davell

So, Houston traded Lin for no reason now.

With him and Wade, they're still a top 4 team in the East, assuming they fill in the rest of the squad fairly well.

1st team 2014 All-TJS Rotation Matt Harvey Jose Fernandez Pat Corbin Matt Moore Kris Medlin 2nd team Jarrod Parker Chad Billingsley Ivan Nova AJ Griffin Brandon Beachy 3rd team Bronson Arroyo Martin Perez Josh Johnson Casey Kelly Corey Luebke Good God.

Oh yea, I agree with you. I would rather have a top 10 hitting prospect over a top 10 pitching prospect all day. If for no other reason than the success rate of hitting prospects is much better than pitching prospects. BUT that also doesn't mean pitching isn't valuable. Kyle when he was on MR and a lot of you here seem to think good pitchers grow on trees and the Cubs will just pluck 2 or three and magically become good with their hitters. The Cubs are in tremendous shape right now with all of their young hitters, but you can't possibly think they don't need pitching. Same with the Mets, we are in great shape with pitching, but we have absolutely no shot unless we get at least 2 legit hitters. And on that note, I am out. I'll respond, hoping he's still reading. Pitching certainly has value. But the risk does decrease it somewhat in my mind. Same with it being young, the lack of track record(health related) is scary. Our guys already have said they'd prefer staying away from guys that don't have a major league track record. If you take our FO at face value, it appears they want to find guys in that 25-28 year old range. In complete honesty, I think we're very likely to try and fit all of our elite prospects in, without trading any of them. Which brings up your main point(a very good one) where are we going to get pitching? Right now, we have Wood, Arrieta, and Jackson set for the rotation next year. Jackson is strictly an innings eater obviously. Wood is our version of Niese, in some ways. He's definitely not a frontline guy, but he's fine as a mid rotation type. Arrieta is our wild card, as he's looking like he's harnessed his top flight stuff. Is he an ace? A 2? Will he revert back to inconsistency? None of us know. But most of the national guys seem to think he's turned the corner and numbers seem to show that too. Leaves us needing to fill 2 spots. Not counting depth, but we've got decent internal options to fill 6 and 7 possibly, in Hendricks and Wada. I'm fairly confident one of them succeeds in that role anyway. And I have no doubt we'll always add a cheap vet or two to help out with that as well. So, needing 2 starters, how will we approach it? My guess is we WILL look into the trade market, but not for an elite guy. I think it's likely we'll attempt to move Vogelbach, Villanueva, maybe Junior Lake if a team sees something, and take the best guy we can get with that. And no, it won't look like much. But Chris Bosio has done a great job with getting the most out of guys and I think that's what they'll attempt to do again. Along with that, I suspect we'll spend big on a FA SP. Kenta Maeda, if we think he's more than a back end guy. He'd be preferable, as the others are older. But it's not a "must get" as next year will likely be a transitional year where we're bringing up a ton of kids for good. Our payroll is so low, nothing would surprise me. We COULD spend on Scherzer, I doubt it, but it's possible. The main point here though, is just because we've got such an abundance of position players, there's no need to go and trade off one or two of them, just to acquire top flight arms so we can have a balanced farm system or anything of the sort. We've got some time to find an ace, if we need one, but I really don't see us trading one of our elite up the middle guys for young pitching. They'll try and buy it, develop it, or trade for older, less costly types before going down that route, in my opinion.

Just stay healthy.

Oh wow. I feel so fortunate. Does the platelet thing EVER work? It just seems to delay the inevitable.

I try to avoid value discussions precisely because of that. Nobody really knows anybody else's systems well enough to be an expert on this stuff. Is Syndergaard fair value for Castro? I dunno. But I do know that we don't have any sort of "surplus" and I don't like pitching prospects, so whatever his fair value in pitching prospects is, I don't want it. I want our guys to use that chart I keep posting with success ratios as something like an NFL Trade Value Chart for draft picks. I LOVE Syndergaard and wish like hell he was struggling in the PCL at 21 for us. And I do think he's one of the absolute elite pitching prospects in the minors. Top 5, with Bradley, Gray, Walker, and Giolito. But it's just not equal value to deal the position player straight up, based on the ratios. As much I covet that elite pitcher, I wouldn't trade Alcantara straight up for any if the guys I just mentioned.

I'll say this: DeGrom is more interesting than what we're likely to give him credit for. He's definitely older, but he didn't start pitching until his Junior year of college. He's also missed 2011 with TJS. So the age thing with him is distorted somewhat. The Mets fans rightly look at that the same way we looked at Shark having less miles on his arm and still reaching his upside in his late 20's. Converging two fanbases over trade proposals is always a recipe for disaster.

As the rooftops issue a statement saying they look forward to continuing negotiations. LOL. Maybe you should have agreed to the original 2 signs before they got approval for 7.

I promise you, for your board's sake, you do not want to say stuff like that. You are tempting some serious fate. There are like four people on earth who aren't so dumb about baseball that I can stand listening to them. I found none on MR and you guys don't need an opposing fan telling you that all day, and I've still got too many Cubs fans to call dumb. Just do it. They have no [expletive] clue. Seriously.

I think he's got a shot at becoming a long term rotation option at least. All I'm really hoping for is for one of him or Wada to look good enough that we feel we're 4 deep heading into the offseason.

Agreed. Now not only will the fans be clamoring for Alcantara to stay up, but they will increase their demanding for Bryant and Baez as well. That's very true.

Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking.

Pirates? I honestly have nothing against them at all.

Sending him back down is silly, but I understand trying to let teams get extra looks at Barney. And rewarding Alcantara with the ASG send off in AAA. He's obviously going to be back quick. If it helps trigger a trade of Barney, more power to it. It sucks, but he'll be back very soon and this just gets me even more excited for what's coming.

We capitalized on the best 3 month stretch of Hammel's career. Niese doesn't look like he's trending up at all. I don't want either if them moving forward.

Molina out 8-12 weeks.

Letsgomets, please read this. This is an extremely good account as to why hitting is safer than pitching and why a top 10 hitting prospect is inherently worth more than a top 10 pitching prospect. http://www.royalsreview.com/2011/2/14/1992424/success-and-failure-rates-of-top-mlb-prospects It's like a stock. If I'm getting rid of something that's very likely to pay off for something that's much less of a sure thing, I need much more to entice me into the second option. And I'm fairly certain based on our FO's actions, they feel the same way. I'm one of the guys on here too that still truly wants to add some elite pitching. But the numbers speak for themselves and it'd just flat out require more than what I'd guess any team is actually willing to give up to get true appropriate value. I've resigned myself to drafting tons of upside in rounds 2-10, getting undervalued guys in FA, and hoping Bosio can work magic on reclamation types. And I think it's the right course of action, since trading isn't likely. We can fit our guys into spots or trade for a Stanton, if we prefer.

Even with the [expletive] pitching mentality, Pomeranz is more valuable than Valbuena.

This should shut the door on Beeler getting starts anyway.

This [expletive] is coming close to making me want to never sign a guy longer than a year.

That's a lot of "rolled over" money. #PTR #IndecentProposal It's great business-wise, if most of this group pans out on some level, as it'll be 2020 or longer before he's even going to be put under fire to actually act like a large market owner. He might even come out with profit and a free baseball team. Him saying he's not making money is an insult.

When Castro was Almora's age, wasn't he raking in the majors and not just getting hot mid-season in A+? Sure. He hit his breakout year during his age 20 year. It's why it's not a perfect comp obviously, but it's not out of the realm Almora hits his next year at 21. Like I said, I get why guys are down on him. But if this were 2-3 years ago, we'd all be thrilled to have him and much more understanding of a half season of struggles in High A at age 20. I think most orgs would still be looking at him as a future star, we're just so ridiculously stacked that we don't feel the need to do that. But 3 years ago we were all basically hinging our hopes on Vitters, McNutt, and Brett. Coming up with reasons they'd succeed. Almora has just dropped off our radar due to other truly exciting kids having a better 1st half.

That's a lot of "rolled over" money. #PTR #IndecentProposal It's great business-wise, if most of this group pans out on some level, as it'll be 2020 or longer before he's even going to be put under fire to actually act like a large market owner.

Right or wrong, I liken Almora to Starlin quite a bit. Very good hit tool, lots of projection in the body. I know it's far from a great comp, but it's still how I look at him. Different regimes too, it's possible Almora could be in AA right now under a different group, just based on his AFL last year. I get why most are down on him, but I'm undeterred as of yet and still suspect he's going to be a hell of a CF for us, hitting around .280-.300, 15ish HR, with solid to better D.