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I have no idea why this would be relevant. YEAH THE AFC IS BETTER!!! THEY HAVE NEVER SEEN SPECIAL TEAMS LIKE OURS BEFORE!!* *except when they played the AFC teams 4 times during the year. Not to mention the Colts special teams was very poor. They had almost cost them the game against New England when Hobbs had an 80 and a 46 yard return in the second half. I've heard before that the coaching staff let the players decide whether to kick it to Hester, and that was a ridiculous decision. Of course the players are going to say they can stop him even when they're terrible at it.

I think Kyle is likely right with a big caveat attached. First, some evidence. Even if we throw out Jackson's last section of AAA AB's where it spiked to 37%, as Kyle said 28% is still really bad for AAA. Here are the top 10 qualified players in strikeouts this year and their AAA strikeout rate: Adam Dunn: 20.1% Pedro Alvarez: 25.8% Carlos Pena: 21.7% Chris Davis: 23.7% Drew Stubbs: 22.3% Dan Uggla (AA stats as he was never at AAA): 17.8% Curtis Granderson: 24.9% Danny Espinosa: 20.4% Kelley Johnson: 12.1% B.J. Upton: 20.3% So even if we take Jackson at his best split possible, he still was well worse than all these high strikeout hitters. That's a massive red flag. It's not like his AAA numbers are a terribly small sample size, and it's not the first time his K numbers have been crazy high for his level either (his last year of college was highly problematic as well). Without any changes, it's hard to project him for anything less than 35% at the major league level, and 40% as Kyle has mentioned is definitely possible. The caveat is that I believe there is some reason for hope. It's quite probable that the previous regime never really worked hard on changing his swing because of the amount of success he was having. And he seems like an ideal candidate for a mechanical change because he doesn't have to worry about refining his approach while doing so. A successful overhaul could throw the previous projections out the window. But I am concerned that a mechanical change that takes away some of his strikeouts will also negatively influence his power. So I think the book is mostly shut on the current iteration of Brett Jackson, but I think there is more room for change than most people in his position have.

The current OT rules are a hell of a lot better than that suggestion, and I kinda hate the current OT rules. Do you hate it because it takes away a team trying to rush down the field at the end? I can see that. I guess it is just whether you want the excitement of someone trying rush to score at the end or being more fair. I didn't mind the old OT rules, but just thought this would be more fair. A tie game in sudden death is already exciting. I wouldn't really care either way--and honestly wouldn't totally mind ending the games in a tie. I hate it because football doesn't work as a "short game". Yes, occasionally there's a quick drive, big pass, etc. But generally it's a grind it out, get 3-4 yards, try to sprinkle in the occasional big play game, and I dont' think that fits well into a confined space. I think OT ends up giving a win to one team and a loss to another, for a game in which both proved equal over the course of 60 minutes of play. I'd rather give them a tie and move along. Obviously that's not an option in the playoffs, and something has to be done there. I wonder how ties instead of OT would have affected this past season? If I get some time later in my Friday, I'll see if I can figure that out. Denver would have finished last in their division instead of first (with San Diego going to the playoffs). Arizona would have had a much better draft pick since they were 4-0 in OT games. Dallas would have had a worse record. Hard to know how that would have affected the NFC East because the tiebreakers already caused some strategy changes at the end of the last year.

Fun with small samples. Coming into today, with hitters who have 80 PA's or more, Jackson is: 14th in MLB in walk rate last in K rate 34th in MLB in isolated power Jackson is either walking or striking out in 57.9% of his plate appearances. Next most was Cody Ransom and Adam Dunn at 50.2%.

Possibly, at least at the start. But unless Theo/Jed go outside the organization again, I'm thinking Stewart is still a distinct possibility. And if we're looking at another "lost" season, I'm fine with seeing how much of a problem his wrist really was. If Valbuena is the alternative, at least. Valbuena vs Stewart is an interesting discussion. Valbuena doesn't have as high of a ceiling, but probably has a better chance of reaching his ceiling. And with Stewart only having 2 years until free agency compared to Valbuena just hitting arbitration (will Valbuena have 3 years of service time after this year or will he be a Super 2?), I personally would rather take the chance on Valbuena. They're practically the same age as well (Stewart is 7 months older).

The question becomes does Valbuena become the likely starter for 2013? His main peripherals look solid. He has the best BB/K ratio on the team. His ISOP of .150 is fine. His defense is good. The only thing holding him back from being an above average 3B starter is a .248 BABIP with a 20.1 LD percentage. What makes that BABIP harder to waive away is that his career BABIP in the majors is .267 in just over 1000 PA's, and his minor league BABIP is decently low for a future major league player (.317). So does he have something in his swing that causes that low difference between LD and BABIP, or is it mostly statistical variation? I think the front office would like to find that out over the last month.

This is what I would love. Lots of strategy potential and a high likelihood of a drive to end the game to try to tie/win. If the players don't want to play more than 1 OT in the regular season, I'm perfectly fine with that. That would probably still leave less than 10 ties a year. That's still a lot less anticlimactic than sudden death is, which has some exciting finishes but is usually pretty boring. If the holding/contact rule were implemented, I could easily see teams choosing to rush nobody on every 3rd and long and effectively making it impossible to throw. Running offenses would become much more valuable as well, which would both increase injuries once again and also lead to the subjectivity he's hoping to avoid (the main one being whether the player holding is still in the tackle box or not). I can't see that rule ending well.

Still have some hope for him. He dramatically increased his walk rate this year, but a jump in his strikeout rate negated some of those gains. He has been much better in the second half of the year which might suggest suggest the new instruction is taking hold. Less homeruns but more doubles. He's still only 21, so he has some time to develop. The main question with him has always been upside which is still highly questionable, but he's getting closer and closer to being a somewhat safe 4th OF prospect.

like this? http://espn.go.com/mlb/freeagents/_/type/dollars Let's try some trivia to test some assumptions. If we were picking out the ideal FA target, I think most would agree that the player would still be in their prime, and would sign a multi-year deal to give the team some control, but wouldn't sign for an insane length to hamper future flexibility. So here's a question, in the last 6 years, how many free agents under the age of 30 have signed multi-year contracts? How many when you exclude international signings? None because most players don't get to free agency until they're 29 or 30 years old unless they're international signings. Close. Domestic: Reyes, Fielder International: Darvish, Chapman, Nishioka, Wei-Yin Chen 6 instances in 6 years, with 2 of them being mediocre internationals, and 4 of which came this past offseason. ESPN lists their current ages on the free agent tracker, which is why most of the examples seemed to occur this past offseason. For example, Crawford was 29 when he signed his contract. A quick glance shows about 10 players who were signed under the age of 30 in 06.

I'm still wondering where all the money went this year. The 2011 Cubs spent around $160 million between the big leagues, the draft and IFAs. Add up this year's payroll, draft, IFA, organizational changes and infrastructure, and I'm still coming up way short of $160 million. Depends on how you spread out the money. The Cubs committed around 40 million in IFA money this year. How much is being put on this year's budget versus other years is completely unknown. How much of the 8 million investment in the Dominican Academy is on this year's budget is unknown. They've fired quite a few people and expanded the front office at the same time. That's going to cost a little extra. They've made quite a few technology improvements throughout the system, which is going to add some initial cost. Basically the only two things we know for sure are payroll+draft. Those two are somewhere in the 118-120 million range combined. Do the others add up to 40 million extra? Probably not, but there's enough there that it easily could depending on the accounting of it.

You lose more than that. 1) You lose draft picks. As davell mentioned, signing Pujols and Wilson would have cost the Cubs their 2nd and 3rd round picks this year. 2) You lose roster flexibility. Signing Pujols makes an opportunity to flip Cashner for Rizzo go by the boards. Sure, you still have Cashner to trade, but who knows if there's another undervalued asset out there for him to get? The more flexibility you have for positions, the more likely it is to be able to find diamonds in the rough. 3) You lose financial flexibility. If the Cubs signed Pujols, Wilson, and Cespedes, do they have the money for even small acquisitions like Maholm? Probably not (they had a lot of money left over, but signing those 3 would have sapped it very quickly), and so you lose one of the other easy ways to build assets-buying players in free agency who just need playing time, and then flipping them when there's a need. And as sneaky mentioned, do the Cubs have the money for Soler if they put a large amount into free agents? 4) As you mentioned, your team is better so you lose draft positioning and IFA money. 5) The Cubs would also lose whatever they did or are planning to do with that 30 million dollars. I don't know how much value to put on this one because we know that money didn't go into thin air, we're pretty sure that money wasn't just pocketed by the owners, but we don't know where it went. So should free agency be completely eschewed? Maybe not. Players like Cespedes and Darvish might have qualified for more reasons than their ages. They wouldn't have cost a draft pick and they both play positions (OF and SP) where you have to have multiple of anyway. But spending big money in free agency typically is a rather poor way for the whole organization to gather assets. By staying active and staying flexible, an organization can usually pick up better assets by going a different route However, I tend to agree the Cubs could have gone the free agency route and likely succeeded in building the organization as well, although the success rate would be lower than it is now.

I'd guess mostly A, but I'd guess Theo wouldn't think it was lying. The dual fronts thing was always couched in one key component. They were going to try to win now, as long as it didn't interfere with the future. Theo stressed this repeatedly. The future always came first in every decision. If they could make a move to improve the team now without hurting the future, they'd do it because every season is precious. But they weren't willing to sacrifice the future for anything. So basically what Theo was saying with dual fronts is that the team wasn't going to actively tank. They were going to try to win, but they were going to do it with one hand tied behind their back because they were prioritizing the future in decisions much, much more than a normal team would. You could still say the statement was misleading though because Theo knew that people would jump on the dual fronts idea and downplay the thought of future based thinking, and he probably used that for PR purposes.

You're fast. I had marked the posts on page one and when I went to page two, it was gone! I'm glad to see this will be helpful for so many of you. Although it does seem to me that Peoria has usually been one of the most barren levels for prospects year after year. This year has been one of the better years, and still it hasn't had the volume of good prospects that other levels have had.

Patterson's going to prep school. We don't know at the moment (and may never know) if he didn't like the offers being presented to him, the schools suddenly cooled on him, or he couldn't end up qualifying at the places he wanted to go.

He's replacing Bynum though, and Howard's a much harder worker on the court than Bynum is. Plus Howard doesn't demand the ball like Bynum does. They'll have their moments, but I think Kobe has a better chance of being able to work well with Howard.

Why in the [expletive] would Denver do this deal? I'd rather have Afflalo than Iguodala, and they gave up Harrington and a first for the hell of it. Iguadola's a more well rounded player. Rebounds the ball quite a bit better, dishes out many more assists, and is considered a better defender as well (although Afflalo is no slouch in that department either). Afflalo is a better shooter, but I'm not sure what else he does better. I'm not sure if that's worth giving up Harrington and a first, but I think Iguadola is better.

There's always a chance they go with a spot starter in game two to keep their rotation set for next week. When I posted, they had Whitenack scheduled to start both games, which probably isn't a great idea, especially since he was under the knife just last year. Have we heard how they're going to use Hendricks? He pitched 1 inning on Friday and hasn't pitched since.

2012 - 158K Games 148 (so far) 2011 - 138K Games 115 2010 - 126K Games 128 Jackson has only played 109 games this year. That changes the comparison significantly. Here are his strikeout rates at all the full season leagues: A-25.0% High A-20.1% Double A-24.2% Triple A-32.5% So it really skyrocketed when he hit AAA. And he was even worse this season than it was in his half season last year. I read the stat 2012 wrong. I combined the last part of 2011. Duh. So it goes up when he faces better competition. Isn't that worrisome? Absolutely it is. But it's also unusual (and very unusual to keep being so productive despite it) which is why people were speculating it would normalize out after a larger sample size. That's why even after his half season at AAA last year, he was still ranked high-it was seen as a fluke. And that's why he's still seen as a decent prospect now, because nobody quite knows why it suddenly spiked or if something can be fixed that will take him back to being a high but not crazy high strikeout player.

2012 - 158K Games 148 (so far) 2011 - 138K Games 115 2010 - 126K Games 128 Jackson has only played 109 games this year, and he has 166 K's between AAA and the majors. That changes the comparison significantly. Here are his strikeout rates at all the full season leagues: A-25.0% High A-20.1% Double A-24.2% Triple A-32.5% So it really skyrocketed when he hit AAA. And he was even worse this season than it was in his half season last year.

It is interesting that his minor league BABIP was also .346, but I think that supports my point. Some loss of BABIP when facing the best defenders in baseball is to be expected. Which is what we've seen, his MLB career BABIP is now .334 after almost 1700 PAs. Is defense really collectively that much worse in the minors or is the major gap in talent among position players hitting related? It's hard to say why it is. Maybe the defense is worse, and field conditions probably have something to do with it too. The minor leagues do tend to have slightly higher BABIP's though. Every league in the minors last year had at least a .300 BABIP against (the Cubs leagues go as follows: PCL .329, SL .312, FSL .313, Midwest .306, Northwest .315, Arizona .342). The major league median (couldn't find the average) was .294.

IMO, Garza's very unlikely to settle for a 4 year deal, especially a 4 year deal that would only buy out 3 free agent years. If he wants a chance at one more contract, he'll be much more likely to ask for a longer deal with an opt out. The Cubs are likely not going to be able to extend him this offseason unless they pay him close to what he wants. And if they wait until free agency, he's probably going to command a 5 year deal taking him through his age 34 season if not 6.

I don't see the blame for the Dodgers. They just didn't value Dempster as much as other clubs did, and they never backed off of that. It was only the issues on the Cubs end that caused them to have to negotiate so much with the Dodgers in the first place.

CCP just posted he's been sitting 87-89. Yeah, I'm not really in love with the ceiling of a guy who got demoted down a level from the previous year's. Hendricks wasn't demoted. He got one random start at the end of the year at AA (probably because their season was still going). He actually jumped a level this year from short season ball to high A.

This report has him at 87-89 on his fastball, but he's added a cutter to his already deep repertoire. http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/prospects/2012/07/kyle-hendricks/ Seems like a guy who will have to prove himself as he moves up the ladder because of the inability to overpower hitters, but the level of control he's shown so far is pretty special. Could move up the rankings quickly if he could repeat anywhere near that level of control at the higher levels.

Not uncommon for a sinkerballer. His low home run rate really helps keep that in check.