wastra

I don't think gammons is a particularly stupid guy in baseball terms. he can recognize talent and evaluate players pretty well. But I think in his rush to beat the news (get it out before it happens), he reports hearsay and rumor as fact. "My source in Houston tells me they inquired about Dunn and were told he's not available" might really mean that Houston inquired into Dunn, Cincy looekd at their scouting reports of Houston prospects and guys they suspect are available for trades, and Cincy replied "Not interested." I just think baseball guys are not as open with him as he tried to lead viewers to believe.

Gerut seems like insurance to me. I don't think they ever expected Greenberg to stay up all year. If they expected Patterson to return, they'd just keep going with what they had until he did. If they DIDN'T expect him to return, they would need to get someone else who can play a little CF. That's Gerut. That allows them to send Greenberg back down when healthy and still have a backup CF. I don't think this is a precursor OR the main deal- it's just a deal that hendry thought improved the team. Now, if a further deal IS made, gerut provides a tad bit on insurance for us if one of the people going out is an outfielder on our current roster. But if Cincy or someone else wanted gerut, they could have had him directly pretty easily without getting the Cubs involved. Dubois wasn't exactly a hot commodity (I'm not trashing him, just saying it's not like we traded a Felix Pie level prospect for Gerut).

-Reds already offered dunn to astro's. Blows that theory. -Reds have already offered dunn to astros. Blows that theory. -We know they are asking alot. -How is gerut long term, he is 28 and still hasnt done anythign special. Dunn could be long term and, finally, and most importantly... Actually, I'm hearing today that most of the Dunn stuff is rumour. The Astros inquired to the Reds about Dunn, and the Reds said he's not for sale. Granted, that's whay the reds suck and will continue to suck. They aren't willing to trade from strengths to make themselves a better ballclub. Basic baseball logic says they have 4 outfielders, all with trade value. They have zero pitching. They have very very few other players who would bring a quality pitcher in exchange other than Dunn, and maybe Pena, Griffey, and Kearns. Teams don't win without pitching. Basic logic says your trade an outfielder for one or more pitchers. But then again, the Reds suck, and they suck for a reason.

On the injury issue, I have one comment: If you're looking to buy a car, and your read the maintenance report on a 1998 Mazda that says: 2000: Brakes failed, major repairs 2001: Starter went out, small repairs 2002: Brakes failed again, more major repairs 2003: Brakes needed minor repairs 2004: Timing belt needed to be replaced Whose fault is it when you buy it have to spend lots of $$$ in repairs on the brakes and starter? The car salesman who gave you the report or your own for ignoring it and hoping for the best?

I give him credit where credit is due- mainly for creative trades, and I give blame where blame is due- mainly for seriously lacking anything approaching a plan in the offseasons. this year, for instance, we began by placing our hopes in an oft-injured shortstop, an injured closer, two pitchers coming off injury-decimated seasons, and a sketchy outfield. What happened? Our 2 pitchers got injured. Our shortstop got injured. Our closer never returned to form. Our outfield has been largely horrendous all year. How does that NOT fall into the lap of the GM? the exact things that every "expert" and casual fan said they were worreid about pre-season turned out to be the main reasons we're out of the Central race. Now I give credit to him for finding usable parts at great deals, but the fact is that despite the best crop of home-grown pitchers I've ver seen in Cubbie pinstripes playing for far less than market value most of the time, our GM has yet to build a real winner despite the league's highest payroll. Maybe this offseason will be the one that does it for us, maybe not. But our roster at the moment (and for the past 3 years) is our GM's choice of players (and manager), hence he's the guy who should get credit/blame for its results.

Well said. It's all about not making outs. Period. If we send 30 Major league caliber batters to the plate and make fewer outs than the other team, more times than not, we'll out score them, particularly if we're hitting it harder than them when we DO. (hence OBP is first, followed by slugging...AVG and Ks are secondary, less important aspects of each).

Actually, I think this dela signifies that they don't plan on recalling patterson this season. The ONLY reason to exchange Grieve for Gerut is that Gerut can play center. If the Cubs planned on recalling Patterson, they'd likely wait a few days and let Greenburg be the defensive backup rather than waste a player on Gerut. However, if they don't plan on having Patterson this year, they'd likely want another guy who can play center with a slightly better bat than Greenburg (I'm not trashing his bat, just saying that he's probably not quite ready for the majors, and being in the minors will help him GET ready). So, IMO, Gerut is the season long answer to backup CF and provide somewhat of a lefty bat on the bench. Nothing more.

I think Lloyd McClendon might give them both a run for their money.

As otehrs have said, he's basically Harston with a strogner arm...a natural centerfielder instead of a covnerted infielder. I don't think that's worth trading for or paying more than a couple million for. That's not to say he's a bad player, just that we already have someone very similar to him. He'd be redundant.

I'd have to say that without help, we won't win the WC. It's great to look at how we've played the past 2 series, but in all honesty, that's just a symptom of the entire season- two weeks of great ball, two weeks of bad ball. The bottom line is that we're going with a weak bench (the better bench players won't play anyway), a wildly unproven and inconsistant bullpen, and a streaky outfield all around. I think to help even out those streaks, we'll need one more bat and at least one solid setup man.

Anyone listen to Mike & Mike in the morning on espn radio? They read an AP story this morning that Mark Cuban has said that he wants to buy the cubs, and would look into whether the tribune would make them available. EDIT: More precisely, a reporter asked him if those reports were true, and he said "I won't deny it."

A-freakin'-Men.

I was hoping to see Ichiro. From what I hear, he puts on quite a show in batting practice (and that's what the HR derby is). People are amazed at how many HRs and how far they go when he hits them. He changes his philosophy once the game starts. Wade Boggs used to do the same thing. I've seen Ichiro take BP twice, and while he tends to hit more fly balls and the occassional homer, he does NOT dsiplay anything close to great power. He does hit lots of gappers in BP, though...screaming liners. His homers (at least the two sessions I saw) barely cleared the fence in Seattle), and they weren't all that common.

Actually, I don't think this has anything to do with throwing in the towell on this season. If they were doign that, it would have been Hubbard, IMO, called up as the backup CF and they wouldn't have wasted an option on Greenburg. Of course, this totally ignores the fact that our management of the 40-man roster has been nothing short of inept for the past 9 months or more. I think Hendry has been unable to make any solid trades, and this wound up being the only way to hopefully add something to the roster that it desperately needs- guys who get on base (hopefully). However, I have seen nothing in the 2 1/2 years of Dusty Baker that gives me any reason whatsoever to think that either of these guys will see more than 2-3 at bats over the next couple of series.

I ahve to assume it was due to Hairston's comments two days ago where he said he was frustrated and wanted to play more. Of course, IMO, benching him for it rather than fielding the best possible lineup is more childish than Hairston saying he wants to play more.

I guessed a game or two over .500, and that was with Nomar being healthy and somewhat moer productive than...totally useless. I cited: -a lack of balance in the offense (no one takes walks, the few who do won't play) -a lack of a bullpen experience, depth, and talent -a poor decision-making manager -injury plagued pitchers -one of the worst corner outfield combos in the NL We've been horribly weak at: -getting on base -closing out games, or having our pen keep us IN games -making managerial decisions -staying healthy -getting production from right and left field So...no...I'm not real surprised at all.

I think that it is a bad idea to accept "okay" from corner outfielders. You an accept "okay" production from positions like SS, Catcher, and even CF on occassion because generally, you expect a much smaller proportion of your team's offense to come from those positions. However, a below average corner outfielder is a significant drain on an offense because they SHOULD be counted upon to provide a huge percentage of your team's pop. With that in mind, I think it is imminently more important to get at least league average production from both corners than it is to get league average production from a center fielder.

I can't take it. If I see Perez leading off again, it's time to really kick this "Fire dusty" bandwagon into high gear. It is utterly inexcusable to lead off with Perez.

Where do we draw the line? Is it Baker and his coaches and they're inability to get the team to play good fundamental baseball or is it Hendry's recently poor decisions in acquiring the talent that can play that type of game? It's both. First off, You don't see many players "change" their approach, so that's not really the accusatio nagainst Baker. You don't typically find a guy who has had bad plate discipline throughout his career and is impatient suddenly become patient because the manager tells him to or vice versa. Sosa in 1998 is one of the very few exceptions to that. The problem is that the roster is assembled from guys who have bad approaches, and then those guys on that roster are horribly misused by the manager so as not to maximise the strengths they DO bring to the team. On one hand, you have a GM putting players with bad approaches on the roster. On the other, you have a manager who continues to preach that approach. Add in mismanagement of the 40-man roster, horrible logic-defying lineups and batting orders, horrible decision making with pitcher use, and absolutely no plan in the hiring of bullpen personel and you've got a recipe for exactly what we're getting- A poorly-built, poorly-managed team with 3 talented but very raw starting pitchers.

Burnitz is not a huge problem for us. Granted, he's not really throwing the lumber around, an over .800 OPS isn't gawd-awful. The problem is that with his .800 OPS, he's the 3rd or 4th best hitter on the team. Seriously- look at our lineup and think of the players independent of their positions. Lee- very Good Ramirez- very good Walker- decent, unspectacular Burnitz-average Patterson-awful Hollandsworth/Dubois- below average Neifi- horrendous Barret-average We back them up this year with stiffs like Macias, Blanco, and Wilson (all horrendous). It's one thing to keep saying "Barret is above average for a catcher so we shouldn't complain." But that assumes that there aren't gaping weaknesses elswhere in the lineup as well. "above average" for a catcher doesn't come CLOSE to the offense lost by having "below average" at the outfield corners because the average production from those positions is remarkably higher than the average catcher's production. The biggest offensive concern on this roster is that we're getting well below average aggregate production from the outfield. Period. We can individually say that any or all are not "THAT" bad, but the fact that not one of the them is even mildly above average from the positions that should provide the bulk of a team's offense is frankly a damning condemnation of our offseason roster construction.

It's hard to be too shocked. I think the majority of poster son this board and sportswriters picked us to finish a hair over .500, and that was assuming Nomar was healthy (and good) and all the pitchers were healthy. You can't trot out a team with one of hte worst outfields in the NL and a bullpen devoid of one proven releiver and a starting rotation plagued by injury and inconsistency over the past 2 years and just expect them to dominate.

They should read: Believe that and we'll tell you another one

Good. Someone within the Cubs organization needs to step up and say it. Patterson has been horrible this year but in no way is Todd Hollandsworth getting anywhere near the production that is needed out of a corner outfield spot. I don't really care what position they play as far as their production is concerned. All I care about is winning games, and it's pretty clear that Todd is helping us to win games more than Corey is. Now, if we can upgrade in left, I'd love to do it, don't get me wrong. But at this point, I don't think the Cubs will contend with Patterson playing everyday. well you are right and wrong. They need to upgrade, but they will contend because the pitchign is that good. I disagree, I don't think our offense is good enough to support our great pitching. And that doesn't make me "wrong" either. That's my opinion. I don't know how you can look at today's lineup and type that with a straight face. huh? Crap....sorry...missed the "Don't" in his post. Sorry Mizzou. :oops:

DP-SOrry

Good. Someone within the Cubs organization needs to step up and say it. Patterson has been horrible this year but in no way is Todd Hollandsworth getting anywhere near the production that is needed out of a corner outfield spot. I don't really care what position they play as far as their production is concerned. All I care about is winning games, and it's pretty clear that Todd is helping us to win games more than Corey is. Now, if we can upgrade in left, I'd love to do it, don't get me wrong. But at this point, I don't think the Cubs will contend with Patterson playing everyday. well you are right and wrong. They need to upgrade, but they will contend because the pitchign is that good. I disagree, I don't think our offense is good enough to support our great pitching. And that doesn't make me "wrong" either. That's my opinion. I don't know how you can look at today's lineup and type that with a straight face.