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Rob

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Everything posted by Rob

  1. Rob
    The fact that this is emotionally charged for you reveals a lot. Unless I'm mistaken, you have no personal stake in Milton Bradley's particular brand of crazy... he doesn't key your car every night in the parking lot, refuse to pick up his dog's leavings on the sidewalk, or make lewd phone calls to your wife. He plays for a team you root for. A team you want to win. And he's part of the solution to that. You're letting guys like Paul Sullivan dictate your emotions. Their job isn't to make the Cubs better... it's to move papers. And the fact that you'd let them put you in a situation where you're rooting for our team to get rid of a useful player... I just can't fathom that. I mean, if he was breaking the law or something, sure. But he's just a dick. Why on earth does that matter to you?
  2. Rob
    All that said, if Ricketts bumps our payroll to 170 million, I'm fine with eat Bradley's contract and signing Holliday or Bay. The trick is that I want an upgrade... not a more expensive lateral move or downgrade.
  3. Rob
    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. Why don't u give us one then? I'm pretty sure that his right fielder would be Milton Bradley but I may have missed that. At this point in time, the best move the Cubs have to make for 2010 is to do everything in their power to get Milton Bradley into therapy. And even if we can't, we'd be better served to spend what little available funds we'll have elsewhere... rather than replacing a player we already have who can produce adequately. He's a jackass. I don't particularly like him as a person. But from both baseball and business perspectives, we're best served trying to salvage what's left of his contract.
  4. Rob
    Given the full-blown mental retardation of our organization, you gotta figure he's being replaced with a speed player. And given the financial constraints we're in, you gotta figure we go cheap. Even if we do go after Figgins (which again, stupid idea), I still think they plan on him at 2B. Some options: (in no particular order) Sam Fuld David Dejesus Coco Crisp BJ Upton Scott Podsednik Endy Chavez Chris Young Eric Byrnes
  5. Rob
    Yes, poor Milton Bradley is the victim. Everybody is conspiring against him, just like they did in Montreal, Cleveland, LA, Oakland, etc. etc... free Milton Bradley!!! Wow... more willful distortions. I never said he handled it well and didn't say things he shouldn't have. I just said that he was telling the truth. But of course, in your bizzaroverse, that was somehow equated with me shedding tears for this fragile ebony god.
  6. Rob
    The irony of it is that Bradley never said anything that wasn't at least partly true... it was just constantly distorted by the fans and the media.
  7. Rob
    I wouldn't even know how to. I'm not above wishing a bunch of the posters on here would though.
  8. Rob
    Here's the thing. We know Hendry probably wouldn't have made this move if he didn't already have a target in mind. Given the comments to the media, I'm convinced it's probably a speed guy. I'm hoping it's BJ Upton. I'm scared it's gonna be Sam Fuld. I'm scared shitless it'll be Chone Figgins.
  9. Rob
    Seth Smith is largely a byproduct of Coors. Luke Scott isn't a bad player, but last I heard MacPhail was asking an absurd amount for him. (as he does for everybody)
  10. 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.
  11. Rob
    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
  12. Rob
    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.
  13. Rob
    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.
  14. Rob
    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.
  15. Rob
    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.
  16. Rob
    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.
  17. Rob
    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.
  18. Rob
    ...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?
  19. Rob
    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.
  20. Rob
    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.
  21. Rob
    VORP of 9.1 is 24th amongst RFers. Average RF EqA is about .275. Bradley is at .271
  22. Rob
    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.
  23. Rob
    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.
  24. Rob
    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.
  25. Rob
    Why is it that the most ignorant people are always the loudest?
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