Rob

It's probably pretty pointless to try to name a player as a starter at an OF position at this point. Maddon has a ton of options and will mix and match as he loves to do.

Looks like the $9M option for next year is a mutual option. So unless Fowler really loves being a Cub, he's likely to turn that down. So in all likelihood this is a 1 year, $13M deal after you factor in the buyout -- unless of course the buyout is less than $5M if Fowler is the one to decline. Pretty awesome all the same though.

Wow. Awesome.

He's one of those guys who I always had a little trouble reconciling what we saw from him on the field defensively with the metrics. For his career, Murton's UZR/150 in the OF is 17.4. That's significantly better than guys like Starling Marte and Alex Gordon. And that's over a 2,000 inning sample. He never looked much better than passable out there, but I guess being contemporaries with guys like Raul Ibanez and Jermaine Dye can really help bring down the bar for "league average."

We've got the personnel to break up the lefties all the way down the lineup, so I'd probably do that. My lineup would look something like this: Heyward (L) Zobrist (S) Rizzo (L) Bryant ® Schwarber (L) Soler ® Montero (L) Pitcher Russell ® You could convince me to shuffle the guys batting 2/4/6 or 1/3/5 in just about any order among their subgroup as long as it didn't leave Bryant or Rizzo batting lower than 4th in the lineup though. Hell, I would be fine with something like this even: Rizzo (L) Bryant ® Schwarber (L) Soler ® Heyward (L) Zobrist (S) Montero (L) Pitcher Russell ®

Thanks so much for all the hard work, Tim. Since this is a fresh start, I assume DaBum is welcome to return?

I actually kinda like the deal for the Cardinals. He's likely to be worth the money. That said, as a Cubs fan I'm happy they're spending that money on a pretty consistent guy without much of a ceiling. The Cubs are a better team than the Cardinals right now, and absent some truly bad luck for the Cubs the Cardinals need a few high variance guys to break through in order to catch up. Leake wont be one of them.

Well, Heyward is a CF now. CF bats first.

I would definitely set the lineup like this: Heyward Zobrist Rizzo Bryant Schwarber Soler Montero P Russell L/R broken up perfectly and high OBP near the top. Leaves Schwarber and Soler near the bottom for double switch purposes.

Is that a Fletch reference?

[tweet] [/tweet]

I'm a little surprised nobody took Black. I'm certainly not disappointed about that though.

Kershaw bringing the heat. [tweet] [/tweet]

Wow. That's a bit unexpected. So long, one or two of Starlin and Javy.

It went right over my head.

Lackey is a giant douchenozzle of a human being. That said, he's a 2.5 or 3.0 fWAR guy probably. And we're past the days of $5M per WAR on the FA market - it's closer to $7M or $8M now. So he's a fine bet to actually be worth the money. It's also a big bonus to only be on the hook for a two year deal. That's way less risk. It's a solid baseball move. Hard to root for the guy, but I get why they did it.

Carrasco is the only pitcher reportedly available via trade that I'd trade Soler for. If we were trading Baez too, I'd prefer something a bit more useful than Chisenhall. Jose Fernandez?

There's two years left on his deal. $15.4M next year, and $16.4M for 2017. He snuck under the radar pretty well, but actually had a pretty sold year last year. He missed a bunch of time early in the season and was awful when he came back. But he picked it up considerably towards the end of the season. He was worth 1.6 fWAR in about a half season of games. If the Padres are willing to eat $10-20M, I'd be interested.

I'm having a hard time getting upset about the idea that we didn't spend $200+ million on a pitcher. Besides, Tampa put a lot of mileage on his arm. It always felt like they knew they'd never be able to extend him, so his long-term health was ultimately of little concern. It seemed like every time I tuned in to watch him pitch he'd get damn near 120 pitches before Maddon would pull him.

This sentiment is so ridiculous. Samardzija was pissed that his team didn't try You can voice valid concerns about his performance last year. But yeah, stuff like "being a dick" is a pretty big stretch. He came up with a team that competed. Then he got to watch while the new ownership came in and gutted the payroll and moved all the good players off the roster... The Cubs were sold to Ricketts at the end of the 2009 season. Postseason 2009: Goodbye - Rich Harden, Reed Johnson, Kevin Gregg, Neal Cotts 2010 Season: Goodbye - Ted Lilly, Ryan Theriot, Derrek Lee, Mike Fontenot, Carlos Silva 2011 Season: Goodbye - Aramis Ramirez, Carlos Zambrano, Sean Marshall, Carlos Pena, Tyler Colvin, Kosuke Fukudome, Jim Hendry 2012 Season: Goodbye - Ryan Dempster, Geovany Soto, Marlon Byrd, Kerry Wood, Reed Johnson, Paul Maholm, Jeff Baker, Bryan LaHair, Randy Wells 2013 Season: Goodbye - Matt Garza, Alfonso Soriano, Scott Feldman, David DeJesus, Tony Campana, Carlos Marmol, Scott Hairston That is a long slow slide out of relevance. It's like watching what the Phillies are doing right now. And every time the front office would acquire a player that would break out and start performing (Feldman and Maholm notably, and Jason Hammel in 2014) you knew that player was going to be gone by the deadline. So why bother getting excited about anything? He was ready to go somewhere that was wanting to compete, and I can't blame him. It was frustrating for us to watch the team. I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been to be living in those conditions.

Rumor has it that the Yankees are getting pretty deep in a conversation about Gardner for one of the Indians young pitchers (presumably either Salazar or Carrasco)

They gave up John Ryan Murphy, who I know pretty much nothing about. I actually kinda like Hicks, despite the slow start to his career. He was pretty decent last year. It'll be interesting to see if he's just there to fill Chris Young's shoes, or if this is a prelude to a Gardner move.

Damn. That's some scary stuff...

When does middle aged officially start? I'm asking for a friend...

Damn, they got Kristen Chenoweth to sing the national anthem? I hope the Cubs have something equally impressive up their sleeves. What's Kelly Pickler up to these days?