USSoccer

Interesting foxsports.com piece with Omar Gonzalez who says he's never heard once from Klinsmann and would be open to a Mexico callup. George John also claims to have yet to hear from Juergen. This guy sucks at managing the pool. Mark my words; in 2 years when our defense is a sieve again we're going to regret wasting the past half year.

Why oh why couldn't Toyota Park be as awesome as Livestrong? Teal Bunbury....I rate him.

So...its better to risk twice as much money over probably 3 or 4 more years on this guy? Scouting reports on Matsuzaka were glowing, too.

Remember, we're not talking about we want. We're talking about your admittedly Ramirez-fan-fueled nightmare where we don't improve *anything* on the offense in free agency and spend all of our extra money on pitching. Even in that scenario, the offense is within spitting distance of average. And again, what pitching outside of Wilson is worth spending on? And assuming you get him, you have Wilson and Garza, not Lincecum and Cain. Wilson isn't Cliff Lee. I'm saying if we miss out on one of the 1B FA's, we're screwed.

Yeah, that was cheating a bit on Byrd. But Jackson's a legit projection. 2011 average NL CFer: .262 .333 .409 2012 ZIPS projection for Brett Jackson: .254 .335 .419 And again, the Chicago Cubs, with a $130 million dollar payroll in a division with such economic powers as Milwaukee, Cincinatti and St Louis, shouldn't be relying on ZIPS projections for a rookie CF in order to be merely mediocre offensively. Do you guys really believe this, or is this just some sort of academic, devil's advocate sort of thing?

You mean Aubrey Huff, who posted a .694 OPS in 2009 and a .676 OPS in 2011? An extremely up and down player who happened to have a really good year that season? If Grady can stay healthy, he could give us Huff-type numbers. And then there's Pat Burrell who had a .682 and .756 OPS around the 2010 season. Again, the Giants took a chance on a highly up and down player and got an up year. They caught a break - one we could get from a Soriano/DeJesus platoon if the breaks go our way. Soto could also have an up season next year and give us an .800+ OPS like Burrell did for SF. As for Posey, Castro probably won't be that good but he could give us an .800+ OPS next year. As for the relievers, Marshall can be close to as good as anybody in their pen that year and Marmol can as well if he can rebound. As for the third, we have a plethora of options to work through, all with upside. Pretty sure Trey said that they have three SP and three relievers better than ours. Their offense would be just as god effing awful as ours. There's no one that's like Lincecum or Cain just out there for us to sign with no competition, not to mention you're again hoping that Carlos Marmol doesn't suck, and hoping that the collection of glish in the upper minors can step in and effectively relieve at the major league level.

Soriano/Jackson/Byrd Random Crap/Castro/Barney/Pena Soto That offense is above-average at C and SS, average at LF, CF, and RF, and below-average at 2b and 3b. I'm not seeing how that's a terrible offense. It's not a great offense, but it's an okay one, and this is in some sort of nightmare scenario where they fail to upgrade a single position. That team is incredibly terrible and we'd be in last place if not for the death hole that is Houston. ETA: I just caught that you declared Jackson to be average in CF and Byrd to be average in RF. Come on, Kyle. You can argue better than that.

i guess people are talking about darvish. Oh yeah. Pissing away eleventy billion dollars on a posting fee + contract for a Japanese pitcher is totally the way to go. I mean, those guys have a proven track record of stardom in MLB. Way better than a shorter term, lower dollar commitment to a guy who's been the best 3B in Chicago for like 30 years. BRB, checking on how Daisuke/Irabu/Iwamura are doing.

And what are we relying on if we give Aramis a 3/45 deal at minimum? Health. We're overpaying a 34 year old, oft-injured third baseman in the hopes that he will stay healthy. I've said multiple times this isn't an ideal scenario and my first option this offseason is to pay very large amounts of money to one of Prince/Pujols. But if that doesn't work out, bringing in two stud pitchers is better than one stud pitcher and overpaying for an old, oft-injured Aramis. Retaining Aramis and signing Pujols or Fielder is far, far, far more likely to be helpful next year and beyond than hoping one of those two decides to sign here to play with Castro and a collection of crap. And again, who's the other stud FA pitcher?

I'm not following you. How does Jeromy Burnitz compare to Headley or Sizemore and how does Soriano compare to Matt Kemp? Sizemore has been broken for like 2 years now and just got non-tendered by Cleveland. You're hoping you catch lightning in a bottle with him. I have no idea what a Headley is, but it sounds like a league average player. Its settling for like the 5th best options out there. And you're on drugs if you're going to put all your eggs in the "Matt Kemp will definitely hit the market, and when he does we'll sign him so it's ok to pass/miss out on every good offensive player going into 2012 because we'll get Matt Kemp" basket. That's not exactly the kind of sound planning that wins championships. If we sign Pujols or Fielder, fine. Whatever. If we don't, no amount of mental gymnastics and projecting 2013 signings or whatever will make us not suck on offense. There's no really likely scenario where we aren't really below average in 2012 offensively.

Right. It's clearly not ideal, but having a fantastic pitching staff and a really good defense can work if you get some breaks. A team with a $130m payroll in the NL Central shouldn't have to rely on pitching health and "breaks"

It kinda does. From my perspective it's worst case scenario, though. With the money we have freed up, we have a very high likelihood of landing one of Pujols/Prince. There's the real chance we miss, though, and rather than make a rash, short term only move (Aramis), I think we should pursue guys who can perform at a high level for multiple seasons going forward. Then in the 2012 offseason we make a hard push for Matt Kemp or someone similar with the money freed up from Z and Dempster. I've seen this one before. We ended up with Jeromy Burnitz. And then had to overpay for Soriano to make up for it.

Which is why I've been one of the most vocal supporters on this board of bringing in one of Pujols/Prince for months now. However, if worse comes to worse and we somehow miss out on both Pujols/Prince, then bringing in two stud pitchers is better than overpaying for an oft-injured 34 year old third baseman who's likely to decline soon. Refresh my memory-aside from Wilson, who's the other stud SP out there as a FA? (don't say Sabathia)

Pena, Soriano and Fukudome also had above-average OPS, and Soto and Byrd were just a tick below. The offense doesn't really have any bad players on it, position adjusted. We're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm already on record in stating I'm factoring in emotion over reason, and I do believe that not having Aramis around makes selling Prince/Pujols on Chicago slightly more difficult. I see the numbers; I think Aramis is worth trying to bring back provided it's not ridiculous terms. That said, if we let him sign elsewhere, and then pass on those guys for hoping Grady Sizemore isn;t broken, Wilson and some random MVP2005 CPU generated 3B option, I'm going to be right pissed and I'll predict we suck next year.

The Cubs were an average offense last year. Losing Ramirez is not going to send it into some sort of death spiral. Average basically because of Ramirez and Castro, right?

Not if we got some good development from guys like Castro and Headley (just now hitting his prime and was around a .500 SLG guy in the minors) and got healthy, bounceback years from Sizemore and Soto. It'd be a high risk team that could lose 90 games, but the rotation would be the best in the league hands-down and the offense would have some upside. We have a 130 million dollar payroll in the 3rd biggest market in the country, are you kidding me? We're not the San Diego Padres; we shouldn't have to rely on "if" and "upside" to put together a competent offense.

You are incredibly overrating how much of an impact losing Aramis Ramirez has. And you're being incredibly optimistic over how likely it is to replace his offensive production with a platoon, Carlos Pena and hopes and dreams.

i'm not particularly excited to watch the 2012 cubs in which no position player slugs .500 I don't know how Cubbie Carmine weighs your excitement, so it's hard to figure that in to my projections. It means that if the grand plan is to find pissant platoon situations and reclamation projects, and we pass on anyone good offensively and try and build around free agent pitching, we're going to blow.

I think we could piecemeal together an offense good enough to score more than one run a game in that scenario. Add Chase Headley, maybe Grady Sizemore in right, find a lefty platoon partner for Soriano (DeJesus?), start BJax in center, watch Castro improve offensively. That's not going to be a good offense, but there's going to be some pretty impressive on-base ability there and some really good defense. Rotation Garza Wilson Darvish Dempster Wells Lineup Castro Headley Sizemore Pena Soto Soriano/DeJesus Jackson Barney P You had it right when you said "that's not a good offense". Holy crap, that team would lose 90 games.

i'm not particularly excited to watch the 2012 cubs in which no position player slugs .500 It's kind of exciting to think of a rotation including Garza/Wilson/Darvish/Dempster/Wells, though. It sounds boring as crap, losing games 3-1

You've breathed in way too much of that Williston oil fume if you believe that.

...balls. Stupid logical TT. it's good logic so long as we get one of those guys and wouldn't have otherwise. if we don't we're a complete disaster team next year. and after that we still only have one particularly valuable piece. That's how I feel. Letting go of Aramis means we'd better be willing to go all in on Pujols or Fielder, or we're going to blow.

...balls. Stupid logical TT.

I went over it here and in the Transactions thread, but it's hard to come up with a reasonable projection for Ramirez that is more than 3 WAR. It's annoying that the meatheads obsess over it, but it really is true that Ramirez gives back a ton of his offensive value on defense and baserunning. This team has too many other gaping holes, especially the rotation and 1b, to justify spending $15 million or whatever Ramirez is going to get. And that's even before we get into the risks of a multi-year deal for a guy entering his age 34 season. "Hey Albert/Prince, come to Chicago! We'll have a platoon of Blake DeWitt and Jeff Baker protecting you in the lineup! Hello? Hello?" That's another affect of this. I know that I'm being less than logical about this because I think he's awesome and such, but I absolutely do not buy the effectiveness of a platoon or some internal solution, let alone some reclamation project we pick up to not only match his offensive production, but I heavily question defensive metrics and think that not having your best offensive player return hinders our ability to attract other good players to come here.

We should go with the sure thing and not risk getting some terrible line out of our 3b like 241/294/452. Yes, lets focus on the outlier