srbin84

Oh I like JP as a person...he seems nice. But as a ballplayer? Is it is .324 OBP last year that you like or his .354 sluggling? Or do you prefer his miserable numbers this year? Maybe you like his arm? FYI, Pie's OBPis .391. His slugging is .911. Oh yeah, he also has 3 or 4 assists this year. So we gave up 3 prospects for Pierre when we have better CF playing in Iowa. First off, just because Marshall, Nolasco, etc. are doing alright now doesn't mean you can just call Pie up and he will be good. Odds are he'll struggle this year. I like Pierre's career average season numbers. He's established and young enough where I'll go by that above anything else.

Whatever, I still like Pierre and am glad he will be in center for the rest of they year. He's the best guy we have for center and leadoff, and he's off to a little bit of a slow start, so what. If the Cubs made decisions on such short amounts of games Marshall would have been sent down for pitching bad.

Junior's gonna get on base here.

I'd be happy with that. Yeah, I got it dead on!

I assume he is out today at least. Barrett, like Lee, deserves his own injury thread.

My expectations are 5 innings 3 ER 5 Ks

Haven't seen this posted yet. Hopefully we don't lose him to the DL.

No Cubs fan should be unhappy with the record of this team despite the injuries. They are on pace for over 100 wins, so they are exceeding expectations had they had Prior, Wood and Lee healthy.

Agreed. Here's how the rotation looks to me for the rest of the season: Zambrano Maddux Marshall Wood/Guzman-Hill Prior/Miller

I for one am glad it's Guzman over Hill. Hill may be off to a better start, but how many opportunities have we had to start a healthy Guzman? Furthermore, although some may not agree with me, I think you treat Guzman like a major league pitcher who is rehabing, so you don't really look at the numbers as much. He's proven he's a big league starter to me over the years despite not making his debut until now.

Miller is already looking like a Cub pitcher. It's starting to look like: Wood: mid-May Miller: June Prior: Sometime between June 1 and October 1

Why people boo Jones so early, I have no idea. Patterson and Neifi have about the same career OPS and Neifi is a SS. That illustrates just how bad a hitter Patterson is, so it shouldn't be surprising he was booed. He is on a big hot streak though (4 for last 17). Neifi's numbers aren't that bad compared to previous Cubs shortstops, and Neifi isn't even the starter.

I agree. One superstar player is not a substitute for a quality team of players. Felix is good, but we would be mortgaging the teams future. To further put in perspective, we'd be giving up a pretty good reliever, plus the #1, 2, 4, 5, and 7 prospects in our system(BA rankings). I definately don't think you should trade 5 of your best young prospects for a player that is only going to take the field once out of every five days. I could maybe see doing it with a position player like Pujols, MAYBE. But that had better be one hell of a player. Also you have to consider the injury risk. If your one star player gets injured, you're screwed. Whereas if you keep those five prospect and one gets injured, you still have the other four. In baseball, one player doesn't win you a championship. The same goes for football. However, if this was basketball, then it might be worth it since one player can completely change a franchise (re: Michael Jordan). I bet the odds are fairly good that one of those five players will make multiple All Star games in his career and another could make one or two. Throw in an average everyday player, and have the other two washout, and that is still three players that make contributions to your team. So like I said, I would maybe do it for a position player but I would never make that trade for any pitcher. Unless he's going to make 70-80 starts in a year and throw 450 innings. Then I would consider it. But I highly doubt we'll ever see another pitcher like that. I see that as the best case scenerio, not a given. I also see Felix Hernandez making multiple all star games as a given. Still not worth it. Look at what the Herschel Walker trade did to those teams. If that isn't a clear example of why you shouldn't leverage the future of your franchise against one player, then I don't know. And in that situation, it's not like Walker stunk or was hurt and washed out of the league right after the trade. Even if Felix's best case scenario turns out, it still likely won't be a great move. Thus far, Felix is off to a slow start, allowing 4 hrs in 21 innings, a WHIP of 1.33, ERA around 4.5 while going 0-3. The kid is probably going to be a stud, but given his success in 12 starts last year, alot of people had him penciled in as running away with the AL Cy Young. My point is, young phenoms are too unpredictable, and to gut your farm on one is taking a serious, serious, foolish gamble with the future of your franchise. The best case scenario in a trade like that is you give up what becomes a few good players for a stud, the worst case scenario is you bankrolled the future of your franchise on what could become a flameout/injury washout. The trade in the original post would be an extremely foolish one to make, IMO. Yeah, you're right, kind of like if someone else tried to trade for Prior.

There is no way Marshall will get sent down, unless he is hurt. Marshall's WHIP is pretty good and beside a couple bad innings he has looked better than any 5th starter option the Cubs currently have. Yeah, he and Rusch are very similar so far. I'd like to see Marshall get another start though and see what happens.

In place of who in the rotation though, Rusch or Marshall?

Well, if you think this team is gonna play alright the next few weeks+, I understand that and wish I was as optimistic. I think the current roster is good enough to win 40% of their games. If Wood, Prior and Miller were coming back soon, I'd agree with you about waiting to see what happens.

What's so bad about drunk people and hot girls around? That's quality entertainment, IMO.

I was very encouraged by the outcome despite the Bulls making some stupid mistakes and key players underperforming. If Haslem gets suspended even one game, that would be huge. If Wade misses more than one game, the Heat are done IMO. The Bulls are obviously the underdog, but with the problems Miami is devoloping, things could get interesting.

Either way, when it comes to top players like Dunn and Cabrera, I think we should give them whatever they want from us in prospects, no matter how ridiculous it might seem. And yeah, the Cubs always had "bad" farm systems before, but they always trusted those players to start and make key contributions instead of trading them when they had value.

Maybe. I'm of the opinion that every player is available if you are willing pay enough. I think if we offered Florida 5-10 guys from our Baseball America top 10, at some point they would say yes. Now, I know a lot of people will say "Good thing you aren't the GM", etc. Fact is though, the team would actually have a good chance at a championship for the next few years for once.

I think Chandler needs to be really physical with Shaq (elbows, step on his feet, etc.). If we can get him banged up and frustrated, I think we have a shot.

Good point. I have no idea why some people would rather wait for the prospects to develop and hope we get lucky and have a top team that way. We tried that strategy for about 100 years. Let's try something else, just once.

*Ding, Ding, Ding* Give the poster that gets it a cigar. This seems like a passive strategy though. Let them struggle and fall out of contention and then determine a deal doesn't have to be made (at least not with us being the buyer).

I agree with Soul. This team looks deflated. The only cure is a blockbuster trade to spark them.

I'm glad to see there are others that support the idea of using the prospects to improve the club. Who cares what Pie, Pawalek, Epatt, Hill become. Cabrera is Cabrera.