badnews

The problem is I don't think that's true. I think most teams are pretty much age-appropriate. It's better than having him back in Daytona pretending that he can catch, I think. A .789 OPS and the most incredible strikeout rate I can remember seeing means he should be rewarded rather than penalized, I think. This Vitters business just shows a lack of confidence it seems. Mike Moustakas is already in A. Chris Marrero is in High A. Now that is promoting. If the Cubs had Marrero maybe he'd be in Peoria this year. I don't see why your best talent can't move fast if you had the confidence to draft them, like pretty much every team does. For the record my biggest complaint is having Hernandez at Peoria again.

Why can't people stop saying Beane only wants OBP and plate discipline? He wouldn't have taken Carlos Gonzalez from the Diamondbacks if that were true. But anyway, it doesn't matter, not going to happen.

Yes, and we were supposed to have 20 steals off of Kendall by now, remember? He wasn't supposed to be stealing off of us.

I'm sorry, but it does seem like being an apologist. you and California Raisin both. One the Raisin side of the ball, the Dodgers weren't just aggressive with their best prospects, they were aggressive with a lot of their talent. I can't figure out the Hernandez thing. I still haven't seen an explanation as to why Scott Taylor made Daytona last year, but Hernandez can't now? There are a lot of examples like these. Clevenger hit amazingly in Daytona, look at those strikeouts, plus that .789 OPS. I think they're stunting his growth by making him repeat Daytona, it's a mistake. I think we all know he's not going to be a catcher, and this is going to prove to be a waste like pretending Jake Fox could catch. I think you're right, it's going to be 1b/DH for Clevenger. Castillo should be playing a lot, so why shouldn't Clevenger go to Tennessee? No reason. Look at how old those guys are though.

Have you ever noticed it seems like 9/10 times when we as a Cub fanbase shoot off our fat mouths about something, it comes back to bite us in the ass? All I heard about since the Brewers signed Kendall was about how we were going to embarrass him, and in a debate about someone's stolen base totals (Felix Pie, maybe?) someone said 17 steals and another guy said "Pie will have 17 steals off Kendall alone." But in today's game Kendall handled himself well and even he stole a base yesterday. Meanwhile he caught Fukudome stealing when some people were projecting him for 20. The Brewers ran us ragged, not the other way around. We had the speed guys on. Another reason I think Roberts is a little overrated - we rarely utilize speed correctly anyway. But my point is (if this rambling has one) why do we shoot off our mouths when this so often happens?

Harden is injured too often to pay a king's ransom for him.

And they move up the wrong guys, like Donald Waters, wasn't he the youngest Cub in Daytona? Come on. If Donald Waters but not anyone else? That's the guy you'll try and make the jump with? Or Scott Taylor? Scott Taylor can handle Daytona but not Robert Hernandez? BAH.

In an earlier topic someone posted the prospective rosters, and they were full of too many aggressive promotions to be true. Sigh. Seeing the minor league rosters every season is like getting a lump of coal in your stocking every Christmas. S-l-o-w promoting. I wish we could be more like the Dodgers or even the Mariners. I like the Mariners style of promoting. It's inexcusable to me that Vitters is starting in short season. Inexcusable. Who puts a Top 5 high school hitter in short season the year after he's drafted. Nobody, that's who. If he doesn't look ready, then he's already a mistake. No, it's not too much to ask your Top 3 selection to go to full season. The mighty Robert Hernandez is REPEATING a level? Come on, what is this? How can you talk up a guy like that then have him repeat a level? Glaciers move quicker than this. Donaldson can't skip a level, no, he's got to be a 23 year old in High A. Steve Clevenger already put a Shaft-like badass hurtin' on Daytona, why is he still there? Remove the umbilical cord on some of these guys. Kyle Reynolds already beat up Tennessee. This is why the Dodgers end up with so many top prospects. They promote guys quickly, they live up to the challenge and succeed, whereas with the Cubs, we have to keep them buried for what can only be described as geologic time, look at how the Mariners promoted Asdrubal Cabrera, if he were with the Cubs he'd still be the Midwest League probably. It's time to get some guys who are young for their levels. Rhee is nice, okay. Tony Thomas is nice. The rest is deplorable. Too many guys with some hope to their futures are being held back by guys with none. Seriously, who is keeping Kyle Reynolds out of Iowa? Who is keeping Robert Hernandez out of the Daytona rotation? Let's get things moving. I think the right guys will live up to a challenge instead of being sandbagged and not being able to see any progress.

The official season of making excuses for Saint Kerry has begun! No Cub has done so little for so much adoration. He has proven nothing to me about his greatness as a reliever, let alone as a closer. Yet he gets treated like Mariano Rivera. He took a 1 year deal worth $4 million plus incentives to stay here, and this means he tends to orphans on the streets of Calcutta. Give me a break. Hendry probably promised him the closer job, which he might be hard-pressed to get elsewhere and he figured he could raise his value next year for his work this year. Somehow the fact that he can't stay healthy and he doesn't even look particularly great as a reliever when he is healthy has bamboozled 95% of Cubs fans into thinking this guy is the #1 badass. No Cub gets more free passes and excuses. "Oh he can't come in in non-save situations." I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot of these kinds of bogus excuses this year.

I prefer we take the chance. And you can't expect me to not to be frustrated that we have stupid people running the show. I just don't care for the way you frame the issue, like taking Barton is just one gigantic hassle and we're better off not taking a risk in a win-win situation. I don't even think it's a given that Reed Johnson is better than Barton. Furthermore, that's one of the problems with this organization - they don't think past one year. That's one of the reasons why we haven't won a World Series in so long. As for Lahey, there were probably better pitchers out there, but Hendry again went with another one of his weird "the experts don't agree/we've never heard of him" picks. Just like he does in the June draft. Baseball America says to spend your bonus baby money on guys like Jordan Walden, Lars Anderson, and Matt Latos, what does Hendry do? Gives more money to Huseby (who? where was he on the radar? Nowhere?) than Walden and Anderson got. Great. Walden and Anderson are already top prospects with Latos close behind. More money and opportunities flushed down the crapper because of Hendry's "hunches." Baseball America says take Travis Snider. Hendry takes Tyler Colvin. Who? What? Wasn't he projected in the early 2nd round? Now Snider is the 5th best position prospect in baseball (we don't need help in that area, of course) and Colvin looks like the #15 prospect in better organizations. So yeah, when Hendry continues to take the no-name over the expert pick and it continually backfires on him, I'm going to be frustrated. I just can't believe no one else is.

No, it's stupid, it's very stupid. I think the fact that only Tim has expressed any anger about this shows how low standards have dropped among Cubs fans. Hell, look at the Baseball Board, there's a topic that congratulates Jim Hendry for not signing Barry Zito. Isn't this great? On other teams they give their GM accolades for making good moves. Over here we say he's good because he isn't responsible for every bad signing in baseball. Here's my problem with this - it's the same old crap from Hendry. Step 1 - A draft comes up. Step 2 - Baseball America makes its recommendations. Step 3 - Jim Hendry takes a guy no one has ever heard of that usually fits in with some bizarre drafting idiosyncracy of his (a catcher converted to a pitcher, a 6'6 righthander from Notre Dame, somebody from the southeast, like Virginia or around the Tampa area, etc.) Step 4 - Baseball America turns out to be more on the ball than Hendry 9/10. This is the same thing again. We should've taken one of the Baseball America approved guys, yes, like Barton. The excuses people make are just bending over backwards for Hendry. "We wouldn't have liked giving a Rule 5 guy a spot over Murton." That's not the point. We're wasting the spot anyway on nothing Fontenot who doesn't have plus speed or plus defense or even play more than one position or do anything at all or contribute anything. And when it comes down to it, our farm system is not great and I'd like a shot at robbing someone else's. The above comment says about Josh Hamilton "Hindsight is 20-20." Oh boy. I can't wait for someone to say that about Barton. "He had a microfracture, at the time no one thought he would be a good pick, etc." Let's all just re-write history to accomodate Jim Hendry. Even aside from Barton, I thought Bierd or Fernando Hernandez would've been better picks than Lahey. But people don't seem to care much. The chance to grab quality talent and improve the team shouldn't be looked upon so lightly. The Cubs just nickel-and-dime away too many opportunities. I wonder, for example, what the bullpen would look like with Bierd and Blevins in the mix. Or heck, Callix Crabbe is probably more useful on a roster than Fontenot and I didn't even think much of the choice. I don't think this organization knows how to manage a roster. Remember when the Cubs put catcher Jose Reyes on the 40 man roster? And people tried to double-talk that there was probably a reason, even though he was awful and no one gave a crap about him? And then a year later he was off, there was no good reason, it was just foolishness. And now Adam Harben. This guy shouldn't be on the 40 man roster. I think the last time I heard so much talk, so much equivocating and double-talk about a guy who did so little was Luke Hagerty. At least Randy Wells was healthy.

I guess I didn't understand the question... since you mentioned LaPorta being stuck behind Braun I thought we were talking about prospects who would make a major league impact.

Jason Heyward is already major league ready?! Good Lord.

So, pardon for not keeping up with the topic, but as far as I can tell, all of the aggressive promotions listed earlier in the topic (guys skipping one level and such) are turning out to be wrong, correct? No Wellington Castillo at Tennessee, no Antigua at Boise, no Burke at Daytona, etc?

Let me be honest my friends. I have grown weary of this facade where we all pretend that no one is more clutch than anyone else. I am tired of pretending that poor Casey Blake is just "unlucky" and we need to take Jeff Francoeur to Vegas. It seems totally disingenuous to pretend that Casey Blake and Jeff Francoeur are equally "clutch." Francoeur has been what some might term "clutch" for 3 years now. Casey Blake has been pathetically, miserably "un-clutch" for eons now. Casey Blake might be the least clutch hitter I have ever seen in my life. But the Baseball Illuminati will not allow us to acknowledge this. Why? Is Casey Blake more likely than Jeff Francoeur to have a better BA or OPS with RISP than with the bases empty? Of course not. He hasn't done it in his career, ever, and Francoeur has done it every year he's been in the league. To me, saying that clutch doesn't exist is tantamount to saying that no one is any more likely than Casey Blake to exceed his bases empty numbers (or, to a lesser extent, his career rate numbers) with RISP or what have you. And that just looks like people lying to themselves to me.

When posting: "Page cannot be found" "Thread didn't exit" "Invalid form submitted" When viewing: Something about a 30 second something exceeded. It seems to work better during the day but, like the mogwai after midnight, this site is just an ordeal then. Anyone else having these problems, any solutions?

I like the fact that he's the fastest man in baseball but a crappy basestealer. He stole 9 bases and got caught 8 times in 2007, stole 10 bases and got caught 6 times in 2006. So in the past two years he's got 19 steals with 14 caught. Meanwhile, in the past two years Adam Dunn has 16 steals with 2 caught. Well utilized speed, huh? Maybe one of these years they'll have him work with a basestealing coach?

I have a difficult time believing some of those aggressive promotions are accurate.

I don't understand either why people think adding Roberts to this lineup makes it a Murderer's Row. I don't even think it would be better than 2004 on paper. Someone posted the OBPs, how about the OPSs: c - Michael Barrett - .826 OPS 1b - Derrek Lee - .860 2b - Todd Walker - .820 ss - Nomar Garciaparra - .819 3b - Aramis Ramirez- .951 lf - Moises Alou - .919 cf - Corey Patterson - .771 rf - Sammy Sosa - .832 Let us think on that. What kind of National League lineup has 7 out of 8 starters with an OPS above .819? So forget this "Roberts in that lineup would be AWESOME" jazz, this lineup just kicks the crap out of that one. 7 out of 8 starters with an OPS above .819, find that in the NL. Oh yeah, and the "weak link," Corey, Brian Roberts could put up the same essential numbers as Corey did that year, this year, and he'd be heralded as a savior. Granted the SLG/OBP is going to different, but I don't think anyone on here would be surprised if Brian Roberts finished the 2008 season with a .771 OPS and 32 steals, 9 caught. Those look like very reasonable numbers.

Maybe if we don't play jerk around for 3 months on this we don't have a problem. That's a bad quote, no way around it. But most players don't have to put up with this crap for this long either. I agree with Mojo. You talk out of line on this team, you often get traded for peanuts. This has been fabulously handled. We can pay out the ass for Roberts, trade DeRosa for a 25 year old Low A pitcher, and not even have the greatness of the "improved bench" everyone was touting. Letting this issue linger for this long (with this organization) was just asking for something bad to happen.

I'm not sure I see what that has to do with my post. I'm talking about having the guts to put an end to an asinine situation where you're being jerked around. Three months and they're "starting to" get frustrated because "they don't know what it will take to get the trade done?" Maybe if you don't know that after three months you should stop negotiating with the lunatics. It's weak. You get jerked around for that long and don't walk away, that's gutless to me. It would be like if, Doug Melvin, after being told it would take Rickie Weeks to get Chad Cordero from Washington, if he continued to negotiate with Bowden for months on end. Yeah, that doesn't make you look pathetic. Like I said, who would continue to put up with this crap? I see too much of this, "Orioles are still scouting players," "Orioles are still deciding who they want," "Cubs don't know what it will take to get this trade done," enough already, it's been enough for a long time. I don't see what is difficult to understand about this. If you have something I want, but you're an unreasonable ass to me in negotiations, I continue to discuss it with you. I don't understand why people aren't grasping the idea of having some pride and dignity about this. By all means let's continue to indulge in the Orioles' masturbatory negotiations instead of hard-lining them after 3 months, that shows an organization that operates with some self-respect.

Does anyone still question why I feel like Jim Hendry is acting like the gutless wonder? 3+ months and, according to the bold part, the Cubs still don't have a good idea of what it would take to get this trade done? Are you kidding me? Who the hell puts up with this nonsense? I wonder if when Jim Hendry was in the dating scene he let his girlfriends pawn all of his stuff, steal all his money, and cheat on him, but he'd still be trying to reconcile. I like that *only now* after 3 months of not knowing anything despite working on this, is frustration beginning to mount, roughly 2 months after anyone with a brain and some ganas would have abandoned this stupid game.

And now it looks like it's a distraction for nearly everyone. There's great reason to halt things, the Cubs have been jerked around like spineless losers on this thing for too long. Maybe that's why. Yeah, I call foul on that. Saint Roberts has now expressed public frustration over this too, and if DeRosa's comments rank a 5 on the 1-10 "unacceptability scale" then Roberts' comments are a 4, 4.5. So while you were crapping on DeRosa you've inadvertently crapped on buddy Roberts. Agreed. Hendry comes off as a weak and ineffectual milquetoast. If Richard Hidalgo hits like he did in 2003 that'd be a pretty good pick-up. Like the guys the Giants got for Pierzynski and so forth? I don't get this line of thinking. If a guy isn't in Baseball America's Top 10 he isn't worth anything. Look at what players have been traded for lately - guys like Tejada and Roberts *shouldn't* be getting these fantastic packages people are raving about. They balked on the Tejada deal for a long time and that's why they got what they did. So more balking hardly seems to be the answer. Not a terrible idea. Yeah, once we get that career .351 OBP at the top of the lineup we're World Series favorites. Sounds about right.

Like I said, the Orioles are crackpots. I can't imagine any good GM humoring them for as long as we have.

I'm pretty sure not all, that there was a major or minor leaguer.