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The Brewers had a few guys making around 5m as set-up guys. I think the Phillies also paid Tom Gordon around 5m, but he was on the DL. Plus nobody said that Gregg wouldn't end up being the closer next season. As for being a type A, Gregg just has be somewhat decent this year and he will. But after how he pitched the last two years, I don't know why we would suck next year at his age. Besides a two week stretch when Gregg was probably pitching hurt, he was pretty good last year. Riske? Who'd they trade for him? Actually, speaking of the brewers reminded me that the Torres trade is a pretty good comp...Ceda is much more highly thought of than either guy the Bucs got. I think Torres is an ok comp, but not nearly close enough to get much true value out of the comparison. Torres was 5 years older, was coming off an absolutely awful season (5.47 ERA, 1.405 WHIP..advanced statistics show he was rather unlucky in 2007, but we know how much that actually factors into trade value). Plus there was no possibility of free agent compensation down the line because it was known that he was starting to get the itch to possibly retire. Plus, the highest number of games Torres had ever saved in a season was 12, and he was traded purely to be the setup man he had been for most of his career. Essentially, Torres last year would be Bob Howry this year if Howry was still under contract. That's opposed to Gregg who is 5 years younger, is coming off 2 good years, has those back to back 29+ save campaigns which inflates his value, and is a good bet for compensation after the season. Those are quite a bit of differences for trade value, enough to make it really hard to be worthwhile to figure out exactly how much more trade value did Gregg have than Torres. All we know is that it was a significant amount. ERA? Seriously? 2007 torres k/bb: 1.57 2008 gregg k/bb: 2.91 Torres had a babip 20 points over expected and a flukey hr/fb greggs babip is 60 points under expected and the lowest hr/fb of his career See my bolded above. Sure, using ERA is a terrible way to judge relievers. It's slightly better for guys like Torres or Gregg, who tended not to come in or leave during the middle of innings (and therefore have to deal with less of the problem of which runs got charged to which pitcher during a big inning where both failed to do their job), but it's still terrible. However, we weren't talking about their production as a comp. We were talking about their trade value. ERA becomes important in that case because GM's will treat it as important. Sure, they're willing to look at other stats, but even with they look at other stats it might actually have the opposite effect of what is intended. For example, look at LOB%. In 2007, Torres had an outlier year and only left 64.5% of his runners on. That was very unlucky of him and he could have been expected to bounce back on that. Show most GM's that number and they would say that Torres failed to do his job in 2007 of stranding runners, and that his value should go down as a result because they're buying low. So yes, the Torres comp may be much closer when looking deeper at the production, but the ability to get a lot in trade was not close between the two. So looking at who the Pirates got back is not a good gauge of who the Marlins should have gotten back.

The Brewers had a few guys making around 5m as set-up guys. I think the Phillies also paid Tom Gordon around 5m, but he was on the DL. Plus nobody said that Gregg wouldn't end up being the closer next season. As for being a type A, Gregg just has be somewhat decent this year and he will. But after how he pitched the last two years, I don't know why we would suck next year at his age. Besides a two week stretch when Gregg was probably pitching hurt, he was pretty good last year. Riske? Who'd they trade for him? Actually, speaking of the brewers reminded me that the Torres trade is a pretty good comp...Ceda is much more highly thought of than either guy the Bucs got. I think Torres is an ok comp, but not nearly close enough to get much true value out of the comparison. Torres was 5 years older, was coming off an absolutely awful season (5.47 ERA, 1.405 WHIP..advanced statistics show he was rather unlucky in 2007, but we know how much that actually factors into trade value). Plus there was no possibility of free agent compensation down the line because it was known that he was starting to get the itch to possibly retire. Plus, the highest number of games Torres had ever saved in a season was 12, and he was traded purely to be the setup man he had been for most of his career. Essentially, Torres last year would be Bob Howry this year if Howry was still under contract. That's opposed to Gregg who is 5 years younger, is coming off 2 good years, has those back to back 29+ save campaigns which inflates his value, and is a good bet for compensation after the season. Those are quite a bit of differences for trade value, enough to make it really hard to be worthwhile to figure out exactly how much more trade value did Gregg have than Torres. All we know is that it was a significant amount.

Unfortunately, no one is ever fully healthy over the course of a season. Guys go through stretches with pulled muscles, illness, and all sorts of other physical problems which would hinder their performances. I'm unwilling to write off a guy's performance over the course of a year due to injury unless it turns out he was hiding some major injury that would require surgery or a lot of time off in order to heal. Gregg did have knee surgery after the season to correct the problem. He should be fine for spring training and it wasn't like his ACL was falling off or anything, but it wasn't a minor injury either..considering he's not even supposed to even get back on a mound for a couple of months.

This is a tough deal to evaluate without knowing what the Cubs are planning to do with Gregg. Did the Cubs make this deal knowing they have another closer candidate now in the fold and declare Gregg the closer in March? If so, that adds value to him. Did the Cubs see that Gregg would likely be a type A reliever after the year and essentially see this as a 1 year move? If so, that adds value again. If the Cubs grabbed Gregg to be a setup man or if they give him a long-term contract, this is a pretty bad move. If this is a let's contend in 2009 with another solid reliever and make sure to not move Marmol to the closer role and then let him go for the picks? It's a pretty solid move then. Essentially, the Cubs paid inflated value for Gregg's closer credentials. They better continue to build that inflated value so that when they sell him, they can sell him for a similar price.

Coming from a Colts fan and a frustrated Joseph Addai owner in one of my leagues, I definitely feel your pain on this. The combination of the Colts offensive line juggles and Addai playing hurt has really killed his production this year. I've been trying to bench him in that league and have been able to do it some weeks, but still have had to play him in others. I will give a bright side though. Addai was running better against Pittsburgh then he has looked in quite a while. Now, I know he had a terrible statistical game..that's to be expected against that defense. But he definitely had some quicker cuts than we saw the week before against the Patriots. Also, the next 6 weeks Addai faces the 23rd, 13th, 26th, 25th, 31st, and 20th rushing defenses. That's a far cry from the 7 games he has played this year against these rushing defenses (although the Baltimore game doesn't really count): 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 12th, 20th, 23rd. It's no shock that his 2 decent games out of those 7 came against Jax (ranked 20th) and Houston (ranked 23rd). So Addai has come out of a brutal schedule and is now about to face a bunch of teams who are a lot weaker against the run, while at the same time the Colts offensive line is slowly getting better as the season goes along. Now, here's the downside. Dungy has continued to say that Addai is the starter. But when the game was on the line against the Steelers on Sunday, Rhodes was the guy. So that's something to watch out for. But I think Addai will definitely have better numbers in the 2nd half than the first half.

How is it that Geo got 31/32 votes, yet Longoria was unanimous with 28 votes? Did some people abstain from voting on the AL? They probably give the ability to vote to 2 writers from each market, and then you only vote for whichever market (NL or AL) you're in. Since there's 2 extra teams in the NL, there's also 4 extra votes.

This is encouraging: RHP Angel Guzman reportedly is hitting upward of 97 mph on his fastball during winter ball in Venezuela. Guzman, who has been hampered by injuries for several years, will be out of options next spring. If he's healthy, he could land a bullpen spot. http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/nl/cubs/notes.htm?csp=34 I'm pretty sure Guzman is not out of options. They got an extra option on him by holding the start of his rehab assignment back so long and then not promoting him until September.

Surely we can pull this trade off, and then see if some team will take on Marquis for this year without us picking anything up. I don't care if we get a player in return who will never go above AA in his career. Just get his salary off the books. If we give up Shark and Marshall, I'm not too crazy about dumping Marquis for nothing. If Harden and Z or some other combination of two pitchers spend any time on the DL, we'll lose Gaudin from the pen, and be forced to dig for a Glendon Rusch type of pickup to plug the hole. Either that, or throw in Gooz and hope his arm stays attached, or pray for 2007 Hill to emerge from the depths of Lake Michigan. I'm all for going for Peavy, but it'll probably cost us depth. As much as I don't like Marquis, I wouldn't give away the insurance policy he serves as for nothing more than saving some money. It's not like that $7 mil we'll save by dumping him is going to help add depth if we really are also bucking to bring back Demp. That money could be used to partially pay for Wood, or a bat like Bradley or Ibanez. I could be wrong, but isn't Marquis due to get $10-10 1/2 mil this year? 9.875 million. 7 million was the average number he'll have gotten over the 3 years, but the backloading has it at almost 10 this year. That's why if the Cubs can get rid of it now, they'll have made a little bit of a steal by only paying 11 million for the last 2 years combined.

If they don't resign Dempster in this scenario, they'll still have Marquis. That's not saying much, but still..... He was talking about next offseason. Marquis will be a free agent along with Harden.

No the Grossman 2.0 last year (Where he was much better) loved tossing that fade route to Olsen. Were those fade routes actually completed? In the games where Grossman played after he got back, Olsen had: Raiders: no catches Seattle: 7 catches, 43 yards Denver: 1 catch, 10 yards Giants: 2 catches, 7 yards In the Washington game, all 3 of Olsen's catches were after Griese replaced Grossman. Their longest connection during that whole time? That 10 yard pass in Denver. That's a rather short fade pattern if it isn't in the end zone. Plus there were no TD catches. It looks like Olsen was only used only as a safety valve when Grossman came back. They didn't send him down the field at all. Olsen's value came last year only when Griese was in.

The difference in picks is pretty negligible(unless Affeldt is the reliever signed), and I didn't include the return on Lee both for simplicity's sake and so that we didn't get into a "we're getting too much/little for Lee" debate, which wasn't my intention. Sort of. Losing two type A players and signing 2 others does have its advantages. If the Cubs did that, they would: lose their first and 2nd round pick but they would gain Anaheim's first rounder, Arizona's 2nd rounder (I believe Arizona is the last team whose 1st round pick is protected), and 2 sandwich picks. So the Cubs would pick up 2 extra high picks with the swap. It would be even better if the 2nd type A free agent was also among the best 15 teams and they would effectively swap their 2nd for another team's first. Even if it just is 2 extra sandwich picks though, that is still significant. Dempster to LAA and Wood to ARZ, or vice versa? Oops. Thanks for the correction. I'll edit the post above. I didn't actually mean those two to those particular teams. The most likely result would still then be that one of the top 15 teams would sign one of them, and one of the bottom 15 teams would sign the other one. So the Cubs would get a 1st and a 2nd and two sandwich picks while giving up a 1st and a 2nd.

I'm not sure it would be wise to have both Harden and Marshall in the rotation. That's a likely 160 innings that you'll have to find from a 6th and possibly 7th starter. Harden is effective enough that even with missing 1/3 of the season the numbers for that spot are still excellent. I'm not so sure you can say that about Marshall. Sure, he'll give you a good 110-130 innings. But if the other 70-90 innings is filled in with an emergency starter, will that be worth more than Marquis? Plus with Harden having Marshall as that extra starter becomes even more valuable. He'll likely be able to be used to his full potential in that swing starter role because of those injury concerns with Harden.

The difference in picks is pretty negligible(unless Affeldt is the reliever signed), and I didn't include the return on Lee both for simplicity's sake and so that we didn't get into a "we're getting too much/little for Lee" debate, which wasn't my intention. Sort of. Losing two type A players and signing 2 others does have its advantages. If the Cubs did that, they would: lose their first and 2nd round pick but they would gain either 2 firsts, 1st and a 2nd, or 2 seconds (depending on two things..if the teams that signed them are in the top 15, and if they are the highest ranked free agent signed by those teams) and 2 sandwich picks. So the Cubs would pick up 2 extra high picks with the swap. It would be even better if the 2nd type A free agent was also among the best 15 teams and they would effectively swap their 2nd for another team's first. Even if it just is 2 extra sandwich picks though, that is still significant.

That's a really hard question to answer. If you sort by 100 plate appearances, the Cubs are the first team to get 2 catchers on the list (Soto is 4th in OPS, Blanco is 23rd. That's out of 64 catchers that qualify). Cin had 2 catchers as well, but one of them is Valentin who wasn't really used as a catcher much this year. Blanco is also looked at as one of the best defensive catchers in baseball, and had another great percentage at throwing out runners (45.4%). So at least with his arm, that reputation is earned. But best backup? It's hard to say. There are a few catching situations that is hard to pick the starter and the backup. Plus catcher defense is even harder to quantify then other positions. But Blanco has to be right up there. Anytime you can say your backup catcher was an average catcher offensively (for both starters and backups) and probably well above average defensively, that is an amazing combination for a backup. Now-there is a question if he can repeat what he has done the last 2 seasons when he is healthy with the bat. Those were numbers he never put up earlier in his career, and it seems strange for him to finally be figuring it out offensively in his mid 30's. He'll turn 38 next year. So some decline has to be expected for him. Blanco's probably the best catcher floating around in free agency even if he's not the best backup overall. The question becomes if you really want to pay a premium for a backup catcher when you have Soto as your starter. How many resources do you want to pay for a guy who will start 30-40 games in the regular season and is only an insurance policy in the playoffs? The Cubs are at a level right now that they should probably think about how to best utilize their resources both for the season and the playoffs. You don't want to load up too much money balancing your team and creating very little holes during the season, but at the same time end up having 15-20 million dollars locked up in your 5th starter, backup catcher, and 4th or 5th relievers, none of who will play much role in the postseason when you could have made an upgrade to get a star somewhere else. So Blanco could be both worth the money and yet not worth it to the Cubs. It's just how much of a risk the team wants to take. Do they buy one star in the offseason and try to risk it in the regular season, or do they continue to build the best 25 man roster top to bottom, even if it isn't the best 18-20 man squad?

Wikipedia has it listed as -7.

Terrible news. Somebody had a decent shot of taking a chance on him if he was a type B and they weren't going to lose any picks for him. I'd be shocked if anybody was desperate enough to lose a pick over him though. And I believe the minimum you can offer in arbitration is 80 percent. So they'd have to offer Howry at least 3.6 million. He might get that somewhere else..if we don't offer him arbitration. If we did, he'd accept for sure because that would pretty much kill the market for him.

I'm not as excited about Burnett as everyone else seems to be, especially for the crazy money teams are lined up to pay him. Assuming Dempster's year wasn't a total fluke, Dempster will be $3-$4 million cheaper per year for 1-2 less years. You really think Burnett is going to go for insane money? I certainly see Sheets and Sabathia going for insane dollar amounts, but i'm not sure how I feel about Burnett. He had his worst year since 03 last year so possibly his price tag will be a little less? Or maybe that's just wishful thinking. Isn't Burnett giving up big money to opt out in the first place? I can't imagine he'd opt out and take less money to sign somewhere else. But, I don't know what his current contract looks like, so maybe he isn't giving up big money by opting out. Burnett has 2 years and 24 million left on his deal.

The Padres are looking to cut payroll and get younger by trading Peavy. DLee doesn't help them with either objective. Plus they already have a good player at his position.

Then later in the article.. Makes me wonder if he would take Randy Bush, leaving the Cubs without a worthwhile GM. http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/chi-081016-chicago-cubs-jim-hendry,0,582070.story Yeah I think there would be interest for Hendry then some think. I know many have not like some of his moves in the past, but even the best GM's make subpar moves.When it comes down to it Hendry has made alot more good moves then bad. Then when you consider he's put a competitive team on the field 5 of 6 years(05 team could have contended for playoff spot without all the injuries) he's been the GM, and has 3 division titles in 6 years. His resume is actually pretty solid, and I can see the Mariners, Blue Jays and a few other teams interested. But I would be surprised if Hendry isn't back, he seems to like it here, and the team is happy with him. I don't see his style working well with a mid-sized market team like Seattle. Hendry makes good moves, but he also throws a lot of money at his problems as well. I can't see him having the flexibility to do that in Seattle, a market that has let very good players leave due to money. And if they do give him some money to spend, are they going to give him more money to spend when he makes mistakes on some of his big money acquisitions? The Mariners spent around 1 million less than the Cubs this year and outspent them last year. They are plenty willing to spend money. They just haven't spent it on the right people.

Well, so much for that trade. McCargo fails his physical and goes back to the Bills.

The season is way too long in MLB to always be looking forward to the playoffs. I refuse to make all my enjoyment based on what happens in a couple week stretch. Sure, it was very disappointing to come out like the Cubs did in the 3 games of the playoffs. But if I enjoyed a team more than they frustrated me, then I'm happy. And there was so much to enjoy during the whole season that 1 week of frustration does not come close to matching. This Cubs team was fun to watch. Obviously, this team still has ways to improve in the enjoyment factor by putting together some postseason success. But if you solely are looking at the postseason to see if the team was enjoyable or not, you're missing a lot of fun with games during the season.

I'm not watching the Bears game, but one way that a defensive player can get called for a delay of game is if they are calling out fake signals trying to make people believe that they are the quarterback. It's probably what happened if there was no real clear delay.

You want a catcher that tips pitches? :confused: Also Hank did hit .292 last year. Did I miss the Koyie tips pitches story? It all stemmed from one game the last week of the season. Samardzija was on the mound, and on every offspeed pitch Hill stretched out. He stayed straight up on every fastball. I didn't see any evidence that he was tipping anybody else's pitches, and that's the only inning I've seen him catch Jeff. I don't think it's a big concern.

Agreed. I'm fine with Hill backing up a prospect at AA or AAA, but he's done as a major league backstop. There are other options available on the cheap that I'd be perfectly fine with. But, my first preference would probably be to bring back Blanco for 1m. I don't think anywhere near 1 million is realistic for a good veteran backup catcher. You can find another catcher out there for around a million, but he won't be anywhere near as good as Blanco. Most backup catchers that have hit free agency make between 1.5 and 2 million, and most of them aren't as good offensively or defensively as Blanco. I think it has to be either the expensive option (Blanco) or the cheap option (Hill). The in between options don't really give you the correct value for your money.

I get the random blind guess of zambrano, he has had a temper in the past and seems to like to play practical jokes (depending on whether the pipe was broken out of anger or as a joke). But..DLee? Huh? I think Lee is being seen as a guess because he was the only one who threw anything during the game. He was pretty upset when he cracked his helmet.