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I might be wrong, but I think Aramis is signed through 2011, and the Cubs hold an option on him for 2012. If that's the case, Vitters should be in the minors for at least another three years. And that'd be totally OK...he'll only be 23 on Opening Day 2013. No need at all to rush him. Aramis has a player option for the 2011 season, and the Cubs have a club option for 2012. So he could be a free agent any of those 3 seasons depending on what happens. I think the 2013 season would probably go beyond not rushing Vitters. That would mean he would have spent a full year in each of Peoria, Daytona, Tennessee, and Iowa (or spent multiple years at one of those places). He might need that much time, but it also might prove to be problematic to keep him down that long if he's hitting well.

Every other year though has been opposite. I would rather trust those rather than the splits from 9 starts where the only difference is a couple more extra base hits. Besides, I don't think he was trying to get the left-handers in specifically. He did put Freel at 3rd when he could have gotten either Miles or Scales in who both bat left-handed. What other right-hander would you want in there? I'd rather sit Soto tonight than tomorrow. Lee is still ill, and I'm not playing Johnson over any of the 3 OF's tonight.

when has hendry severely overpaid in a trade? i've got one in like 6 years of him being a GM, juan pierre. in trades for good major league players, hendry has actually not paid all that much (nomar, lee, ramirez, harden). I wonder if Hoff is going to be part of this along with all the usual suspects. Oh, Hendry also overpaid for Kevin "[expletive]" Gregg. It's hard to say with the Gregg trade. We only know what the Cubs thought about Ceda, and that was the fact that several pitchers had passed him up on the pitching prospect chart. This wasn't a situation where they were giving up a guy they valued highly but they loved Gregg enough to give him up...this was a guy they were starting to sour on. My guess is that they really wanted to trade him before his trade value got as low as they believed his actual value was, and that they got the best player they could for him. And his trade value has been dropping steadily since then (and while you can't completely predict injuries, Ceda's conditioning made him a prime target for an injury).

Cotts might be the first change pretty soon here if Lou's quote is any indication: I assume his "it's time" didn't quite mean yet that it's time to pull the plug, but it probably does mean that Cotts has absolutely no extra rope left.

In addition to what the others have said, essentially it's a money difference. A normal player that is there from the start of the year goes like this (if they have no long-term contract signed): year 1-major league minimum year 2-tiny raise year 3-tiny raise year 4-arbitration year 1. This is where a player can finally start getting some significant raises instead of just making very close to major league minimum. year 5-arbitration year 2. A decent player usually receives a modest raise here. year 6-arbitration year 3-the rules for arbitration change in this year, so sometimes big raises can happen here. Year 7-free agency In the case of a Super 2, it goes like this: partial year (pro-rated minimum) year 1-tiny raise year 2-tiny raise year 3-Arbitration year 1 year 4-Arbitration year 2 year 5-Arbitration year 3 year 6-Arbitration year 4 Year 7-free agency It can be hard to convince an arbiter of too big of a raise from year to year. So it's highly beneficial to a player to have 4 arbitration years. Not only do they get into the 7 figures a year earlier, but they also have more time to build the raises incrementally, making that 3rd and 4th years of arbitration monster salary figures. A person brought up during the year who is not a Super 2 will have the same chart except their third full year will also be close to major league minimum and then they will have 3 full years of arbitration instead of 4. Basically, their decision to not bring up Wieters for another couple weeks could save the Orioles somewhere between 8-15 million dollars over the next 6 1/2 years.

Probably yes, but Orioles fans don't have a lot to look forward to this year. I can't imagine the Orioles not taking advantage of the attendance spike his first series would cause. On the Super 2, it's close. If he came up now, he might qualify and he might not. Every day they keep him down for the next 2-3 weeks makes it much more likely that he will not qualify.

My guess is they're going to wait for the next homestand. Super 2 status eligibility is right around now, and I think they want to be pretty sure that he won't get it at this point before bringing him up.

That decision made a little more sense. I think Kosuke was going to bat for either Freel or Miles in the 9th to face Capps but the freak injury changed all those plans. Of course, Kosuke should have taken the at-bat in the 7th and Z should have already have been used in the 5th, so there were definitely still major errors made.

Yup, because despite the fact that Kosuke has similar numbers against lefties and righties, Lou cannot PH a lefty vs. a lefty or a righty vs. a righty. It's not about Kosuke's numbers in that situation. It's about Burnett's splits from last year: against LH hitters: .171/.238/.276 against RH hitters: .328/.432/.537 This year his numbers are a little more even (only about a 100 point OPS difference) but he's still been very tough against left-handers. And his motion suggests that he would be very tough for any left-hander to hit.

If they call somebody up, it will be Fox and they'll go to 11 pitchers. Bruce hinted that the Cubs might be somewhat close to ending the Patton experiment the other day on his blog. But it's still somewhat likely that they call up nobody and use Hoffpauir as the DH (or do as they did last year and let their regulars DH while bench players trade off playing the field).

I don't think it's the slump that is of concern. It's the fact that he's physically doing the same things that caused him to fail miserably last year. The whole stepping towards first base thing is ridiculous. I don't know about you guys, but I was taught in little league that you put your foot back down TOWARDS THE PITCHER. I realize this could be a difference in teaching between Japan and the US, but I just don't see why Kosuke can't shake it. If someone told me right now to take a step in a certain direction, it would certainly not be a difficult task. I mean, isn't anyone actually telling Kosuke this stuff? Does he not notice or what? Changing how he steps that drastically could potentially change his entire swing. It could take years to rebuild the swing...I'd rather work with what he has even if it is unconventional. I haven't really seen an approach change from him. The copter has been there even during his hot streaks...that's just a natural result of his timing being off on that particular swing. The only thing i noticed different last night was that he swung at some terrible pitches in the dirt that he normally doesn't touch. But then again, by the midpoint of the game it looked like most of the Cubs couldn't see that pitch very well (Theriot and Soto especially also looked very much unlike them with the swings they were having). The night before that, Fukudome was seeing the ball very well and laying off some close pitches.

Scales is at third. If Lou is really trying to keep Fontenot at 2nd to concentrate on his hitting, that's good news for Scales and to a lesser extent Freel and bad news for Miles.

Lee is in between Bradley and Hoffpauir.

Since Ramirez has been out (11 games): Fontenot (9 starts) Scales (7 starts) Miles (5 starts..1 was at SS) Freel (2 starts) Miles started more earlier in the season when he was the only backup at 3 different positions. Right now, it's an exaggeration though to say that Lou is looking for ways to get him in the lineup. He has clearly been behind both Fontenot and Scales lately, with both the number of games played and the spot in the lineup when they do play.

I guess God hates you. Wow Im shocked you have a smartass comment. Completely unexpected It would be like me being surprised that you're wallowing in melodramatic misery yet again. Stop it both of you. Post about the game, not about each other.

Mixed results for Rich Hill tonight against the Nationals: 5 2/3 IP, 3 H, 2 ER, 4 BB, 6 K, 1 HR

Brady's season was arguably the greatest in league history. It's probably only 2nd or 3rd best. But that's a nitpick. I would agree that there's still a big difference between Cassel's level and Brady's level. Although if Cassell had experience, those first 3 games would have probably had a lot higher numbers and inflated his season stats. But still I think Cassell is a system QB while Brady might have been a system QB in the past but would now be a fantastic QB for any team. Brady's a fantastic QB. But his numbers don't really stack up to the top 5 QB's of all time. So he has to rely simply on team success. And it's really hard to consider that Brady is the best QB of all time when the Patriots were a better defensive team than offensive during most of their SB runs. Brady will likely go down in the top 10 of QB's all-time. If he hadn't gotten hurt, maybe he would have put up more eyepopping seasons and been top 5 all-time. I'm not sure how much higher he could get though. He got to sit on the bench for his first couple years (so he avoided the terrible rookie year that some QB's have while they are still learning the league) and yet his numbers still aren't likely to stack up by the end of his career.

The only person that you mentioned that had a single at-bat at regular A ball the year they were called up was Alex Rodriguez, and he only got a handful of at-bats in the majors that season. The other players were at least at high A at the start of the season and some of them were in AA. Essentially, Vitters would follow their career path if he came up sometime during the middle of next year. That would be awfully young like all of those other prospects. Bringing him up this year is crazy-you'd have to promote him super aggressively straight to AA for 2-3 months, and then promote him again in August or September if he's destroying the ball. There's very little reward in a plan like that and a ton of risk. It's simply too big of a jump trying to think of a prospect jumping 4 levels like that. The best timetable for Vitters is the middle of next year and that's incredibly unlikely. The beginning to middle of 2011 is a more realistic fast timetable for him.

You might be able to get Mora, but probably only later in the season. Baltimore understandably wants to play him and see if they can get a better return at the deadline. They're probably considering getting compensation for Huff after the season, so any traded pieces would have to be worth more than that. I doubt the Cubs will want to give anywhere near that much. As for Wigginton, he's signed through 2010, and the Orioles manager loves him. I doubt he's going anywhere for a while. And the reason none of these trades are happening? Because the Orioles don't need any more AAAA pitchers. They already have too many of them as it is. Plus, they don't care about winning this year. So if they're going to make a trade involving one of those guys, it's going to be for prospects, not major league ready guys with low ceilings.

So is hitting the ball hard right at the defense. In result, yes they go down the same as a lazy out. But most hitters would say there isn't really a difference between a hard hit ball to a gap and a hard hit ball for an out. There isn't much placement of a ball besides the general idea of which field to hit it to. If you make solid contact, you simply have to take your chances of where it goes.

Yeah, these are the games that actually frustrate me. It's one thing if the team just stinks, but it's another if they're actually driving the ball and nothing is landing for a hit or dying at the wall. Driving the ball obviously isnt working for them, and they refuse to attempt small ball. There basically playing like the White Sox, with a few sluggers who show up when they want to and a bunch of mediocre players around them. Not exactly easy to play small ball when you're not getting any runners on base. The Cubs 1 run was partly accomplished through small ball (the hit and run with Theriot at the plate kept the team out of the inning ending DP in the 6th) but normally the team really isn't built for it. They're not a huge home run bunch either, but they are gap hitters and their line drives did not find any gaps tonight.

The offense was a lot better tonight than the first 2 games of the series. They just got really unlucky today.

I think this is probably a give Ascanio two innings tonight because we're sending him down tomorrow, but maybe he can convince the staff to get rid of someone else instead.

Vitters goes deep with his 8th of the season.

Marquez Smith continues his hot hitting with his 3rd home run while with Tennessee. That puts his line with the Smokies at .338/.348/.585.