KingCubsFan

HAHA this better not be true. There should be no hesitance in doing any deal involving Colvin for a much better well established player. Colvin is far far far from being someone Hendry is scared to deal. Come on Honestly, Cashner and Archer are the only ones Id refuse to move, and we might end up having to give up one of the 2. Im probably one of the very few Colvin fans still out there, but if Hendry refuses to move him to get A Gon, he should be smothered. I'd resist trading Archer or Jackson, but I'd trade any of the others in a heartbeat. If Cashner is just going to be a setup man for us anyways, might as well trade him now

Justin Upton...

Both Soto and Castro are two of the best young players at their position. Soto's .385 wOBA was the best in the majors among catchers with at least 200 PAs. Soto will be 28 on opening day next year and is a catcher. He's not particularly young, and we're currently wasting his best years.

Butler would not be the worst option and its possible his HR totals could reach the low to mid 20's. He is young and has a great bat, possbily with hitting him between Ramirez and Soriano (whoever hits 5th) could be beneficial for him. He'd be the perfect project for Jaramillo. He hits a ton of doubles, and is a big guy, so it's not out of the question he could hit around 30 homers.

I don't get why the new thing is to blame Ricketts every time something goes wrong. By all accounts, Hendry was in on this until the end, meaning they weren't just "sitting on their hands." It's not Ricketts' fault he inherited a bloated payroll full of mediocre players and an old, small stadium that was falling apart. Long-term, he's doing the right things by trying to improve Wrigley (and maximize revenue) while diverting resources to the farm system. Of course, he's totally responsible for not firing Hendry.

Hendry should be on the phone with the Royals, trying to pry away Butler before Moore gets fired or the Royals become so good that they won't trade him away.

In reality, it shouldn't take that much. Kelly is another overhyped Red Sox prospect, Rizzo is nothing special and Fuentes is too far away to know how he'll turn out. The Red Sox had an advantage because the Padres front office probably overrates the Red Sox system, similar to what the Orioles did with ours. This really sucks. It's entirely possible first base becomes a huge black hole for this team for the foreseeable future, given that our scouting director refuses to draft players who project to hit more than 15-20 homeruns a season.

His rebounding and ability to draw attention from other defenders should immediately help us, regardless of whether he can score. Hopefully, he'll realize that he needs some time to work himself into the offense and pick his spots.

I'm not going to quote whole threads. Go back and read them. Very few were in favor. Most of those quotes were from a thread where the OP suggested Lilly might be a good signing. For one, nobody knew at the time just how much they had to spend. And two, when the dust settled people were generally pleased with Lilly at least in comparison to the other signings. And three, Ted Lilly was good before he became a Cubs so the whole point of this discussion in the first place is nonexistent. Maybe we have different definitions of "good," but here's what you said about Lilly at the time we signed him: The whole point of this is that Rothschild does deserve some credit for turning Lilly into the pitcher he is today. Since signing with the Cubs, his numbers across the board greatly improved, and given that a similar effect has happened to other pitchers, it's hard to ignore the fact that Rothschild probably influenced his improvement.

I'm not going to quote whole threads. Go back and read them. Very few were in favor. Most of those quotes were from a thread where the OP suggested Lilly might be a good signing.

Go back to the threads around the time Lilly was signed, and you'll see the general perception was much different. Just just to disprove your point after a quick search:

Ditto Ted Lilly. You could also make a case for Randy Wells considering he was an after-thought as a prospect back in the day. Ted Lilly was a damn fine pitcher long before he became a Cub. Nobody was saying that when we signed him. Most saw him as an inconsistent back-end starter that Hendry overpaid for.

Hopefully Zac Dysert will be back, but ultimately it will come down to Miami's defense. Outside of the Missouri and Cincinnati debacles, our defense has been pretty good.

James Johnson (even though he made some horrible decisions at the end of regulation)

Not sure about that. The WHIPs are higher and the hits are up, too. K/BB is pretty consistent.

Pitcher's arm strength peaks in their early to mid 20s. Young Zambrano got away with poor command because of his velocity. Even though his velocity is only a notch down from where it once was, it's allowed hitters to square up more often and hit more consistently off of him, causing a drop in his production. Had Zambrano learned control to compensate, perhaps it'd be a different story. He hasn't. Dusty Baker had nothing to do with Zambrano not being as good as he was circa 2004. So your position is that all of the concern with how Dusty Baker handled pitchers like Z was a waste of time, as it was inevitable his career would begin a steady decline at the age of 26? While I think NB's description has an effect, albeit possibly a small one, to me the major difference is that Z's mechanics aren't the train wreck that Prior and Wood's are. He has decent mechanics, which should have allowed him to escape Dusty without as much damage. Plus, going back to Baseball Prospectus' PAP chart (I know, it's not the end all be all), he has never been abused the way Wood and Prior were in 2003. Between their horrible mechanics and what Dusty did to them in 03, that pretty much explains Prior and Wood. Z is a completely different animal. His problems are largely command, and keeping his head on straight. His pitcher abuse points from 2003-2008: 11, 3, 2, 2, 2, 7 I agree that Zambrano has better mechanics, and that's probably the only reason he's still an effective starter while the other two are not. And control is obviously a big problem as well. But I think it's wrong to say to say Dusty's abuse of Z during the early years in his career didn't have some sort of effect on his current decline. It certainly had an effect, along with the other factors mentioned.

Pitcher's arm strength peaks in their early to mid 20s. Young Zambrano got away with poor command because of his velocity. Even though his velocity is only a notch down from where it once was, it's allowed hitters to square up more often and hit more consistently off of him, causing a drop in his production. Had Zambrano learned control to compensate, perhaps it'd be a different story. He hasn't. Dusty Baker had nothing to do with Zambrano not being as good as he was circa 2004. So your position is that all of the concern with how Dusty Baker handled pitchers like Z was a waste of time, as it was inevitable his career would begin a steady decline at the age of 26?

Yeah, if someone would get Harang fixed he can eat a bunch of innings... he was as good as Z at one point. And, like Z, he's also been Dusty'd. Yeah, cause Z's arm really deteriorated after Dusty left I'm not sure how you could argue it hasn't.

Yeah, if someone would get Harang fixed he can eat a bunch of innings... he was as good as Z at one point. And, like Z, he's also been Dusty'd.

No. We have Chris Archer in two years What does Chris Archer have to do with Justin Upton and Mike Trout? Soto is more valuable than Mike Trout to us because we have really high-end pitching prospects that could match Trout's production in two years without having to give up anything. The upgrade from Soto to Upton is marginal, again, to us, and not worth downgrading a huge area of strength for our club. What does Mike Trout have to do with Justin Upton? Trout's an outfielder

No. We have Chris Archer in two years What does Chris Archer have to do with Justin Upton and Mike Trout?

Contracts have to be honored and deals in place already can't be up and changed that easily. The end of the European theatre was also six years after it began. And the Marshall plan lasted another four. It's a matter of motivation. As we have seen large mergers can be shotgunned in a weekend when people are motivated to do it. Look how fast the GM bankruptcy went through. I don't believe for one second that we couldn't have two more wildcard teams starting in 2011 if that's what they really wanted. They just want to market it. I can guarantee you the GM bankruptcy was not done over a weekend

http://www.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/22297882/25909428 Ricketts could use that fact to his advantage. The state would love paying millions a year to keep up an old, empty stadium.

He was the #65 prospect entering the 2008 year. For what it's worth, he's been very good in the minors and had a horrid BABIP (.275) in the majors last year, with a strong LD% (22.2). It's a pretty limited sample size, obviously, but it's something to consider. I'm with TT on this one. If all we're giving up is Castillo or Chirinos, with Soto already here, I don't see a good reason not to do this. I don't see going after Davis as a hindrance to getting Dunn, because if Hendry wants Dunn, he'll go after him either way. The more likely situation is that we'd get Davis instead of Nick Johnson or Carlos Pena, and, while I wouldn't hate either of them, I think I'd prefer Davis due to cost and upside. His BB/K ratio has always been horrid. Has anyone ever consistently succeeded in the majors with those types of peripherals?

For the people who would not consider trading Soto for Upton: Would you trade Soto for Mike Trout?