apete6

major league teams should not give starting jobs to 30 year old first basemen hitting .239/.338/.433 in the pcl. i don't care if we're going to be bad, there's still no reason to waste a spot like that. But why spend $10m on Adam Dunn or Carlos Pena when you're going to suck anyway? I'd rather wait a year and go after Prince or Adrian Gonzalez. Also, I said to offer Lee arbitration and he could accept and you have him on a 1 year deal. Whatever you do, don't deliberately field a team with Micah Hoffpauir as your opening day 1B. It's not like they would carry over that $10m in savings to the next year. OK, who is a better option when considering performance, $$$, and possible prospects/players traded for?

major league teams should not give starting jobs to 30 year old first basemen hitting .239/.338/.433 in the pcl. i don't care if we're going to be bad, there's still no reason to waste a spot like that. But why spend $10m on Adam Dunn or Carlos Pena when you're going to suck anyway? I'd rather wait a year and go after Prince or Adrian Gonzalez. Also, I said to offer Lee arbitration and he could accept and you have him on a 1 year deal.

Ah yes, maybe Frasor is the Toronto RHP I was thinking of.

I hope this is what we see (partially realistic version). They will suck, but they can develop some young guys and save money for a year before a better FA class after the 2011 season. C: Geovany Soto 1B: Micah Hoffpauir (More likely: Adam Dunn 2/$20) 2B: Jeff Baker (More Likely: Christian Guzman 2/$5 moving Baker to bench) SS: Starlin Castro 3B: Aramis Ramirez LF: Alfonso Soriano CF: Marlon Byrd RF: Tyler Colvin Bench: Austin Kearns (Platoon 1B and backup OF) Wellington Castillo (Backup C) Mike Fontenot (Backup 2B and 3B-non tendered if Baker on bench) Darwin Barney (Backup SS) Sam Fuld (Backup OF) Rotation: Ryan Dempster, Randy Wells, Tom Gorzellany, Carlos Zambrano, Carlos Silva Bullpen: Carlos Marmol, Sean Marshall, Andrew Cashner, Jeff Stevens, James Russell, Esmailan Caridad, Angel Guzman I think they should offer arbitration to Lee and Lilly. If they accept, then welcome back and Kearns would be gone and Cashner would be starting at AAA (like he should be anyway, but they like him in the pen). Gorzo would go back to the pen, Russell would go to AAA and one of the Berg/Atkins/Caridad/Schlitter/Samardzija crew would be up. In my scenario, they non-tender or trade Theriot and DFA Grabow. I also can't see Aramis opting out. If he does (like he should because of a terrible 3B market), maybe they sign a Jorge Cantu to play 3B because I can't see them giving him more than the 2 years he has remaining after all of his injuries. In this scenario, they would trade Kosuke either this year or in the offseason for salary relief and maybe a low level prospect. I can't see a scenario where they would be able to trade Zambrano or where they would just DFA him and eat his whole contract. Obviously I could see them signing a veteran RH reliever (Putz, Wood, Downs?) so that (hopefully) Cashner and Jay Jackson can continue to start in the minors and be ready to come up when they finally bail on Zambrano and after Silva's deal is up after 2011. If they do decide to cheap out and pretty much give up on 2011, I think they should just let Sandberg see what he can do with the team. He might be able to sell a few tickets and get his chance to manage a Cubs team with low expectations. If he's truly terrible, maybe they can get him to retire after the season and take a front office/ambassador position. If they go the other way and sign some FAs and make some trades to compete better, then sign a real manager.

Is the only way Cubs ever score on a Sac Fly or Solo HR. I swear we haven't had a bases clearing double or 2 run single in forever.

Low batting average and he spins around when he strikes out sometimes. That and he's owed $13.5 million this year and has never OPS'd over .800. But, yeah, it's the helicopter strikeouts that people hate. He's a nice player with some value, but not that much value. So are you saying you hate him? Because I was explaining why some people hate him and you sound like you have a semi-reasonable opinion of him. He has an OPS over 800 right now by the way. No I don't hate him at all, but I can see why some non-reasonable people could hate him. And yes, his OPS is over .800 right now, but it probably has been the past few years as well before his summer swoon.

Silva with a good start. I just can't believe my eyes.

Low batting average and he spins around when he strikes out sometimes. That and he's owed $13.5 million this year and has never OPS'd over .800. But, yeah, it's the helicopter strikeouts that people hate. He's a nice player with some value, but not that much value.

http://www.suntimes.com/business/2405782,CST-NWS-wrigley18.article Seriously? Does Tunney live in the area? Clark is hopping every freaking night with all the bars even in the winter! I'm so glad that I'm moving out of the area in a couple months. I am done with Chicago politics. Not really. Friday and Saturday nights are hopping, but Sunday-Thursday its kind of a ghost town. A grocery store and/or gym would provide the city more constant revenue streams. Not to mention the hotel and the property taxes from the condos.

Marmol is a beast. Probably going to be an overworked beast, but he's money.

Glad to know Lou has absolutely 0 confidence in Cashner to get out of this. Glad we used Marmol last night in a non-save situation. Although watching him own everyone last night was fun.

5.73 ERA - 1.55 WHIP - 4.59 xFIP - 9:5 K:BB Not much to like this year for Wuertz. Only 11 innings, though, so he must have been hurt or something. Ya, he missed the first 2 months or so. His last few years have been very good though.

If I'm the A's, I walk Soriano so Lou puts Hill in for Soto.

Koyie Hill pinch hits into a double play.

That was an unexpected sight. You tube please.

Oh, and words can't express how much I hate Theriot.

Watching Wuertz own us while we're wasting our top prospect to fill his 7th/8th inning role is going to be fun. I hate the Cubs.

Nevermind, struckout. Dammit!

Soriano just broke gameday, what happened?

I think that losing Nolasco was always the biggest reason to hate the Pierre trade. Losing Mitre and Pinto was just throwing salt in the wound. That and the fact that, at the time, all three players had substantially more value in a trade than netting a year of Juan [expletive] Pierre. It's amazing how much damage this one player has done to the Cubs. The 2003 NLCS, the stupid trade in 2006 and breaking up the no-hitter on Sunday. Juan [expletive] Pierre. Combine all of that with the White Sox giving up John Ely and that decent reliever for him and he's screwed more people in Chicago than Patrick Kane has the past few weeks.

But at the same time those teams are already much better than Chicago. Those teams simply have to tread water, the Cubs have to get significantly better. And they're the last 3 champions (Bos, Phi, NYY) besides the Mets. If we would have won in 2008 like we could/should have, no one would care about the contracts. Hendry gambled on shooting his load for a few seasons and lost. If they won it all, he'd be a hero, but they choked and he has to pay the price.

I think they should just play all 11 teams and then 1 non-con game against a patsy. Guaranteed to get a team into the championship game if they're undefeated.

Huh? Most of the contracts are all off the books after 2012. You just have to sign the right FA to go along with whoever the farm system produces. Yeah, current contracts won't hold us back from being able to compete again by 2012-2013. Most are off the books by after the 2011 season and we'll have two FA classes to supplement what our farm system can't fill. The key will be making good decisions leading up to the 2012-2013 seasons. I don't know why people pretend that the contracts that run through 2012 are no big deal. The Cubs have a tremendous amount of money guaranteed in future years, much more than most teams. And those contracts absolutely do affect beyond 2012, because they affect what they can do right now, and right now is when you need to be positioning yourself for the future. You can't just wait up November 1, 2012 and say, okay, we can fix all this now. Every contract handed out affects future payroll flexibility. The Cubs have a higher budget than most teams. It's not a shock that they have more future money committed as well. Boston has 75 million committed for 2012. The Yankees have 107 million. The Mets have almost 61. The Phillies have 87. The Cubs are at 62.5 which includes the buyouts to both Ramirez and Silva. BTW, for 2011 the Cubs are at 103.5. Boston is at 100.5. The Yankees are at 144.6. The Mets are at 108.8. The Phillies are at 134.7. So the Cubs don't have an extreme amount of money committed in future years compared to the teams who are directly above and below in payroll. That's mostly because the Cubs had a pretty quiet offseason only committing 10 extra million or so to 2011 and 8.5 to 2012. They'll have plenty of flexibility to make moves as early as this offseason and definitely by the offseason after 2011. The problem is that the Cubs have that money tied up in 2nd and 3rd tier players (Soriano, Zambrano, Silva, Ramirez, Dempster, Fuku) while Boston (Beckett, Youkilis, etc...) , NYY (Arod, Sabathia, Teixiera), and Phillies (Howard, Halladay, Utley) have it tied up in 1st tier game changing players. Even that awful Howard contract extension is going to give the Phillies more value than paying Soriano $18 and Zambrano $18.

Moral of the story is: Never bet on baseball, soccer, or hockey.

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