Elrhino

You can clearly hear Theo yelling 'My constructed roster is wicked pissah!' in the audio.

I guess Szczur would get the final bench spot for pinch running & outfield defense, if Schwarber is going to play more catcher? There's really no need to continue the Baez outfield experiment.

That isn't going to happen. At a minimum, he will be a defensive super-sub. I could see Maddon close out games with a lead with Zobrist shifting to LF and Javy at 2B. That would be a hell of a defense.

Amazing. This will also allow the vendors more time to sells beers, which means more money for the Cubs to spend, which means yet more amazing signings...resulting in even MORE beer being drunk! Also more pitching changes, meaning more commercial breaks, meaning more ad revenue, meaning new television rights worth fiftyleven billion.

Fowler - CF - 20th Among All Qualified MLBers in Pitches Per Plate Appearance Heyward - RF - 72nd Among All Qualified MLBers in Pitches Per Plate Appearance Rizzo - 1B - 55th Among All Qualified MLBers in Pitches Per Plate Appearance Bryant - 3B - 21st Among All Qualified MLBers in Pitches Per Plate Appearance Schwarber - LF - 9th Among All MLBers with at least 250 PAs in Pitches Per Plate Appearances Zobrist - 2B - 30th Among All Qualified MLBers in Pitches Per Plate Appearance Russell - SS - 14th Among All Qualified MLBers in Pitches Per Plate Appearance Montero - C - 32nd Among All MLBers with at least 400 PAs in Pitches Per Plate Appearance We are going to wear some pitching staffs out.

Especially since I would have been fine with DFAing Castro 5 months ago.

Well, the fact that we would still have Rizzo, Bryant, Russell and Schwarber is kinda big in this scenario. If we trade Castro and Soler, then they are simply trading the two worst guys of our "core," depending on if you consider Javy a part of the core. They aren't trading away the cheap, young stars. In fact, Starlin isn't really any of those things. His salary isn't really cheap anymore. It's not prohibitive or expensive really. But, he isn't pre-arb, like those other guys. And he is what he is now. He's just a guy that happens to be kinda young and under contract for awhile. Trading a guy like Soler might bite us. But, he's like our fourth or fifth best pre-arb guy, anyway. And he hasn't done anything to prove that he is anywhere near the level of the guys we are actually keeping. That's not how it works though. Zobrist isn't that much better than good Castro. He's not that much better than bad Castro and Baez (who would presumably take over for bad Castro at 2B), that you pay him 19Mil more over the next 4 years with 10 years of age on his side. And there's no law that you can only have 4 good pre-arb players. And if I'm trading a good pre-arb player, I want a similarly good pre-arb player at a bigger position of need. It's swapping out Starlin for Zobrist for $15 million more over the next four years + whatever we get back in a Starlin trade. I think it is brilliant. Just the insurance against having one of the worst position players in baseball when bad Castro appears (for many months at a time) is worth it for a team that can be the best in the NL for the next three years

I still can't believe Javy, Soler, Bryant, Rizzo, Shwarber and Castro all donged in Wrigley in front of the hometown fans in their first playoff series taking down the freakin Cardinals . What a payoff for following these kids progress through the system and into and their early careers. If someone were to write it into a screenplay you would make fun of them for being too over the top and cheesy.

I still can't believe Javy, Soler, Bryant, Rizzo, Shwarber and Castro all donged in Wrigley in front of the hometown fans in their first playoff series taking down the freakin Cardinals . What a payoff for following these kids progress through the system and into and their early careers. If someone were to write it into a screenplay you would make fun of them for being too over the top and cheesy.

I still can't believe Javy, Soler, Bryant, Rizzo, Shwarber and Castro all donged in Wrigley in front of the hometown fans in their first playoff series taking down the freakin Cardinals . What a payoff for following these kids progress through the system and into and their early careers. If someone were to write it into a screenplay you would make fun of them for being too over the top and cheesy.

Fark it. Lock everyone up for the next 30 years. BOBBY BONILLA CONTRACTS FOR EVERYONE !!!

Get used to it Cards fans. You'll be watching this for the next few years.

But But Harold Reynolds told me only small ball works in the playoffs.

Hopefully teams are busy talking themselves into the idea that he can rebound with his bat, and don't bother to notice that how badly he's deteriorating as a shortstop.

Tommy Birch ‏@TommyBirch 12m12 minutes ago Hearing that Pevey was tossed arguing a ball Baez hit that was first ruled a HR and then reversed to foul. Details sketchy. I'm not there.

What do you think league average hitting for a catcher is these days?

Remember last August when the cool thing to do was laugh at all the meatball fans who were inevitably going to hate Baez based on completely predictable struggles when he got his first call up? And now in only a few months its gone from "Javy Does Whatever the F He Wants" to "Javy is Horrible At Baseball" after ~200 official ML at bats at 21 years of age? Je Suis Meatball.

So sexy, BA just moved him into the Top 50 of their top rookie prospects.

And framed huge strikeouts. But Persunulhz catcherz!!!111ONEZ

Lester and maybe Wood. His framing is especially strong with left handed pitchers who need to cut low and in to righties.

http://espn.go.com/blog/chicago/cubs/post/_/id/29029/schwarber-wood-highlight-day-1-of-games

Jed and McLeod were heading the Padres front office through October 2011. Hard to explain why the Cubs were so late in the game implementing it. I guess they were holding out hope Welly could get better.

Are the Phils going to be trading prospects? Even mid level ones? Shouldn't they be trying to shed payroll? Neither Welly or Wood would be long term money commitments. Welly could be a nice steal depending how how much (or how little) your org values pitch framing. Wood could be flipped if he rebounds back more towards 2013 level performance.

...despite his high OBP, especially for his position. This caused me to ask myself who the opposite of Dusty Baker would be? Yes, because his career BB% is still 5.2%. Meaning his OBP is almost entirely dependent on a high BABIP. Like I said, if he maintains his significant jump in career high LD% and HR/FB% from 2014 because he turned some corner in development, great. If it turns out he was just having a one off really good year hitting the baseball, he's going not going to help the team in OBP in 2015.

As someone who spent a lot of hours on RBI Baseball on NES growing up, I really liked the Bob Tewksbury comp for Hendricks. His curveball was unfair, like using Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl.