Rob

Do me a favor and look up Jeter's numbers and compare them to any other SS in the HOF. Based on stats alone Bill James has his chances of getting in the HOF at greater than 100% (as only James can). Jeter is a first ballot HOFer. Mattingly is borderline but defiantly should get consideration. He's the Mark Grace of the 1980s. FYI, the Bill James metrics used for HoF evaluations are meant to measure whether they are likely to get voted in... not whether they are worthy of it. Maybe so, but James has him ranked as the 53 best offensive player of all time. Oh, I'm not arguing his worth. He's probably already HoF worthy.

Do me a favor and look up Jeter's numbers and compare them to any other SS in the HOF. Based on stats alone Bill James has his chances of getting in the HOF at greater than 100% (as only James can). Jeter is a first ballot HOFer. Mattingly is borderline but defiantly should get consideration. He's the Mark Grace of the 1980s. FYI, the Bill James metrics used for HoF evaluations are meant to measure whether they are likely to get voted in... not whether they are worthy of it.

He's got a higher WARP3 than Jim Rice... then again, who doesn't? lol, awesome No, seriously. Career WARP3 values Rickey Henderson - 189.8 Bert Blyleven - 147.7 Tim Raines - 131.1 Alan Trammell - 127.1 Mark McGwire - 109.8 Andre Dawson - 107.5 Tommy John - 103.8 Harold Baines - 98.6 David Cone - 94.2 Matt Williams - 91.2 Jay Bell - 88.8 Dale Murphy - 86.4 Mark Grace - 86.2 Lee Smith - 85.5 Jack Morris - 85.0 Dave Parker - 84.6 Don Mattingly - 84.3 Jim Rice - 80.2 Greg Vaughn - 65.3 Ron Gant - 62.9 Mo Vaughn - 61.2 Jesse Orosco - 60.9 Dan Plesac - 52.5 Obviously, there are arguments for peak vs. longevity and all that... but Jim Rice belongs nowhere near a HoF conversation.

He wasn't my favorite, but he seems like a genuinely good guy. I wish him the best of luck.

He's got a higher WARP3 than Jim Rice... then again, who doesn't?

We claimed Brad Snyder off waivers... doesn't that count for something?

Here's my personal list... (based on absolutely nothing) 1. Josh Vitters 2. Jeff Samardzija 3. Hak-ju Lee 4. Andrew Cashner 5. Wellington Castillo 6. Jay Jackson 7. Dae-Eun Rhee 8. Ryan Flaherty 9. Micah Hoffpauir 10. Tyler Colvin 11. Chris Carpenter 12. Junior Lake 13. Aaron Schafer 14. Starlin Castro 15. Dan McDaniel 16. Brandon Guyer 17. Matt Cerda 18. Esmalin Caridad 19. Donald Veal 20. Larry Suarez 21. Tony Thomas 22. Mitch Atkins 23. Marwin Gonzalez 24. Drew Rundle 25. Hung-Wen Chen 26. Dylan Johnston 27. Alex Maestri 28. Jovan Rosa 29. Marquez Smith 30. Roberto Hernandez Other guys I'm keeping my eye on - Chris Huseby, Kyler Burke

I remember Vlad only getting 5/70 guaranteed because he hit the market at the wrong time. Most other years he woulda been a 100 mil+ guy.

I misspoke. Gregg is likely to be a Type A regardless... but that is much less likely to be an issue for other teams if he has a "proven closer" tag attached in FA. Middle relievers aren't generally worth giving up extra draft picks for... some GMs feel that closer are, however.

So, this leads me to two possible conclusions about why Hendry declined arbitration. 1) He thinks he can re-sign Wood. 2) Teams are declining arbitration in order to keep their budgets down, as more draft picks require more money to be spent and someone accepting arbitration could result in the team paying more money than expected. Does anyone know about this rule change, by the way? It was a minor tweak in the most recent CBA. It used to be that declining to offer a player arbitration meant that they couldn't resign with their original team until May 1st (IIRC). Negotiations were essentially limited to a month after the season if you wanted to keep a player who was becoming a FA. They did away with that part of it... So yeah, we can still negotiate with Wood. But if we were really intending to do that, we would have offered him arbitration. That's not to say that we wont negotiate with Wood... but something drastic would have to happen, like Woody deciding he wants to play here for free, or Marmol shooting himself in the leg, Plaxico Burress style.

Henderson McGwire Raines Blyleven Trammell Those five unequivocally deserve to get in. I go back and forth on Dawson... he's right on the edge. Grace is a half step behind, and probably deserves an inner circle spot in the Hall of Very Good. Lee Smith shouldn't get into the HoF without paying for admission.

Taking contract details into account, I'd definitely rather have (in no particular order): Hanley Ramirez Jose Reyes Jimmy Rollins Alexei Ramirez Jhonny Peralta Yunel Escobar JJ Hardy Rafael Furcal Stephen Drew Troy Tulowitzki Jed Lowrie Brandon Wood And if we took out contract considerations, we could add to the list: Derek Jeter Michael Young Miguel Tejada Khalil Greene And then there's quite a few people that Theriot would be in a close group with... including Ronny Cedeno (whom I still believe is the better player of the two)

I still don't understand this board's fascination with guys like Dunn, Ibanez and Abreu in RF. For the price, I'd rather run Pie out in CF and Fukudome out in RF. I love offense as much as the next guy, but the available guys to "play" RF are absolute butchers out there... consistently among the most terrible fielders in the game. Pie ranks as one of the top defensive CF... the difference between him and those guys actually should get pretty close to covering for the bat, at a mere fraction of the price.

I understand the decision to let Woody walk... the argument that spending that kind of money on a closer is an incorrect allocation of limited resources is probably a valid one, sentimentality aside. Forgoing the potential compensatory draft picks is a mistake on Hendry's fault, though... and just one of many mistakes he's made this offseason. Dempster's contract was a HUGE gamble, and we probably would have been better served to just let him walk and pocket the draft picks. And the budget room he's sucking up is apparently pretty important too. And the handling of the Ceda/Gregg/Marmol thing has been pretty ridiculous too. The trade would actually make a bit of sense if the plan was for the Cubs to use Gregg as the closer so he's a Type A after this season, and then let him walk and pocket a couple high draft picks. It'd be trading Ceda and a few mil for a couple high draft picks, essentially. If we'd become less enamored with Ceda, that's certainly defensible. But no... we trade Ceda for a guy who is no sure bet to be any better than him this year, to say nothing of the price difference (which certainly comes into play). And then to top it off, Lou pretty much names Marmol his closer which means we'll be getting nothing for Gregg after this season, barring something unexpected. That'll jack up Marmol's price in arby even higher, too. It's no wonder our farm system is quickly becoming a laughing stock... Hendry is completely bungling the process of infusing the system with high level talent.

Absurd.

unless he has figured out how to throw strikes consistently, i don't know how you can be so sure about that. You don't need control to be a LOOGY... just a slider.

Almost certainly. He needs more minor league time if you want him to start, but he can be a quality LOOGY today.

The Cubs are currently the only team in serious negotiations for Peavy. However, due to our lack of pitching prospects, we're trying to get a third (or maybe even fourth) team involved to facilitate a deal. No other team is making a serious bid at Peavy right now though, so we're taking our sweet time getting a deal worked out. It could be a while yet.

Does anybody know when the spring training schedule will be announced and when tickets will go on sale? I'm trying to make some plans for my spring break.

I didn't think the acquisition made much sense from Beane's perspective... I guess I just didn't see the endgame.

Randy Johnson has been below average exactly once since Nelson Mandela was let out of prison. Calling him bad, or saying he's likely to be bad is stupid. You can say he might not be healthy... you can say you don't think he's worth the money he'd cost. But arguing that he's bad... that's stupid.

How can you make the assumption that he'll probably be bad? He's still a good deal better than average. Cause he's 45 and injury prone? I seriously can't believe anyone is considering this a good idea. Injury prone doesn't make him less effective, it just makes him effective less often. I'm not saying I want to pay a few million dollars to get the same production Sean Marshall can give us... I just don't think it's correct to predict that he'll be bad.

No. Between DeRosa and Fontenot, we have too many good players for too few at bats already... why would it make sense to trade our top prospect (and others) only to exacerbate the problem?

How can you make the assumption that he'll probably be bad? He's still a good deal better than average.

Everybody hates NSBB. We're pretty full of ourselves. No its not that. We are just the biggest and most popular Cubs message board on the internet. Like all popular things, its cool to hate us. Well played, sir.