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So how much more advanced is class A Daytona than Peoria? If Vitters does well enough we should see him in AA by this time next year hopefully. Going from Peoria to Daytona is about the same jump as going from Daytona to Tennessee. It's just the name of the league that throws people off. Actually it's not, going by what I've been told by former players. The biggest jump is going from A(-/+) to AA in terms of talent level. That's true and why I used the word about to qualify the statement (in large part because some great talent skips low A and goes straight to high A..other great talent goes directly from low A to AA, but it's very rare for anybody to ever skip AA and they tend to play there for a while, which increases the talent level). I was more referring to the fact that despite Peoria and Daytona both technically being Class A teams, it's still definitely a jump up in talent level to go to Daytona, and used that example that isn't perfect to illustrate that.

So how much more advanced is class A Daytona than Peoria? If Vitters does well enough we should see him in AA by this time next year hopefully. Going from Peoria to Daytona is about the same jump as going from Daytona to Tennessee. It's just the name of the league that throws people off. Now that they've promoted him, they've sort of committed themselves. If Vitters does well the last 2 months of the season, he'll break camp in AA out of Spring Training. If he struggles at Daytona, he has a chance of going back there but still has a chance of going to Tennessee to start next year (my guess would be Daytona if he struggles because of his top prospect status, but other prospects have moved up anyway in that scenario).

No, I'm giving credit to the Cubs because they have put a good amount of talent in the system (mostly due to the excellent 2008 draft and international signings, although the 2007 draft was pretty decent as well). The fact that they are fast rising due to the very aggressive promotions over the last year is just icing on the cake. If they were only getting promoted because of a weak system, then they would not be having success at their new levels. The fact that they have maintained their success despite such aggressive promotions is an excellent sign for their futures.

Um, how is the Cubs talent level rising fast in the minors? I don't really see how they have been doing "just fine" in the draft. They may have plugged the dike, but they aren't exactly thriving down there. Just in starting pitchers, you have 3 from the 2008 draft that are already in AA. That's awfully fast for three different ones to be there already (and the two that have been there for a while are having success, while the other just got there). In Daytona, you have a 4th starting pitcher from last year's draft who just got moved up after having success plus two 19 year olds who are doing well for their age in that league. That's what I meant mostly about rising fast. The Cubs are starting to have real prospects start to hit the higher levels of the farm system, and they have plenty more behind them in Peoria and Boise (some would say that when you add the Koreans in that Peoria and Boise have the most talent of any of the levels, although Tennessee is really starting to make a case now). With progression of these prospects to higher levels and a couple more drafts like the last couple, the Cubs system should be top 10-15 if not better in another 2 years. That's what I mean by doing fine..the Cubs system had to be completely repopulated and they have been doing that. They don't have a lot of stars, and if they don't get more stars they'll probably never reach the top 3-4, but they are on their way to having a very deep system of good prospects. And remember, they've already traded away one of their good prospects from the last couple drafts, and he has to be included when talking about how well they've drafted as well (Donaldson).

Okay, that's actually a good point when you explain it that way. Again though, it's not as if he's the one making draft decisions. He's hiring/employing the people who are, though, so ultimately it does fall under him. Although your ire should be directed elsewhere if your biggest issue is the draft. It's the snowball that keeps getting bigger because of the ineptitude that I have a problem with. The drafting has been terrible, which causes him to throw money at bad free agents because of the mistakes under his watch in the draft. I see what you're saying. But ultimately your problem is with the people that fall under Hendry on the org chart, not Hendry himself. Right? True. However, Hendry is the GM and he obviously has substantial say so as to the picks. How SOMEONE hasn't been canned with the state of the farm is beyond reason. Hendry's the boss, which means it falls in his lap. Somebody did get fired...3 1/2 years ago now. At that point, the Cubs had some talent in the high minors and very little in the low minors. Now, that very little talent is in the high minors which leads to the bad farm system rankings..but the new staff has put a lot of talent together in the low minors and they are rising fast. It doesn't make sense to suddenly fire either the scouting staff or Hendry for the results of mistakes in the draft that were made 4-6 years ago now. Both have been doing just fine in that department for 3 years now. If you want to talk about Hendry's regime in other areas, that's fine, but the drafting problems ended a while ago.

Maybe. There still was talk of how the Cubs might not be able to get DeRosa's salary cleared. And if the Indians just wanted a major league ready pitcher (like some reports were claiming) the Cubs only options were really Marshall or Marmol, and both of those were too much for DeRosa. Players like Ascanio or Wells would likely be too little. Perez's numbers haven't been up to par yet, but his age and his great stuff still would often make him overvalued by teams. Hendry might have dropped the ball on this one..DeRosa would have been a very good fit for the rest of the year. But we just don't know enough facts to know for sure. We don't know if the Cubs had the payroll, or if they matched up well with the Indians, or even how good this PTBNL is yet. I would agree that unless the PTBNL is a good to great prospect the Indians have lost in these two deals..they gave more to the Cubs than they're going to get for him just a few months later.

Marmol would be claimed very quickly. The Cubs would pull him back, but it would be pretty pointless to even try. Is he out of options? I thought he was only up and down once. He isn't out of options but he has been in the major leagues for long enough that he would have to clear revocable waivers in order to get to the minors. The Cubs could always pull him back if somebody claimed him, but they still wouldn't get him to the minor leagues. He would only have 1 option left anyway. He got added to the 40 man after the 05 season. He was sent down after Spring Training 06, and then he was sent down again after Spring Training 07. That burned two of his three options.

Marmol would be claimed very quickly. The Cubs would pull him back, but it would be pretty pointless to even try.

He was probably considering putting in that Ramirez also missed time before the dislocated shoulder with a calf injury (in late April), and somewhere along the way it got melded together for space creating a wrong statement.

I don't know about you, but that looks "nearly as bad" to me. A significantly lower OBP with a higher SLG equates to just about as pathetic. Where are you getting your numbers Truffle? I have: .247/.325/.398 (.723) for the season and .219/.326/.337 (.663) with RISP for the season. Jersey, the Cubs have the second to last difference in the major leagues in their OBP from their season and RISP. They only have a +1 difference between the two. The only team in the negative in that statistic is the Nationals (-7 points). Almost every team in the league gets a significant bump in OBP with RISP because of pitching around hitters. The major league average in that category is adding 19 points to a teams normal OBP to get their OBP with RISP. As for the other two statistics, the average major league team loses 3 points on their batting average with RISP compared to their overall numbers. The Cubs are down 28 points. The average major league team loses 11 points on their slugging with RISP. The Cubs have lost 61. The average major league team's OPS is 8 points higher with RISP than the overall. The Cubs are 60 points lower. We can debate the causes of it, but one thing is for certain. The Cubs performance with RISP is very, very abnormal. Edit: Truffle, I didn't see where you had said nobody on. Your numbers are correct for nobody on. The Cubs overall numbers are better than that even with their dismal RISP numbers because they are doing very well with just a runner on 1B (.286/.369/.455). That's almost amazing..a 161 point difference in production between the runner standing on 1st base or a runner standing on 2nd and 3rd. And each of those samples has between 400 and 600 at-bats, so it's not a really tiny sample size.

I think the board consensus is that we're confused. He was already a confusing player last year with either being very good with the strikeout/walk ratio or hitting the ball well but never both. Now you throw in TJS, his bad numbers at Daytona to start the year and the questions surrounding that (was that just because he was rehabbing? Did the concussion hurt that? etc.) and now his hot start in Tennessee and I really don't think the picture is clear at all on him right now. Is there hope? Yes. Colvin's power seems to start to be filling out and if that does he'll get to the majors and stay there for awhile. Colvin reminds me a lot of Jacque Jones. Jones was another player with decent to good power and a bad walk rate. He also went through stretches where he walked at a higher pace, but his average and power tended to go down during those stretches as well, and he ended up being more productive when he was aggressive. They also both had the ability to play CF but are kind of in between being a natural center fielder and a corner outfielder. I see Colvin as more of a platoon/4th OF, but he also has a decent chance of being a team's starting CF (possibly still in a platoon, although Colvin hasn't shown consistent signs of struggling against left-handers) when he's cheap and be just fine there.

He might. Blown saves can happen in either the 7th, 8th, or 9th innings. I believe 3 of Heilman's 4 blown saves so far were before the 9th inning. Besides, two of Heilman's 4 blown saves are really Gregg and Marmol's fault anyway. The 5/16 game (where Gregg left with a 4-2 lead, bases loaded and nobody out) and the 06/07 game against the Reds (where Marmol left him with runners on 1st and 2nd, nobody out) were both games that Heilman got charged with the blown save because the runners scored on his watch, but he really didn't pitch badly in either outing.

He's not an elite closer, but he's not paid like one either. He's a decent closer who will get the job done, but he'll make it tougher than you'd like sometimes. Inevitably, that type of closer will blow a few. He's better than a random middle relief pitcher, though. I guess. He doesn't really have closer stuff, he gets behind a lot of hitters and is good for a couple of meatballs in most appearances. Sounds like a middle reliever to me but I could be wrong. I'm going out on a limb here and could be wrong, but would much really be different this year if Aaron Heilman was our closer all year instead of Gregg? ERA+s of 122, 125 and 121 aren't random middle reliever numbers. Those were Gregg's last three season (2007-2009 so far). He had a 110 ERA+ the year before. His biggest problem is walks. Outside of 2004 and 2006 he's never had better than a 2:1 K:BB ratio. He's also had some bad WHIPs in recent years. He'll fall behind guys and he'll walk some guys, but in his time as a closer he's saved 89% of games, 76% of games (hampered by injury that year) and 85% of games. He's generally successful, which is what is to be expected from a non-elite closer. I don't think ERA+ is a good measure of a 1 inning reliever. The K:BB ratio and WHIP is more telling to me. Other relievers can't really be measured on ERA+, but for the closer it's a better measure. They usually don't inherit runners, and they usually don't leave the game in the middle of an inning. So ERA+ is as important for closers as it is for a starting pitcher (not even close to the only stat you want to look at for performance, but definitely important)

What's the timeline of those blown saves? Piecing it together: 04/10-Gregg 04/16-Heilman 04/18-Marmol 04/30-Marmol 05/08-Heilman 05/16-Heilman 05/25-Cotts 06/02-Gregg 06/07-Heilman 06/20-Marmol 06-23-Gregg The Cubs are 4-7 in games where there has been a blown save. Good relievers or not, the Cubs are going to have several blown saves if they're asked to protect a 1 run lead most nights. They are playing way too many close games to not have a few trickle away from them.

It will be really close for DeRosa. In 2008-2009, he so far has played these positions: 95 2B 64 3B 44 RF 42 LF 8 1B DeRosa will likely be in the 2nd/3rd/SS group. But if they combine the OF games into one grouping instead of separating it out by position, he could be in the OF group by the end of the year. And then the question is..if they combine the OF numbers because they are in the same grouping, will they also do the same thing with second and third base? I'm not sure how many other people have been in that situation like that to compare.

Glover is up by 2 now with 2 to play. Duval just bogeyed 17 to drop him 2 back. Mickelson has bogeyed the last 2 to also have him 2 back and he has a long putt for birdie at 18.

I would disagree with that. In the regular season, he might manage to just barely get out of jams... but in the postseason, I think it would be a different story. In a world series game, you can't bank on your closer walking a couple guys, throwing a wild pitch, and then finding some way to just barely close the game out. Gregg hasn't exactly been doing that though. His last 22 outings have gone this way: 20 scoreless outings out of 22. 4 of those outings have had an inning where Gregg allowed 2 or more combined hits/walks. That means 18 of his last 22 outings have had 1 combined hit/walk or less. He hasn't really gotten into many jams anytime recently. Adding another reliever basically means that one of the Cubs good relievers is now pitching with deficits on a routine basis. That's a waste of either Gregg, Ascanio, or Guzman's talent. Not only would the Cubs then have to pay much more than the value that a good to great reliever actually gives you, but they'd also have to put a good reliever in a bad role. It's a terribly inefficient way of going about roster management and should really only be done if the Cubs are convinced that 2009 is their last chance (which is a supposition that I don't agree with whatsoever). Right now, it's simply a luxury that the Cubs cannot afford to have.

I can understand why you don't bring in Fox here. He looked like he had never seen a sidearmer yesterday. It was one of the worst final swings ever. Don't know why you wouldn't use Soto other than the thought that a right-hander struggles normally against a sidearmer..but even that's not really enough I don't think.

And have your only backup IF be Jake Fox? That could get fun. They must think Guzman is fine because they're planning for him to go multiple innings here.

The discomfort is not in his arm...although I still wouldn't put him out there. Edit: There are conflicting reports. Some say triceps, other say under his arm. That's a huge difference in what the soreness could be.

That's not a completely fair argument. The great likelihood is that both of those things happen no matter what the manager does. It's not likely to work out because both of those were really bad situations.

I like the bunt there. 3 singles hitters coming up in a row (Hill, Blanco, Miles). The run's still not likely to score, but it's probably a little more likely with the bunt than relying on 2 hits from that combination of hitters. And now you should have no DP that brings the top of the lineup up next inning.

The great likelihood is that whoever was in the game for that situation would have probably given up 1. But I still would have left Marshall in. Hope for the ground ball and if you give up the lead you have Marmol for the 8th. Now Marmol has already thrown a lot of pitches and the Cubs probably have to use Heilman in the 8th.

It looks like that if Blanco can get Fukudome home Lou will let Lilly bat and if he can't than Lou will bring a pinch-hitter in.

I think it would be a huge mistake to trade anywhere near that much for a rent a player. That's sacrificing way too much of the future (as early as next year) for an upgrade for three months. I don't think Hendry would be opposed to reaquiring DeRosa at a much smaller price though. He already said in an interview when asked about the possibility of trading for DeRosa that he would always love to have DeRosa on his team and that he wasn't going to rule out any speculation.