davell

KG just responded to Brett on Twitter amd said Praver has been known to agree to contracts with players and take them off the market. Since Soler can't officially sign yet, my hope is this is what's going on.

Over on PSD, some dude said a scout was on The Score and mentioned his upside as Justin Upton.......

It's going to be tougher to get the top notch FA, as most of them will be extended by their current team or possibly traded and then extended. I'm starting to think extending Garza is our best option. It wouldn't surprise me to see us add one large contract next offseason, but my guess is we're expecting to have enough chips from our system to make the Gio, Cahill, Latos type deals from this past offseason. Obviously, no one knows who may be available then, but I figure some guys will be anyway.

Without a trade of Garza, I really hope there's a pitcher that's a clear cut choice for us to take at 6th in the draft. In fact, it wouldn't bother me one bit if we used all 4 of our top 70 picks on pitching now.

Just curious, anyone know whether we pronounce it like "George" or is it "Horhay"?

Given the bonus, I'm going to have Concepcion somewhere inside my top 10. Surely the Cubs see something here, that they project more of an upside than a 4. Of course, if he's really, really polished and he's a "safe" type guy that's going to be a solid major leaguer, in their eyes, I guess I still see why they'd give out a huge bonus. But, the scouting things we've heard, would make me think he at least has more upside possibilites than what he's been given credit for.

A Garza trade right now probably would put us squarely in the top 10 range. But even if we keep him, with the picks we have and guys like Torreyes, Candelario, Maples, Vogelbach, Hernandez, and Golden all having bigtime upside, not to mention Baez and the guys like McNutt, Lake, Szczur, Vitters, and Rhee all likely to still be in the minors all year, I fully expect us to be top 10, even losing Brett and Rizzo to the majors.

Cubs or MLB? MLB. Compared him to Bubba Starling and said they'd slot right around each other. Goldstein said he'd have been a single digit pick in last year's draft, by the way. Lofty praise considering how strong it was.

My guess would be 3B.

Callis has said in the past he'd rank somewhere in the 11 to 20 range for them, by the way.

It'd depend on who you asked honestly. Law had us 20th, BA had us 14th before we even added Rizzo. My thinking is BA would probably bump us up to the 10-12 range. Law, Sickels, may put us somewhere in the 15 range. Either way though, it certainly helps and we're well on our way towards being a top 10 system next year.

Only if that provision is put into the contract. It was in Cespedes, but I'd be shocked if it was in Soler's. Mainly due to the fact we'll be paying Soler millions to play in the minors. I'm not totally sure how it works, but let's say he makes the majors to start the 2014 season, for instance, and sticks. He'd play under his current contract for 2013 and 2014(assuming it's 4 years}. In 2015, we could give him a 20% reduction in salary, as it's still a pre arb year. Then, 2016 thru 2018 would be his arb seasons. I could be slightly off here, but I think I'm right.

Awesome. KG just answered my followup question to that and said he thinks he has agreed.

That dude showed up on Twitter earlier today evidetnly and admitted that educated guessing got him 2600 followers.

That's just recycled info from van Dyck, who's probably never broken a Cubs story in his life. At least, with this news though, hopefully he's available very soon and we DO sign him. That said, I'm really not liking the fact that we're considered the "favorites", because it seems like that doesn't work out to well anymore.

In ASK BA, Callis said he'd slot Concepcion in at 19 on his Cubs top 30. Mentioned one scout said if all went right, he may could have a Randy Wolf type career.

I guess to make money off the guys from there that go to games and spend money on the team? Goodwill and all, I suppose? Probably not a great reason, but for a team in as bad a shape as they are, it's a pretty low thing to do to a group of rabid supporters. I understand why they may want to stop, but if I'm them, I'm not risking the probable fallout from that site. It makes more sense just to keep doing it, the money gets made up in merchandise sales and crap anyway, that they wouldn't get otherwise. Maybe it's not a good reason, but if I ran a team that was that God awful for as long as they've been, I wouldn't want to piss off a group of my best fans, especially since there's another team in the area doing the opposite and building an actual contender.

Total baseball payroll is around 200 mill. 50 mill of that has gone towards paying salaries of non players and all minor league expenditures. Leaving 150 mill to spend on the draft/IFA and major league payroll. However, right now, we're paying Hendry and Quade, so there's an extra 2 mill. We're paying Theo 3.5 and we've probably added another 1.5 mill in other FO people, not counting Hoyer, who's making a round what Hendry did. So, this adds 7 mill somewhere, with 2 of it falling off after this season. The draft/IFA budget is 11 mill for 2012. If you take that and these extra expenditures off the 150, we're at 132. Then, take off the 8 mill we're spending on the Dominican Academy and it puts us at 124. We're at 115 right now. It leaves us room to sign Soler and about 2 or 3 mill worth of other IFA before the July 2nd cutoff. Botto line is that we've got 10 mill or so counting towards Hendry, Quade, and the Dominican facility, which will go back towards major league payroll only, especially since IFA money will also be capped. The Cubs think the Dominican Facility is more important than spending that cash towards a single player. Can't say I blame them either. I wanted more done to the major league team this offseason, but totally understand where their priorities are. Getting Soler fits into everything they've talked of and my guess is they do.

Orioles signed Nick Johnson to a minor league deal a few days ago. Oh well, not the reason I'm posting. I went over to Orioles Hangout a bit ago because they messed up royally in signing a 17 yr old South Korean pitcher and it's gotten them banned from all stadiums in South Korea. Instead though, I noticed a post about the future of the site at the top. Curiously, I started reading and on page 10, hell starts to break loose. The editor of the site is evidently in a pissing match with the Director of Communications of the Orioles and the O's have decided not to spend any money on the site anymore, partly because the site isn't "positive" enough about the O's. They basically were spending about 5K a year on the site and giving some discounted tickets away. Don't get me wrong, we all made fun of those guys during the Roberts drama, but it's certainly a very active site, more than a team like the O's deserve. If that site shuts down over 5K or so a year, it just shows exactly how pathetic that organization is. Those guys are probably damn near the last Oriole fans on earth. At any rate, it's some pretty good internet drama, since there's no news going on with us.

If they don't have this team dominating the division and able to afford any free agent they want to keep in 4 years than they have done a poor job. Won't argue that at all. Agree completely.

I wanted Cespedes, but I want Soler more. That said, my guess is the reason we didn't get him is we wouldn't do the 4 year deal with immediate FA afterwards. Since we're not planning on competing this year and next year is iffy, it'd give us a two year window with him, before he hit FA. All I've got, I guess. Disappointed we didn't beat this offer, but who knows? Maybe he didn't want to play in a large market? I figure there's got to be some reason we missed on this one, because personally, I find the contract iffy, but I'd have done it anyway. At any rate, Soler is a MUST now and I hope we add some other IFA as well.

Goldstein's top 101 has Brett at 44, Baez at 66, and Rizzo at 75. Cespedes would be 20 and Soler 39.

I guess I look at it in the opposite way. To me, once Brett, Rizzo, and whoever else we may have that's ready, gets called up, that's when I want to see the Cubs play. Hell, I'm excited about the nucleus of Castro and those 2 as building blocks. To me, it's cool to see them progress from here on out. Doesn't mean I don't want Cespedes, I do. And yes, he'd bring excitement with him for sure. But, Soler has as much, or possibly even more upside, is younger, and cheaper as well. Which is why if it comes down to one or the other, he's my pick.

Crisotomo signed for 98,500, for what it's worth. I guess the guys who haven't signed to this point, typically aren't as well thought of and get less money. I did see the Cards signed a RHP for 750,000 a few days ago and signed one of the top LHP left yesterday as well, no bonus available yet. The 2 big names I'm aware of still left out there are Manuel Gonzalez, a 6'4, 220 pound RHP. He's 16 and throws up to 95 already. He's the guy I really want to see us get. That said, quite a few of these guys have already come to agreements that just haven't been announced. Helsin Martinez, an OF, was thought to have been given over a mill by Seattle, but it fell through, and he's still available as well. The only other guy on Badler's top 40 expected bonuses is RHP Gialy Arias. I know a pitcher named Jose Luis Mendez has turned some heads this winter as well and could get a solid bonus as well though. It'd be nice to see us add another rather lofty bonus guy out of this group.

I have to admit, I thought the exact opposite. An 18 year old signing for 25000 automatically screams "org guy" to me. Obviously, no one knows what any of these kids can do, until they make it over here, but if he's not been signed at his age and signs for that small of an amount, my guess is he's not highly sought after.