goonys evil twin

People, people, you forget that our entire ’06 team philosophy seems to be predicated on catching lighting in a bottle - over and over again! (need I remind you of our starting right fielder??) My point is only this - you can't catch lighting without a bottle . . . This is true, I think, maybe. Is he pitching for the Italian team this spring?

In 2002 he was 11-5 with a 4.02 ERA. Sure, he was playing above his potential, but what's this costing us if he stinks? Maybe a few hotdogs from the HoHoKam concession stand? 2002 was completely out of character from his career. And then he stunk in 2003 and 2004. And his peripherals in 2002 kind of predicted that he wouldn't repeat the ERA, let alone the record (which was completely due to his team).

The Cubs don't eat salary. They were adamently opposed to the idea until the Sosa situation came up. Unfortunately, the Cubs like Jones. Hendry likes Jones. He's not going to trade him. He didn't sign him with any intention to trade him. Jones could repeat his mediocre career stats every year and Hendry would be ecstatic. He wanted an athletic RF, not a productive one.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/sports/cst-spt-cub03.html Living down here in Cardinal country - I can tell you that the uncomfortable man-love for Jason was just insane back in 2002-2003. If he can regain some of his old form, then JH might just have found a pretty good sleeper for the pen! This is certainly a Hendry move. Take a guy who was good before surgery who is currently a FA, sign him to a low base offer and hope for the best. Low risk, high reward. I can't say I'm against it. If he is good, you have a very good arm in the pen. If he stinks, you're not out all that much. Simontacchi was good? I seem to remember a guy with an ERA over 5 who got lucky to be pitching for a team with a tremendous offense. I agree it's low risk, but it's nowhere near high reward. If he returns, he'll never be very good. He might become a mediocre 5th starter if healthy.

True that, but, for the purposes of this discussion, his performances at AA, AAA and the majors following the decision to place him on the 40-man have already justified his roster spot. He certainly would have been selected after his year at AA, so... The only thing that performance justifies is keeping him on the roster, and giving him a chance to win the job.

A strikeout has value when it prevents grounding into a double play, which is something guys like Neifi Perez do far too often.

Cause the arbitration process is based on service time. Comparing arbitration guys to free agents isn't remotely fair. I'm completely with Hendry on this one. You have to make an example at some point otherwise, players (knowing that the Cubs won't go to arbitration) will keep pusing up their requests knowing they'll just get the halfway point anyways. Arbitration money and free agent money are worth the same. I don't see how willingly throwing away millions of dollars is a different ballgame than worrying about a couple of hundred thousand for a guy who actually deserves it. One could pretty easily make the case that budging on arbitration numbers for a guy making less than a million isn't going to hurt the team nearly as much as the kinds of free agent contracts Hendry has signed in the past couple of years. The difference to the organization was chump change. It's an organizational priority/CBA integrity thing, not necessarily a baseball decision. It doesn't make sense to squabble over 5 figures when you often times screw up with the 7 figures. But this wasn't about money, it was about slotting and all that.

I thought it was bizarre at the time, because he hadn't done anything as a pro to make you believe he could stick on a major league roster for a year (even though it might make sense for teams to try this, they rarely do it unless you can get some production out of a guy, like Sisco). So I'd have to say I would not have rostered Cedeno at the time. Did anybody of value end up being left off? He's improved exponentially since then, and maybe they thought he needed that sort of motivational support to take the next step. Or maybe he would have emerged regardless. I still have my doubts about Ronny though, hopefully he can maintain the momentum.

Not all batted balls are equal. A lot of contact is just garbage contact, which is why "just put the ball in play" is hardly an effective strategy at the major league level. It works at lower levels, where defense is weak, but not in the majors.

You have to stop hitting bricks with your head.

Strikeouts don't matter. OBP is H + W + HBP / PA (or something similar). The inverse of OBP would be how often you make an out. It doesn't matter what type of out you make, what matters is how many, or how few, depending on how you look at it.

If last August and September were the only times in his career he struggled, maybe this theory would hold water. Unfortunately, he's been an inadaquate right fielder throughout most of his career, and is very likely to continue not doing enough with the Cubs.

No it's not, because the discussion is not just Abreu, Tejada, Giles, or whatever other impact bats became available this offseason. You have to be able to predict the market in the future, realize what your needs are likely to be, and figure out who might fill the spot. Hendry's failure has been a big picture failure. It's not just a winter 2005/2006 failure. It's not just this small story. It's the entire roster (which is all him), and the entire organization (which is largely his influence) and the freaking pathetic coaching staff (which again, is completely his fault for letting it get so bad).

An interesting comparison could be Miguel Cabrera. Career minor league: 1428 AB, 262 K, 131 BB, .286/.350/.431 Age 20 in AA: 266 AB, 49 K, 31 BB, .365/.429/.609 Felix Pie Career minor league: 1402 AB, 315 K, 118 BB, .297/.356/.460 Age 20 in AA: 240 AB, 53 K, 16 BB, .304/.349/.554 Similar career paths, up until Pie got hurt before his callup, at an equivalent time to Cabrera getting called up. Miggy obviously enjoyed a bigger jump in his final year though. And the big difference is k/bb. Felix strikes out more and walks less, by a considerable margin. But some guys struck out as much as Pie and found success in the majors, including Dunn, Bay, Burrell. Others struck out even more, like Preston Wilson, who of course has enjoyed only moderate success for a brief period. Some of these guys walked more than Pie, or about the same. Pie does have the advantage of speed over all these guys, as well as position (except for Wilson). I think an interesting comparison though, is Geoff Jenkins. He struck out a little more, walked about the same, then went on to have a nice career, solid but unspectaculiar, despite a few big years. Anyway, it looks like Pie's numbers mean he's got a chance to succeed. But he'll probably never be a superstar unless he significantly improves the k and bb issues.

You think Jim agrees that Pierre and Jones are a pair of mediocrities and that the current makeup of the Cubs is not a recipe for success? I don't think so. I think Jim is a little shellshocked that he's left with what he has, but for the most part, I think he is satisfied with what he has put together. He went hard after Pierre, and overpaid. He likes the Jones type of player, and people were predicting he'd end up with Jacque long before they ended up scraping at the bottom of the barrel. This isn't some accident or tough situation that Hendry was thrust into. This team is his making, from the farm to the veterans, it's all Hendry, and it screams mediocre disappointment.

Those aren't the only two possibilities, Prior isn't the only tradable asset, and Jim should have done a better job in past seasons to prepare for a time when he needed that last big bat. You can't excuse the team's overall failings by saying "well, he's made good trades in the past", and you can't say it's not his fault he was priced out of the market this year, when moves, and the lack of moves, in the past, put him in the situation he is in now.

None of those trades put them over the top, and none of them have happened within the past 2 offseasons (Pierre is no difference maker, he's just an example of Hendry once again overemphasizing unimportant physical characteristics over actual production), when the Cubs most needed an improved bat. The Cubs needed Lee and Ramirez just to form the core, because Jim and his assistants were so terrible at developing position players. The problem is with this core, they're just an above average team at best. Now they have to make those moves to move into the elite, and they've failed miserably in attempting that move (if they even attempted it at all). This all goes back to this team's failures of actually developing major league talent (which Jim is largely to blame, since that was his job for so long). But it includes Jim's failures as GM, which are plainly obvious to anybody that can find the standings and the stats pages. Jim has not built a very good team. And just when this team was positioned to benefit most from a supposedly strong farm system (the core is in place), Jim has come up short transitioning that strong farm into a strong major league team. He's a failure, just like practically every Cubs GM we've ever seen. If he wasn't, this team would have won more than 79 last year, and would be in a position to be a top club this season. He either failed as farm director, failed as GM, or mixed some of both. But the results speak for themselves. I for one don't see the back to back over .500 seasons, followed by two disastrous offseasons, a 79 win season and now hope for an 85 win season, as anything but failure from a GM in charge of a big market team.

Then why disagree with trading the most qualified of the pitching youth (Williams) as part of a package to get a bat? I realize this is slightly out of thread context, but we've disagreed in recent weeks on whether or not to use Williams as a trade chip at his current value - with you stating he has more value to the team than as a trade chip. You are wrong there. I'm all for trading Williams for an actual offensive upgrade. He's got value to this team because the pitching is so questionable and they need the qualified arms, so it would be silly to trade him for marginal upgrades, but I would be, and I have been, all for trading Williams for a good bat.

Sorry, but you're failing to apply logic to this debate. The plan was never to develop great pitchers and then trade them. The plan was develop a core of players (which Zambrano and Prior are apart of) and then trade others for the difference makers. If Hendry doesn't have those others to trade for a difference maker, than he either failed to develop them, or squandered them frivolously. Either way, the plan was not carried through well enough.

One doesn't have anything to do with the other. NFL team value blows away MLB team value.

Exactly, they aren't going to arbitration with Zambrano. And it's a lot more palatable to risk paying $750,000 if you lose than paying $3-4 million if you lose against a more experience player.

No matter how much of the text I included, the point still stands. The Cubs plan was to draft and develop pitchers, then trade for and sign big bats when the time came to contend. The time has come, they aren't signing the bats, and can't trade for them. That is the fault of poor management. Agreed in general. I dunno if we can kill JH re a possible Abreu trade based on this point, but may be we can. I'd feel very comfortable roasting him if this deal does go through, and he didn't do everything possible to convince Gillick he was nuts for taking back an old inconsistent pitcher and a mediocre older outfielder, when he could have positioned his team much better with a package that included some of Murton/Pie/Williams/Wuertz/Novoa/Ohman/Harvey/etc. I have no problem roasting him for ignoring Giles, even if he supposedly refused to play outside of SD. I have a big problem with a GM that doesn't do whatever possible to make the team better. But I'm not going to kill him based on rumors, I have more than enough ammunition just looking at the overall state of the team.

Are they really that proud, or is that a media creation? Or, are they proud of the record, but realize that having that record means players won't fear going to arbitration and risk having to settle for the lower offer if they lose? I think they are more interested in the cash than the record of no arbitration, nobody gives out prizes for never going to arbitration. I've heard, on more than a few occasions, both Hendry and MacPhail mentioning this tidbit as something they're seemingly proud of. I don't really see the big deal, unless protecting your players from criticizism is that important. I've heard them talk of it as something they are seemingly proud of, I just think it might be a stretch to say they are so so proud of it. People are making it seem like it's their biggest goal, or among their biggest goals. My guess is that they'd be willing to go to arbitration if they thought the player's asking price was way to high and that the midpoint was out of whack with what they thought of as top dollar.

I know you wrote Carlos would disagree, I was merely replying after seeing a few posts that questioned Hoops for writing what he wrote. It appeared to me that many thought he was nuts for thinking some GM's would think what he wrote they might think, and I happen to agree with his theory.

Really? Seems to me Philly won 88 games last year and Hendry's team won 79. Gillick is new to the job though, so claiming one GM has done a better job than the other is impossible. The failure on Hendry's part is that the plan was to build the farm up through pitching, develop a core of players, and then trade for or sign the position players who can put the team over the top. If the Cubs are in a position where they can't sign difference making position players (whether that's due to a lack of available funds/space or interest from the player, or a lack of players), and he can't trade for difference makers, then he's failed to carry out the team's plan. The other failure, of course, is this team just hasn't won enough under Hendry, and they aren't in a position to make a huge dent in that poor record. But I apologize to those Cubs fans who don't want to hear management has failed. Let's just go on pretending they've done a marvelous job.