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That all depends on who the final bench spot is. Right now with only 4 spots locked down, the Cubs have: against left-handers the top 2 options are Johnson and then Miles (hitting with his slightly better side) against right-handers the top 2 options are Miles (hitting with his slightly worse side) and then Gathright. Of course, that is against right-handed starters. Against left-handed starters, there will be Fontenot and Fukudome on the bench. So either way you go, you're going to have problems. If you put another right-handed hits lefties well player on the bench, suddenly your bench hits lefties very well but will struggle mightily against righties. Give the job to Hoffpauir and you don't have any right handed hitters on your bench on any day where there is a left-handed starter. I would say the bench needs a capable left-handed hitter for that last spot more than a right-handed hitter, but there's going to be a deficiency either way.

I'm not a fan of Marte in this situation. He is a likely total bust, but even if he isn't he'll need at-bats to figure it out in the majors. The Cubs won't be able to give that to him, so the team would just end up having a backup 3rd baseman with a likely terrible bat and average defense. If the Cubs were a bad team who already had a hole at third? I'd potentially try Marte then and let him hopefully develop. But I don't see the value in him as a bench player.

I was hoping he'd be a fallback option in the offseason (as a FA) in case the second base situation sucks. Now, we've got a whole heck of a lot riding on Fontenot playing well. Of course, I wouldn't have been thrilled with paying Roberts $10 million a year over 4 years, either. Maybe that's a bad value in this market, but I don't think that's overpaid. He is a very very good player. In DeRosa's career year last year, Roberts outplayed him in several areas. The problem is his age and the fact that speed is such an important part of his game. It makes him a very questionable bet to give that long of a deal to. He'll start slowing down both on the basepaths and defensively, and he'll have to hit as well as he did last year in those final 2 years to make up for that. The Orioles caved on this one. Roberts has been demanding a 4th year for months. Because of Hudson, the trade value for Roberts has been zero, so I guess they weren't willing to gamble on losing him for draft picks at the end of the year.

http://masnsports.com/2009/02/bullpen-sessions.html That makes me feel better about the trade. I was worried that he was just injured all last year and that he'd figure things out right away in Baltimore. As long as he doesn't completely blow up, we should be able to get the better PTBNL from Baltimore. Hill has been all but guaranteed a rotation spot because the well is so dry for them in the rotation in 2009 that they can afford to take a risk on him for a month or two even if he shows little in ST. is that speculation on your part or have you read that somewhere? cause i find it very, very hard to believe that they'd just put him in the rotation if he STILL can't throw strikes in spring training. Here's a quote: Even what he did early in the minors I think would be acceptable from that quote. If he can manage to fight his way through 4-5 innings, they'll keep him in there for a while. This was from this MLB.com writer in his blog: http://spencerfordin.mlblogs.com/

http://masnsports.com/2009/02/bullpen-sessions.html That makes me feel better about the trade. I was worried that he was just injured all last year and that he'd figure things out right away in Baltimore. As long as he doesn't completely blow up, we should be able to get the better PTBNL from Baltimore. Hill has been all but guaranteed a rotation spot because the well is so dry for them in the rotation in 2009 that they can afford to take a risk on him for a month or two even if he shows little in ST.

Despite what we're all hoping from, it's hard to say he's gotten a raw deal in the past, given his behavior. Why? Because he threw some balls and some bats that one time? Since then he's been pretty clean. We can point to that thing with the ump last year all we want, but when you get down to it, the ump walked after HIM, not the other way around. The problem is he throws some bats/balls/coolers/whatever once or twice when he's young and those images get replayed year after year after year. Now all of a sudden he's got this reputation as a nutcase when his true persona seems to be nothing of the sort. In addition to the recent incidents that the posts before me have indicated, here is a list of the incidents that Bradley was in just up to 2005. I'm going to put them in spoiler tags because it's a little long: Here is the article that had this list at the end of it for the LA Times back in 05: http://articles.latimes.com/2005/aug/31/sports/sp-bradley31 Bradley's reputation is completely deserved. Those incidents combined with the manager/umpire incident in 07 and the Royals broadcaster issue in 08 show a huge pattern of troubled behavior. Hopefully he can finally rise past his issues and continue to show progress. But it's certainly not because of replaying 1 or 2 incidents that Bradley has gotten the name that he has.

I'm doing Gameday Audio this year. I'm blacked out of Cubs games anyway. Why don't you watch it on TV or do you not have cable or satellite? CSNC is the RSN in this area and I am able to watch all the games (except WCIU because it's too much of a pain to switch over to an antenna to get it on channel 69). MLBTV blacks out in market subscribers which is why you cannot get the Cubs games (nor Sox, Tigers, Reds). So I am going to assume this is for when you are working. Indiana's cable companies don't carry CSN Chicago because it's not the local RSN. At the same time, it technically is inside the Cubs home territory so the games are also blacked out on MLBTV. So if you get cable for any reason, you have no way of seeing those Cub games in this market. I'm still crossing my fingers that they won't black the games out with Uverse (which actually has the channel but they blacked out Bulls games) but I'll have to wait another month to see for sure. Incorrect, I live in Indiana. CSNC is my RSN...was in NW Indiana and it is in NC Indiana. Cable or Satellite...take your pick. I take it you don't live in NW or NC Indiana. They used to have a listing on their website but no longer of the cities where CSNC is the local RSN. BTW, we are blacked out of Pacer games up here even though we live in Indiana. Good thing I am not an NBA fan. If UVerse blacked out the Bulls, they will black out any Chicago team. It isn't the provider you use that matters...it is the overall blackout rules. That's true about the NW and NC areas and I misstated by saying the state as a whole. I live in the Indianapolis area. We get Fox Sports Indiana as our main regional sports channel. And I'm not sure about blacking out of Cubs games. When inputting my zip code, my local baseball teams should be the Cubs, White Sox, and Reds. That's been confirmed by this zip code lookup from DirecTV and also this map: http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/global/contentPageIF.jsp?assetId=P3000004 http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_wvoLtwni0kc/RhO4G919-jI/AAAAAAAAHfI/Jw8QG3CUqvU/s1600-h/major+league+baseball+blackout+map.jpg The Cubs are supposed to be one of my local teams, but neither the Bulls or the Blackhawks are (it's the Pacers and Blues). So I should be able to get the Cubs games through Uverse who offer both CSNC and Fox Sports Indiana even though the Bulls games which are not part of my home market are blacked out. I know other people in the Indianapolis area who do get Cubs games doing the same thing (along with getting both Pacers and Reds games on FSI), but as they are in slightly different zip codes I'm still waiting to make sure.

I'm doing Gameday Audio this year. I'm blacked out of Cubs games anyway. Why don't you watch it on TV or do you not have cable or satellite? CSNC is the RSN in this area and I am able to watch all the games (except WCIU because it's too much of a pain to switch over to an antenna to get it on channel 69). MLBTV blacks out in market subscribers which is why you cannot get the Cubs games (nor Sox, Tigers, Reds). So I am going to assume this is for when you are working. Indiana's cable companies don't carry CSN Chicago because it's not the local RSN. At the same time, it technically is inside the Cubs home territory so the games are also blacked out on MLBTV. So if you get cable for any reason, you have no way of seeing those Cub games in this market. I'm still crossing my fingers that they won't black the games out with Uverse (which actually has the channel but they blacked out Bulls games) but I'll have to wait another month to see for sure.

Guess who had a higher IsoP last year between Blanco and Bako. Are you suggesting Bako is a better hitter than Blanco? And if so, are you basing that solely on last year? I hope you're not trying to suggest what I think you're saying because of one stat from one year. I'm saying that Bako has as much if not more "pop" in his bat as Blanco does. But that was a huge outlier for Bako. Looking at their last 4 seasons ISOP of 100 AB's or more (throwing out Bako's 05 and Blanco's 07): Bako: .080, .020, .051, .111 Blanco: .162, .149, .153, .100 That's a huge difference between the two before last year, and that was a strange year for both. Bako hit as many home runs as he had in his 6 previous seasons combined, and Blanco had easily the best batting average he has ever had but more of those ended up being singles. Even though last years data should be the most valued (especially with these older players) I don't see how in this case it does enough to contradict the previous data that Blanco has more power than Bako.

Interesting that that page said Fox was taking some grounders at third. I wonder if he would be passable as a backup CI? Has anyone heard if they are going to bring in someone else to audition for backup MI or is Fontenot going to be the only backup SS? Fox played 3b 2 years ago when I saw him play for Tennessee. In the four games, I watched he played first, third, and left. That ended up being the only game Fox played at third in 2007. Then last year he played 3 games there. I can't see how Fox could possibly make the team. The Cubs didn't want him as an extra pinch-hitter last September when there were no roster restrictions. That would be quite a turnaround for them to suddenly have enough confidence in him to be a pinch-hitter and backup positions defensively.

Fortunately for us Crean has been working hard for months now and we have a recruiting class coming in next season that is Top 10 at worst, maybe even Top 5. If he can get those kids to play as hard as the current group then next season will be a bit more fun to watch. RSCI isn't a huge fan, with IU coming in at 16th as of their November update. This wouldn't take into account Rivers(3 star on rivals) though, and I think the big addition for Indiana next year is depth. Being able to 9 deep without resulting to walks on who can't shoot or dribble or guys who should be redshirting is a big help. I could be mistaken but I think IU is after one more kid and if they get him, it would push them into the Top 10. I really don't follow the recruiting talk as much as others do, I will admit as much. 16th still sounds pretty good to me at this point. And yeah getting some depth will be cool. Quality depth. IU can't get anybody else. They've actually oversigned by one so they have to run somebody off to get that extra player. But to be fair, the RSCI list is based off of only the top 100 players. So they're only counting 2 of IU's 7 players coming in when compiling their rankings. IU has three other players who almost certainly just missed the cut and so if a couple of them crash the next version of the rankings IU could shoot up in a hurry (and that has a decent chance of happening because IU's recruits are doing very well this year in high school). That list that they have on there is also painfully out of date. For example, Stephan Van Treese would not be anywhere near the top 100 list today. Most of the schools he was looking at refused to make an offer to him in fact.

Fortunately for us Crean has been working hard for months now and we have a recruiting class coming in next season that is Top 10 at worst, maybe even Top 5. If he can get those kids to play as hard as the current group then next season will be a bit more fun to watch. RSCI isn't a huge fan, with IU coming in at 16th as of their November update. This wouldn't take into account Rivers(3 star on rivals) though, and I think the big addition for Indiana next year is depth. Being able to 9 deep without resulting to walks on who can't shoot or dribble or guys who should be redshirting is a big help. Agreed. For example, IU played 7 guys today. That included a not Big 10 caliber player playing probably the most important college position to at least be adequate at (point guard) and another player who should be near the back of a rotation playing 32 minutes in Taber. They can't play these kinds of minutes and even the guys in the rotation can't stay fresh playing 35 minutes a night. Many of IU's players are capable. But there's no one there if they get in foul trouble or if they get tired or if one of them is having an off night. Pritchard has to play so carefully because we've gotten killed when he has to leave the game due to foul trouble. Taber had to get off the floor in a key situation the other night when he was having a solid impact because he was so exhausted. Roth should be a guy who gets minutes if he's shooting well and not if he isn't, but there isn't anybody to replace him in the games where he isn't. Your 7th, 8th, 9th guys might not get that many minutes, but they're vitally important to be capable when they're out there. IU's aren't. BTW, one quick note on Illinois. Out of the 8 teams IU has had to play this year, Illinois has been the hardest to match up against. They played the toughest defense against IU (with the possible exception of Michigan State since they had to face an Indiana team with Dumes), and the only team to be better than Illinois on the offensive end was Ohio State. If they can find a consistent mix over there, they could go places. But I'm not sure if they can because the pieces don't quite fit, and I can't put my finger onto why that is.

Yawn. It's a road game, Big Ten homering is brutal. Maybe they do things differently in the Patriot league, but you'd be hard pressed to find a Big Ten fan not agree that road teams get hosed. Find me the ref complaints on games in Champaign. Last game you had a Kansas and Iowa fan laughing at the homering, and this game you had an IU fan jokingly say nice tackle to his own player. In fairness to the foul disparity in this game, Indiana was playing a zone for 3/4 of the game and they were letting Illinois have a lot of shots. Illinois only drove the ball into the lane a handful of times today..why would they need to? They could pass it in and get an uncontested layup or have Tisdale come out and shoot a wide open 15 footer. So there really wasn't many situations for UI to get fouls especially shooting fouls. UI on the other hand was playing tough physical defense all day. Add in the fact that Indiana didn't have Dumes and their offense consisted of driving into the lane hard all day or Pritchard taking the ball strong. When Indiana did take it in the lane, Illinois was making an effort to block it on every play. It's not surprising that caused a lot of blocks or bad shots (10 blocks and several plays where the ball didn't even hit rim when it was thrown up there) but also a lot of fouls. Also most of the fouls are going to be shooting fouls playing this type of game. And in this game, a much higher percentage of the fouls for Illinois than normal were shooting fouls going for blocks around the basket. It was the perfect situation to have such a huge foul shot disparity. Of course, it's also not a winning strategy to play that way for IU. They may have avoided foul trouble, but they also let Illinois have whatever shot they wanted for most of the game. That's not to say the game was called perfectly-I thought the technical was questionable (it depends on if Brock said something or not, the bump should not have been called). There were a couple of loose ball situations that went Indiana's way, and my guess is that only one of those should have gone their way. But the game was not officiated very unfairly.

I would imagine all of it unless another team picks him up off waivers. Unless Hill suddenly figured out how to hit, I saw enough of him in 2007 to feel much more comfortable with Bako as the back up (and that is saying a lot since I don't think much of Bako either). Hill was about as close to an automatic out as you can get. It's like having two pitchers in the lineup (and even that is an insult to some of our pitchers). His line in 2007 was .161 / .231 / .269. His career line is .190 / .257 / .281. And most of that is before he chopped off a bunch of his fingers. Sorry, he does not belong on any 25 man roster, especially not on one for a contending team that will need the back up to make about 40 starts in order to keep their everyday catcher fresh. Depending on when he was cut in ST, Bako would receive between 1/4 and 1/6 of his salary for this year. If he outplayed Hill in ST but got cut anyway, he could file a grievance and get his full salary. At least from looking at the CBA that's what it seems to say. If he makes the roster at the start of the year, the full salary is guaranteed.

eckstein isn't bad considering that he's a shortstop. what's not to love about that 88 career OPS+? His career average is about 10 points of OPS below the SS average for the last 8 years, but he also has about a 25 point advantage in OBP over the average SS during that timeframe. So overall, he's been right at an average SS offensively, and he was ok as a defensive SS until the last couple years. Certainly not a guy to get excited about, but he was an adequate option out there for a few years. There never were anywhere close to 30 SS's that could outperform him during most of that time period so he was never in any danger of not having a job. At this point he's declined enough defensively that he can probably still hold onto a backup job if he wants it but would be a pretty bad starter.

what just in case he dies during spring training? Well, it would have to be a little longer than that. The Orioles would be very foolish to keep him up from the start of the season. He'll have to at least stay a couple weeks in the minors and he has a decent shot of staying down there until June.

Bradley was wanted by another team while Dunn wasn't. That makes a huge difference in salary expectations. If Hendry had waited on Bradley, he would have lost him to the Rays. There of course is certainly a debate on whether waiting for the players who very few teams wanted (in this case Abreu and Dunn, and would have been Burrell as well if Bradley had been signed by TB) would have been a better approach by Hendry, but to sign Bradley he almost certainly had to do what he did.

An infielder can do everything you mentioned, except they get more chances than a right fielder. Middle infielders get the most chances, but there's very few plays on where they stop an extra base hit. It's either a single or an out. Corner infielders and outfielders get less chances, but good ones also let fewer doubles/triples sneak through than those who don't. So to turn it around and use terms that are usually just in batting/pitching stats-the defensive OBP difference between good and bad players for OF and corner players is lower than middle infielders (due to the number of chances), but the defensive SLG difference is higher, which means that the actual total impact each position can make is closer than it appears.

I'm trying really hard to make sense of this and figure out who Mike is, and I'm coming up with nothing. Churchill's contact in the Cubs organization is named Mike. I think people have speculated before that it is Mike Valarezo, but it could be any of a half a dozen people in the organization.

A typical Pacer game this year..goes down to the last 10 seconds (if I'm counting right, that's 20 games on the season with a 3 point final margin or less or OT, and there have been several other games that were 4 or 5 points). TJ Ford hit a jumper with 0.8 seconds left for the Pacers to go up 2. Cleveland comes out of the timeout and threw a lob to Lebron. Granger knocked it away and the Pacer fans celebrated. But they called a foul on Granger and the fans were irate. Lebron knocks down two free throws with 0.4 left (47 points on the night). So what do the Pacers do? They run the exact same play as Cleveland did, and the refs made the exact same bad call on Lebron as they had on Granger. Granger hits the first free throw with 0.1 left, then intentionally misses the second one to win the game. This Pacers team is 11 games under .500 with wins against Boston, Cleveland, Orlando, Lakers, Houston, Atlanta, Detroit, etc. Of course losses at the buzzer to teams like Washington on Sunday are the reason they are where they are. For example, in their last 7 games: Wins: Miami, Orlando, Cleveland Losses: Knicks, Minnesota, Philly, Washington They just don't make sense. They're good enough to do damage in the playoffs, but they're not good enough to make the playoffs.

The three choices for the game of HORSE are.... Kevin Durant, O.J. Mayo, Joe Johnson I think that's a pretty solid lineup for the game. I hope it works out. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/allstar2009/news/story?id=3896766

Tom Crean has suspended Devan Dumes indefinitely: http://www.indystar.com/article/20090208/SPORTS0601/90208023/1004/SPORTS Good move cutting the problem off at the pass. This is going to be a really bad week though.

I thought it was probably intentional, but wasn't too surprised when the ref gave the benefit of the doubt to the player. Of course, Dumes removed all doubt when he continued later in the game. Other then that, I thought IU played all right, but Dumes continuing to be a hothead is really bothering me. I wouldn't mind Crean leaving him on the bench for a game even though that would practically guarantee an IU loss.

Well, let's see. The best you can really hope out of Sheets coming off surgery is for him to be a 20 million dollar pitcher like he was last year (slightly over 3 ERA over 200 innings). But the chances of him doing anything like that are very slim. The realistic hopeful scenario would probably have to have him worth somewhere around 15 million. So you're paying 10 for him to be possibly worth 15, but there's a solid chance that he'll be worth 4 or less (if he's either unable to pitch or is not effective coming off surgery). That's a very questionable gamble in and of itself. Then you add in that if you do this, Sheets becomes the major free agent acquisition of next year. The Cubs budget would be pretty much maxed out, and so you're sacrificing a lot of roster flexibility if you sign Sheets now. That includes not being able to re-sign Rich Harden. So you're essentially taking Harden's money and throwing it to Sheets and trading one risk for another. But I'd still rather take a risk on Harden because you'll have more information on how Harden is going to perform in 2010 in 7 months when his contract negotiations start than you do with how Sheets is going to perform in 2010 now. Finally, you add in the first round pick. And that's a major loss to an organization who needs more talent in their farm system. Sheets being a possible 5 million dollar bargain is not worth the pick, loss of flexibility, and risk that he'll continue to be hurt.

I'd be all over that like white on rice. Give him a low-base deal with vesting options based on IP, because he's not going to get a big, multi-year deal anymore. At least not with his next contract. Giving up the first round pick is too much of a gamble for an injured player. If he's still out there in June, he'll have some competition for his services once the compensation drops off, but I doubt you'll see anybody besides possibly the Brewers touch him before that.