KingCubsFan

Luckily, Adam Lind was just waived. I'm sure he'd step right into that lineup and put up his 2009 line.

This should be the least of anyone's worries. Without Wrigley Field, their home values would fall off a cliff.

At what point does Lake's improved patience become legit? A month in? I'm not expecting him to keep up the pace, but if he can show the ability to draw 45-60 walks, with a decrease in strikeouts and an increase in power, I think he starts projecting to be a regular.

Yeah. Given that he has an 80 arm, I'm guessing he'll switch over to 3B soon and, if that fails, RF.

He pitched one of the greatest games of all time, second all-time in K/9, 10th all-time in H/9, was a key part of some of the best Cubs teams in recent times and was a fan favorite(which I think matters for team honors). Just because he doesn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame doesn't mean he wasn't an all-time great Cub. If they retire Kerry Wood's number, we will be a further laughingstock. I would say the following people would have a better claim to get their number retired by the Cubs: Sammy Sosa Mark Grace Lee Smith And maybe: Carlos Zambrano Ryan Dempster Aramis Ramirez Ryan Dempster? Why don't we just throw Ted Lilly on there too.

He pitched one of the greatest games of all time, second all-time in K/9, 10th all-time in H/9, was a key part of some of the best Cubs teams in recent times and was a fan favorite(which I think matters for team honors). Just because he doesn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame doesn't mean he wasn't an all-time great Cub.

Luis Aparicio

Soriano and Barney don't solve anyone's problems.

Very good defensively and very good at stealing bases. Decent offensively as well, especially for a CF, and he's a 4 or so WAR guy a year. That's very valuable. How much of his defensive ability is due to Maddon? Given Soriano's defensive numbers this year, I'm beginning to wonder how much of Upton's value is tied to the manager. Taking a quick look at Carl Crawford last year, his UZR fell off a cliff when he got to Boston. I'd be interested to see the defensive measurements for Rays players after they leave. I'm not opposed to Upton, but Wrigley's small outfield + Sveum's apparent defensive positioning skills makes me wonder if we couldn't make Brett Jackson into a similar player at a fraction of the cost.

I haven't seen the play, but a friend said it would have been a routine grounder if Barney wasn't playing up the middle. I know there have been a lot of plays in the Cubs favor, but when the opposing player hits away from the shift, it seems to be a scoring play. Personally, I have a hard time believing Molina pulls that ball that much, especially late in the game with runners on base. Anyway, based on in-game decisions by Sveum, I sure hope the front office can pick young talent better than they picked the manager. The shifts have saved the Cubs a lot more runs than they've cost them. Complain about all the outs freely given up, not the ones he's actually saved through efficient defense and baserunning. Considering how far outside that pitch was, either Dolis badly missed his spot or Castillo was dumb for calling for an outside pitch.

It's too bad, because the team would be around .500 with a decent bullpen.

Volstad: 5.08 K/9, 2.77 BB/9, 48.5 GB%, 18.7 LD%, 3.85 FIP Zambrano: 7.31 K/9, 3.19 BB/9, 50.8 GB%, 18.9 LD%, 3.42 FIP Zambrano has been better, but he hasn't been that much better. And we have to remember he's 30, is about to be a free agent, and hasn't had a full season in quite a while. I'm not ready to give up on Volstad yet, as he's shown flashes but for whatever reason has some sort of mental or mechanical block that causes him to give up runs in bunches.

If Burke has another good start, I'd like to see him moved up. Given his age and (likely) innings limit this year, I think it would be good to see how far up the ladder he can go and sustain success.

I agree with this. Next year is a transition year, and I think the focus should be on Thibodeau. Go get a few busts from the past few drafts, give them meaningful minutes and see if you can get a long-term asset or two out of them.

I'd be interested to see what Pujols' and LaHair's lines would need to be the rest of the year to finish with an .850 OPS.

What if we hold out for a top 5 prospect and another top 10-15, don't get the offer, keep him, and then he finishes the year with a sub-.800 OPS? Then we have an average bat and a below average glove on our hands - not a very valuable commodity on the market. While it's nice to think about your scenario, the sub-.800 OPS scenario is more likely. I'm not in favor of giving him up for scraps, but if we can get two of another team's top 15 prospects, I do that trade without thinking twice. This is a guy who had 0 value prior to the season. Is a sub-.800 OPS more likely at this point? No matter how much you attribute his start to luck, his numbers are so absurdly good that I have to think he'd have to really fall off a cliff to not end up with respectable numbers by the end of the year. The walk rate and LD% suggest he should maintain some production going forward. Overall, I think it's worth holding onto him. As has been documented, guys like LaHair do come out of nowhere every once in a while and have productive careers. Jumping at the chance to trade him for two C to C+ prospects seems premature, as those trades rarely work out and the consensus outside of this board seems to be that this is not a complete fluke. The concern with LF defense is a bit excessive, especially considering the LF defense this team has dealt with (and succeeded with) the past 6 years. Best case scenario, we have an Andre-Ethier like player for cheap the next few years. Worse case, we lose out on the ability to add two more Brett Wallach's/Abner Abreu's to the system. So you think Soriano has been a poor defender throughout his tenure as a Cub? In general, I don't think he's been very good (outside of his arm). We can just skip to the part where you cite Fangraph's positive take on his defense and his good UZR rating. And I'll point out that Baseball Reference has a more negative view of his defensive abilities, and I've never seen anything from scouting reports or other publications indicating he was a good fielder. So, in the end, we have a mixed bag on his defensive abilities (although I think it's pretty clear he's been bad the past few years). Even if we assume he's been an average fielder, does it really matter? Were we a much better team in 2007 or 2008 because of Soriano's defense in LF? Left fielders should be paid to hit. Combine that with the fact that Sveum's defensive positioning seems to be a real positive for our defense, and Epstein/Hoyer appear to be focusing on groundball pitchers going forward, and the value of a good defensive left fielder drops even further. It just seems stupid to me to advocate dumping him for marginal prospects because his WAR might drop when we shift him to LF. As long as he doesn't constantly drop easy flyballs, I don't care too much about his defense if he continues to be an above-average hitter.

What if we hold out for a top 5 prospect and another top 10-15, don't get the offer, keep him, and then he finishes the year with a sub-.800 OPS? Then we have an average bat and a below average glove on our hands - not a very valuable commodity on the market. While it's nice to think about your scenario, the sub-.800 OPS scenario is more likely. I'm not in favor of giving him up for scraps, but if we can get two of another team's top 15 prospects, I do that trade without thinking twice. This is a guy who had 0 value prior to the season. Is a sub-.800 OPS more likely at this point? No matter how much you attribute his start to luck, his numbers are so absurdly good that I have to think he'd have to really fall off a cliff to not end up with respectable numbers by the end of the year. The walk rate and LD% suggest he should maintain some production going forward. Overall, I think it's worth holding onto him. As has been documented, guys like LaHair do come out of nowhere every once in a while and have productive careers. Jumping at the chance to trade him for two C to C+ prospects seems premature, as those trades rarely work out and the consensus outside of this board seems to be that this is not a complete fluke. The concern with LF defense is a bit excessive, especially considering the LF defense this team has dealt with (and succeeded with) the past 6 years. Best case scenario, we have an Andre-Ethier like player for cheap the next few years. Worse case, we lose out on the ability to add two more Brett Wallach's/Abner Abreu's to the system.

500 were available for yesterday's game or available yesterday for today's game? Both. I check out the prices for fun fairly often, there is literally never a point where there are 0 tickets available for the bleachers. It didn't take long for a few cheap sets to pop up, followed by a market correction, and now you have 8 tickets going for $50-99, while all other seats stay around the cost that yesterday's were going for. I put mine up last night and they were gone within 5 minutes. I think your broker theory might be right.

Is it against the rules for a MLB team to own a foreign team? Ricketts should just set up a shadow farm system by a buying a foreign team and sending players there.

For this year. The contract can be backloaded.

Dumping at least 2 of them without adding salary (or dumping all 3 and re-signing Asik to a small deal) gets them out of the luxury tax. That seems to be the goal if that info is true. And that's a really scary goal because the Bulls will likely have to go into the luxury tax eventually to not get worse than they are right now. There are ways to build the team and avoid the luxury tax, but they won't be easy. Rumor is that the Cavs are going to go hard after Asik. So I think a small deal is out of the question.

At this point, he's more valuable to the Cubs than he would be in a trade, because I just don't think you're going to get much for him. When Rizzo comes up, they should try LaHair in left field and if it works out, you've got a league minimum replacement for Soriano (who at this point looks like he'll probably be released before his contract is up). If LaHair's bat is legit, that's a good way for the Cubs to improve the offense without having to sink more money into LF.

I'm not basing this on what I think, I based it what I figure they're thinking. If Upton is going to command 20 mill a year for 6-7 seasons, which I could see happening, because of the lack of bats, is it worth spending THAT much on him? To me, he could fall into the same category as Greinke even. Maybe Theo wouldn't want to take that big of a risk with his first big FA signing. I like Upton a bunch personally, but I'm not even sure I'd feel comfortable giving him over 100 mill. Nobody is giving Upton that much, unless he keeps up his .917 OPS.

The one difference between Hamels and the other pitchers is that Hamels is lefthanded and gets a good amount of groundballs, both qualities that the new regime seems to have targeted. So if they were going to throw big money at a pitcher, Hamels is a likely candidate.

Disagree. The "strength" of our farm system right now is bats. By next year, we should have three major young offensive pieces under team control for a long time. Pitching-wise, we have nothing in the upper minors. Our best pitching prospect is looking more and more like a reliever. And if this year's team has showed us anything, it's that good starting pitching 1-5 can keep a bad team competitive in most games.