KingCubsFan

Cedeno played in 151 games in 2006. Surprisingly, Dusty actually let him play. He lost his job to Theriot in 2007.

Thanks much, TT. I don't think I've really gotten any scouting reports since the rather brief draft ones, which tended to basically follow the "senior, old, had surgery, doesn't throw hard, but polished" kind of formula. He wasn't in last year's B book. So this is helpful, even though I admit I'd hoped that i'd read that he doesn't work at high velocity but he can hit 92 at times, and has a great curveball, or something like that. 86-89 comes across bad, of course, but that's basically where Marshall works. 87 with sink and command is presumably a lot more useful than 90-94 that's kind of wild and kind of straight. Does anybody have any idea of what kind of an arm slot he has, or his splits versus lefties? Would he project particularly well as a situational lefty, or not really? I'm kind of hoping that he can end up being kind of a Marshall-type pitcher, who is pretty good without being noticably fast. Not sure if Marshall is a good comparison, just because he has a plus pitch (curveball) that makes him an effective reliever, while Rusin doesn't appear to have any plus pitches. Best case scenario for Rusin is that he somehow improves his value (either in the majors or minors) to the point where we can trade him for something useful with a little more upside.

You're right. I was confusing Law and Goldstein, who didn't like Castro very much.

Has there ever been a player in our system that Keith Law liked?

That infield was *set* for a decade, at least. Don't forget Jeff Goldbach

Why? More speed?

So is Wilken going to sit this one out, then?

You must have missed the Wildcat plays Only 1 was a bad play, and that was the Forte pass. Don't know why you call that play in a 28-3 game that you are dominating running and passing, but other than that the Bears got a 9 yard run from Bennett and a 3-4 yard run from Taylor out of the wildcat. actually, the earl bennett play was the best wildcat play i've seen them run this year. if earl cuts inside instead of strangely running into jay, that's a td. Bennett was stuck there. The problem with that play was that Cutler was relied on to be the main blocker at the end, which is a flaw in the formation. The key to that play was the misdirection, which could have been accomplished with Cutler in his normal position.

You must have missed the Wildcat plays

I don't think it's fair to call Lee "redundant". Had he stayed and panned out he would quite conceivably have moved Castro to second in a few seasons. If Castro becomes what everyone thinks he can be (perennial all star), I can't see a manager moving his 23 or 24 year old superstar to 2B to make room for a rookie. And unless Lee played SS, he's probably not that valuable.

Yeah I think they are slightly better. Going into the playoffs the 2006 team did not have a better overall defense. They were without Harris and Brown. This year's defense is healthy, has a better defensive line, and better safety play. The 2006 was not flawed, but they did not have the kind of QB play that Cutler brings right now. And since that is the most important position in major sports, it is key. Cutler is what makes this team better. Minus Brown and Harris, the 06 Bears were still a better team than the 10 Bears. Grossman was clearly not in the realm of Cutler, but still gave you a chance to have a great game. He wasn't Todd Collins and despite his issues with protecting the ball could still move the ball down the field and score points. The defense wasn't anything special once Harris went down. He was Peppers-like in '06. It was largely our offense that got us to the Super Bowl.

Thats interesting. I could be way off here, but it sounds to me like our equivelent of Robinson Chirinos, Sean Marshall, a healthy Angel Guzman, and Hak Ju Lee or even Junior Lake. Sounds very similar to package we gave up. Derek Holland was their #2 (behind Neftali Feliz), and Beltre will be in their top 5. And Holland has more value than anyone we gave up.

The biggest problem I have with this trade, as I said earlier, is that Garza pretty much has to reach that potential for this trade to make sense. We didn't have a need in the rotation and Garza hasn't been a top of the rotation pitcher to this point. He'll cost upward of $5-6 mil this year and more after that. His xFIP doesn't indicate a pitcher on the verge of being a top of the rotation pitcher, but he'll have to be to keep us from having overpaid. And if I'm trading primarily for potential, overpaying doesn't make sense. Dew, I think you're overrating xFIP given Garza's ability to outperform it on an annual basis. Similar to when a hitter typically hits for a high BABIP, after awhile it becomes the norm. Minus HRs, he'll improve his stats. how can we be sure that Garza outperforming his xFIP wasn't due to Tampa Bay's super awesome defense? Does every pitcher on Tampa Bay consistently outperform their xFIP?

We better be getting McGee back too

Baseball America isn't geared towards the common fan. People who suscribe to the magazine already have a great deal of interest in the minor leagues and probably know more about a team's minor league system outside of its latest first round pick. Including the first round pick in the Top 10 has more to do with the process and the nature of the draft. When you're ranking a system, it's hard to ignore a guy who the scouting directors talk up (since they just drafted him), has incredible stats (probably one of the reasons he was a first round pick), and has had limited history of failure (again, guys who have failed a lot probably won't be drafted in the first round).

BA bases a lot of their rankings on evalutions by the team itself, so this list is also a reflection on how the Cubs view a lot of their prospects. That's why David Kelton kept making the list year after year.

I wouldn't say they mortgaged their future. They didn't give up any great prospects, basically just a reliever, a guy years away with a ceiling as a #3 and a light-hitting SS whose value was only going to decline going forward. It was a great trade for them. They spent years stockpiling talent in the farm system, and the window on that group is about to close due to financial constraints. Going for it all makes sense.

Odd that you say that on a night they shot 78% from the FT line. I watched the Cavs broadcast and they flashed a graphic that said the abulls are 28th in the league in FT% Yeah they are horrible at FT shooting. Tonight was a good night for us at the line despite shooting a mediocre percentage. But we also missed several FTs in the last minute that would have killed us had Cleveland hit a shot or two. I don't necessarily know if lack of FT shooting will hurt us in the playoffs. Orlando actually has even a worse FT percentage than the Bulls this year and they are a team that wins in the playoffs and went to the finals 2 years ago. We'll see how much it hurts us. When Noah was on the broadcast the other night, he said it wasn't due to lack of effort, as they finish off every practice by shooting a ton of free throws. They weren't bad at it last year either, so it's hard to say what the problem is. I won't start worrying about it until we get closer to the playoffs.

And the Brewers have just traded away 5 of their best prospects in two trades. Young, cheap production is going to be really hard to come by. I wasn't talking about the Brewers. And when their window is up in 2 years, the trade proceeds/draft picks from Fielder, Greinke, Marcum, Weekes and Braun can replenish that system very quickly.

Sure, if you're keeping payroll roughly constant then 2-3 wins is probably the right ballpark, and probably a little high actually. Just as a simple exercise: Add Pujols ($25M) Subtract Aramis Ramirez ($14M) Add a replacement 3B for $1M Subtract Ryan Dempster ($13M) Add a replacement SP for $1M What's the impact of those moves taken together? The money's even -- $27M out and $27M in. You think the Cubs would improve by a lot more than 2-3 wins in this scenario? I don't. It's certainly possible if they make the right moves. What if Dempster gets replaced by Archer, who ends up being better? What if we replace Aramis with a cheap, young player who ends up being productive and plays through the entire season? There's simply too many variables to say "Oh, the money spent is even so the win improvement can only be marginal." It's not how much money you spend, it's how you spend the money.

It is going to be much more than a couple of wins, most likely 5+ wins and plausibly 10+, the range of outcomes is pretty large. The quote you were responding to was focused on the Grienke trade specifically. As outlined, you start with an estimate of Greinke's WAR, subtract a little for the switch to Betancourt at SS, and subtract a little more for the opportunity cost of Greinke's $13M salary. 5+ wins is on the WAY high side for this move alone. 10+ is just silly. There isn't a 10 win player in baseball (much less a pitcher), even before the downward adjustments. Pegging it at a 2 win improvement is very reasonable. Add a couple more for the Marcum move, but even then I personally don't see it vaulting the Brewers into the playoffs. It vaults them into the .500 range. This is a team that won 77 games last year. Going from Chris Narveson to Zach Greinke has to get you more than 2 wins. Try reading my post again. Put whatever win number you want on the move from Narveson or whomever to Greinke. Then start subtracting. Escobar is nothing special but Betancourt is worse. Subtract. And IIRC the math is something like $5M = 1 win on the FA market, so paying Greinke $13M has an opportunity cost of over 2.5 wins. On a per-year basis we're talking the Dunn, Victor Martinez, Konerko class of players. Subtract. When the dust settles, 2 wins sounds in the right neighborhood. That's a little oversimplistic and doesn't account for a team's actual needs. Do you really believe the Cubs giving $25 million to Albert Pujols would only improve their team by 2-3 wins?

It is going to be much more than a couple of wins, most likely 5+ wins and plausibly 10+, the range of outcomes is pretty large. The quote you were responding to was focused on the Grienke trade specifically. As outlined, you start with an estimate of Greinke's WAR, subtract a little for the switch to Betancourt at SS, and subtract a little more for the opportunity cost of Greinke's $13M salary. 5+ wins is on the WAY high side for this move alone. 10+ is just silly. There isn't a 10 win player in baseball (much less a pitcher), even before the downward adjustments. Pegging it at a 2 win improvement is very reasonable. Add a couple more for the Marcum move, but even then I personally don't see it vaulting the Brewers into the playoffs. It vaults them into the .500 range. This is a team that won 77 games last year. Going from Chris Narveson to Zach Greinke has to get you more than 2 wins.

We're a better team, but I fear a letdown after the big win. If we beat the Jets, how secure is the #2 seed?

I'd lean toward no, but might be talked into it. The only reason I consider it is because Soto is 28 and may only have 2-3 really good years left in him. We could potentially get 2-3 times that out of Montero. The problem with Montero, though, is that he likely won't be much better than Soto at his peak and if he needs to move from catcher, he loses a ton of his value. That's the caveat with him. You move him to first and he becomes an above average 1B (offensively speaking), but that's about it. A .300/25/100 season for a first baseman his fine... great even, though it's far from elite. You put that line up at catcher and you might be the best offensive catcher in the game, which he probably will be capable of doing if things pan out for him. His value really depends on whether he improves his catching ability. If he played any other position he probably would be a Top 25 prospect instead of a Top 5 Some of the reports I've read suggest he could move to 1st and still be an offensive force.

He's younger, healthier and not crazy? but z is much better. this whole trade z movememnet upsets me greatly. he's never gone near 100 in terms of era+. I don't know how you can argue that Z is better. Garza just put up 3 consecutive WHIPS of roughly 1.25 in the AL East; Zambrano hasn't done that in 5 years in the NL Central. how can i argue? whip, really? all that means is that zambrano walks more hitters. the success of each pitcher in not giving up actual runs, along with slga would point to the fact that garza gets hit harder. holy crap, in 2006 zambrano posted a 1.15 whip and walked 115 hitters. that's pretty impressive. as far as last season goes, teams ops'd .678 against him, and slugged .333. he also only posted a slga at .700 once in his career, and that was .701. garza was at .723 last year. not to mention the era+ numbers in which zambrano is consistently superior. so, yeah, zambrano is pretty clearly a better pitcher. All that means is that Garza walks less hitters but gives up more homeruns. They both have their flaws, but they're probably about equal at this stage in their careers.