KingCubsFan

definitely...especially when both the actual pitchers themselves will be better and the defense will be substantially better. the question is how much the offense is going to drop off after it was around league average last year. You have to hope improvement from Soto and Castro make up for the loss of offense at 3B. DeJesus should be an improvement in RF. And LaHair/Rizzo have to put up around a .800 OPS at 1B. You also have to account for likely drops at LF and 2B. All in all, not looking too great. likely drop in LF? what am i missing? and while i do think barney overachieved with the bat somewhat, there's not a lot of room for his offensive production to fall there Soriano has seen a pretty steady decline, and he's already 36. The fact that people are expecting a "rebound" from him seems strange to me; I think it's more likely he continues to get worse/gets injured. Although he had a lower than average BABIP, he also had the highest HR/FB percentage he's had since 2008,and his entire second half was pretty bad. Obviously up for debate, but that's just my opinion. Barney was pretty terrible after April, and that lines up with his minor league numbers, considering he was a college draftee. I expect him to be one of worst offensive regulars in the league this year, but hopefully I'm wrong.

definitely...especially when both the actual pitchers themselves will be better and the defense will be substantially better. the question is how much the offense is going to drop off after it was around league average last year. You have to hope improvement from Soto and Castro make up for the loss of offense at 3B. DeJesus should be an improvement in RF. And LaHair/Rizzo have to put up around a .800 OPS at 1B. You also have to account for likely drops at LF and 2B. All in all, not looking too great.

Which you then bizarrely tried to turn into whether the 2012 team will win more games than the 2011 team was projected to win. Because using how many games they actually won would be "hindsight," and that would be bad for some reason. It's because veiled in all of this is the fact that he's trying to make it a Hendry vs. Theo thing and defend Hendry on the basis that the team should have performed better but just underperformed. I'm just trying to give a balanced view. There are many posters on NSBB who would never give credit to Hendry for anything good that happened while he was GM. There are also many posters on NSBB who will never admit that Theo could actually make a bad move. I'm sure that the latter group will say that we shouldn't count wins and losses from 2012 & 2013 because he has to rebuild the whole system. The situations are completely different because Hendry was told to spend money to build a winning team, minor league system be damned. Theo's plan is the complete opposite. Link? Hendry was around for nine full seasons, and 10 seasons total if you count 2002. During that time, the only instance where the farm system was highly regarded was in the beginning due to his work as head of the minor league system. There was more than enough money to devote to the major league and minor league teams. The lack of impact talent wasn't due to signings like Soriano. It was due to signing guys like Aaron Miles and Neifi Perez, and hiring people like John Stocksill to run the drafts.

Why would the Tigers ever want Soto? Because Soto is one of the Cubs' better chips? If the Tigers are going to give up a bunch of prospects for Garza, getting Soto back may make the trade easier for them to swallow. So you're proposing Soto to be a throw-in?

No it wasn't. It was a setback to teams that are willing to spend more in the draft. The Cubs were one of a few organizations in that position. It impacts some more than others based on current strategies, sure. We view it as particularly detrimental to the Cubs because we finally had a management team and ownership that wanted to focus on pouring more money into the draft. But it still impacts every team, and it definitely impacts teams like the Rays, Pirates and Royals more than us, because they can't fall back on building a huge scouting base as opposed to collecting as many picks as possible. How the hell can it be a setback to teams that had no interest in overspending in the first place? If the White Sox fired Kenny Williams today and replaced him with Dan Evans or someone else who actually wants to focus on building through the draft, the new CBA immediately presents a problem for them, just like it did for the Cubs. My whole point is that, while this alters the short-term strategy for the Cubs, it ultimately affects the decisionmaking for all teams, whether they are choosing to utilize overspending right now or not. And as someone else mentioned, numerous teams were picking up on this practice anyways (including the Cubs). In the end, the CBA probably works in our favor, but it's going to take a bit longer to develop a pipeline through the draft.

No it wasn't. It was a setback to teams that are willing to spend more in the draft. The Cubs were one of a few organizations in that position. It impacts some more than others based on current strategies, sure. We view it as particularly detrimental to the Cubs because we finally had a management team and ownership that wanted to focus on pouring more money into the draft. But it still impacts every team, and it definitely impacts teams like the Rays, Pirates and Royals more than us, because they can't fall back on building a huge scouting base as opposed to collecting as many picks as possible.

I wouldn't worry too much. I think Theo and co. are setting themselves up to acquire their superstars via trade, a la Adrian Gonzalez. They're accumulating quite a bit of prospect inventory. I wonder if Theo's man crush on King Felix will ever materialize into anything for us. They'll have to acquire a lot better "inventory" then they are currently collecting for that to happen. I'm not exactly sure how they will acquire the inventory either. They're about to have 3 straight high draft picks in Baez, 2012 draftee and 2013 draftee. And they've already talked about building the best scouting infrastructure in baseball. Even though the CBA was certainly a setback, it was a setback for every other team as well, and I still think we have an advantage given the mindset of our front office. It hurts teams like the Rays and Pirates more than us. Heck, if we trade Garza for Turner and another prospect, and turn around and sign Cespedes and Soler, they've built a top 10 farm system in a matter of months through a few trades and signings.

Why would the Tigers ever want Soto? Because they took a hit to their catching/hitting situation and Soto is a 29 year old with a career OPS over 800. They have a better catcher, and Soto derives most of his value from the fact that he can catch. Why wouldn't they just sign a DH off the scrap heap as opposed to paying a premium for someone like Soto?

Why would the Tigers ever want Soto?

I assume he means that they let the pressure of the playoffs bother them and thus played significantly worse than they otherwise would have. Yep.

No, but I'm sure many people on this board chalk the 2008 playoffs up to three bad games, and the Cubs just got unlucky at the wrong time.

If you think it's a crapshoot whose results shouldn't dictate your opinion of an entire baseball season, then no, you don't. Most here, that is. I think you'd be surprised how many of even the most rational posters here would feel otherwise. That's not to say that I don't think there is a significant portion of this board that agrees with me. But this board is very far from the real world in that regard, anyway. I admit the playoff appearance really tarnishes 2008 for me. I firmly believe they choked, but obviously there's no way to prove that.

I think it's a definite possibility. I wonder if the Dodgers would be willing to give up Ivan DeJesus Jr.

Right, but if you think he could get 1/4, then something like 3/6-7 shouldn't make them flinch, and that would be around the midpoint. Exactly. The team that gets him is going to have to be willing to eat some money too. Nobody is going to keep him on their roster for 3 years. I don't think a team at 3/7 would look at it as eating 4.6 Mil. They'd look at it as giving Soriano 1 year for 7 Million. Certainly not outlandish for a team that is desperate for power and hopeful that Soriano turns it around somewhat. 1/7 with 2 team options at zero cost. Given what Pena just got, 7 is way too much for Soriano.

Sounds like a pretty good starting point for negotiations. A difference of $8m? Yeah, it's a really good start. 3 years, 2.7 Mil seems insanely low for Soriano. I don't think 3 years, 10.8 Mil is too much to ask a team to pay for him. Granted, the years are clearly the bigger issue, but if he was a FA you wouldn't get Soriano for much less than 3.6Mil/year. Guessing a team will meet the Cubs somewhere in the middle. 3 years/$5-7Mil wouldn't be bad for a team to swallow. The problem is that Soriano likely wouldn't get a multiyear deal on the open market. The additional years on his contract make it hard to compare what he'd get on the open market.

I would think Darvish would be the second best pitching prospect (doubt he'll be ahead of Moore, but possible). Dice-K was the #1 prospect in all of baseball, but there wasn't a bryce harper back then. I'd say Harper, Moore, and then Darvish.

That would really suck for the Angels if the Rangers added Darvish and Fielder in the same offseason the Angels added Pujols and Wilson.

We've already hit rock-bottom. We once had John Shoop. Are you suggesting we shouldn't worry about the quality of our OC, cuz 10 years ago we had a real stinker? This just reminded me of Shoop. I firmly believe I will never see a professional coach in any sport worse than John Shoop for the rest of my life.

Them sinking their own ship will be little in the way on consolation. Would you really need to be consoled if Tice was no longer the Bears OC? Depending on his replacement, possibly. that would be my only worry: the Bears hiring someone less exciting then Tice. And it is a legit concern, but I really doubt Tice gets the Raiders gig We've already hit rock-bottom. We once had John Shoop.

I could see it. Baker is a part-time starter (he should always start somewhere vs. lefties, preferably in place of DeJesus or Stewart) whereas Dewitt is basically the 25th man.

It's unfortunate we'll be paying DeWitt more than the league minimum.

All things equal, I'm sure they'd prefer Pena. But Pena at $8 million for 2012, or Soriano for $8 million total for 2012, 2013, and 2014? I'm genuinely not sure. What happens to Soriano when Martinez comes back next year?

Maybe to you. But the general consensus from management from the sessions I attended indicated Volstad would be the 5th starter.

I just watched a video of Sveum answering some questions and one of the first things he said really made me cringe. Someone asked who the leadoff hitter was...he responded that he couldn't really say yet, although DeJesus was probably the leading candidate...sweet....then he dropped Barney's name. UGH. In what conceivable way is it a good idea to give our worst everyday hitter the most PAs on the team? For [expletive]'s sake. The other thing that bothered me about that answer was that he said he'd also take spring training performance into consideration. This came after both Epstein and Hoyer pretty firmly stated that spring training means nothing to them. I'm sure it's something they talked about during the interview, but it was one of the few disconnects I saw between management and Sveum. That and Sveum saying Campana's speed could be worth 5 wins this year. I think ST performance means something to a manager. Who's leaving AZ in the rotation? Sveum's choices will be, largely, performance based. While, unless some performs way outside of expectations, I can't see why Hoyer would need to take some action based on ST performances. I don't see the conflict. As of now, the rotation is Garza, Dempster, Maholm Wood and Volstad. Outside of an injury, there really shouldn't be much of a debate. The same goes with position players. I agree that spring training performance means something to a manager. Luckily, our management realizes the truth and hopefully just ignores the manager when he tries to get this year's version of David Patton on the Cubs.

He probably won't stay at shortstop, and will most likely shift over to third base. I think his ceiling is similar to Jose Hernandez.