KingCubsFan

Not to mention Patterson had two productive seasons before Dusty tried to turn him into Lou Brock I'll give you the half season in 03, but what was the other season? 2004. 24 homers and plus plus defense out of a CF making almost nothing is pretty good

Not to mention Patterson had two productive seasons before Dusty tried to turn him into Lou Brock

Can't blame him for trading a bunch of questionable prospects for a possible ace. One of Hendry's strengths is evaluating players in his own system, and he rarely has given up anything of value in those types of trades. Hendry rarely has anything of value in his system to give up, and that is his fault. We are all excited about some of the additions to the system the last 2-3 years, but the Cubs went a long time under Hendry with a horrible farm system despite having a big market payroll to invest in prospects. The farm system has actually produced a good number of contributors the past few years, and Hendry deserves some credit for hanging on to guys like Marmol, Soto, Theriot, etc. while getting rid of guys like Eric Patterson. And that was with a horrible scouting director. I'm not a fan of a lot of the things Hendry does, but it's probably better to focus on things like Aaron Miles and his fetish for veteran middle relievers instead of his past trades (except for Juan Pierre).

Can't blame him for trading a bunch of questionable prospects for a possible ace. One of Hendry's strengths is evaluating players in his own system, and he rarely has given up anything of value in those types of trades.

We could be worse is nonsense? Give me a [expletive] break. I guess I'm just more concerned with who IS our GM rather than who ISNT. If Ricketts loves Bill Bavasi or Jim Bowden or Steve Freaking Stone, I couldn't give a [expletive] whether or not Hendry deserves to keep his job (he doesn't). I want the Cubs to be in the best possible situation next year... and there's a very large amount of GM candidates on the market who would be actively taking this team a step backwards. And I think that's a pretty pathetic way of looking at things. They could be a heck of a lot better, and I'd like to see them do so. Hendry epitomizes mediocrity and I don't see why we should stick with that out of fear of failure. Where did I say stick with Hendry? I'm saying if we think we can get a White, Antonetti, Towers, DePodesta, Ng, one of Theo's boys out in Boston, etc... I'm all for firing Hendry. I'm not scared of giving some of those guys their shot. But there's work to be done beforehand. You call up the parent organizations and ask for permission to interview. You put out a feeler to Towers. You don't just fire Hendry and then start doing those things. That's how you end up [expletive] outta luck and find out your best option to replace Hendry is promoting Randy Bush or hiring Jim Bowden. So you want to interview candidates while Hendry is still GM? That will go over really well. And what is Hendry supposed to do while he's in this quasi lame-duck status? Who makes the decisions regarding arbitration, trades, etc.?

He wrote a series of columns for Yahoo that heavily advocated sacrifice bunting, hits and runs, and ripped on a variety of statistics. I don't know how that will affect his skills as a hitting instructor, but I'm guessing this team is going to work on a whole lotta bunting next season if he's the hitting coach. Earlier this season, Ryno had the #3 hitter for Tennessee sac bunt in the first inning after the first two batters had walked. ](*,) Lou would never do that, so why does anyone care? Everything about Sandberg in this thread suggests he would be a terrible manager, but I haven't seen anything regarding his ability to be a good hitting coach.

It is Paul Sullivan, so take it for what its worth, but it really sounds like weve seen the last of Harden as a Cub. It doesn't suprise me that they don't want to bring him back but it's stupid to not at least offer him arbitration.

You'd think if Wells was that bad they'd already have the book on him. He's pitched almost the whole season in the majors and had pretty consistent success. 1.48 WHIP since the ASB I'm not saying he's going to repeat this year, nor am I saying he isn't very hittable. The guy seems like he could be a pretty durable #4 starter though. His ERA since the ASB has been pretty good, and his walks have stayed down. Whoever alluded to Jason Marquis is somewhat accurate although I think he'll be better than Marquis.

You'd think if Wells was that bad they'd already have the book on him. He's pitched almost the whole season in the majors and had pretty consistent success. I wasn't a believer in the beginning, but at this point I think he has a pretty good chance of being a decent starter.

Burrell: RF Soriano:LF Fukudome: CF Upton:??? Do people think Upton can still play 2b? Or that Pat Burrell could play the hardest outfield position at Wrigley?

What about trading for Hermida and Uggla? Both are about to get expensive for Florida.

1. When did Bradley do this? 2. Who [expletive] cares? Your skin seems to be as thin as Bradley's. He said the fans were involved in creating a completely negative environment and that he doesn't like playing in Chicago. He's also brought up racism, which rightly or wrongly people tend to take as directed towards a large part of the fanbase. As the head of an organization who survives based on how many people come to a game to see your product, you don't want one of your supposed main attractions saying those types of things to the fans you're trying to get to spend money, especially during times like this.

This is dead on. Agreed. This is Sosa all over again. 16 mil went to Baltimore in that deal, if I'm not mistaken. Not comparable player situations, but financial definitely. I can't believe the idea of Hendry being fired isn't being talked about at Clark & Addison. My guess is that they'll see it as "one bad signing" when in reality it was an expensive risk not worth taking and one that had little chance of success from the moment Bradley signed. Especially when there were plenty of other options out there.

IMHO Cameron would= the 2009 equivelant of Jeromy Burnitz I think Mike Cameron is quite a bit better than Burnitz with the glove and the bat. What's funny is that we're going to spend money on an "athletic" outfielder when we had a perfectly good 23 year old athletic centerfielder just a year ago...

Are you Michael Barrett's cousin or something? What did Zambrano do to you to hate him so much? Sure, he's immature, does stupid things, and overall seems pretty self-centered. But Piniella has aired him out in public too, and his actions have all come during the game, which isn't surprising since he's so competitive. There's clearly more behind the scenes than we all know about regarding Bradley. The fact that no teammate even attempted to defend him speaks volumes, and it has nothing to do with them being "afraid" of Hendry. Ha I dont hate Z at all. Im trying to be realistic in this and pointing out how Bradley is being made a scapegoat. Big deal Lou aired him out in public, he didnt suspend him did he? And thanks for making my point, Z gets overlooked for being "competitve" while Bradley gets called a dick. Z punched a damn teammate on the bench and didnt get a suspension, if you dont think thats worse than Bradley saying something, than your hatred for Bradley has completely clouded your judgement. Are you really that naive to think that if the players wanted to defend him they would? Bradley just got suspended for making comments, and everybody knows he wont be with the team next year, why in the hell would a guy risk his job by speaking out against Hendrys decision? Come on I don't hate Bradley, and I've defended him up until his antics over the past few weeks. And I'd hardly say Z gets a free pass for the things he's done. He's constantly questioned about his anger issues and what he "could" be instead of what he is. Regardless, the two cases are entirely different. And, yes, if players wanted to defend Bradley I don't think they would hesitate to do so. You act as if baseball players are regular workers like the rest of us, where they are afraid of speaking out against their boss. They all have guaranteed contracts, and a few of them have no trade clauses. If Soriano or Aramis was suspended, I'm sure someone would stand up to defend them. Instead you have someone like Derrek Lee going out of his way to say that Bradley never attempted to make himself feel welcome.

Are you Michael Barrett's cousin or something? What did Zambrano do to you to hate him so much? Sure, he's immature, does stupid things, and overall seems pretty self-centered. But Piniella has aired him out in public too, and his actions have all come during the game, which isn't surprising since he's so competitive. There's clearly more behind the scenes than we all know about regarding Bradley. The fact that no teammate even attempted to defend him speaks volumes, and it has nothing to do with them being "afraid" of Hendry.

How does this do anything but turn the attention back to the Cubs and Hendry? 3 days ago, they were just playing out the string of games, people had gotten over the fact that they were terrible this year, and the city was focused on Urlacher's injury and whether Jay Cutler can win a game. Now he's brought a lot of that attention back to the Cubs and writers around the country are once again bringing up the Cubs' horrible season. Bradley insulted the organization as a whole, as well as the rest of his teammates, so Hendry did what he felt was necessary. Because now Bradley can definitely be used as the scapegoat, and the bad chemistry plus injuries can now be used why the Cubs underperformed. All the focus is on Bradley now, and off the performance of the team. Bradley was going to be the scapegoat regardless of what he said. He should have realized it and not said anything. Instead he alienated most of his remaining supporters.

How does this do anything but turn the attention back to the Cubs and Hendry? 3 days ago, they were just playing out the string of games, people had gotten over the fact that they were terrible this year, and the city was focused on Urlacher's injury and whether Jay Cutler can win a game. Now he's brought a lot of that attention back to the Cubs and writers around the country are once again bringing up the Cubs' horrible season. Bradley insulted the organization as a whole, as well as the rest of his teammates, so Hendry did what he felt was necessary.

The whole stadium for the first month and half of the season

Because their fans aren't as dumb as ours? people are really trying to blame the fans for this? I'd probably put it at something like 50% Bradley's fault, about 30% the media's, and about 20% the fans. Maybe fans shouldn't have booed him, but that doesn't mean he needed to run himself out of town. Ask Derrek Lee, Fukudome, etc. how they handled being booed in their first year.

I think Texas is probably the best place for him. Ron Washington seemed to get along with him and he can DH. Do they have any bad contracts?

Because he signed a pretty big deal, didn't perform well, and did everything he could to run himself out of town, thus hurting the team. He was basically a slightly more productive version of last year's Ryan Theriot, playing in RF, and making much more money. Because of his antics, the Cubs are almost forced to pay him to play somewhere else. Nobody wants him around, not his teammates, not his coaches, not even himself. Generally speaking I would say suck it up and keep the player, but when everybody in the organization expresses some form of relief when he's gone, it's hard to fault the organization if they feel he must go. And he brought this all on himself. There may be some blame to go around, but 99% of it is on Milton Bradley and people need to stop pretending otherwise. There's no question he's been a big disapointment both on and off the field. But he's probably not even in the top five of disapointing players this season on this team and people act like he's single-handedly taken a team from 98 wins to 83. Like I said, he was certainly going to be traded in the off-season anyway, but I don't see what suspending him accomplishes and I just can't generate the kind of hatred toward Bradley that a lot of people seem to have. I've been a supporter of Bradley, and think he got a raw deal from the media the moment he signed, but he's definitely been one of the bigger disappointment. He was supposed to be a middle of the order hitter, and he's slugging under .400.

If you're going to sign Milton, then you'd better have a pretty solid plan for managing the damage his personality may cause. Cubs executives couldn't even get him through one season before they have to sell him for pennies on the dollar. Exactly. They should have known the media would immediately attack him and try to make him the bad guy, which they did pretty successfully. My guess is he alienated himself within the organization fairly quickly and nobody even wanted to stand up for him.

"You got out there and you play harder than anybody on the field and never get credit for it." Bradley is dead on about that, regardless of what else he says

If Grabow is the only guy in the pen making big money next year I'd be fine with it. I still don't know why Gaub and Parker haven't been given a shot in September