davell

Archer's last 4 starts: 20.2 IP 7H 0ER 7W 24K Not exactly shabby, huh? :D

I admit I'd rather see us as sellers, because I don't THINK we'll make the playoffs. That said, I agree COMPLETELY with the 1 in 8 rule once you get there. The Cards won 83 games and got hot at the right time and we all know what happened. The White Sox were playing pathetic baseball, almost blew a huge lead in their division and we all know what happened once they got there. And on the flip side, we had as good a team as any in 2008 arguably and couldn't win a game.

:thumbsup: Ah, cool.

Who can we deal though? Does a team out there right now actually WANT Silva at this point in the season? Sure, he's been better than we thought, but there's still a solid amount on his contract that's left to be paid and I'd think most teams have journeymen types down in AAA they'd try before actually trading for Silva. I don't think Dempster is in any danger of being dealt. Hell, I'm much more worried that Lou will send him to the setup guy role, if anything. Wells is young, cheap, and has surprised us a ton over the last year and a quarter. Seriously doubt he'd get moved unless it was for something very nice and I'm not so sure what other teams view Wells as at this point. Which leads us to either Gorzelanny or Lilly. Gorzelanny is cheap and has been pretty solid for us. We have Marshall in the pen, we may not need to have 2 guys that are fairly close to the same pitcher. Especially since we also have Russell, who may or may not ever get a shot at becoming a SP for us as well. Still, not sure what kind of return we could wrangle out of someone for Gorz. If we ARE going to make a trade, i'd like to see us trade Lilly. He's been damn good for us obviously, but trading him early could net us a larger return and also give us more room financially to make an addition, if we actually get to the point where we feel we can contend.(unlikely, if you ask me anyway)At any rate, I'd like to think Lilly would fetch us some decent prospects. Probably better than what DeRo brought us back anyway.

Ranaudo and Pomeranz both are struggling some at this point. Pomeranz not nearly as badly as Ranaudo, but both could conceivably start dropping down draft boards, nonetheless. Although I find it hard to see a situation where Pomeranz could fall to 16 without his arm falling off between now and the draft.

Mount Z is due for a serious eruption at any point honestly. And if this is truly just a move to becoming a mop up guy and not getting him ready to move back to the rotation, then I figure this one will be off the Richter scale.

Chris Huseby went 3-3 today down in EXST with a double and a walk. Yes, you read that correctly. No idea if he's going to try becoming a position player or if this was just a day to get him thinking about anything other than pitching.

I didn't think 16 year olds could sign until July 2nd for some reason?

You have to think Matt Spencer will be moved to AAA at some point in the near future, if he continues to rake. Whether he has a position or not, he's probably got the most power of anyone in our system. Great to see Vitters hitting this well since his promotion. Solid outing from Cashner obviously too. I figure he'll be moved up to the majors by the break, at the rate he's going.

Trib is saying WWW is trying to sell Lebron and Calipari as a package deal. Not that it's a surprise at all.

Martin Steylon Peguero, a SS appears to be on the Cubs' radar. He's evidently the best SS on the July 2nd market and supposedly already has at least one offer of more than a million bucks. I saw this on MLBTRADERUMORS today, but it was posted a few days ago. They listed 6-7 teams as having serious interest in him. On a side note, assuming this info is correct, it totally shoots holes throughout my theory that we are stacked enough in the middle infield, to where we wouldn't go out and spend big on more prospects at 2B or SS. Is there a list out anywhere yet as to who the bigtime prospects are on the International market as of yet this year?

Raley with another subpar performance. :(

Also there's this: We are now ONE game ahead of the Astros for worst record in the NL. So we've got that going for us!

I bring that up as a possibility because of a couple of reasons actually...... 1) Not sure what GM's are/will be available currently. Ricketts may not want to rush this type of hire. If his guy isn't out there, you don't want to hire someone just to get new blood in there. (unless you go ahead and promote Bush for a year and give him a trial) 2) Depending on what we do over the deadline, we may not be able to FIND someone of quality who truly wants to inherit THIS mess we have currently. If Aramis has played so poorly he opts in, Z sucks all year, etc.....We've basically got an extremely old team for the most part that isn't any good and little ability to make changes for the most part, until the FOLLOWING season. So, it's possible that when a new GM is hired, he'd want to be able to come and actually have the ability to make major roster changes immediately. Granted, it'd only be another year before he could make changes, but we don't know how these guys think in situations like this.

If we're 10-12 games back, I really don't see Ricketts allowing Hendry to go trade off anything of future value to add what he's "praying for" as the final piece to whatever convaluded puzzle him and Lou have created. Hendry is evidently an extremely likable guy, so it wouldn't shock me if he actually survives another year here.(Not saying this is what I want, by any stretch) I figure Lou is as good as gone. Probably mid-seasonish, if you ask me. He'll just retire and we'll probably see Trammell as an interim guy for the rest of the season. Tradeable parts- as I see it anyway Lilly- could be best SP available actually Theriot- doubtful, but maybe a contender loses a SS and needs a stopgap. Figure it's the last chance to trade him anyway, as he'll be too expensive next offseason Lee- if we don't see him as our 1B next year, tell him that and he'd probably remove his NTC to go to a contender. Of course, he needs to get hot between now and July to have any value. Aramis- See DLee. Zambrano- Possibly? At the very least, I think if we left him unprotected after August 1, someone could pull an Alex Rios and claim him anyway. Obviously, the Cubs won't get rid of everyone, but I'd like to see these guys dangled to see what type of returns are out there.

BBTN already did a segment in which Ted Lilly is considered a July 31st acquisition for some team. And I hope Lee, ARam, Lilly, and maybe Fukudome are all gone come July 31st. I don't want Fukudome gone, but I want the Cubs to get younger. I'd like to add Theriot to that list, if a contender wants him. I'm kind of with you on Fukudome. I'd like to see the Cubs younger, but I don't really want to see him gone. On a side note, I can totally see a Zambrano blowup from hell where he asks to be dealt between now and the deadline happening as well. Although, I have my doubts that he's even tradeable right now.

With the upcoming schedule for the rest of this month, we've got a solid shot at being 10 under by then. We have guys who are off to great starts too, so when Lee and Aramis finally get going, it's likely that everyone else will have started to cool off. We may actually get to see the Cubs in "sell" mode this deadline.

Ooh, I doubt it. We've got 2 at home versus the Rockies, followed by 2 at Philly, 3 at Texas, 3 at home versus the Dodgers, 3 at home versus the Cards, and then travel to Pittsburgh for 3 to finish out the month and start June. I think there's a damn good chance we're 10 games under .500 at the end of this month, if not worse than that.

Are you leaning towards taking guys who have fallen somewhat? Do you think Ricketts is going to increase the budget very much this year? Personally, I think it goes up some, hopefully quite a bit actually. But Toonster made a great point about Ricketts may not want to rock the boat TOO much with MLB since this is his first draft....... In the end, I'm hoping we get a guy in the 1st who has fallen because of signability issues. Probably go slot for a while after that(maybe through rounds 5 or 6) and then wind up with 2-3 overslots total that we wind up spending 500K( hopefully including a guy we give out a mill or more too) apiece on and another 2-3 guys we give out 100K to or so........ We had around a 4 mill scouting budget last year, I'd like to see us in the 6-7 mill range this year. Some of that will be the discrepancy of picking 16th versus 31st anyway. I'm hopeful that when Ricketts said the scouting and player development budgets have increased, this is his plan...... As far as positons go, I honestly don't think the Cubs will take a MI early on this draft. I understand BPA and all, but we are loaded at this point and it's honestly going to be hard to move up for some guys. I guess a HS guy is possible, but a college MI would be blocked just about everywhere you look right now. I would LIKE to see us take a power arm, a high upside OFer, and maybe either a C or another arm in the top 3 rounds, assuming we see guys on the board who fall into where we pick and aren't reaches......

True. It doesn't mean things can't suddenly "click" for him though.(of course it's not likely) I have no idea what kind of changes he's made over the last year as far as his hitting approach goes. He's obviously not an age appropriate prospect and I don't EXPECT him to become some sort of solid hitting major league catcher for us. But, I'd give it a remote possibility at least. Catcher is a premium position and if he shows enough in AA this year, maybe he at least can become someone that is more than a throw-in on a trade.

I figure Chirinos is a future backup catcher for us. Which is more than I thought last year at this time anyway. Is he a top 10 guy for us right now? I hope not, but depending on graduations and also the draft and international signings, along with progress or lack thereof by certain guys(Burke, LeMahieu, Flaherty, Archer, Rhee possibly and some more guys) it's possible that by the end of the year, he's at the bottom end of our top 10. Of course, he could be taking the Geo approach to becoming a true prospect and if so, he'd at least become a true tradeable piece at that point. Which is what the best case scenario is for us, if you ask me, since I figure Geo is our longterm starter. Worst case though, he becomes a cheap backup.

Rusin pitched 4.2 innings of perfect ball tonight, but Cabrera struggled pretty badly in his Tennessee debut, giving up 10 hits and 5 runs in 5.2 innings, with 3 walks and 3 K's.

What's crazy is unless something happens, we'll lose Colvin and Castro from our prospects fairly soon. And by the end of the season, I fully expect Cashner and probably Jay Jackson(albeit as a reliever for now) to graduate as well. A season ending top 10 is going to look TONS different than what it did at the beginning, which is good, due to graduations hopefully, but unless we have a bigtime draft and/or overseas signings galore, our system will take a backstep, in all likeihood....... That said, I could see both B Jax and Vitters being top 50 guys next year and based on the recent article on Lee, even with his current struggles, I figure he's a top 100 guy as well. I'm not seeing anyone else though, who looks like they'll make a jump into that range of prospect for us this season. But, alot can change with the draft and the overseas signings. On a side note, this draft should be a great indicator as to how the Ricketts family intend to run things. I'm pretty sure he had sent out a letter to season ticket holders a while back that mentioned the scouting and player development budget has been increased, so I'm hoping for some Bostonesque type overslotting and maybe stepping it up some in the Dominican possibly, and continuing our nice Pac Rim domination as well....... :D Could be too much to ask for, but I'm hoping anyway, especially since it doesn't look like we'll be needing to take on any salary at the major league level and technically COULD be selling off some parts possibly too.

I bet Lebron will be doing a ton of posturing this offseason, knowing that he's probably the key to everyone else's fate. My guess is he's got Wade, Amare, and Bosh on speed dial, going over options, with the idea of 2 wind up in one place and 2 wind up in another. If Lebron wants to go to the Bulls, he'll probably be trying like hell to get Bosh or Amare with him, meaning the Bulls would HAVE to find a way to pull off the sign and trade. If they can't pull it off, then he'd likely move on to option number 2, whether it's the Knicks or Nets. All in all though, the Bulls have the best core to build around, so if Lebron is purely thinking about titles, he'd almost HAVE to start with us, under this scenario anyway.

It doesn't surprise me to see the desperation of the Cubs falling down on someone. Looks like Jay is going to take the brunt of it this year. As long as he gets a legit shot next year at a rotation spot, I'm fine with it, I guess.