badnews

Wait, why couldn't the 2003 Cubs make the playoffs without the Clement trade? Juan Cruz and Shawn Estes were going to keep Dontrelle Willis out of the rotation? Or we wouldn't have been close enough in the standings to trade for Ramirez? I do not believe that.

Look at his numbers without that one game pasting he took from the Yankees (how many earned runs was that?). A question: Why don't the Cubs ever seem to sign their players to contracts like these? Because we develop a lot fewer of them, yeah I know, but...

His walk rate was higher after the ASB but not crazy higher. A 174 ERA+ in 2006, 134 ERA+ in 2007, with more strikeouts than IP the past two years, he could be the closer on some teams.

Fleita talked about Vitters yesterday. I inferred that the default is Boise, unless he really rocks in camp. Talked about how you don't need to rush him; about how with Reynold, Marquis Smith, Lansford, that 3B is deep and packed; that Southern Cal boy isn't used to 20 degrees in Beloit April. So I'm guessing Vitters will need to "Wow" them to make Peoria. And if he does, you can assume he's had a rocking camp. When I think of depth of a system, I think of when the Rockies had Jeff Baker, Garrett Atkins, and Ian Stewart all at third base, or when the Angels had Erick Aybar, Hanley Statia, and Sean Rodriguez, all at shortstop. Kyle Reynolds, Smith, and Lansford seem more like warm bodies than anything to call great depth. The Lansford talk especially confuses me, he seems like organizational fodder.

Michael Wuertz is supposed to be, what, the 4th best reliever on the team and people are bellyaching about his walks? Okay. Find me a list of 4th best bullpen relievers on a team that are better than Wuertz. Guerrier... some guy on the Padres who will get his ass handed to him if he ever goes to another team... who else?

Murton in center field is not a horrible idea when considered with the Byrd-ternative. A number of lefty-mashing corner outfielders play some center when they shouldn't. Maybe not a lot, but look at Ryan Spilborghs, or however you spell his name. That dude is no center fielder. Yet, yeah, he's played there. Or Cody Ross. Not a center fielder, he still gets played there. I doubt Murton is going to look any worse in center than those two.

Let's just sign Lofton now so we don't have to trade 4 players at the deadline for him.

Amen to that. First time I read that, I thought, wow, that's a really sucky attempt to be clever.

Rich Hill is more like Al Leiter than Walter Johnson? What does that mean? It looks like fun though. Let me try. Why does everyone want Erik Bedard? He's more like Donovan Osborne than Randy Johnson. And for that matter why does everyone want Brian Roberts? He's more like Ryan Freel than Rickey Henderson. So trading for Ryan Freel and Donovan Osborne will bring the team the World Series. I think not! Here's another left field comparison - trading for Bedard is like trading for Cliff Lee after 2005. Or Odalis Perez after 2002. Or Randy Wolf after 2002.

Questions... Why is Jose Guillen worth $12 million a year, but we had to kick in money to lower Jacque Jones's salary down to $4 million and he still didn't fetch anything in return? Why was Mark Kotsay worth a real prospect when all we got for Jones was a can of magic beans? I'll be interested to hear the Hendry-friendly spin on this one. When Jones has an off year, it counts, but when Kotsay has a bad year (actually 2, his 2006 was as bad as Jones's) it doesn't count? And his crippled back doesn't factor in. I'm still irritated people actually praised this trade.

I'd say our system is well-below average. You look at other teams around the 6-7 spots and you're dazzled, with us, it's blah. Anyway, has anybody said that Josh Vitters' perfect world comparison is Nomar Garciaparra as a hitter (when he was good)? That's what I think whenever I read the Vitters scouting reports, that his upside is something like Garciaparra 2002.

I remember when I liked Jason Jennings as sort of the poor man's Jake Westbrook. That was not a wise assessment and I don't even see where I came up with that now. It probably didn't help that I was a bigger Westbrook fan than most people. I thought he would've had a better 2007 than he did. Oh well.

I don't know anything about Russell but the above description sounds like Henry Sanchez from the Twins or Cody Johnson from the Braves, what was said about them at draft time.

Geoff Jones's K/9 and G/F rates make him mildly intriguing despite his age.

Seems like hardball to me. The White Sox have a crap farm system and that didn't stop them from getting an extremely attractive deal for Swisher, who has a contract that can only be called mind-boggling. The equivalent situation would be, if the Tigers called up the Braves to ask about Renteria, and the Braves demanded Andrew Miller and Joel Zumaya and Cameron Maybin. I mean really. What is this Pie or Colvin, Marshall or Gallagher, and Marmol or Hill nonsense we're getting from the Orioles?

It would be very difficult to fail to reproduce last year's CF numbers, methinks. Should be stronger on either side, with Sori a full year in his best defensive position and Fukudome instead of the madness that was RF last year. I'm actually starting to warm up to our outfield for the first time in years. If Pie even hits marginally it will be much, much better from what I can see. The Cubs got an aggregate .710 OPS from CF last year. I don't think Pie is going to be much, much better than that. Just my opinion.

That sounds like bad logic to me. To me that sounds like "We should have Charles Johnson as Soto's back-up so the organization won't be tempted to replace Soto." Or "We should get Denny Neagle as the 5th starter to give Gallagher and Marshall a legitimate shot at winning the battle." The defensive numbers I'm looking at say he's awful in CF pretty much all of the time. In 2006 Byrd hit lefties worse than righties, at a .627 OPS clip. In 2004, about the same as righties, .610 OPS. About the same in 2007 and 2003. His career OPS vs. lefties is .757 and against righties it's .717. That's a crappy lefty-masher. Angel Pagan could do that, play better defense, and we wouldn't have to trade for him. What's Byrd going to cost? Maestri or Atkins? I'd rather keep them than have this kind of "upgrade." I just get sick of all the useless, non-upgrade bench tinkering, like when Hendry had to fool around and spend 3 weeks chasing Chris Woodward around this time. It's Chris Woodward, who gives a crap? Same thing for Byrd.

This is why I wasn't particularly pleased with the Angel Pagan trade, because I figured it was a prelude to wasting time chasing someone not any better, and Marlon Byrd probably isn't any better. He's a horrid center fielder. You can pretty easily see us giving up too much. No joke, we would've been better off with Craig Monroe (yes, Craig Monroe) or keeping Angel Pagan than bothering with trading for Byrd.

Not out of the realm of possibility, but I'm less optimistic. Something around .814 sounds more reasonable to me. Soto with improve the line at catcher, can Pie and the crappy platoon partner replicate last year's mediocre CF numbers? It seems likely.

Wow, are people demanding. Remember when Jake Peavy put up a 99 ERA+ in 2006? People would have been saying "Look, he's no good." And Jake Peavy is like the worst big game pitcher in baseball, people would be saying "Get another two guys as good as Peavy is during the regular season to make up for the fact that he's a headcase choker." And so forth. Okay, Jeremy Bonderman. I don't really believe any pitcher can be so "unlucky" for so long. I think he is a guy that may have some mental or focus issues. He had a 3.48 ERA the first half and a 7.38 ERA the second half in 2007. In 2006, he had a 3.46 ERA with a 1.14 WHIP the first half, a 4.87 ERA with a 1.49 WHIP the second half. 3.99 ERA, 1.24 WHIP the first half of 2005, a 5.61 ERA and a 1.56 WHIP the second half. If Rich Hill had a bad attitude when guys got on base, his LOB % wouldn't be so high at 75.3%. Bonderman is always below 70% and was at around 65% this year. So Bonderman pretty much craps out every 2nd half, which isn't a good sign, as you'd think this many years, the preparation should be better, and he's losing his free pass - he's been in baseball too many years for this, young or not. The Tigers would be wise to lock Bonderman up, otherwise it's easy to forsee him breaking this pattern right before free agency and then ka-ching. Well, ka-ching either way, but a bigger ka-ching. Anyway, back to the Cubs. Cub RFs had an aggregate .795 OPS in 2007, so maybe the increase won't be as much as people think. GMs seem to be making reasonable trades, but as soon as they talk to Jim Hendry they suddenly become unreasonable.

Matt Cain should cost less than Tim Lincecum, correct? It'd be great to get him. Of course since our 2007 draftees can't be traded yet, and at this juncture we wouldn't be able to replace Geovany Soto, it would seem quite difficult.

Mike Cameron was a very good acquisition for the Brewers at that price, very good indeed. I think after a few months of Felix Pie and Sam Fuld we could be wishing we had went down that road. I don't buy that Suppan, Bush, and Capuano are a back of the rotation that makes you step back and go "Whoa, time to give up the season." Even if they are healthy or whatever.

I think Lieber's 1999-2002 numbers say nothing useful about him right now. Lieber's nearing that vaunted John Thomson point in his career.

Not that exciting, he just lists the Cubs along with some other teams. Anyway, it seems like an odd move to me. Cabrera's value is about as high as anybody's right now seemingly, and at the price he seems like a risk. Also the Yankees are my least favorite team and I wouldn't like to do anything to help them out. Rosenthal also listed the Reds: "Cabrera, 23, is part of the Yankees' offer for Santana, but could fit for several teams that are in the market for a young, affordable, switch-hitting center fielder. Those teams include the Cubs, Reds, Braves, Royals and Pirates." What, the Reds just traded a young, affordable, left-handed hitting center fielder for a prospect Baseball America really scoffed over (especially Jim Callis) so they could trade a fortune to get a guy who turn around when he occasionally faces a lefty? Yeah, that makes sense, the Reds trading a lot for another outfielder.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong (again), but it doesn't look like there's a lot of room for the Kendall pick to drop. What's the worst it could end up, 6 Type Bs unsigned, right, haven't checked whether they have a better or worse record than us, so... worst case scenario, around 45? There have been a *lot* of good players available at the #45 pick in the draft.