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In order to obtain an .830 ops this year, what ops would he have to put up the rest of the way? Depends on how many at-bats he gets this year. If he has 400, my calculations would have him needing an .857 OPS the rest of the year to get to .830 overall. But I'm not very confident about that answer although it should be in the ballpark of what is needed.

He might be building some sort of value, but I highly doubt it's killer. He might be able to be considered worthy of being the throw in for a lefty reliever or something. Agreed. In the offseason and spring training, nobody was interested in him despite the Cubs trying hard to sell him (apparently to multiple teams, I know Hendry tried to convince Seattle to take him in the Heilman deal). Fox might actually be building some trade value now, but it's hard to build up too quickly from zero. It's not like his weaknesses aren't still there..but an AL team might be a little more interested now.

Lee/Johnson 4/5 makes that debatable. And a non-functioning Soto adds to that debate. Well, right now it might not be a great lineup. But that has more to do with how certain players are playing and not the injuries. And even then we can only evaluate how these players have started out against right-handers because the team has had very few at-bats against left-handers. That's not really indicative of how they would do against a left-handed pitcher considering the huge splits of many of the Cubs hitters. Normally the top 6 hitters in that lineup are all good to excellent against left-handers. All of them are better against left-handers than right-handers, but especially Lee, Theriot, and Johnson.

oye. I can't wait till we're back to full strength. That's only one hitter different from a regular lineup against left-handers (Ramirez for either Miles or Fontenot). Sure, that one is a big loss, but that's still a quality lineup against a left-handed pitcher.

A nit-pick for sure, but he had 2 hits in last night's game. He's 3 for 28 now.

A unique sequence in the Tennessee game. It's not very often that you'll see a team bunt with their relief pitcher on deck, and then the other team respond by intentionally walking that relief pitcher. It did not work out for Carolina though as Tennessee has scored 3 runs in the inning, the last 2 coming on Barney's third hit of the game. If Barney can show a little more with the bat than last year (which he is doing quite a bit so far) then he will likely be the player pretty soon here who is called up if the Cubs need another backup middle infielder. That's pretty much what his destiny is..to be a 2nd backup MI on a major league team.

He's available. And he was suspended the last 3 games of last year, so I'm not sure that he would be suspended at all this year. If so, it wouldn't be more than 1-2 games. His suspension from last year is finished. But he's at least somewhat likely to get suspended again since he violated the terms of his plea agreement during the offseason.

He's still appealing the suspension.

Searle is done for the night. 5 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 2 K, 9 GO-3 FO

That's what everyboyd says when they get caught. They didn't know it was banned, they didn't read the label, they didn't know what they were taking, their doctor/trainer/teammate gave it to them, whatever. Romero's big claim here is that the packaging did not indicate that the supplement contained a certain substance. I would think that part should be easy to prove if he still has the packaging. I don't know how he's going to prove the part about the clerks assuring him he wouldn't test positive. Also even if it's true that the clerks assured him that there wasn't a banned substance in there, he has to prove that it was likely that they were intentionally misleading him. That is a problem on multiple levels. 1) They are not considered experts on baseball's banned substance list and so unless he asked them specifically if it contained a certain ingredient, their opinion even if it was wrong is certainly not illegal. 2) They would have to prove that the clerks knew that the banned substance was actually in the product. First, it's unlikely that the clerks knew anything more than the packaging. And even if they did, it would be extremely difficult to prove that they did because you would have to prove how they would have obtained the information in the first place. The case against the manufacturer seems stronger because it's not reasonable for them to not know what's in their own product. I don't know if Romero would have to prove that they left it off intentionally or just that they showed negligence by leaving it off.

Anybody heard anything about a Colvin injury? He got pinch-hit for last night in the 8th and now he isn't starting today. One or the other might seem like normal usage, but both doesn't seem quite right.

Or not. It's the Colts third round pick. They pick somebody somewhat strange and he busts. It's 11 years and counting now with no real solid picks among them. Hopefully Powers possibly breaks that streak, but I don't see it right now.

Wells couldn't see the field for the Colts. If you can't block or catch the ball, you can't be a RB in the Colts system. It has nothing to do with talent level. I think we all agree that Wells is the more talented pure runner, but he would really hurt the Colts when he was on the field. If the Colts drafted Wells, the only time they could really use him would be as a goal line/3rd and 1 back, and you don't draft a RB in the first round for those two situations.

Agreed. Moreno would have been the pick if available. Brown also fits the Colts offense. Wells wouldn't have been picked under any circumstance. My guess is Brown was 4th or 5th on their list of 6. And with the only great options at DT gone and no receiver that sticks out, it makes sense to go RB now.

Welcome to the forum! Lou loves to pull stunts in April and May. I guess he thinks it keeps his team loose.

Enough bad moves become devastating, however. If you keep the core of your offense and the core of your rotation intact, and you've selected good players for those positions, you'll be ok. Hendry has done a good job of that the last couple years. His problems have come mostly in the bullpen, the bench, and a couple of the lesser offensive positions. Those mistakes cause frustration but don't hurt the ballclub to a huge degree. He also has issues with overpaying for players. But overpaying for players isn't horrible if you overpay for the right players. And very few of the Cubs high priced players have blown up and been busts.

Terrible GM's rarely get first place finishes and a 97 win team. That is even with the large payroll teams out there. The fact that Hendry was able to put together that team pretty quickly takes him outside of the worst 5 GM's. Money does give you more room to recover from mistakes. But the most limiting factor in baseball is still the 25 man roster. If the GM is a bad judge of talent the money is still not going to make them win. Hendry has lots of weaknesses, but the thing that keeps him afloat is that all his weaknesses are in the less important areas of a ballclub. He makes lots of bad moves, but he rarely makes the devastating move. As for the farm system, most people believe it is on its way up now. They had 4-5 bad drafts in a row all the way through the 06 draft, and so in the last couple years once the players in the high minors left there were no good prospects to replace them. The last two drafts have started to restock the system once again (even with one of the top 3 picks of the last 2 years already being traded) along with the further expansion of international signings. Those players are all still in the low minors which is why the rankings are still so low for the system (close to the majors still means a lot in prospect rankings). I'm not sure how much to blame Hendry for the 4-5 years of bad drafting. He probably deserves some of the blame but it's hard to tell how much input he has.

Complete misuse of assets, a Hendry trademark. Or still have Marquis on the roster, not starting, grumbling about being in the bullpen, and paying him I believe 7 million this year. The original Marquis deal was 3 years 21 million if I remember right. It was a bad situation and Hendry did his best to rectify it, but it's like putting makeup on a pig. Marquis should have never been signed for that kind of money to begin with, but losing Vizcaino is not a big concern, just the cash, which is potentially 4.5 million. Look at the bright side, the Cubs saved 2.5 million off the Marquis contract, although they have nothing to show for it. They actually shaved about 5 million from the contract of Marquis. Marquis did get a 3 year 21 million dollar deal, but the Cubs through backloading had only paid slightly more than 11 through the first two years. 4 went to Vizcaino, a little less than a million went to the Rockies, and the Cubs pocketed 5 million off of it.

It slows the development of his secondary pitches which most everyone agrees need work. I don't believe it signals the end of his career as a starter candidate as a cub. They could easily stretch him out during ST into a starter. It very likely ends his starting chances this year. Maybe they're trying to send a message to Gregg. Though once again the timing is strange. I didn't see the end of last night's game. Who gave up the last 2 runs? Guzman and Gregg were the ones to give up the last two runs, but this roster move was known before yesterday's game started.

The beat writers all seem to think it's Vizcaino. This quote from last night would seem to exclude Patton from the discussion: That seems to rule out Patton unless Lou didn't know what the corresponding roster move was going to be, which seems unlikely.

Anybody know anything about David Williams out of Jacksonville? IU picked him up as their first recruit of 2010. He isn't rated at all of Rivals and is only a two star on scout, but he is also listed at either 6 foot 6 or 6 foot 7, 200 pounds on there and the news release of his commitment has him at 6 foot 8, 220 pounds. Also, his numbers look too good to be a 2 star playing in the Jacksonville area, and he had 5 other schools pursuing him including Kentucky. So I was just wondering if anybody has heard anything about him because all this isn't adding up. The strangest thing about it? The news release has his stats as: 21 PPG, 11 R/G, 6 assists per game. Other places have his stats from this year at 10.9 PPG, 6.7 R/G, 2.7 A/G. And now a Louisville reporter says that his style of play is like Jalen Rose's?

The only way acquiring Gregg worked out was if he had a season good enough to make other teams sign him after we offer him arbitration. That's pretty much shot now... all he had to do was start well and finish well. No GM would remember if this had happened in July. As it stands now, yeah... I'd have been much, much happier to hold onto Ceda. Although now Ceda's injury is nothing to sneeze at either. Shoulder stiffness that has come and gone for the last month does not portend good things for him. I'm not sure when he is expected to make his debut this year or if they even know.

Most people counted Vizcaino's 4 million against Marquis already. The book can now be closed on that contract. 15.5 million for 2 years of Marquis and a couple relief appearances by Vizcaino.

??? Hendry didn't just say they were getting rid of Cotts in that clip? My sound is really low (putting the baby to sleep) No, he said that Cotts was the only one he would confirm who was safe to stop the speculation that he would be the one released (along with Marshall staying in the rotation).

This definitely sounds like something that Lou asked for considering this news came directly after the Lou-Hendry meeting this afternoon. I'm not sure if Lou thought he was a problem though or if he simply said that he never was going to trust him so might as well let him go.