davell

Jon Heyman ‏@JonHeymanCBS 1m1 minute ago Hearing from a baseball source, kenta maeda and dodgers are in agreement. No word on $. @DfineNrmLC all over this one

Is it too much to ask for Moore and McGee, without using Javy or Soler? Send Coghlan, plus non-Contreras guys from the system. I think that'd be about the best possible move left for us, if we do anything.

It really just seems backwards to me.....The success rates of high ranked hitting prospects is close to double that of what it is for pitching. In my mind, that means in order to trade ONE hitter like that, you ought to receive TWO pitchers, in order to balance out the risk involved. However, it kind of seems to be the opposite(at least in Dave Stewarts mind) where it appears teams want TWO hitters for ONE of those type pitchers. In a run environment that's severely diminished to begin with. From that standpoint alone, it's hard for me to fault our guys for not going out and paying up for a Carrasco/Salazar/etc..... If we can top off our IFA class with two of Ruiz/Gutierrez/Morejon/Perez/Bolanos/Sierra, I'd say we hit it out of the park. As an aside, I kind of suspect our approach to drafting from here on out will change dramatically, as we can start to afford taking chances on pitching later(this year doesn't count, as we'll have so small of a draft budget). But if top end guys with arm issues, like a Giolito or an Aiken fall to us in the future, I'd suspect we'd pounce on them at this stage.

Mirotic makes me sad, but Portis is fun as hell.

I think Russell IS a 4 WAR guy in 2016. Granted, it's only 1 from where he's projected at, but that's something anyway.

I was curious to see how much pitching we missed out on by drafting the way we did. Not necessarily looking to see who we could have had if we took pitching in the 1st(2012 excluded), that's worked out about as well as it could have. But who we may have missed out on in rounds 2-10, or later thru 2015. It hasn't been all that much, to be completely honest. First though, in fairness, lets look at 2012 and the pitching we could have had instead of Almora.....This one hurts. Almora went 6th, while Andrew Heaney went 9th, Lucas Giolito went 16th(forgivable, as using your 1st pick since taking over on a TJS guy would be way too risky right off the bat), Michael Wacha at 19 and Marcus Stroman at 22. That said, hindsight and all, but it obviously would be nice to have one of that group right now already inserted into our rotation or in Giolito's case, being the best pitching prospect in baseball. We took Pierce Johnson and Paul Blackburn with supplemental picks that year and Duane Underwood in the 2nd round. We didn't whiff on many guys that were taken later than them. Alex Wood was a late 2nd rounder, as was Jake Thompson(who's a top 50ish prospect now). Thats pretty much it. So while it certainly would have been great to have grabbed one of those guys instead of Almora at 6, it would have been extremely difficult to have chosen correctly on Wood over Johnson or Thompson over Blackburn, considering the other 18 pitchers that were also drafted in between Johnson(highest) and Thompson(lowest). 2013 saw us take Bryant, so any pitcher taken before our next pick(which was Zastryzny) is off limits obviously and rightfully so. Wow, what a [expletive] show of pitching this draft has been. From our 2nd round pick thru the end of the draft, there's one guy(unless I'm missing someone) that's either a legit major league pitcher or a top 100 prospect. It's Jose De Leon, who the Dodgers McNutted in the 24th round. But that's it. So while our pitching didn't produce out of that draft, no one else's did either. I guess we can look at 2014 already, since there's actually some guys in the majors. I'd love to have Aaron Nola, to be honest. But not at the expense of Schwarber, not even close. So again, we start in the 2nd round with our pick of Stinnett. At a bit of a discount off of slot too. He obviously hasn't looked good as of yet, but considering what else we pulled off in getting Sands, Steele, and Cease, who each have the ability to conceivably become top 100 types at some point soon, it's a bit hard to look at that singular pick in too hateful of a light. But we could have had Brent Honeywell, who went late in the 2nd to Tampa, at a price underneath Stinnett's. 16 pitchers went between Stinnett and Honeywell, by the way. I'm not even sure why I looked this stuff up. All it shows is how hard it is to draft pitching and especially how hard it is to draft pitching outside of the 1st round. I think it's almost fair to say that coming up with Underwood and the upside of Sands/Steele/Cease has been a solid enough job by the FO, since they've tried to add in other ways too. But it's not hard at all to see why they like the position players in the 1st. I honestly can't understand why all these teams rebuilding now are trying to do it with pitching. Our way was so much easier and safer.

to the Dodgers on a 3 year deal.....Their rotation now consists of 5 lefties, with Kershaw/Kazmir/Wood/Anderson/Ryu. 3/48, opt out after year 1.

The AL is a crap shoot for sure. The White Sox adding one of Cespedes or Gordon would put them firmly in the mix for a playoff spot. Although I'd guess they'd appear to be a bit on the outside of it by the numbers, without looking. They're doing all they can though, they can't just tear down like we did.

I guess Miller gets dealt to the Astros soon?

I get what he's saying. I'm saying I think there's more there. It's possible, but I think they went over the top and included next year in order to get Heyward, but I don't see Theo doing a trade off on something like this. Yes, Heyward is far more important obviously. But, I don't see Theo giving something up in this case. I think he's getting what he wants overall, especially with his own contract coming up.

Nope, I honestly don't think so. I think there's a separate discretionary fund for these types of things. Mainly because of the Moncada news that we came very close to getting him to wait until July to sign, due to Maddon meeting with him. That would have been 60+ mill and there's no way Theo makes that deal if it keeps them from signing Lester in that offseason. Theo and Jed have both said they're looking at adding pitching to multiple levels of our organization as well, which stood out to me, on this front. Theo went in November to see Ruiz and Perez himself, which shows serious intent. We're supposedly the favorites on Morejon too. It's a one time/last time type of thing that especially after losing our 1st(and comp pick) this year, we'll replenish this way. As to the how we may have this type of fund.....I think it's probably been built by money we saved from midseason trade offs during the lean years, any profit that was accumulated at the end of those seasons that hadn't been spent, along with the extra TV money, attendance, playoff revenue, etc from this past season, coupled with a very solid increase in ticket prices for 2016 as well. Not to mention, you can probably use signing bonuses in fairly creative ways, when it comes to payroll. No, I do NOT expect us to come out of this spending another 40 mill, plus overages, but assuming a bunch of these guys are available in time, I'd put our over/under at 25 mill(plus overages). Which should net us 2 out of Ruiz/Gutierrez/Morejon/Perez/Bolanos and one position guy, like Machado, Arozarena, etc. If that buys us MORE than that, then wonderful.

I just want guys to ACTUALLY become eligible. I was fairly sure a solid group would be, even by now. With more coming eligible within the month or so. As it stands right now, the ONLY guys eligible are P Vladimir Gutierrez and CF Jonatan Machado. I figured Ruiz, Arozarena and others would be signable by now and we'd likely get about half of the Ona/Lazarito/Morejon time frame guys in on this class. With the news that Lazarito will know by the end of January, I'm guessing others will as well. But I find it unlikely that ALL of these guys get dumped into this class(even if other teams can bid and keep them from signing till later) I just want news these guys are available. We'll get our fair share as long as they are.

I'd much rather sign multiple pitchers than spend huge on him.

Javy likely? Hell to the no. The two combined out WAR those 2 is what I meant by that. I do think Javy is a 2 WAR guy this season though.

Russell and Javy are likely to out WAR Piscotty and Grichuk. I don't even see why we need a [expletive] Cardinal thread, until another one does something stupid.

I've gotta think that Coghlan will be soaking up a good portion of the Soler/Schwarber off days, though I would agree, but I think he'll be dealt before Opening Day, likely for bullpen help.

Not the point. Zobrist doesn't HAVE to play 2B. He can play LF/RF with Javy taking 2B on days Soler or Schwarber are rested. There'll be plenty of AB's for Javy, as long as he can handle them.

Cuban teenage phenom "Lazarito" has a showcase scheduled for Jan. 8. This video was sent to scouts to preview event: https://t.co/VtrQWGclUI

I don't see sporadic playing time. He'!l get into most every game as a PH/defensive replacement that he isn't already starting in. And he'll start a ton too. With the versatility we've got, he'll be starting plenty while Soler/Schwarber/Zobrist/Russell get days off. Not to mention, he becomes a full time player if anyone goes on the DL. My prediction is 477 AB's with a .261/.300/.454 line. 16 HR with a 31.1% K rate.

RHP Carlos Sierra signed with the Astros. He's 20 and has been on my page 14 list. Reports seem fairly nondescript on him. 90ish with control. No word yet on how much he got, but I'm hoping he was cheap enough to keep the Astros under their limit.(Which appears to have around 2 mill or so left)

5/80 doesn't buy stars anymore. Thats not even a bad deal for Leake, who'll likely outperform it by a bit anyway. If the Cards stay out of the 9 figure hitters, I'll be very happy.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2015/12/22/lazaro-armenteros-cuba-baseball/77750654/ MLB should be ruling by the end of January as to whether Lazarito is eligible to be signed this period or not. No idea if this also means they're ruling on others or just him, but I'd veer towards it concerning more than just him.

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2015/12/22/levine-is-dexter-fowler-still-a-fit-for-the-cubs/

They've also talked of moving one of them down, if some of our power guys are having trouble making contact at certain points.

Joe Ostrowski Retweeted DHP ‏@DHP 2h2 hours ago My White Sox ticket rep asked me if I was excited about the addition of Brett Lawrie. I don't actually care about the White Sox, but after our offseason, I did find this humorous.