and backloaded contracts, so it's easiest to just do it with average annual value) Lee: + $7,400,000 Lilly: + $5,400,000 Johnson: + $1,500,000 Harden: + $1,400,000 Heilman: - $625,000 Dempster: - $1,200,000 Cotts: - $2,700,000 Fukudome: - $2,900,000 Bradley: - $4,000,000 Ramirez: -$4,600,000 Zambrano: - $5,100,000 Gregg: - $5,600,000 Miles: - $8,550,000 Soriano: - $20,600,000

You don't know that. Give me one realistic option to put out there that's likely to outproduce Bradley. One. I've been asking for quite a while... haven't seen anybody come up with one.

Good thing Bradley produced THIS YEAR for us. Almost exactly like a league-average RF, yup. Though I bet you'll either gloss over this post or refer to some absurdly bad statistic like RBI and pretend it proves a point.

That's not something the emotional people are concerned about. They hated Bradley, and they'll cross the bridge of who plays RF later. I've yet to see one reasonable suggestion from them about how to fix the situation.

Well he wasn't producing like he was getting paid for, how about that. Don't bother with that guy. He and the other Bradley defenders will defend him to no end even when his own teammates have now said he's basically an ass. I really wonder about some of the posters on this board. I'm defending him as a player, that doesn't mean I would invite him to my birthday party. You don't need to worry about me. I'm just able to rationally separate his personality from his production... It's called intelligent thought.

Well he wasn't producing like he was getting paid for, how about that. That's fine. But there are plenty of players who haven't lived up to their contracts this year. Soriano was worth less than a replacement player this year... with a difference between his performance and what we've paid him of about 20 million. That's hard to pull off when we only paid him 16 million. And I'd be shocked if Dempster and Zambrano have produced within 3 mil of their contract as well... hell, due to the injuries, Ramirez may not have either.

I don't think so. He wasn't producing worth squat and his teammates clearly didn't care for his attitude (and it's probably worse than what they admitted to in the article). Again, on a per plate appearance basis, Milton Brady was producing almost exactly like an average RF. He was average in the field as well. To say he "wasn't producing worth squat" is flat out wrong, at best. Hate Milton Bradley for being a dick all you want. Hate him for being worth about 3 mil less than his contract for all I care. But saying he wasn't performing is absurd.

...so basically Hendry admits he made an emotional decision without thinking about how his action would affect the future. Who cares. This needed to be done. Right. Just because it was a rash decision doesn't mean it was a wrong one. It was wrong from baseball and business perspectives. Are you really going to argue the personal impact of making a few guys on a non-playoff team happy for the next few weeks is worth the cost?

Pretty much the only scenario I can come up with to fix this involves acquiring BJ Upton... who is essentially Milton Bradley. Attitude problems and coming off a down year in production. And he'll cost us a nice chunk of our farm system.

I couldn't give a good [expletive] if he's blaming babies for his troubles and flipping off boxes of kittens. This isn't hard folks... let's look at the situation. 1.) We do not have the money to sign Holliday or Bay. 2.) Milton's production actually is an extremely good bet to be better than Vlad or Abreu once defense is taken into account. 3.) Likewise, his production is an extremely good bet to be better than Fox or Hoff once defense is taken into account. So... not only is our team likely to get worse in RF next season, if we try to sign a replacement, we'd be hamstringing our payroll even more... which hurts our team where we could have spent that money. This is a bad baseball decision. And since revenues are extremely dependent upon winning, it's a bad business decision. I hear a lot of people saying they support this decision, but I haven't seen a single one suggesting a viable way this makes our team any better.

VORP of 9.1 is 24th amongst RFers. Average RF EqA is about .275. Bradley is at .271

I doubt Bradley is much better at defense Bradley is pretty much spot-on average in RF. Some people have problems separating their personal feelings about a player from their professional ones. Here are the facts. Bradley has been an average RF this season... both in terms of offensive production and defense. He's been worth a few million less than his contract's annual value, but that's not nearly enough to make him worthy of the complaints he's been subjected to regarding his production. Most fans simply came into the season with unrealistic expectations for Bradley's power production.

Well, it looks like Bradley gets to be the scapegoat this season. It's a shame, there are plenty better options... Hell, from a baseball standpoint, we'd be better served to make DLee the scapegoat and run him out of town. We have no legitimate options for RF right now... so we're gonna have to pay Bradley's contract, plus a FA contract. Or we can run Fox out there and watch him cost us 25 runs on defense. This is a disaster, and the fans and media are to blame just as much as Bradley.

I only know the stuff from last year was he peaked in the low 90's on the fastball, with solid sink, along with a solid change/curve. From the interviews, it sounds like the kid knows what type of pitcher he is and pitches accordingly (won't try to overdo it and blow guys away ... basically, pitches to his stuff). There was talk about him working on a cutter/slider type pitch, which would be a big help IMO by offering a different view, so let's see how that goes. He's more of a mid-end of the rotation type projection. That isn't meant as a negative (I mean ... even in weak markets, FA costs for mid-end of the rotation arms will still be high enough that if you can save internally, that's a huge boon). I probably overrated him last offseason when I did my lists on another site (ranked him 12th on a Cubs pitching prospects list I did), but he's been quite impressive this year. A lot of people seem to forget that he was pushed rather quickly as well. Right now, I think he's probably outside the top 5 for Cubs pitching prospects for me (the top 3, Antigua/Searle), but he fits in thereafter for me. I hadn't heard the talk of adding a cutter, but that's exciting news. It would fit pretty well with his repertoire, and if there's one thing Rothschild can do well, it's teaching the cutter.

Why is it that the most ignorant people are always the loudest?

Survey done. And I'd like to see the results as well, but only if NCCubFan can't.

Kelly Clarkson. No, he meant the Kelly Pickler interview... that was just a trainwreck of epic proportions.

All of these assumptions are based on Ricketts acting similarly to the Tribune in regards to payroll... meaning a slight bump for next season. If he decides to start giving us a $200,000,000 payroll, toss all this out the window. On the homefront Offer Harden arbitration. Be willing to work on a two year deal if that's what it takes to keep him here, otherwise let him walk and pocket the two draft picks. Likewise, offer Grabow arbitration... but for god's sake don't offer him a multi-year deal. Just let Gregg walk. We can realistically listen to offers on DLee, with a Fox / Hoff platoon of sorts being perfectly adequate at 1B. But if we can't get enough to justify trading him (or he isn't willing to waive his NTC) it's not a big deal. He'll be worth 2 picks after next season. In that case, we should examine the market for Fox and Hoff. Zambrano is probably overpaid, but doesn't want to trade his NTC and, more importantly, we don't have enough pitching waiting behind him to fill in. If we want to compete next season, Zambrano is a part of that. Likewise, Bradley was a disappointment, but is an excellent bet to rebound in the power department next season. He's not near enough of a problem to justify paying his contract to play elsewhere, especially considering we have no options. No, Jake Fox is not an option. He's atrocious in the field. To my knowledge there aren't any better RF on the trade market... and the only FA options likely to be better are Holliday and Bay. Unless Ricketts goes crazy with the payroll, they aren't really options. One of my biggest fears is that we pay Bradley to play elsewhere, and then sign Vlad or Abreu, who are just as bad as Fox in the field. See if Reed Johnson is willing to give us a hefty discount to stay Fukudome's platoon partner. Don't get suckered into paying him like a starter though. This is an easy place to lose some payroll if we're tight. Re-sign Chad Fox. Call him up in mid april and then put him on the 60 day DL after a week... just for some added roster flexibility for the playoffs. Looking outside the organization now Pay attention to the Figgins sweepstakes until it gets past 3/24, at which point bow the hell out. He's not worth near the money he'll be getting... and signing players whose value is so wrapped up in speed to long expensive contracts after age 30 is just a stupid idea. Our middle infield situation has a lot of options. The big move I support is making a run at Stephen Drew. I've heard the DBacks front office may be looking to rebuild next season, and this could be huge. Jose Reyes may be available as well, and would potentially be a very good pickup if we have the pieces. Check out Orlando Hudson and Akinori Iwamura as well. Ideally, we could kick the tires on some potential upgrades over Koyie Hill. Varitek, Zaun, Benji Molina, Yorvit Torrealba. But they probably want too much money to make it worthwhile.... and even if they didn't, I don't think we could trust Lou not to play these guys way too freaking much. Give Rocco Baldelli a jingle and see if he's willing to platoon with Fukudome. Bedard, Duchscherer, Escobar, Schmidt, Sheets, and Smoltz will all be available, and should all be fairly cheap. Obviously some would need to be extremely cheap to justify the investment (Schmidt would probably need to be on a minor league deal as well as extremely cheap), but they're all worth taking five minutes to find out their asking price as rehab projects. I know the urge to overspend for middle relievers will be very strong this offseason, but I'd be content to not make any moves in the pen at all if that's the case. If we really need to make some moves though, Billy Wagner and JJ Putz may be cheap enough to warrant the investment. Summation: We're locked in with most of the roster, as all the backloading contracts doesn't leave us with much to do but tweak. It sucks, but we aren't far from being a decent team.

What is everybody obsession with assigning replacements? There were a bunch of different roles filled by DeRosa. Fontenot took on some of the responsibilities, Miles took on others.

A couple years back, I started muting the 7th inning stretch and the bottom of the 7th when I'm watching home games. How freaking sad is that?

While Derrek has exceeded even my expectations, I would like to point out that I was one of approximately two people on this board who was still saying Derrek wasn't done all during that terrible start.

If I had to guess, I'd say it'll be about 7.25 mil over two years, plus incentives for games finished... just in case we need to use him as closer.

We wont trade Zambrano this season.

Here's a simple fact. We don't have many places we can upgrade. Lee, Ramirez, and Fukudome can't really be upgraded. Soriano's contract can't be moved and Cubs brass wont be willing to bench him. That leaves us with C, 2B, SS, and RF we can conceivably look at on offense. Bradley has been a bit of a disappointment, but he's been worth just a tiny bit less than we've paid him this year and he stands an excellent chance to rebound in the power department next season. But because of his personality issues, we'd haveto take on his contract in order to move him, and then we'd have to pay market value for a new OF (either in terms of money or prospects). That kind of inefficiency is stupid... akin to how everybody complains about Hendry giving guys like Neifi and Miles multimillion dollar deals over a couple years to ride the pine. Upgrading in RF should be near the very bottom of our priorities. Soto was the victim of some atrocious luck this year... and to top it off, the gems of the FA class are Ramon Hernandez, Bengie Molina, Jason Varitek, and Greg Zaun. Bring one of em in on the cheap to backup Soto? Sure. Count on any of these guys to be a starter? Hell no. We can't really upgrade at C. The middle infield is where we have options... and where there are some nice players on the market. Mark DeRosa, Chone Figgins, Orlando Hudson, Akinori Iwamura, Felipe Lopez, Marco Scutaro, and Miguel Tejada are available in FA. Speculation has Jose Reyes available on the trade market as well as JJ Hardy, Christian Guzman, Luis Castillo, and even possibly Stephen Drew. It's possible to upgrade over our league average SS and our 2B platoon that's light on OBP and defense but carries a bit of pop in their bats. That's why people are looking at Theriot. He's one of two spots we can conceivably upgrade at.