davell

The FO knows whether or not they'll have the money to make a serious run at Price(or a Heyward with a guy like Lackey attached). If they don't have the ability to add that 100+mill contract in the offseason-that's when Hamels becomes more of an option in my mind. It's asinine if we need them to contribute a bit of salary, but if that does wind up being the case, the true objective is adding the best SP you can and for more than just this season. It's definitely possible that that's him and now is the time to do it, if Amaro/Gillick/MacPhail wind up being remotely reasonable THIS deadline. And I've got serious doubt as far as that goes.

I think the idea of a sellers market is going away. Price Hamels Cueto Shark Shields Kazmir Kennedy Leake Gallardo Latos Haren Lohse That's not counting guys like Ross, Cashner, Miley, Iwakuma or anyone else that has been thrown out there at some point. These teams are buying pitching Cubs Dodgers Cards Giants Orioles Blue Jays Astros Angels Rangers Twins Royals The Yankees don't seem to be doing anything, the Mets don't need pitching. The Pirates seem to be after hitting too. At any rate, there's plenty to go around at this point, we'll get a very good arm soon.

Kazmir threw 112 pitches a few days ago and looked really good doing it.

JD summed it up perfectly.....With every line drive, he's becoming a better catcher.

Anderson Amarista, a projected Cubs signee, went to the Rockies for 600k. To my knowledge, there's still not been any press release of any Cubs IFA signings.

The board would crash No it wouldn't. It'd thrive as at least half the board will have died during the game.

Isn't his velocity even up from where he was pre-injury? Maybe a wee bit. He was hitting 97 tonight evidently. I don't think he had ever been clocked at 100 pre TJS, but I guess it's possible he could have in shorter stints.

Be as excited as you would be if we had taken him at 9 this year. He was a top 10-15 prospect heading into last year in a stronger draft before he had TJS.

I'd like to get him, but I'd want a deal with a team option attached, since he's a FA next year.

Murray breaks us even versus Belushi and Cusack. Garland takes care of one hack too. What other shitty celebrity fans do we have though? I'm forgetting this stuff.... I'm assuming Vince Vaughn knows nothing, but am I wrong there?

[expletive]. Tim, did you merge with cubs.com and not tell us?

He supposedly was still growing when he signed and may still have room for added velo, which is exciting since he hits 95 currently from reports I've read. I know you're going to gather your info together on all you saw, but did you hear Madison's thoughts on De La Cruz specifically?

Basically, it's the debt structure stuff. Unfortunately, it makes complete sense as to why that'd be the case. I think Zobrist is going to be in very high demand, I kind of suspect we get outbid on him. I figure we'll add a rental SP and a decent bench bat.

http://chicago.suntimes.com/sports/7/71/753380/maddon-bosio-magician-part-can-cubs-make-impact-trade Mooney has insinuated limited funds as well. It all comes from the baseball ops budget and remember, we're in the middle of spending a bunch on IFA's too. Not to mention, the Shields offer was backloaded and a bunch was deferred too.

De La Cruz may be the most intriguing pitcher in our system outside of Cease.

I'm not even sure the Phils do anything now, it seems like a 3 ring circus over there. MacPhail saying if things don't change, he doesn't see Amaro there next year, Amaro's comments on Utley-I could see them deciding to hold off on anything until the offseason. Especially since MacPhail is cautious as [expletive] to begin with. Yeah, the price was supposedly cheap on him, but there were also rumors they wanted to include cash for a better return. Either way, if we truly only have between 3-5 mill to spend, Papelbon would take up a majority of it. To me, an SP is a much more important addition and its not looking like there are too many controllable guys that don't have salaries available. So that looks like a rental guy to me. Plus, another OF/bench bat is higher on my list of needs than bullpen help too. Motte, Strop, Rondon, Ramirez, Grimm, Soriano, with CJ as a late season possibility seems like a very solid pen to me. I think most teams would love that depth. I like Papelbon, but unless we either have more money to spend or we find a cheap SP and preferrably an OF too, I think he's more of a luxury. If we can't address anything else, then help your squad anyway you can obviously. But he seems like an option that'd be pretty far down our list at this stage, in what looks to be our actual situation.

Doesn't that question imply that he'd need to look good in order to warrant a callup? Would the FO bring up someone just for the [expletive] of it? And there is not/will not be a 40 man issue as long as we've got guys like Teagarden, Herrera, Baxter, Jokisch, Richard, Roach, Schlitter, Edwin, and even a few others on it.

Even if we're not constrained monetarily, I think the need for pen help has fallen far behind a starting pitcher and a position player. My guess is we're out on Papelbon, unless circumstances change on our end.

I mean, I'm far from upset if that's what he becomes. But he never had serious control issues until last year, which could at least conceivably be explained by getting a late start to the season.(I admit this is rather weak and glass full thinking) At any rate, it was 21 in 48 AA innings....Bad, but not awful, as this year has been. But I definitely think the fact he's coming out of the pen and airing it out a bit more than he would as a starter, has contributed to the excess of walks this season. (Legitimate reason in my mind but don't know if velo is up from last year) Hell, just take away his April, where he walked 10 in 9.2 innings. He was better in May, walking 10 in 15 innings and from June 1 on, he's walked 7 in 14.2 innings.....So he's trending positively at least.

I get that CJ isn't a top 100 guy, but I'm not ready to write him off as a starter yet. It seems that the FO has done this to curb his overall innings for the year and give the talent a shot at coming together enough to help the major league team in a year of contention. If he began the year starting, he'd run up on his likely innings limit at any point now. My guess is he'll be around 80 for the year. It's not likely given that career path that he'll be starting next year, even if they give him 110-120 next year. But it's possible he does his 80 this year, gets 80 next year starting for Iowa, then moves to the ML pen the rest of the year.(winding up in the range of 110-120). Then is looked at as a potential SP for 2017. It's just been one injury for him, again, my honest guess is he DOES wind up as a very good pen arm. But I think that path I just wrote is his ticket to starting and there's a non zero chance of it happening.

Kenley Jansen and Pedro Baez

Reading the last 30-40 posts, I side with Raw....It's not likely to beat the Cavs.....But damn, you can't just tear down. New coach, improvements from a few guys, Rose technically could come back better than last year himself(Im a Rose hater too), shouldn't be as tired heading into the playoffs.... No, I don't think we'll beat Cleveland. But as much as I'm an all or nothing guy-you can't just say [expletive] it, we don't have Lebron, lets whack off until he retires.

I'm basing it on a couple of things....One baseball ops budget obviously. Last year we spent 4 mill or so total on IFA's. What's been reported versus what may wind up being the case on IFA's can always change, but currently we've spent 2.5 on Sierra, 2 on Ademan, 1.2 on Amaya, 1.3 on Perlaza, .650 on Perez, and a mill plus on Martinez....Plus, while its not confirmed in the US, a Korean paper has us with 1.2 on a 1B.....Then, there's another 4-5 guys we're rumored on too, which most likely wind up signing(if they haven't already)-call that 3 mill. That's 10 mill in confirmed guys-13 or so with the others....Then remember that our bonus pool is only slightly over 3 mill....100% penalty factored in and we're spending 17 mill already, likely to be around 23.....Plus, there are some high upside Cubans left that have yet to be cleared and it wouldn't surprise me if we got one of them(most of them appear to be 2-7 mill bonus types) So in the end, our IFA budget went from 4 mill last year, to a bare minimum of 17 this year and likely into the low/mid 20's.... Any extra revenues we've added this year to date could legitimately have gone to paying IFA overages at this point.

Mooney has hinted around at the same thing, just without a dollar amount attached. They've got their hands around the debt structure stuff pretty well. And yeah, we've got extra revenues starting to come in, but this is the first year for most of them, right? So assuming this IS debt related(I do), there's the very good chance that spending heavily on IFA's cuts deeply into what we can do prior to the deadline. I'm hoping that since those guys sign contracts for NEXT season, that their bonuses can be counted towards next season and that's the reason for Crane's comments about Theo being resourceful. Unfortunately, I THINK that this is just Crane taking blame off himself and Ricketts by saying we've got money available, even if its not enough to do anything we want. Either way, as David said, a Kazmir addition is great with me.

Looking forward to the report, Tom. Hope you had fun.