Rob

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.

Everybody hates NSBB. We're pretty full of ourselves.

Nope. Check it out for yourself... you'll have to cut and paste this link. http://www.hardballtimes.com/thtstats/main/index.php?view=pitching&linesToDisplay=50&orderBy=der&direction=DESC&qual_filter=ignore&season_filter[]=2008&league_filter[]=2&team_filter[]=FLA&Submit=Submit I'm confused again. That site says that Florida, with 116 throwing and fielding errors, was second only to Washington in committing the most errors in the NL. How does that help the argument that Gregg was the recipient of a good defense? For the record, errors don't mean jack squat. What I had that link set up to display was defensive efficiency... which is a measure of how often the defense turns a ball in play into an out... which is what we're looking for... not whether they committed "errors". And what you're seeing is that Gregg benefited disproportionately from his defensive unit (which BP has ranked just a tick above the middle of the pack... 13th overall). They turned 75.3% of the balls in play into outs with him on the mound, but only about 69.3% on the average. So that's it then, the DER is what matters? I see he also has a similar DER in 2007. Amazingly, they just field better for him. The pitcher has nothing to do with this? Are Harden (.790 DER) and Marmol (.831) just lucky too because the defense seems to play better for them? Or does how they pitch have something to do with what kind of balls are put in play? I find it odd that Gregg, Pinto, Volsted, Olson, Nelson, and Nolasco, all pitchers with decent DER numbers (and coincidently better LD% than the rest of the staff) were simply the beneficiaries of a good defense playing over its head just for them. I completely disagree that one sole stat like DER is the tell all about a pitchers performance if three stats like BAA, OBP and SLG are just random as I've been told. And in 2004 Gregg ranked 11th out of 16 Angels pitchers. And in 2005 Gregg ranked 15th out of 18 Angels pitchers. And in 2006 Gregg ranked 15th out of 18 Angels pitchers. You say Gregg has just figured it out. I say his defense is doing him some favors the last couple years. I'm not calling DER the one telling stat for pitchers. It's telling of team defense, and that's about it. His strikeout rate, walk rate, groundball tendencies, and other peripherals are much more important (read: stable) than junk like hit rate (which is why BAA, OBA, and SLG are less useful). DER was simply a tool to help prove that there's a whole bunch of sway in hit rate (without resorting to arbitrary scoring decisions like calling errors).

Yeah, but we also got Bo Flowers along with Novoa. And Scott Moore.

Nope. Check it out for yourself... you'll have to cut and paste this link. http://www.hardballtimes.com/thtstats/main/index.php?view=pitching&linesToDisplay=50&orderBy=der&direction=DESC&qual_filter=ignore&season_filter[]=2008&league_filter[]=2&team_filter[]=FLA&Submit=Submit I'm confused again. That site says that Florida, with 116 throwing and fielding errors, was second only to Washington in committing the most errors in the NL. How does that help the argument that Gregg was the recipient of a good defense? For the record, errors don't mean jack squat. What I had that link set up to display was defensive efficiency... which is a measure of how often the defense turns a ball in play into an out... which is what we're looking for... not whether they committed "errors". And what you're seeing is that Gregg benefited disproportionately from his defensive unit (which BP has ranked just a tick above the middle of the pack... 13th overall). They turned 75.3% of the balls in play into outs with him on the mound, but only about 69.3% on the average.

Nope. Check it out for yourself... you'll have to cut and paste this link. http://www.hardballtimes.com/thtstats/main/index.php?view=pitching&linesToDisplay=50&orderBy=der&direction=DESC&qual_filter=ignore&season_filter[]=2008&league_filter[]=2&team_filter[]=FLA&Submit=Submit

Relievers don't have all that much control over their triple slash stats. Look at Brad Lidge... his peripherals stayed pretty constant, but luck has made his numbers jump all over the place. http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/stats/players/index.php?lastName=lidge So, even indicators like K/BB rate and GB % aren't good enough because in the Lidge example you posted, his K/BB ratio and GB % has been about the same over the last 4 years yet his SLGA has been .323, .408, .409, and .269? Conversely, when Gregg's GB% and K/BB ratio were better, he posted much worse slash splits. Is it fair to say that we really don't know what will happen and can only go by what has happened? No, not really. You're attempting to give Gregg triple credit because the Marlins defense has performed extremely well behind him the last couple years... something which he had no control over.

Relievers don't have all that much control over their triple slash stats. Look at Brad Lidge... his peripherals stayed pretty constant, but luck has made his numbers jump all over the place. http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/stats/players/index.php?lastName=lidge

Urge to kill... rising...

Fair enough.