KingCubsFan

Agreed. His profile suggests he could be a pretty good pinch hitter and provides some insurance in case Baez flops. Given the fact that this team could struggle to get on base, his ability to draw a walk could be helpful.

Who is he suppose to be signing with? Only rumor I've seen is that the Phillies are willing to pay a ton.

Bryant and Soler?

I fear it would take Javy, but I hope it could be done with Alcantara as the headliner. It's hard to go down this road too much and not seem like a total homer, but at the same time, you're getting one year of Zimmermann and he's making 16.5 million. I agree, I just have to think that's what Nats would want considering they're a contending team and they have a middle infield need.

I fear it would take Javy, but I hope it could be done with Alcantara as the headliner.

Masterson for a deal similar to the James McDonald signing is an absolute steal. That also seems fake. That's Wittenmeyer speculating. There's almost no chance Masterson would only get $1 million.

Somebody needs to go to Cubs Convention specifically to ask Jed about Soler's contract.

ricketts meant tv deal -> spending money, not spending money -> tv deal i'm not saying adding players (and maddon) and the surrounding excitement might not help down the stretch with this tv contract, but that's definitely not what he was saying. I think you misinterpreted what you quoted at least as badly as you think that person misinterpreted Ricketts. Yeah, I don't see what's wrong with the quote.

And I think that's really dumb. You can think that, and I'm not saying I agree with it. But they have repeatedly said "we don't have to get all out starting pitching in one offseason" or something similar. I don't agree with holding back to wait for a particular player who may or may not be available, but unless there is a wave of extensions, next offseason's FA SP pool is going to be really deep. I just think Price is going to be the guy. I think he says that stuff to not corner himself in negotiations and to protect himself in the fairly likely event that they don't sign everyone they'd like to this off-season. Agreed. If they can get two pitchers for what they feel is fair value this offseason, I bet they'd do it regardless of who is a free agent next year.

Probably like 83-84. I feel like an 88 win expectancy is abnormally high. Can Aoki play CF? I feel as though the Cubs are only going after a guy that can play all 3 OF positions given Bryant's position is currently up in the air.

Butler said he might play Friday. And even if he's out for a month, at least that's a month that Thibs can't play him 48 minutes a night.

Logan White?

Whoa, easy there.

I think Rivero is going to pass Grimm and Ramirez in the pen by June.

Hopefully they give us something to cheer about this time around. The '08 playoffs basically consisted of a DeRosa homer followed by a comedy of errors.

Davaris Daniels kicked out of Notre Dame. Not exactly surprising. With Russell and Daniels gone, nobody will really care about what happens to the other 3.

I don't see why you're so upset over this. By the end of his career, Manny had (a) taken steroids, (b) known to quit on his team, © attacked a staff member, and (d) accused of assaulting his wife. Guys like that typically don't get nice jobs in the game after their career is over if they make one of those mistakes, let alone all 4. If a FO trusts a guy like that to hang around their top prospects all the time, it makes sense that they're going to try and defend it a bit. Plus, the more Theo talks him up, the better chance he has of staying in the game in some capacity, whether it's with the Cubs or not.

Your stance on this is really obtuse. People can change the way they behave. The biggest changes in behavior often coincide with the biggest changes in circumstance. Not every baseball player is Len Dykstra. Theo may be overly dramatic with regard to Manny, but Manny may have made big changes in how he behaves toward others. Then say that instead of the melodramatic garbage he said instead (especially since he was never "out of control" or needed to "turn his life around"). As a whole, the Cubs under Ricketts seemed to have enjoyed spouting really pandering meatball-y [expletive] at times to sports hacks who are going to needlessly shred them whenever they feel like it. Manny as a whole has had a rep of being easy to get along with, especially with other players, even when he's had his ups and downs. He's a phenomenal hitter regardless of the PED stuff; this isn't someone you have to jump through hoops for to justify why he'd be brought on as a coach. Theo should be proud of the hire instead of acting like he needs to explain it away. He needs to justify why he would have Manny tutoring the young prospects that the entire franchise is dependent upon. It's not just that Manny is serving as a hitting coach, it's that he's been personally charged with overseeing guys like Baez, Bryant and Soler. It's really not that hard to understand.

This is so meatball-ish but I love it anyway:

I doubt the Cubs would be able to get it done without including Russell or Bryant. I'd still do it though (assuming our front office believes he can play CF).

It will be #2 and #5.

It was the end of July and we basically [expletive] buried them. In the division, and it was glorious. However, they went on to win the Wild Card and win more playoff games (1) than the Cubs did (0). [expletive] me. I know we all know this, but I was thinking about today about how the four touchstone seasons for Cubs fans are an epic regular-season choke, two epic playoff chokes, and a playoff sweep. I never really considered '07 to be an epic choke. Maybe it's because of how bad we were in 2006, but I remember 2007 being a somewhat surprising season where you didn't expect them to make much noise in the playoffs.

Unless his philosophy in teaching was different than his personal philosophy in hitting, I can't believe he was the one telling them to "jack the first pitch". He had an OBP of .373 over 11 years in the ML and averaged 76K to 72BB per season. Dusty Baker had a good BB:K ratio too.

Only 7.7 K/9 in Japan. Even if Lester is older, I'd rather pay a little extra for the known commodity.