Rob

We'll be lucky if we get draft picks. Rumor has it that the upcoming CBA isn't going to include compensation picks anymore. Keeping the sandwich picks certainly isn't out of the question, but getting another team's first rounder seems very very unlikely at this point. Holding on to him was quite possibly the worst mistake Hendry made this season.

I just got sick looking at that. I can already see the Red Sox trading Manny + Cash for Pat Burrell and Brett Myers. Sox get rid of Manny, but they take on two "troublemakers" and get better in the process.

I am far from convinced that Pie is going to live up to his super-star potential. In reality, I don't see him being more than a very good regular with a couple of star-type seasons sprinkled in, with a high chance of a flameout and no real value ever to the Cubs. On the other hand, I am convinced Pagan's ceiling is a top-of-the-line fourth outfielder. As such, I'd rather see Pie in CF... Pagan may be a better bet to put up sub-par numbers... but Pie is the only one with a real shot to be beneficial to the squad. Then again, I'd rather grab a stop-gap solution for next season in the form of Vernon Wells, Andruw Jones, or Jim Edmonds. Pie could use another year if we can afford to give it to him.

I'd bat Edmonds #2 in the lineup, FWIW.

I'd like to see Miller get smashed. Then again, I'm committed to making a run at the #1 draft pick.

Frank Robinson is almost a Dusty-doppelganger... and he should be available after the season.

Noooo... That needs to read Fredi Gonzalez in place of Lou Piniella... and Joe Girardi.

only because I have zero clout with the media. You could always play the race-card for Lee Smith. Everybody else in the media is willing to use it for their own selfish gains... at least you'd be doing it for somebody else. *glares at Jesse Jackson*

Yeah. You'll get to watch Bynum, Cedeno, and Blanco instead. . For less than half the price. Crappy ballplayers annoy me... Crappy expensive ballplayers infuriate me.

Hey, I'm damn happy about it. Now I can enjoy the game on the 30th, without having to watch him be a scrub.

I think it would cost a productive major leaguer as well as some prospects. The caliber of prospects would depend greatly on the caliber of the major leaguer. I think the Jays would want either Barrett or Murton from the major league roster and then one of Marshall or Marmol. Toronto may start off asking for Barrett or Murton, but they should know it's unrealistic. Quantity over quality should get the job done here. I really don't think it'd take more than Izturis, Pie, Ryu, and Aardsma. We wouldn't be giving up all that much, but it'd be upgrades across the field for them... with the only downgrade coming in the form of a top 25 prospect.

English translation?

I've done in in my own notes, but I'm not ready to put down a preferred roster yet, I'm still up in the air on some things. I wouldn't expect any less of you. It's the "others" :shock: I'm just hyper-realistic and when I see people proposing to spend 20 million more or less dollars than our approx 100 million dollar payroll, it's annoying.

Would anybody else be willing to start putting their payrolls down with the players like Vance and I did? It helps a lot in being realistic when you know how much you have to spend.

I'm assuming the Wells trade would take an Aardsma throw-in. Earl Weaver (who I'm a devout follower of) is adamant that the best way to bring a pitcher into the bigs is through a long relief role. As such, I'd rather have Marshall coming out of the pen... but Ohman still isn't a horrible player, I suppose. I was about 50/50 on that move. I think Nixon's worth whatever it takes to get him. That might only be 2/12, or it could be more. I did mention I purposefully overestimated contract values, just to prove I could bring it in around 100 million in a worst case scenario. At any rate, I do see him having a resurgent season next year. Having another legit LF in Murton would help give him plenty of rest too... keep the bugger healthy. Between the two of them, a .850 or .900 OPS would be about what we'd get out of LF. Acceptible for around 6-8.5 million combined, certainly. Plus, it'd be nice to have an actual bench for once. goony, I still don't get the Padilla love. He's certainly better than Meche (my sock is)... but I don't see the point in giving a good sized contract to an average player. Our system is supposedly stocked with live arms for a reason... I say we try to get some mileage out of them.

How on Earth is Marquis a solid bet to pitch 200 innings with an ERA around 4? His ERA right now is 5.82 As a Card, he's averaging about 200 IP... but an ERA above 4.50

Well for the difference in salary, I think it would be worth it to go with Marshall or Guzman than signing Zito or Schmidt and another starter. However, if we could get Gil Meche signed to a decent contract, I wouldn't be opposed to that. I posed this question in another thread and didn't get a response: Why do people support the idea of signing Meche? He's never thrown 200 innings in a season, he's gives up a fair share of homers, his career WHIP is terrible, and he's put up those crappy numbers pitching roughly half his games in a pitcher's park. This year, his numbers are OK, but his WHIP is still terrible. The best you could hope for is a Matt Clement type of turnaround from him. I think you could get similar production from one or a combination of the young pitchers the Cubs have. I really don't understand why people think Meche is suddenly worth something... it's not even last call yet. Padilla too, for that matter.

Wave goodbye to Blanco, Bynum, Mabry, Ohman, Miller and Pierre. Re-sign Aramis. 4/52 with a no trade should get it done. Sign Schmidt (4/48) to bolster the rotation and hand Guzman the #5 spot. I seem to be alone in thinking he can handle it if he stops getting jerked around, but I still have faith. Hill can slot in as the #3, and Prior as a #4. Sign Trot Nixon (3/24) , Craig Wilson (2/9) , and Ray Durham (1/7). Trade Dempster to any team willing to take on his salary. Re-sign Wood to a one year, one million contract with incentives pushing the deal to as much as four million. Trade Izturis, Pie, Ryu, and Aardsma to the Blue Jays for Vernon Wells. 2B - Durham (7) C - Barrett (4.5) 1B - Lee (13) 3B - Aramis (13) LF - Nixon (8) CF - Wells (5.6) RF - Jones (4) SS - Cedeno (.350) Bench: Wilson (4.5) in a platoon with Jones Murton (.350) in a platoon with Nixon Pagan (.350) Moore (.350) Theriot (.350) groomed as a UTIL Soto (.350) SP1 - Zambrano (10ish) SP2 - Schmidt (12) SP3 - Hill (.350) SP4 - Prior (5ish) SP5 - Guzman (.350) LRP - Marshall (.350) MRP - Marmol (.350) MRP - Wuertz (.350) SU - Wood (4 tops) moving into closer as the season progresses SU - Eyre (3.5) CP - Howry (4) Total Payroll: 101.95 million And that's likely assuming higher than realistic paydays for some of those guys. Depending on the coach we get and his preferences for roster construction, we could drop Moore back down to the minors and bring up that 12th pitcher... Mateo would cost the same though. At any rate, that's a solid offense, with a more than solid bench. The pitching staff is a bit top-heavy, but I imagine at least one of Prior and Hill will perform well enough to give us a stellar top 3. We could survive sup-par performances from the 4 and 5 slots. The bullpen would also be quite effective for a relatively low cost. Any comments, suggestions, or questions?

The Brewers hold a 5M option on Cordero... something I assume they'll exercise, otherwise they probably would have grabbed a young live arm from Texas in the Lee trade. As of Sept. 9th, Kevin Towers out in San Diego was saying he saw Branyan in the Padres plans. I see him staying there for at least next season. And I have been all about Craig Wilson for a couple years... that man has been getting screwed. Helms and Weaver don't interest me much... Hillenbrand might be worth picking up. He always has a nice first half, and we could trade him for a decent prospect or two come the deadline... provided our coach doesn't challenge him to fisticuffs. Only problem is, he'd never agree to be strictly a bench bat.

Holy Frijoles! I think that's the first thing we've agreed upon so far.

You mean to tell me "giving 110%" and "pushing it to the limit" isn't exactly the sort of thing that instigates freak injuries? At any rate, perhaps my vitrol got to be a bit much while making such a backhanded comment. I think it's fairly obvious to both of us that it's very unlikely "most" of your players wouldn't end up on the DL. The ones most at risk are the high-talent ones, though... the ones accustomed to loafing when hustle is counterproductive. Those are the people I would least like injured. If you want to play your cards like that, you may as well go with... "Nuh uh... pitchers use their arms! Fielders are more likely to hurt their legs!" I'm not saying asking a player to hustle real hard all of one game is the same as asking a pitcher to go 130 pitches. I'm saying that asking a player to give it 110% for 162 games is like letting your starting pitcher average about 110 pitches a game. Only a select few can even come close to that without catastrophic results, be it appearing in the form of injury or simple fatigue-related performance decline. I will grant you that you did mention that if given the job as a manager you said you would give your players more frequent days off. The one thing that could give your argument any validity whatsoever (in my eyes at least...) is if you could tell me approximately how often you would play certain guys. A healthy Lee, an oft injured Aramis, Barrett, and Murton are the ones that interest me most. Don't pull that double switch w/me, that crap don't work. That was in regards to Rowand and the potential of injury from increased effort not some injured player people think is loafing out there. Perhaps this is merely a semantic argument we can clear up. Can we both agree you shouldn't have put the word "always" in your quote? Given the fact I've been drinking Crown Royal the last 5 hours, I'll give this a bit more of a concilliatory approach. I get peeved when the runners don't even bother to touch first base on a routine groundout. I find it extremely offensive that the players can't even be bothered to launch the minimum effort required to reach the bag. It may just be the liquor, but I'm becoming confused as to what exactly your stance is... so I think it'd be best if I put "running it out" in most certain terms. How would you feel for the following: 1. Aramis hits a hard grounder to Scott Rolen at third, which he fields cleanly before Aramis is hardly out of the box. Aramis jogs to first, touches the bag (clearly out by a mile) and trots back to the dugout. 2. Aramis bounces one back up the middle that Maddux fields cleanly inside of half a second. Aramis trots to first, touches the bag (out once more) and trots back to the dugout. 3. Aramis hits a routine grounder to Everett at short. He hustles out of the box, but slows down once he sees the ball hit Berkman's glove at first... still touching the bag and then trotting back. 4. Same as above, but it's a hard grounder. Aramis only trots out of the box, as Everett already has the ball in his glove before Aramis is even a quarter down the first base line. 5. Aramis hits a routine grounder up the first base line to Helton. Once again, he hustles until Helton touches the bag... Aramis then loafs up the line to touch first, turns around, and trots back. Sorry to force such answers out of you. I'm just curious and maybe a bit drunk. However, let me point out this fact... ARAMIS IS ESSENTIALLY ALWAYS INJURED. No, that does not excuse the lack of a great offseason conditioning programs. But the fact remains that he is almost always injured, or on the verge of being injured. Since you yourself admitted that there's a difference with injured players, why doesn't Aramis get a pass? BTW, I retain the right to alter my arguments contained in this post.... Stupid wonderful Crown Royal.

You wouldn't have to rest your players if you were the manager. Most would get plenty of DL time in. And no, there's really not a whole lot of separation in the pitching analogy. On both sides, you're leaving your body out there in a position where it will deteriorate given that it's left in such high stress situations for longer than advisable. You're attempting to force the players to hustle irregardless of health issues... that's not at all dissimilar from leaving a pitcher out there after 120 pitches irregardless of the health issues. Smooth move trying to allude to me being like Dusty. But it has absolutely nothing to do with a veteren preference. It's called being a realist. Andruw Jones at 19 had good knees and the ability to heal quickly. Barry Bonds at 41 barely has knees and cannot heal quickly at all. If you honestly want to pretend you're the same player, that's probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And can you honestly tell me that... is anything but short-sighted? It's the utter definition of it! You're potentially giving up large future gains for satisfaction in the short term. You can argue to how sane an idea it may be, but not how short-sighted it is most of the time.

One more time, cause I don't think most people have picked up on this yet. The Cubs had forced Ryan Theriot to switch-hit. He gave up on this prior to last season. His minor league numbers aren't nearly as useful as they would be if he still switch-hit. Last year is likely more indicitive of his true level of ability than the previous years.

Maybe she has herpes of the mouth? If that's the case, I want them too.

Don't presume I'd rather Aramis loaf than get in shape. The question rises in whether or not his body can physically take 162 games, no matter how hard he works? I don't believe he can survive without getting a few too many of those nagging injuries he's become so famous for. My passion has become insane for this game, now that I see it as the art form that it is. I see baseball everywhere I go... I see it everytime I sit through physics class... A lack of hustle is an errant brushstroke. A bad front office direction is an 800 pound gorilla falling on your water lillies. That's an extremely short-sighted view to take. Tell me, is the blatant abuse of our pitching staff in 2003 working out well for us? Those "gamers" in our rotation really "gave it their all" for 120 pitches a game. Sorry, I had missed it. Bobby Cox certainly made the right decision, as he is apt to do. Once again, he has the foresight necessary to avoid silly short-sighted decisions. He recognized that the cost of Andruw coming out for one game would possibly positively benefit his team down the road... putting a work ethic into a young, impressionable player. But it's important to note that Andruw Jones was 19 and needed direction. Pulling Barry Bonds in that situation now wouldn't net you a bloody thing. I really do find it odd that you essentially refuse to believe anything but the short-sighted view of hustle in guys like Aramis could be wrong... while simultaneously trying to use an example where Bobby Cox was trying to use the situation to bring about more long-term success as the basis for your argument.