davearm

Huh? The ball slices from CF toward the foul line in both LF and RF, and with both LH and RH hitters. (I suppose technically when the ball's pulled into the corner, it's more of a hook than a slice, at least in golf parlance, but regardless the sidespin, and thus the ballflight, is toward the foul line.) Thus, regardless of the handedness of the batter and the fielder, a ball that starts out in the gap will tend to slice toward the corner OF and away from the CF, and a ball that starts out straight at a corner OF will tend to slice away from that corner OF, and toward the foul line. RF and LF are essentially no different in that respect.

McGuire is dishonest scumbag that shouldn't go into the hall of fame because he dodged questions about steroid use and if he had just came clean everyone would respect him so much more. Giambi is a moron shooting off his mouth and should get his contract voided because he has been relatively honest and come clean about his steroid use. Seems to me there is no way to win in public perception. Everyone wants honesty until you give it to them and then they want to string you up. I couldn't care less whether or not Giambi gets his contract voided. FWIW, I do think that by displaying some honesty that he's occupying a higher moral ground than any of the other usual suspects, and on a certain level I find that admirable. But despite that, I wouldn't be saddened to see him lose his job over the choices he's man enough to admit to. Above all, I certainly don't fault the team who signed up to pay him $120M under false pretenses to want out of the deal. And regarding public perception, I'd say that the no-win situation you alluded to is a direct result of these guys' own decision to use PEDs. Whatever consequences these guys are facing are of their own making.

Why now? Why again? Because Giambi was quoted recently (USA Today?) once again apologizing for using "that stuff", and saying "we" should have been more honest. He gave them ammo to once again look to getting out of his contract. He gave them more ammo? That ammo had already been given with his grand jury testimony in 2003. I don't see how he gave them more ammo, he just game them the same ammo again. He (sort of) admitted to using steroids for the second time. Which gives them ammo to revisit the notion of getting out of his contract. Had he not said anything, they wouldn't be leaking this story. It's not that confusing. I understand why the Yankees would want to get out of his contract, and I understand that the Yankees would want anything Giambi says regarding the situation to be ammo. But, regarding the voiding of his contract, they either can or cannot void the contract based on his steroid use. Since he already admitted to it -- in front of a grand jury, no less -- they don't need the extra ammo. The admission has been made. If the Yankees can void the contract, they don't need a second admission -- the first one would work. I don't understand why that's so confusing. Good luck building a case around sealed grand jury testimony (leaked or otherwise) that MLB has no rights to see, let alone act upon. Obviously the Yanks and/or MLB weighed their options the first time around. Now by shooting off his mouth again, Giambi has given them reason to revisit those options. In the end they may still not have enough to punish him on. But thanks to Giambi himself, they have more now than they did a week ago.

So the Red Sox won the World Series thanks to changing wind patterns? As theories go, that one's as far out there as any I've heard in quite a while.

Actually from what I've read, what's kept Fontenot out of the bigleauges is his inability to be a viable utility player -- not enough defensive flexibility (or plain old defensive ability either). For a long time the conventional wisdom was that he'll either make it as an everyday player because he hits enough to put up with a subpar glove, or not make it at all. Now FWIW, he's getting the chance to dispel that notion by playing a bunch at 3B. Not sure how well that's going though.

It seems worthwhile to point out that Soriano has been more effective than any other leadoff hitter with a similar, .360-ish OBP. Better to go .360 OBP with 5 walks than .360 OBP with 25 walks. The first guy's got 20 more hits, and despite the rallying cry, a walk is not as good as a hit.

That's one of the worst trade ideas this side of Victor Zambrano for Scott Kazmir. Carl Crawford is flashy but not that good. Carl Crawford is a valuable player. He's young, cheap, plays elite defense and put up a solid .289/.364/.481 last year. Z is expensive, ineffective and going to be a FA. Agreed. The Cubs don't have a glaring need for another OF, but Crawford is an exciting young player that's still improving. Given the various risks inherent with Zambrano, I'd feel pretty good about cashing him in on a guy like Crawford. FWIW, PECOTA thinks Crawford will be worth more than Zambrano over the next 5 years... 25.3 WARP vs. 20.9 WARP.

If Keith Moreland could play RF at Wrigley than Soriano should be able to. Though I don't see them making this change during the season. By that logic, then so can Murton, or Floyd, or whomever... allowing Soriano to stay where he's more comfortable.

Seems like a perfectly reasonable question to ask, seeing as last year Marshall was better than Guzman. I'm as hopeful for Guzman as the next guy, but until potential turns into consistent production at the MLB level, he absolutely needs to be weighed against an alternative like Marshall.

wrong he was already ours until then. holding him down at the start of the season guaranteed it (i think it's only 2 weeks. the cubs did this to kerry wood in 98). I believe the rule states that if a player is recalled within 20 days of the start of the season, and remains on the roster for the duration of the season, a full year of service time is credited. Pie was recalled on like day 15 or 16, IIRC.

Marshall is trade bait at this point. I suspect that Hendry will bring him up quite a bit in discussions this summer.

Because Pagan is on the 40-man. Because Chris Walker just arrived at AAA. Why have him become a major league bench player already? This is what I was about to say. Even if it was a good idea, calling up Chris Walker would present some prickly roster management issues. With Pagan, no problems.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK this move assures that Pie will not reach free agency until after 2013 at the earliest. If he'd stuck all year long, he would've collected a full year of service time, thereby moving up his FA window by a year.

Yeah, it would be shocking to me if Blanco didn't start this game: day game after night game Barrett caught 15 innings 2 nights ago left-hander on the mound for the opposition Blanco is 2-5 against this pitcher Z is on the mound All the factors say a Blanco start is coming. My guess is that the rest of the lineup will be the same, but there could be 1 or 2 other small changes. Seems to me it would've made more sense to sit Barrett yesterday. Give him his offday after the 15 inning game, rather than the day after a night game. Maybe the Z factor scotched that thought.

Igawa is not getting moved Reasons 1) Just signed - can't be traded at all until some date like 6/15 without approval, right? 2) Money left on contract - a lot 3) Present value - very low 1) Not sure if the regular FA rules apply here. Igawa was never a FA. 2) Most of the $$$ the Yanks invested here is sunk in the posting fee. The contract is actually pretty reasonable @ $4M/yr. 3) I'd say: Present value - very uncertain. The guy's been in MLB for a whole month.

Brian Anderson? That'd be a real nice deal. I've been on that bandwagon for weeks. And Jones really does make a lot of sense for the CWS, and doubly so now that they've reached the point of demoting Anderson to AAA. On our side, let Anderson and Pie platoon in CF, with Pie getting 60-75% of the starts, then see what you can get for Anderson at the Winter Meetings once Pie's ready for fulltime duty in 2008. Murton and Floyd share RF. Problem(s) solved.

I'm also with the leave-it-alone crowd. But one realistic and mildly intriguing approach to the top of the order would be... Soriano Lee Floyd Ramirez That's a heckuva lot of SLG at the top. Fill in from there as you wish... lots of combinations would work, but unfortunately there's room for only one of Jones, Murton, and Pie (and Murton's basically out because the open spot is CF).

Neither guy is a rookie. [/nitpick]

I seriously cannot understand why some people continually insist upon defending Jim Hendry by dragging out every tired excuse in the book to try to explain why the Cubs should have done well but didn't. In this case, you're saying the injuries were his excuse. I'm not excusing Jim Hendry for the Cubs' collapse in 2006! It's 100% his fault that the team was unprepared for the adversity it ran into! It's also 100% Hendry's fault that Dusty was ever the manager, and continued in that role for so long! Hendry didn't acquire Cedeno, he came up through the Cubs' system. And Hairston was just a token in the Sosa deal. Hendry would've probably taken anyone to push that deal through. Agreed on the OBP. However that crap philosophy seems to have been adressed in the regime change, between Lou and Gerald Perry. This is a total lose-lose situation. Hendry loses if he doesn't spend money, and if he does spend it, there will always be someone who thinks he should've spent it differently. I wasn't crazy about the Soriano signing myself, but Carlos Lee would've been even worse IMO. And he *definitely* loses if he lets our own guys walk away for nothing (DLee, Ramirez, etc.). Put yourself back in February, and as you consider the need to sign Cliff Floyd, ask yourself... Who plays OF for the Cubs if Soriano gets hurt, and Pie isn't yet ready? In that event you've got Murton, Jones, and Angel Pagan playing every day, and it's goodbye, 2007 season. Who plays 1B if Derrek Lee gets hurt? Daryle Ward? Again, goodbye, 2007 season. Look Floyd isn't perfect. He's got injury issues, and age issues, and defensive issues. But he's a darn better everyday option than Pagan or Ward, and in the event that nobody gets hurt, he's still valuable as a part-time starter and a primary PH. And if he plays enough to trigger his option, it will mean two things -- one, we really needed him as insurance, and two, he played well enough to keep himself in the lineup when the need arose.

I think this is complete BS nonsense. The Cubs didn't lose because of a lack of depth. They lost because the team sucked, and the team sucked because the GM sucks. Hendry didn't rectify problems, he put together a patch work desperation plan hoping to get lucky and catch a down division. The Cubs sucked because their outfield couldn't produce, there were black holes in the lineup, and the pitching was shaky. Depth was not the problem. Not enough front line production, has been, and still is, the single greatest problem out there. You don't lose because of 4th outfielders and 5th starters. You lose because your best players just aren't good enough and your worst players are just too freaking terrible. You don't lose 90 games because of depth issues. You don't go 4 years with a top payroll for your league without ever winning 90 games because of depth issues. A GM doesn't have a sub .500 record because of depth issues. This isn't about having enough backup outfielders. It's about a clueless GM who can't realize he's making the same mistakes over and over and over again. Pretty hard to say what the 2006 Cubs would've been if all of their best players would've played. Unfortunately only 2 of the top 5 did. Lee, Prior, and Wood were all lost for the season, effectively. Their downfall was they had no contingency plan for these losses. They lost because their 5th starter became their #3, their #s 4 and 5 belonged in the minors, their 4th OF became their everyday 1B, and they had no viable "Plan B" for Cedeno and Hairston sucking. Those are depth issues, plain as day. Now the blame for all that most certainly falls on Jim Hendry, no doubt about that. Now you can argue whether or not Hendry has satisfactorily corrected the problem for 2007. But I don't see how simply subtracting Cliff Floyd off of this team makes anything better on any level.

So basically, since the Cubs were completely terrible last year we should feel better about being merely bad so far this year. That so badly misses the point that I can hardly believe you're being serious. Look at *why* the Cubs were terrible last year. No depth, and no ability to weather storms of injury and ineffectiveness. Hendry has rectified that problem by arguably *overstocking* this year's roster, thereby virtually assuring that the roster depth problems of last year will not be revisited this year. The downside (if you can even call it a downside) is the redundancy you and others are railing against. What I'm saying is quit complaining long enough to recognize that the alternative to redundancy, namely vacancy, is far worse, as we saw last season.

It's not really opposite though. It's similar, in that it's an unsettled OF situation, with guys playing roles they shouldn't have. Matt Murton was their best OF last year. I like Murton, but that's not good. They've gone from Pierre to Pie, and I'm not sure we'll see any more production. The opposite of last year's OF would be an established highly productive LF, and RF who does not need to be platooned against LHP, and a CF that at least gets on base a lot. The only way it's opposite is CF defense. Otherwise, it remains highly flawed, with no ideal OFers. I wasn't limiting the query about last year to the OF situation. Last year the Cubs were perilously thin basically everywhere. A few injuries and underperformances sent the team to an absolutely dismal season because their depth was horrible and completely ill-equipped to handle these contingencies. Now they've got greatly improved depth (albeit imperfect depth), and people want to complain about that, too, because there's some minor redundancy in guys like Ward and Floyd, and/or Floyd and Jones. The point is that if people were willing to take a step back and consider the alternative, they might just reach the conclusion that a little redundancy is worth living with.

Imply what you want, but I don't think any of them are complaining about too many good players. The problem is too many flawed players. I'm not interested in debating whether Floyd is a "good" player or a "flawed" player. He's probably both, actually. They're not mutually exclusive terms, after all. But I come back to my original question. Have people already forgotten what happened last year when we had the opposite problem?

I don't hear that. The problem is they don't have enough quality starting position players, so they have to mix and match with a bunch of less than ideal parts. What I'm hearing is that Floyd was a bad signing, given the rest of the roster. The implication is that the Cubs would be better off without him. Ergo, the problem with Floyd is that he gives the Cubs have too many quality, starting-caliber players. No, he gives the Cubs another not quite starting caliber, but decent if he platoons player, but with no platoon partner. The problem with Jones is he should only face righties. The problem with Floyd is he shouldn't play much. The problem with Murton is that while he's a nice OF at a cheap price, you should really have some serious quality in the other spots. They don't have a real CF on the roster without Pie, so they almost feel forced to put him out there, despite being a potential black hole bat. Soriano in left is the only guy you should feel comfortable starting no matter who else is starting in the other 2 spots. Well to clarify, I realize that you're not arguing that Floyd gives the Cubs too many quality starting position players. But some other folks here certainly are. I agree completely. Hendry has done a terrible job and has overstocked the OF. He just doesn't get it. That's four quotes from three separate posters implying that the Cubs would be better off without Floyd, absent any other changes/additions to the roster.

I don't hear that. The problem is they don't have enough quality starting position players, so they have to mix and match with a bunch of less than ideal parts. What I'm hearing is that Floyd was a bad signing, given the rest of the roster. The implication is that the Cubs would be better off without him. Ergo, the problem with Floyd is that he gives the Cubs have too many quality, starting-caliber players.