KingCubsFan

My guy is Torreyes, so I can't say much. I gotta go Javy. If he makes it we have a star SS. Plus Starlin Castro. Pretty unreal. Javy's easily my 2nd, easy guy to see making a huge impact. Honestly, if we find a way to get Price, I hope Almora is the lead piece. If Javy's K% and BB% stay about the same, I hope it's him.

You've been watching the next Dawson since 2007.

=D>

I kind of see how people are superficially seeing a fit between the Cubs and Rays for Price, but I just think the cons outweigh the pros in terms of likelihood of it happening. We're going to pay a huge haul of prospects *and* a massive contract extension for a pitcher who turns 30 during our first "ready to compete" year? Tampa Bay's going to find what it wants in a system that has very little in terms of impact prospects above A-ball (though some of them might have had a small taste of AA by the end of the year)? All for a pitcher who is a 2-win improvement over a guy on Garza's level? Not that two-win improvements aren't important, but it seems like this front office would want to pick up a bunch of the cheaper, less commital improvement options we have available to us. The only way it makes sense for us is if we're trying to turn on the switch and be a 90+ win team in 2014, and I don't see how we're likely to get there even with a Price trade. The only way it makes sense for Tampa Bay is if they *really* like Baez or Soler even more than most people. I agree, it doesn't really fit into Theo's model. But a rotation of Price, Samardzija, Garza, Jackson and Wood would be pretty incredible (and still good even if they decided to get rid of Garza). You combine that with an actual bullpen and you could be looking at a pretty good team. One thing about Price is that he's gotten better as he's relied less on his fastball and more on his curveball and changeup. So maybe the inevitable decrease in velocity won't hurt him as much in the future in the event he's given a long-term contract.

Everytime this comes up I keep going back to Wilkin's draft day description of Jackson's only flaw being a struggle to make contact or something like that. I would think that is one thing you can't teach by the time a guy has already played college baseball. I remember that. I believe he also called him a poor man's Mark Kotsay, which is looking about right.

With a fourth round grade.

Wouldn't those token starts take place this summer? Prior didn't pitch for the Cubs after the draft. I don't recall the story around his negotiations, or why he didn't start at all that summer. But part of the excuse for starting him in the minors the year after the draft was that he never pitched as a pro. How many innings will he be at by the end of the college season?

Yeah, it's pretty funny. I'm no medical expert, but I can't take a guy seriously when he misses two months with a "strained quad."

Having bad flashbacks of Kevin Gregg as closer. Seems like yesterday.

That's incredible.

I can't imagine anyone ever hiring Sveum again if he quits on a team because they're bad.

I think Dope might have been on the Dope. He had 80 power coming out of high school. I remember when he was drafted, and Callis or somebody else said that he was either going to be an All-Star or flame out in AA, with little chance of anything in between. Pretty accurate prediction in the end.

Kyle must have been bored last night.

Entertainment value? I think Ramirez's popularity amongst fans (or lack thereof) has been thoroughly discussed on this board. He wasn't bringing people to the park or the television sets. And he wasn't adding 15 wins to the team. He's one of my favorite players of all-time, but I agreed with the front office that he didn't really fit in with the team's long-term plans. As for the draft picks, it's certainly a crapshoot. And there's no guarantee Appel or Gray will end up being good. But in a usual draft, it becomes much more of a crapshoot outside of the top 4 or 5 picks. In this draft, it looks like it falls off a lot after the top 2. Plus, with the new CBA, you get the added benefit of a bigger draft pool. Rebuilding can be painful at times, and I think it's even more painful when you think your team was close to contention before the rebuilding started. Personally, after 2011, I saw a team with a huge payroll, most players on the wrong side of their careers and a farm system in the bottom half of the league with almost no impact talent. To me, that looks like a team in need of a serious overhaul. Some people see it differently, and I can see why they'd be more frustrated with the current process. In terms of entertainment, which is entirely subjective, it is much more entertaining for me to watch guys like Rizzo, Castro, Castillo, Samardzija, etc. develop rather than watch a veteran-laden team struggle to reach .500.

This stupidity is why I chimed in on Kyle's message about backup MIF The Cubs got ~ negative 1 bWAR from their 3B last year, and Ramirez put up 5.6. If you take the Cubs 69 win pace from when they stopped trying you've got a 75-76 win team. And that takes us from Gray/Appel to someone like Austin Meadows. And Ramirez is untradeable even with a great year. And we still don't have a long-term answer for third base. Right, because what's important is not spending money and getting high draft picks until...some point in the future when it's not important. How angry were you about the contracts we signed this offseason? Once pythagoras balances out those players of actual worth are going to kill us in the always hilarious fecal league. There's a few differences between the players we signed this year and someone like Aramis. The guys we signed this year were younger and could either be seen as long-term pieces or guys who were relatively inexpensive that, if they performed, could be traded for another asset. And if they sucked (like Ian Stewart), they could be easily discarded and replaced. With his 10/5 rights, Ramirez didn't really serve any of those purposes.

Very encouraged by Candelario this year. Hopefully the power picks up when it gets warmer.

This stupidity is why I chimed in on Kyle's message about backup MIF The Cubs got ~ negative 1 bWAR from their 3B last year, and Ramirez put up 5.6. If you take the Cubs 69 win pace from when they stopped trying you've got a 75-76 win team. And that takes us from Gray/Appel to someone like Austin Meadows. And Ramirez is untradeable even with a great year. And we still don't have a long-term answer for third base.

Do Loosen and Jokisch profile as anything more than depth? How do they compare with depth guys like Coleman, Raley, and Rusin when they were at the same levels? Loosen is better then those other guys.

They probably want to collect as many decent OFers as they can for if/when they trade Soriano and/or DeJesus. Seems like they already had enough. To me, this only makes sense if they're close to trading DeJesus. I'd be surprised if a team wanted to deal enough for DeJesus at the moment for the Cubs to want to deal him so soon. Weren't there rumors that the Royals were interested in spring training? Given their start, maybe they want to make a move as quickly as possible. Seems unlikely, but seems even stranger that they'd want to stash Borbon for months so that he can take over CF for two months, particularly when they already have Jackson.

They probably want to collect as many decent OFers as they can for if/when they trade Soriano and/or DeJesus. Seems like they already had enough. To me, this only makes sense if they're close to trading DeJesus.

Alberto Gonzalez DFA'd to make room for Borbon.

CJ Wilson was another one that was popular last year. He put up the same WAR as Paul Maholm last year. Was Paul Maholm not valuable last year? He was...and our guys got him for 2 years/11.25M while CJ took a hometown discount to get 5/78 ETA - I really wanted CJ. I don't think CJ was do-able because of the quickness with which he signed with Anaheim, but my overreaching point is that KingCubs seems to want to play WAR/$ rather than play WAR. Don't tell me that a high payroll doesn't mean anything and then say well we got Maholm much cheaper, so aren't you glad we didn't sign CJ Wilson? I wasn't trying to do that. My point was that one of the solutions people were pointing to last year was CJ Wilson. We didn't sign him, and instead signed Paul Maholm. Depending on how much faith you put in WAR, they had virtually the same amount of value last year. So spending an extra $100 million and having CJ Wilson on the team wasn't going to help the Cubs be competitive last year, even if it might have placated those wanting to spend a ton of money in free agency. They were (and are) in too deep of a hole to simply patch up with a few free agent signings.

CJ Wilson was another one that was popular last year. He put up the same WAR as Paul Maholm last year.

And then when we let it drop, we won 61. Developing cheap talent is more important, but not spending what you can is fighting with one hand behind your back. Going from 71 wins to 61 wins had more to do with the fact that, in one season, we traded off guys at the deadline, whereas we held onto them during the 71 win season.

payroll is repeatedly being presented here as the only important variable, in nearly every post it's just become so tiresome The fact that they so drastically reduced payroll in such a short amount of time is directly related to how poorly they've done on the field. Paying more isn't the only way to get better, and it's not a guarantee to getting better, but gutting payroll to the extent the Cubs have is a guarantee for getting worse. You make it seem like the Cubs are the Marlins now. And the lower payroll is not the reason they're bad. $30 million on the free agent market won't buy you 30 extra wins.They're bad because they don't have enough talent, period. They had the same problem when they had the third highest payroll in baseball in 2010 and lost 87 games.