CubColtPacer

Oh, I'm sure they have the ok to do it. But I'm guessing the approval is that if you feel you can bunt for a hit, you can do it. Bradley has tried bunting more in a variety of situations lately. Lou is not a big sacrifice bunt guy, but the players have shown that they are encouraged to learn how to bunt for hits. The pitchers do it more than any other team in the league, and players like Kosuke, Theriot, and Bradley also try it from time to time.

Lou both wants enough power hitters in the middle spots and balance in the lineup. Fukudome at 5 accomplished both those things better than him at the number 1 spot. The Cubs actually only used that combination of Fukudome/Bradley twice (and of course with Lou's quick hook, it didn't help the case that the team scored a combined 3 runs in those 2 games). I have never agreed with him on this, but to Lou the integrity of the middle of the lineup is more important than the top or the bottom. The top and the bottom are then arranged as best as possible with the pieces that are left. I think it would still be a close decision either way if Soriano or Soto were hitting better. With them both struggling, it helps neutralize one of Kosuke's best assets (his walks) and makes him much more suited for leadoff on this particular team.

I tend to give players a long leash (so I'm not really supporting booing that early) but to be fair, that was after a miserable April for Bradley in all respects. He was hitting horribly. He got thrown out of a game for arguing. He didn't hit the DL in April despite only playing 1 full game in a 16 day period. He complained that the media was treating him unfairly and refused to talk to them for a day or two. Everything that could go wrong for Bradley did go wrong. The fact that the fans gave him a month showed that it was nothing like the Jones situation (where the fans booed him after 3-4 days). If it hadn't all come together in the first month, they might have given him a little bit longer. I do hope Bradley comes back next year though. He's regularly making solid contact now which is something he wasn't doing the first two months of the year. I think he would have a much better overall year next year.

Tennessee has a good shot at making the playoffs while Iowa doesn't. They aren't going to take a key player out of a playoff chase (and have to make a corresponding roster move with another player) just to give him 10-15 games with his new minor league club.

You have to offer arbitration to free agents if you want compensation picks if they sign elsewhere. What is the rationale for this? If you don't offer arbitration and free agents sign elsewhere, why don't you get compensation picks in that case? The rationale is that teams only get compensated if they actually want the player to come back. The team shows that they want the player by being willing to offer 1 year for a reasonable amount of money. This standard is similar to other leagues, although it takes very different forms (for example the NFL does restricted free agency with 3 levels of compensation. The more a team is willing to pay a player the more compensation they receive if they lose him.).

Yea of course. And its just a coincidence that they were on vacation to Detroit(since when is this a vacation spot?) where worldwide Wes is from. Completely coincidence. Is it really hard to believe that a kid from Chicago would travel to Detroit to watch a Detroit/Chicago playoff game? You have to register for the SAT's a month before the test. He wouldn't have known that there was going to be a playoff game there when he picked his site for the test. Even if he was able to change his site last minute (which I really don't think you can do)..do you really think he would take the time to change the site and make it a bad environment for trying to concentrate on the test that he badly needed just to go watch a playoff game? That's rather far-fetched. Edit: I found out. You can change the site with an additional fee no later than 2 1/2 weeks before the test date. The playoff schedule would still not have been set by this time. You can also try to plead your case for a later change if you go into the test center the day of, but I really doubt the "I went on vacation to watch a playoff game" would be an acceptable reason in order for him to take the test at a different site.

You can protect anybody who you're willing to put on the 40 man roster. If Gaub and Parker were put on the 40 man in order to be called up in September, they would be protected. But that would also take 2 of the available spots on the 40 man for other players that might need to be protected before the rule 5 draft. There's no separate list for Rule 5. At the time of the Rule 5 draft, anybody who's on the 40 man roster is protected. Anybody who hasn't had enough minor league experience is also protected. Everybody else who has been in the minors for long enough is eligible to be picked.

BTW, Bruce has said multiple times on his blog that the Cubs have no interest in Wagner. Now, that doesn't completely rule it out (the Cubs front office might have gotten desperate in the last couple days with the bullpen performance recently) but I'd consider it very unlikely that the Cubs were the ones who claimed him.

If he has, they should DL him for the rest of the season now. Let him heal up. I think it's pretty clear he has some sort of leg issue. Even on that triple the other night where he was clearly trying to run hard, his running motion was very unnatural. The problem becomes deciding whether that's a temporary thing or if he will likely have it the rest of his career. His legs appear to be giving out after the leg injuries he had early in his Cub career.

Um..... because Hendry is an idiot? Basically did the same thing with Milton too. Cubs actually were not the highest bidder for Kosuke, he took less money to play here Hendry was willing to go 1 extra year for each one..maybe 2 extra for Soriano. I remember teams willing to give 6/105-110 (and maybe 7/115) to Soriano before the Cubs offered the huge deal. That's why Soriano's agent told them that it would take 8 years to get them to sign. I doubt any other team would have gone that high for him, but it wasn't a completely insane offer either as far as what it would take to land him(remember, Soriano was considered a better free agent than Carlos Lee who got 6/100). It was an insane offer for his possible production though. With Bradley, Tampa Bay was willing to go 2/20 and possibly give a 3rd year to Bradley but Bradley didn't want to go anywhere but Chicago if he could. So finally TB gave up and signed Burrell instead.

Bruce is at the Peoria game tonight, so he will be giving updates on Z on his blog. He also said he interviewed Jackson, LeMahieu, Brenly, and Huesby before the game. This would be such a wonderful game to go to..not only to see all the hitters (of course including Burke and Flaherty in addition to the names he said) but to get to see Z and Archer as well? That's pretty nice.

Perhaps, but its still garbage. Have you ever walked on it? It's pretty incredible stuff. I'm sure there will always be cold weather cities with grass fields, but I'm not surprised that increasingly cold weather cities with open air stadiums are converting to Fieldturf. It feels so much like grass but doesn't get completely ripped up with bad weather like grass tends to do. In a few years I would expect there to be only about 2-3 teams left with grass in the northern half of the country.

No. Since the Padres took the lead during the inning the game would be suspended and the rest of it would be completed at some later date.

92 wins (projected to have the best record in the NL), winning the division by 7 games over the Brewers.

Hate to tell you, but he didn't suck last year. he actually did suck last year minus 4 weeks of hot hitting. Ridiculous. what did he bat in the playoffs? 1-14....He really hits when it matters. Most of his home runs came when we were up or down by a bunch of runs. Let's see if the home run allegation is true. Here are Soriano's home runs from last year. The score reflected is at the time right before Soriano hit the home run, and I also have noted if the Cubs took the lead or tied the game with his home run: April 6th-tied 1-1 (took lead) April 11th-down 3-2 (tied game) May 2nd-down 3-1 (tied game) May 12th-down 2-1 (took lead) May 13th-tied 0-0 (took lead) May 14th-tied 0-0 (took lead) May 16th-tied 0-0 (took lead) May 16th-up 3-0 May 17th-up 3-2 May 17th-down 5-4 (tied game) May 25th-down 2-1 (took lead) May 31st-down 2-1 (took lead) June 1st-up 4-3 June 3rd-up 6-3 June 7th-up 1-0 July 27th-down 5-2 (tied game) July 28th-up 1-0 July 31st-up 5-1 August 3rd-up 7-5 August 5th-tied 7-7 (took lead) August 6th-up 6-4 August 14th-up 5-2 August 29th-tied 2-2 (took lead) September 2nd-tied 0-0 (took lead) September 6th-tied 0-0 (took lead) September 6th-up 2-1 September 6th-up 3-1 September 14th-tied 0-0 (took lead) September 16th-up 3-2 So 29 home runs. The largest deficit the Cubs ever had was 3 runs when Soriano hit 1 (and that home run was a 3 run shot to tie the game). They only had a 4 run lead once when he hit a home run. He took the lead with 12 of his 28 home runs. He tied the game up 4 times. The team had a: 3 run deficit- 1 time 2 run deficit- 1 time 1 run deficit- 5 times tied- 9 times 1 run lead- 6 times 2 run lead- 3 times 3 run lead- 3 times 4 run lead- 1 time There are a lot of criticisms that can be made of Soriano as a player, but hitting home runs only at inopportune times is not one of them. In fact, the case could be argued better the other way. The Cubs had quite a few potential blowout games to hit home runs in last year, and for Soriano to hit exactly 1 home run with a run differential of more than 3 runs at the time is pretty amazing. (and that 4 run lead was finishing off the sweep of Milwaukee, probably the biggest series of the regular season)

The question becomes how the team would be helped by releasing some of the names on that list. For example, Fukudome. Why would you want to get absolutely nothing back for one of the best CF's in the league this year? Harden and Gregg are both free agents after this year and both might bring the Cubs back draft picks in free agency. Losing them for nothing could only hurt the Cubs at this point and not help them. Fontenot is at worst a cheap backup at 2B and still has 1 option left to be sent down to the minors. With both those options at the Cubs disposal, why should they lose him for nothing instead? Bradley and Z I can sort of see, although Bradley has been turning it around quite a bit and Z has been consistently good year after year and that's a hard thing to replace in a rotation. Injury risk does come into play here though. Heilman is also a free agent after the season and likely will not bring back anything in return. It doesn't really matter either way if the Cubs lose him through the waiver process or not. Soriano I would agree with that I would give up for nothing. He'll likely produce in the next couple years better than this year, but having his money available for other things would still be much better than having him for the next 5 years. And I don't think you'll get any argument on the benefit of losing Miles for nothing. Getting out from under his contract would help next year's club slightly. So there's a few names on your list that would be fine for waiving in that fashion, but there's also several names where it would be absolutely ridiculous for the Cubs to do that move. And the Cubs cannot force another team to put in a claim for their obvious bad contracts (Soriano, Miles). How would it help the 2010-2012 Cubs to let go of the rest?

The new owner might also not want to have to pay Hendry for not working for the next 3 years. Plus, that's assuming the sale goes through in the next 2 months. If the sale is completed in November or later, Hendry stays for sure in order to make sure that the 2009 offseason isn't a total wash.

Probably has nothing to do with George The Rose and J Happ being southpaws. ok, so why is he being platooned for ANOTHER LEFTY? Using a tough lefty as an opportunity to give Fukudome a rest is probably smart. Sitting him against damn near every lefty drives me crazy (how is he ever going to hit lefties if he never faces them). Doubly so when Reed Johnson is on the DL. Damn Lou is frustrating at times. If he can't hit left-handers in his 30's, he's not likely ever going to hit them. He probably wasn't platooned in Japan so he would have had plenty of chances to see left-handers. This isn't like a prospect coming up. It looks like Fuld and Fukudome are probably about the same player against a left-hander. Both are slap hitters with no power but still walking a lot (while there's a huge difference between them against right-handers thanks to Fukudome's power). I don't think Fuld should be playing against every left-hander, but it just doesn't really matter which one plays. They're so interchangeable offensively that if Lou wants to play Fuld against every left-hander for either his defense or to give Fukudome lots of rest, I don't really think it will hurt the Cubs at all.

Topic please. This is your warning. Stop talking about each other.

I'm not sure how that last inning is scored, but I have a feeling that he only has given up 1 ER so far.

Probably, yeah. Pretty much (at least for starting options). Iowa's rotation to start the year was Atkins, Ascanio, Caridad, Wells, and Samardzija. The Cubs have seen them all this year (along with Hart who was in Iowa's bullpen to start the year).

According to Cots, he's in the final year of his 3 year deal. This season paid him 8mm, so one would wager he's not owed much more than 2-3mm. And no one claimed him? What am I missing here? He's a 1B/DH that has a .725 OPS. He had a .540 OPS in July and a .683 so far in August. He's not exactly the clear upgrade for any team that they would want to risk a couple million dollars on. He was very good last year, but he hasn't exactly been consistent over his career, and with his lack of defense if he isn't hitting he's a huge liability.

Jay Jackson is finished for the night. 7 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 4 K

I got the pitchers from ESPN. Guess we'll just have to wait and see. Well Cubs.com is prolly wrong. Pedro is going for sure on Wednesday. It's one of the leads at the bottom of the espn ticker. That means it bumped off Farve and Vick. It has to be correct. Cubs.com on its probable pitchers has Pedro on Wednesday and Lee on Thursday. That would seem to make the most sense to me. Lee pitched before Blanton the last time they were in the rotation, and I haven't heard anything that would make it likely they would flip them.

Apparently Cales has been promoted to Iowa. I would assume that's more of a Blake Parker type situation for an infusion of innings and that he'll be either sent to Tennessee or Daytona in a few days.