Mephistopheles

We're not doing this because we're not in a position to go bidding against the Yankees for pitching: Lowe. Who's got the Yankees in on Lowe? AFAIK so far the Mets are Lowe's only serious pursuer. yankees/mets same thing. you know what i mean. his market is bigger. there is no corner outfield market.

No, because that five mil saved probably goes to increases we already had on the books.

There are varying degrees of going out a limb....

So in terms of next year's team, we just traded DeRosa and Marquis for Bradley and Miles Yep. That's not good. Peavy pretty much has to happen now to make this offseason a success. Actually we've more or less traded Reed Johnson, Mark DeRosa, and Jason Marquis for Milton Bradley, Mike Fontenot and Sean Marshall. We're better off because of the moves. Personally I would have liked to have gotten different players in the Marquis and DeRosa moves but getting them moved was more important than the guys we got back. Miles though was unnecessary but in a backup role, he can't hurt us too much.

We're not doing this because we're not in a position to go bidding against the Yankees for pitching: Lowe.

It makes perfect sense. Hendry's not a dumb guy. He knows that with Fontenot and DeRosa at 2B we have two guys who are essentially the same entity. We can only play one of them. He knows that the Cubs are worse off than their win total from last year so he's trying to manuever his way around to get them to be the best they can be. He knows that he has very little wiggle room in the payroll and couldn't afford to keep Wood for ten mil. He thought Gregg would be a good addition so got the cheapest bullpen alternative. I disagree with getting Gregg and would have tried something else, but I see what he is doing. Now he knows that we got a ton of production from center last season. He knows Edmonds and Johnson aren't likely to repeat it, so he know he doesn't want to go into 2009 with the same setup in center. He figures Johnson isn't too expensive, can play all the outfield positions and hits lefties well and is worth keeping around as a fourth or fifth outfielder. He also knows that Fukudome is probably an immovable contract after the 2008 season. He knows that replacing the CF position and getting decent production via the FA market or trade market will probably be out of his price range. So he says well we can get close production at the corners at a cheaper rate. Fukudome, despite being slotted in right, can play center. Let's move him there and look at corner outfielders and do what we can. He sees that he can sign Bradley at a discount due to health concerns and replace the production in center a third of the time or so (the 33% chance or so Bradley stays healthy) and varying quantities of it the other two-thirds of the time. He thinks that this is the best bet he has to try to replace the production and make the team the best he can. The 9 or 10 mil it costs to add Bradley this year is a bit more than he can spend without moving contracts. He sees Marquis and Marshall. He sees that they are the same entity. He trades Marquis to dump some salary and pushes Marshall into the rotation. He sees DeRosa and Fontenot. They're close to the same entity as well. He trades DeRosa to dump some salary and pushes Fontenot into the 2B slot. He's now saved enough money to sign Bradley and finalize the deal and replace production out of center the best he can. The rest of it can be made up in the form of Fukudome hitting better than he did last season.

why should i assume that the chips fall into place when defending my comment when my comments were assuming that chips did not fall into place? I said as of right now..."Probably not" has not weakened because the prospect we got aren't ones that SD would covet. The two are likely unrelated. If anything, it has made the probably not more likely because we can't trade DeRosa for prospects they say they want down the road when a deal is near completion. Sorry 0 for 1. Harden for 115 innings and Marshall for the other starts? Marshall has to take Marquis starts (relatively similar production levels there). The other starts go to guys like Kevin Hart and Jeff Samardzija. Again, my original comment was that thus far that the Cubs are about 10 wins worse than they were last season. Not that the Cubs with Peavy are 10 wins worse. Basically I am saying that 1+1 is 2. You are saying no, 1 + 1 + 2 does not equal 2 because you need to assume that the +2 happened. Sorry 0 for 2. For Dempster, there's being very good, and there's being what Dempster was last season. I'd put Dempster's true level for next season somewhere right around a 4.00 RA. That IS very good. However, that difference from 2009 to last even with assuming him to be a 4.00 RA pitcher is a difference of nearly two wins alone. Sorry 0 for 3. You think Fontenot and Miles can hit .300/.380/.460 combined over 162 games? I just don't know what to say. That is inane. Fontenot could come close if he hits his 90th percentile. That's a 10% chance of happening....not very likely. Sorry 0 for 4. Um okay Marmol replaces Wood fine. Who replaces Marmol? Gregg? C'mon Gregg is trashy. The pen will be better because the rotation is better? That's dumb. The rotation is not better and the pen lost its second best piece. Those comments don't add up. Sorry 0 for 5. Funny, it's a typical Aaron Miles day at the plate for you.

Not without picking up some of his contract. These days you have to "pay" for the good prospects.

add up lines 2-4 and then insert value into line 1.

Let's see we've "signed" Milton Bradley but we haven't "officially signed" Milton Bradley. How much is he going to be per year? 10 mil or so given his health? Swapping DeRosa for Miles saves us about three million. Oh we've "traded" Marquis to Colorado, but not quite done. This is supposed to save us between five and six million. Six plus three is nine. Nine and ten are close, very very close. The most likely explanation is that we can only add a marginal amount to our payroll and that we need to move money around before we can finalize the Bradley signing. DeRosa and Marquis dumps are precursors to that.

Ooooh I know this one! Trimming the payroll.

now that weve seen the prospects. this trade has nothing to do with peavy. just a cost cutting move. peavy isnt looming

When did we finalize the trade for Peavy? We did not, have not and probably will not. Sure we'll have Harden for an entire season. How many innings does that mean nowadays anyways? He's pitched over 70 innings three times of his five major league seasons. We got that many out of him last season. If we get more than 115 innings out of him this season I would be ecstatic. When did we finalize the trade for Grady Sizemore? Because that's what we need to do if we're going to replace the production that we got from center last season. I love Milton Bradley, but the guy plays 100 games in the season less often than Rich Harden throws 100 innings in a season. That would be three times this century. If he played 140 games, okay we replace that production, assuming he hits like he normally dos. If he plays 80 games and the rest go to Micah or someone else trashy, then well we've lost a lot of production. How confident are you that Bradley stays healthy? When did we finalize the trade for a second Jake Peavy. Because that's what we're going to need to do in order to replace the production that we got from Ryan Dempster last season. Do you really think Dempster is going to do what he did last season? No one should. When did we complete the trade for Chase Utley? Because that's what we're going to need to do in order to replace the production we got at second last season. Now that DeRo is officially gone, how confident are you in Fontenot hitting .300/.378/.458? That's our production from hitters playing 2B last season. Oh, Kerry Wood is gone too.

Archer has good stuff.

Im working under the assumption that DeRosa's gone. If DeRosa's not gone then we have Fontenot and Cedeno. Do we really need a fourth second-sacker that costs 5 mil? Answer: Hell no. If Cedeno and DeRosa are out in trades, then yes we probably would be in the market for another infeilder who can back up in the middle infield. Cintron can play 3B, 2B, and is a natural SS. Mile has played all of like 35 innings over the course of five major league seasons in the outfield. Considering we have Soriano, Fukudome, Johnson, and Bradley who can all play every outfield position plus Hoff in the corners, we don't need any more versatility in the outfield. Any position player who can play SS offers the exact same flexibility that Miles offers. Rivas and Cintron do that.

Right. The Cubs are going to get the same production out of shortstop, secondbase, centerfield, two pitching spots and our bullpen. If you think that is true, then perhaps we're somewhere in the low 90s. If you think that is true. Is 88 wins really all that surprising? Everyone thought we were close to that last year when we had almost the exact same team. Then a lot of guys had outlier seasons.

just because our pythag was 98 or w/e it doesn't mean we were a 98 win team going into the offseason.

This is short-sighted and naive. There's nothing wrong with acquiring another middle infielder to back up Fontenot to allow DeRosa is traded. The problem is if we're making moves to save money and get some prospects, why in the world are we spending five million on a one million dollar player? Alex Cintron and Luis Rivas aren't noticeably worse in a backup role and will probably be getting minor league deals.

I'd be interested in seeing your stats to back up that 10-12 win regression. And it is a little hard to make any such definitive statements until you see the final team they bring to spring training. Considering we were a 90 or so win team that managed to win 97 games last season I don't have to do much. Basically, all I have to say is that Ryan Dempster's ERA needs to go up a run and that Milton Bradley isn't Carlos Beltran and Grady Sizemore and I've covered my three wins or so. I'd put the Cubs right around 88 true level, right around 90 adjusted for the NLC.

ya think. The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry

They're not likely to clear before the start of the 2009 season. Yadel Marti would be interesting, but I'd pass on them both. I would have made a run at Dayan though.

even if we sign bradley with all of the downgrades we've done this season we're a lot worse than we were last season. A good 10 to 12 wins.

Yeah Aaron Miles has shown that he can get a single 29% of the time. and that's it. He's a trashy second baseman who is more or less a replacement level player. Even if we traded DeRosa and Cedeno, there's still no excuse for this deal.

Not that I disagree or anything, but for what it is worth. Ryan Dempster has had two ASG appearances, which is two more than AJ Burnett and only one fewer than CC Sabathia.

Yes and no. Compared to the market, probably not. Compared to his most likely level of production, probably a bit.