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I wouldn't call the offseason bad at all. What the Cubs haven't done is just as important as what they have done. It would have been a bad offseason if they had signed Fukudome, but they had signed Kendall and Lofton also in an effort to win now and effectively blocked Pie and Soto. Sure, it's not great. The fact that the SS position is still exactly where it was before is a huge problem. Overall though, the strategy of upgrading one of the positions and letting the young players sink or swim at the others is a good one. The team has certainly improved from last season, both with acquiring new players and giving starting roles to young players that weren't given last year.

A.J. Ratliff left the Indiana program for good today to deal with some personal things. He may have been frustrating over his four years with Indiana, but he always played hard. I'm sorry to see his senior season be such a waste with the ineligibility first semester, the lack of confidence on the court, and now this. Hopefully his personal issues can be worked out whatever they are and he can live a productive life outside of basketball.

Well, the basic list of guys better than Theriot whose teams wont be competing... Jack Wilson Jason Bartlett Brendan Harris But as I'm sure you know, teams don't have to be out of it to trade their SS away, they just have to have a ready replacement. So, depending on how everything else is looking, some of these guys might be available... Jhonny Peralta / Asdrubal Cabrera Yunel Escobar / Brent Lillibridge Rafael Furcal / Chin-Lung Hu Alex Gonzalez / Jeff Keppinger Edit: Also, depending on some variables, I could see Orlando Cabrera or Khalil Greene becoming available. Neither scenario is bloody likely, but they are both possible... Cabrera moreso. The only 3 I disagree with are Harris, Furcal, and Gonzalez. Tampa Bay finally figured out what everybody else already knew that Harris simply couldn't play SS, and had to move him to second by the second half of the year. Furcal and Gonzalez have management (one the GM and the other the manager) that won't get rid of them mid-year because of their veteran status. No way Coletti or Baker lets a less experienced player take over in July unless their team is more than 10 games out. Bartlett and Wilson will likely be available, but are very inconsistent and would be bad deadline moves (if they are having a good season, the Cubs will overpay for an average to bad player). Peralta is the most likely option, but the Cubs would likely have to give up significant talent in another area in order to fill the Indians needs in their run for the playoffs. Escobar could be traded, but Atlanta is very high on him. If Cabrera or Greene become available, that would be the best solution. It would just be rolling the dice to see if that happens though.

Great. If you can swing a deal where all you give up is Murton and Cedeno, then I'm all for it. Anyways, I think giving up Cedeno could hurt this team a lot more than people think. I'm not at all saying I'm a fan of Ronny, but entering the season without a real backup plan for Theriot is a very frightening thought. Entering the season without a real backup plan for Theriot makes Lou more desperate. We saw last season that when he gets desperate, he gets creative, and no clear backup for Theriot gives a decent shot that DeRosa would get more at-bats at SS, which would help even more than Cedeno would there.

Again, it would be great to fill the SS hole, but who, how and where? It's not a luxury to have another good baseball player on the team, which Roberts is. The way I see it, Derosa is always a possibility to fall back into his pre-Texas numbers, which are not good. Roberts is a much better bet to be a real good player, thus making the hole from Theriot's lack of production less of a burden. Renteria over Theriot would have been a much bigger upgrade than Roberts over Derosa. Ok? And what does that have to do with today? Renteria is not available. Roberts likely is. Do you not improve the team because you can't improve it as good as you could have 5 months ago? That makes no sense. Huh? Aren't we discussing ways Hendry could have made this team better in the offseason? Renteria was available after the season was over, when it was clear we needed a shortstop. No, we're talking about ways that Hendry can make the team better today. Right now, the only options seem to be a Roberts trade or to go into the season with the current team. Renteria isn't an option, and it doesn't look like any other quality SS's are either. Given those limitations, does making the Roberts trade make the team better than standing pat and playing with the current team? Exactly. If we're talking about how he could have made the team better in the offseason, there's a lot bigger fish to fry than Renteria. Arod and Andruw were both available for cash. Cabrera was available in a trade. Haren, Bedard, Santana were available. Granted those most of those weren't likely, but neither was a Renteria trade considering it was done like 2 days after the Series. That's a poor comparison. What does Renteria being traded 2 days after the season have anything to do with how likely it was to get him. We had just as good of a chance as the Tigers to get him. I'd like to think that Hendry is aware of how the business works. Anyways, we didn't have a realistic shot at Arod, Andruw for 2/36 is not appealing at all (and we couldn't afford it anyways), we didn't have what it took to get Cabrera (and we don't have a position for him anyways), Santana wouldn't accept a trade to the Cubs (plus we couldn't extend him), and Haren/Bedard got more in trade than we could realistically offer. Renteria was very realistic and was had for relatively cheap. The timing meant that the Cubs may not have had a chance for Renteria. Atlanta by trading him as quickly as they did and for as little as he was traded for implies that Atlanta was desperate to get rid of him. Atlanta may have targeted Detroit as a potential trade partner and finalized the deal before others figured out why Atlanta was so desperate. The World Series ended on a Sunday night, the trade was made on Monday afternoon. From all you've seen from the Braves organization, do you think they're that dumb to trade Renteria for so little so quickly? Surely somebody would have given them more if they had waited, but for some reason they traded him without letting teams negotiate for him. That trade is about as fishy as they come for involving something that we as fans just don't know about.

Two of the Cubs pieces in the supposed Roberts trade (Murton and Cedeno) will be worth less and less every day they sit on the Cubs bench. What good SS is on a team that won't be in contention at the deadline? There is very likely not going to be any upgrade available for Theriot. Bullpen help will be needed even less that the upgrade from DeRosa to Roberts. The Cubs already have plenty of people in the bullpen, and even if a reliever or two goes down that will still be the case. Injury problems are a big concern, but DeRosa moving to the bench is a preemptive measure to protect against big injuries to most of the position players. Basically you're solving the problem before it even starts. Also, the Cubs will still have resources. By July the Cubs will have a better idea if Pie is going to be the long-term answer. If he is, then Colvin is expendable in a deal. The Cubs also have several 2007 draftees that many other fans have already found interesting, and they will be available to be dealt by the deadline (I believe everybody but Vitters, who wouldn't be available to be traded until August). Now if the Cubs suffer a long-term injury or two to one of their top 3 starters, then there might not be enough resources to replace them. That would be the biggest risk of this move.

Again, it would be great to fill the SS hole, but who, how and where? It's not a luxury to have another good baseball player on the team, which Roberts is. The way I see it, Derosa is always a possibility to fall back into his pre-Texas numbers, which are not good. Roberts is a much better bet to be a real good player, thus making the hole from Theriot's lack of production less of a burden. Renteria over Theriot would have been a much bigger upgrade than Roberts over Derosa. Ok? And what does that have to do with today? Renteria is not available. Roberts likely is. Do you not improve the team because you can't improve it as good as you could have 5 months ago? That makes no sense. Huh? Aren't we discussing ways Hendry could have made this team better in the offseason? Renteria was available after the season was over, when it was clear we needed a shortstop. No, we're talking about ways that Hendry can make the team better today. Right now, the only options seem to be a Roberts trade or to go into the season with the current team. Renteria isn't an option, and it doesn't look like any other quality SS's are either. Given those limitations, does making the Roberts trade make the team better than standing pat and playing with the current team?

Theriot put up a .300/.342/.420 line out of the leadoff spot.

I like DeRosa too. I like him even better with 425 AB's all over the field. But there is only so much I would give up. Also...you're viewing being an All-Star in an odd way. You're basically viewing it the same way some people do as leadoff hitter being a position. Being an All-Star is great, but it doesn't add any extra trade value. Is that you Brian? Make no mistake..Brian Roberts is worth that much. He is one of the better players in the game at his position, and he isn't going to be given away. That doesn't necessarily mean the Cubs should make the trade. There certainly are legitimate arguments that for the Cubs, Gallagher and Cedeno especially are worth more than the upgrade to Roberts. It's more about positional scarcity than overall trade value at that point. I think the whole key to this trade is how likely you think the Cubs would give Cedeno and Gallagher starting roles on the team. If they both are relegated to bench roles all season (Gallagher probably in Iowa most of the year), then Roberts becomes a big upgrade. If Cedeno were to have a very good shot to start at SS for most of the year, then it might be different.

Um...what? 1) Lofton is still a potentially useful player (albeit limited), so there would be no need to save a GM from signing him. 2) Hendry has never been reported to be interested in Lofton. That has been a creation of NSBB. So even if somebody needed saving, it would be the board not Hendry.

Best case scenario: Nomar plays about the same number of games he has played the last two seasons and gets 450 AB's at 2006 levels. That's the biggest problem with Nomar. First, you have to assume he's going to have another bounce back season at age 34. Then, he has to play some sort of competent defense at short when he hasn't played there in 2 years (and has had a lot of leg injuries), and didn't play particularly good defense at 3rd base last year. Then, he has to stay as healthy at SS as he did at 1st or 3rd. Even if he does all that, he's still not anywhere near a fulltime player and Theriot would get 200 AB's at SS anyway. The odds are that 1 of those 3 things are going to go wrong, and he either is not going to be healthy, not able to play short, or not able to hit well anymore. He is still more valuable to the Dodgers than he is worth in a trade because of all the huge potential negatives at moving him to SS.

Pie would really have to suck for Payton to be a viable fall back plan. PECOTA projects an OPS for .697 for Payton. I just have a really bad feeling Pie's not going to hit. I think it is important to have realistic expectations of how he'll preform. I think it is realistic to expect a league average CF production from Pie with well above league average fielding. To me the problem is not putting Pie in CF it is that the Cubs don't have a strong enough team to let a talented young CF learn to be a major league player. They need Pie to produce. What is league average offense for a CF? My fear is that he'll be terrible, like .220/.283 kind of terrible. I know, I need to have more faith :cool: .272/.337/.420. If Pie does that, the Cubs will have an above average offense next year, and possibly a top 5 offense. 7 of their 8 positions will be average or better, with a few of them having the potential to be significantly above.

The Reds refused to include Bruce in a trade with the Orioles for Bedard. I don't know why they would turn around and include him in a trade for a worse pitcher in Blanton.

nah not likely, TSN prefers defense over offense. Soto and Blanco are both pretty damn good defensivley, and the fact that Soto should actually produce some offense, its very likely the Cubs will have the 2nd or 3rd best production in the NL from Catcher. I can't accept that Soto will produce offensively yet. Not a big enough sample size @ MLB level. Here's hoping he does, he would be an amazing NL catcher if he brought his defense to the table and doubled it up with a little O. You don't think Soto can put up a .700 OPS next season? That would qualify as producing offensively for a catcher.

I don't really agree with that. If Gallagher is on the team, I think he'll have a legit opportunity to start ahead of Dempster/Lieber/Marquis (if he's on the team). We all know how Lou feels about Marquis, and I doubt he feels much better about Dempster starting. I think Gallagher is going to have an uphill climb to start coming out of Spring Training. Unless Gallagher is amazing in spring training, or one of Marquis or Lieber get hurt, those two will likely start the season as the #4 and #5. That doesn't mean Gallagher won't get his shot though. A few good triple A starts, a few bad starts by one of those two, and he could easily be in the rotation for a long look by June 1st.

So when is the IU apology coming for their fan behavior? Im sure they plan on issuing it soon For what? The Uconn game? If so, it has already been done. Several of the players did some PSA's that they played on the video board during the game. What does it matter anyway? IU didn't make them issue a statement. How about for mister attention whore and his salute to the Illini fans? Class pure class You don't issue an apology for one fan flipping the bird after being heckled all game. If that were the case, you would have A.D.'s issuing apologies after every Big Ten road game. Come on. Gordon Sr. is probably an attention whore, but if he and his family actually was hit by beads, it's not stunning that he would have something to say on his way out. For the record I don't think anything I actually saw was out of line. I'm just saying that when everyone in college basketball outside of your fans is blasting you today, it's probably not the right time to complain about class from others. For all of the Indiana people that were outraged by it, do you remember what you did to Luke Recker when he came back to Assembly Hall 5 years ago? He got the same treatment as Gordon, maybe worse. The Recker treatment was appalling. One of the absolute worst times to be an Indiana fan. He didn't deserve any of that.

So when is the IU apology coming for their fan behavior? Im sure they plan on issuing it soon From the story in the Indystar today: I think that's a lot to be done to try to curb the practice. The story also mentioned that the referee warned Frazier for the bump, but decided against calling a technical foul for it because he had never called a technical for something that happened before a game, although it was within his discretion to do so.

Well we know we are a terrible team and that they are supposed to be a good team. Yet everytime we have played them they have barely beaten us. We also played Duke, they had no such problem taking us to the woodshed. They lose Gordon and White next year. In the next three years we add the most talent we have ever had, IU could be on probabtion. Are you still failing to see why we think we will be better going forward? and who's to say that your great recruits don't all bolt after THEIR freshmen year? At what point did I say any of them were that good? Maybe Jereme Richmond can do that, but even then I doubt that as we will be pretty good and he won't get to run loose like Gordon does. i honestly don't know anything about your recruits, which is why i'm asking. from what i can gather, you have good recruits, but not so good they'll leave early, but good enough to be better than Indiana for years to come? how are IU's recruits? They have a very good one for '08 whose name eludes me. After that they have struggled because of the impending NCAA investigation. Trust me, people better kick us now while we are down. IU is not struggling in recruiting whatsoever. For 08, they have Devin Ebanks (ranked 12th in the county), a pretty good point guard (Holloway), and then two good role players (Roth and Pritchard). That overall gives them the #15 recruiting class for 08. In 09, they've landed a decent power forward and are on many lists for many of the nations top players. There is absolutely no indication that their recruiting is struggling because of any investigation. I do agree that Illinois will be a lot better in the next few years though. I expect to see several more years of a very good and unfortunately very heated rivalry.

Exactly. Imagine if someone came on here the morning that Z re-signed claiming to know Z's agent and that a deal was about to get done (when nobody saw much of a chance of something getting done with Z). They would have a cult-like following on here and people would hang on every word. Actually, this sort of happened. Somebody scooped the Z deal the night before it happened when nobody thought it would happen during the season :D. Heh, I actually would've completely missed it. I was at the doc getting my broken nose fixed that day. What happened? This was posted by BleacherBadger the night before Z was signed: People of course were skeptical until the next day, but the info was still very well appreciated, and the next time BleacherBadger picks up something I hope people will still be skeptical, but remember that he already scooped that.

I'm sorry, but the bolded part is comical. "I have never been to France, but I can only guess that the wine here is far more superior" I'm not saying that NSBB is not a superior site but it is hard to make such a statement if you have never been there and goes to show that some people have a strong bias against the OH in general. Agreed. They are both great sites. Obviously after this trade I'll spend little to no time on the OH because I really won't care about the things they discuss. Honestly though, OH is a good example of what NSBB is building towards. It encompasses all the sports in the city, it has social broken down into several categories, and it normally has about 5 or 6 times as many people as NSBB does on it. That of course doesn't mean I like OH better. Bigger is not always better. I can see this site having a layout that is at least somewhat similar to theirs with many of the same categories in the future though. One thing is clear though, NSBB is not OH Jr., and I'm glad OH news has been confined to this thread. I also look forward to when this trade will be done. Even though I enjoy reading the very large community over there, running over the particulars of one deal can become very boring.

Exactly. Imagine if someone came on here the morning that Z re-signed claiming to know Z's agent and that a deal was about to get done (when nobody saw much of a chance of something getting done with Z). They would have a cult-like following on here and people would hang on every word. Actually, this sort of happened. Somebody scooped the Z deal the night before it happened when nobody thought it would happen during the season :D.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/mariners/2004170043_webmari07.html Who gives a crap about a news conference, all we want is an announcement. That is one long physical.

A .750 ops split is not good. Not really, but it's a lot better than what the Cubs have currently. Is there anybody currently available that could consistently give the Cubs better? Shannon Stewart Shannon Stewart is better against right-handers than left-handers. He hasn't had a single season of .750 OPS or better against left-handers out of the last 4. Plus he has had only 6 games played in CF in the last 7 years combined. Payton is better than him in both those aspects.

A .750 ops split is not good. Not really, but it's a lot better than what the Cubs have currently. Is there anybody currently available that could consistently give the Cubs better?

I doubt that did you see the contract Carlos Silva just got? Crappy innings eaters cost 10 mill a year minimum in today's market. You're not gonna get a top level prospect for him but someone would take him. If that's the case then why is he still here? Nobody wants Marquis. Why is he still here? Because the Cubs aren't desperate to move him. They may not be in love with him, but they still won't trade him unless they get some type of value from him. There have been several different reports that teams are interested in Marquis. They just haven't given a package that the Cubs are willing to take for their most costly and most dependable 4th/5th starter option. We may wish they would dump the contract of Marquis, but the Cubs have given no indication that they are willing to do that.