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What do you define as replacement level? I'd only define maybe 2 of those guys as replacment level. The others are average ballplayers who are overpaid (and the jury's still out on Marquis. With the way the pitching market is going, he may end up as an around average starter at an average or below average salary). Plus 3 of those are relievers, and there are tons of average relievers around the league that are overpaid, and the list grows every year.

We could probably get away with both upgrading SS and signing Fukudome. I was on the Murton bandwagon for years, and I could probably live with having Murton in RF instead of Fukudome, but at the same time you have to wonder how many chances he is going to have. Every year we expect him to breakout, but every year he ends up on the bench. I'd like to think its just the Cubs org not giving him the opportunity, but he has been our opening day starter the last 2 years and has managed to end up on the bench or demoted to the minors both years. He is basically our Austin Kearns. Good OBP, moderate potential for power, a butcher in the field, cannot stick in a starting lineup. If we can solve our major glaring problem (OBP) by getting one of the top 3-4 OBP guys on the market (behind players like Bonds and ARod) we'd be stupid not to. Fukudome isn't going to OBP 400 in the states. He'll be a 360-370 guy. A smidge better than Murton. Based on what? The last 3 years in Japan, his OBP is .430, .438, .443. Even with his sure drop in HR numbers, how can you expect less then 90% of those numbers in the states? His OBP the last 3 years has been .401, .368, and .438. http://thebaseballcube.com/players/F/Kosuke-Fukudome.shtml

Thats irresponsible reporting if they report Monroe is the head of any trade package. Anyways, I'd rather have Fukudome than Crawford any day of the week. -Fukudome is better in the area we need more help in, OBP -Fukudome doesn't cost anything in terms of players -Fukudome will probably be making less than Crawford by the end of his contract. Fukudome is older and most definately cost more. Crawford is due 23.5 mill over the next 3 years. If Fukudome doesn't at least get 8-10 mill per over 4 years I'd be surprised OK, I didn't realize Crawford was extended. I thought he was still doing arby. But still Fukudome will put up better numbers than Crawford. He's 30, not 38. People are looking to give 8 year deals to a 32 year old ARod, but are concerned with giving a 4 year deal to a 30 year old. Granted Fukudome is not nearly in the same class as ARod, but I would not be concerned about regression between the ages of 30-34. It's not regression so much that people are worried about, it's more about how his skills will translate to the U.S. Most people I think believe that he'll be productive, but it's hard to say how productive. Personally I don't see how someone can say that Fukudome is going to put up better numbers than Crawford. Maybe comparable numbers, but better? Crawford's OPS the last 2 years is .830 and .821. Now maybe Fukudome can put up similar numbers OPS wise with better OBP, which of course would be a little better. How high is his upside though? Can he be a 900 OPS player? At the same time, Fukudome could easily be somewhere around a 750-775 OPS. Fukudome has the advantage in defense, but Crawford's 154 SB's over the last 3 years at an 85 percent clip is a nice weapon as well. Crawford's definitely the less risky option IMO. He's younger (and still theoretically hasn't entered his prime), he has less variability in projections, and his contract is better. It will all depend on how much the Cubs would have to give up in trade to see if Crawford is the better option or not, but I just don't see how you can look at the contract and numbers and say that Fukudome will be better. He has a chance to be better, but more likely not. It doesn't matter if he is better. From your argument I would conclude that you think that Fukudome would at least be 90% the player Crawford is, with the potential to be 110% the player he is. Looking at how other players who have come over from Japan to the US have fared, you could expect his OBP to be around 93% of what he is putting up in Japan, his SLG to be about 85% of Japan numbers, and (not that it matters) but his BA to be within 96% of his Japan numbers. Using his numbers from the last 3 seasons, that would put him at roughly: .307/.404/.490/.894 The difference of course being that his SLG is going to come largely from doubles instead of HRs (source for Japanese translation: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/176072/how_well_will_japanese_baseball_import.html) The key point is, Fukudome addresses a much bigger need than Crawford addresses. He will likely put up an OBP over .400 and a SLG similar to Crawfords. Edit: I forgot about my point in this. If you are getting a player thats roughly the same value of another, what is more important to you, keeping players like Rich Hill and prospects like Gallagher on the team, or spending an additional $3-5 million per year. Obviously just guessing on the players given up, but Crawfords name value is extremely high, and even with the new GM in Tampa, they've been reluctant to trade players unless they get more than adequate value for them. Even if those projections are completely correct, your math is wrong on Fukudome's last 3 years. Here would be his projections to the States using his 3 year splits and 96% BA, 93% OBP, 85% SLG: Fukudome: .304/.377/.521 Still a great player there, just a little different. Plus, the author of that article is using career statistics for those players in Japan, while you are using 3 year splits during the prime of Fukudome's career. If you use 3 year splits for Ichiro and Hideki Matsui in Japan, the conversion rates from Japan to US drop a lot lower. For example, Matsui's last 3 years in Japan he had a 1092, 1080, and an 1155 OPS, and his career numbers that the author used only had him at a 995 OPS in Japan, which is a significant difference from using his 3 year numbers. Fukudome for comparison had a 1005, 937, 1091 the last 3 years. If you use Fukudome's career Japanese numbers like the link was doing for every other Japanese player and then convert them, you get: Fukudome: .289/.360/.456 That's what that author would project for Fukudome in his career in the U.S.

Thats irresponsible reporting if they report Monroe is the head of any trade package. Anyways, I'd rather have Fukudome than Crawford any day of the week. -Fukudome is better in the area we need more help in, OBP -Fukudome doesn't cost anything in terms of players -Fukudome will probably be making less than Crawford by the end of his contract. Fukudome is older and most definately cost more. Crawford is due 23.5 mill over the next 3 years. If Fukudome doesn't at least get 8-10 mill per over 4 years I'd be surprised OK, I didn't realize Crawford was extended. I thought he was still doing arby. But still Fukudome will put up better numbers than Crawford. He's 30, not 38. People are looking to give 8 year deals to a 32 year old ARod, but are concerned with giving a 4 year deal to a 30 year old. Granted Fukudome is not nearly in the same class as ARod, but I would not be concerned about regression between the ages of 30-34. It's not regression so much that people are worried about, it's more about how his skills will translate to the U.S. Most people I think believe that he'll be productive, but it's hard to say how productive. Personally I don't see how someone can say that Fukudome is going to put up better numbers than Crawford. Maybe comparable numbers, but better? Crawford's OPS the last 2 years is .830 and .821. Now maybe Fukudome can put up similar numbers OPS wise with better OBP, which of course would be a little better. How high is his upside though? Can he be a 900 OPS player? At the same time, Fukudome could easily be somewhere around a 750-775 OPS. Fukudome has the advantage in defense, but Crawford's 154 SB's over the last 3 years at an 85 percent clip is a nice weapon as well. Crawford's definitely the less risky option IMO. He's younger (and still theoretically hasn't entered his prime), he has less variability in projections, and his contract is better. It will all depend on how much the Cubs would have to give up in trade to see if Crawford is the better option or not, but I just don't see how you can look at the contract and numbers and say that Fukudome will be better. He has a chance to be better, but more likely not.

Why would the Cubs pay any part of it? They didn't have to pay Monroe in the first place if they didn't want to.

I'm kind of shocked someone is willing to trade for him when the Cubs were going to release him anyway. How do the Twins justify his 5 million dollar salary with their payroll? Maybe they are going to non-tender him and then re-sign him to a lower deal.

No. He isn't supposed to be a free agent until next year, but the Cubs were likely going to non-tender him later this month. Still. Why would the Rays want a crappy outfielder? That must be one hell of a minor-league package we're giving them if we're also giving them Monroe. I have no idea on that part, which makes me highly skeptical. I guess we'll just wait and see though. If it was a minor league package, it almost certainly includes Gallagher though (he's the only guy that's big enough in the minor league system that the Rays would want).

No. He isn't supposed to be a free agent until next year, but the Cubs were likely going to non-tender him later this month.

Looks like Eyre will be a Cub next year. The 12th was yesterday, and so apparently he didn't file for free agency (as expected). http://mvn.com/mlb-cubs/2007/11/03/daryle-ward-back-with-cubs-in-2008/

Ward would be one of the worst defensive OF's in LF, but no worse than some of the other butchers out there. At the same time, I don't know if he'd hold up with a whole season of playing the OF at this point of his career.

This exact same thing was reported last year as well in the spring about both Theriot and Cedeno. Neither of them played a significant amount of time in the OF when the season started.

If you don't re-sign Wood with Dempster already going to the rotation makes the bullpen a little thin in quality arms. Suddenly you have a bullpen of Marmol, Howry, Wuertz, Eyre, Hart, Ohman?, and then still 1 more guy. That's a lot of question marks at the back of the bullpen. At the same time, 5 mil for Wood is awfully steep.

not really. the computers have the gators top ten iirc Computer rankings for Florida: 15th, 11th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 13th. So most have Florida just outside the top 10, although slightly higher than their 14th ranking in the human polls.

It's in baseball discussions, currently third thread down.

That's better. I'd like to see another BCS other than 2 ACC but I can't complain. Still...ok I will complain...8 home games and 4 away. 7 home games...4 away....1 neutral. how many top 25 teams play 5 roadies? (not many if any). This years Kansas team has four road games and a crap big xii schedule. Just looking at the top 10, it looks like 5 play 5 road games. 2 play 4 road games and 1 neutral, 2 play just 4 road games, and West Virginia played 6 road games this year.

=D> That line-up = about 70 wins. I think that's more than 70 wins...it would probably be a winning season, though probably not playoff caliber. there is no way that's a winning taem. that team would be awfully lucky to win 75. or they would just be awful. It's not that huge of a drop from this year's team. The differences are Floyd/Murton to Infante, Jones/Pie to just Pie, and the 2007 catchers. Infante is probably around a 100 point drop from Floyd/Murton (maybe 75, maybe 150). Pie probably won't be much worse than Jones and Pie combined to do in 2007 (because Jones had a down year and Pie was absolutely awful in his time last year). Soto is an upgrade over the 2007 catchers. So the lineup looks awful, but it's really not that much worse than the average lineup in 2007. With another good pitching year and another weak NL Central, they would be around 80-85 wins again with that lineup.

This scouting report predicted 3-4 years totaling $12-15 million over the length of the contract, but that was before he had the elbow problems. It's not totaling 12-15 million, it's 12-15 million per year over 3-4 years. Now I've heard that he'll probably get around 10 million per year.

It seems to me that people want to adjust both pitchers and hitters numbers higher when moving from the AL to NL. I'm not sure why moving him to the NL will help at all. Perhaps getting out of Comerica will make his numbers look a little better. It should be noted he does not hit much better vs left-handers. Career stats: .257/.301/.387 vs RHP .245/.290/.382 vs LHP I stand corrected on the hitting vs left-handers thing. I thought I was looking at career stats, but I somehow had switched back over to just looking at this years stats. I think people tend to believe the talent level is simply better in the AL right now, both pitching and hitting. Almost certainly the pitching in the AL Central has been better over the last few years than the pitching in the NL Central will be.

Nothing official, just little snippets like this: http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20071105&content_id=2293279&vkey=news_chc&fext=.jsp&c_id=chc

That's actually a very good point about the home away splits. Here are the splits for his career: home- .233/.278/.343 away- .271/.316/.425 Take him to the NL and away from Comerica, and you may get much closer to those away numbers for a full season. I'd take that from a middle infield option. It's not good, but it's around average for a middle infielder.

You would think so, but last year was a bizarro year for Sampson. They were toward the bottom of the league in defense but they had the best offense in the conference. I would guess whether that repeats itself or not will depend on their freshmen because their offense will be damn good. Those stats are a lot more indicative of the way the Big Ten plays than IU's lack of defense. How so? Everyone in the Big Ten plays good defense. Right, but among those teams they ranked 7th in defense, 1st in offense. I'm not saying they played terrible defense overall, it was just a twist on what you would have expected from Sampson. I honestly don't know why they played that way in the Big 10. Their defense was definitely better than their offense though. To illustrate, here are some key non-conference games from last year: Duke- 54-51 Kentucky- 59-54 Southern Illinois-57-47 Gonzaga-70-57 UCLA- 54-49 There's their 5 big non-conference games, and the most points IU scored was 70 once (2nd best was 57) and the most points they allowed was 59 (2nd was 57). That's definitely a mark of a better defense than offense.

The Colts are fine in the conditions now. Their offense wasn't suited very well to it in 2004 and 2005, but now they have a much better running game and their short passing game is better than it ever was. Add to that a very good defense, and that's a pretty good recipe for playing in bad weather. In fact, the biggest question mark for conditions right now has to be NE. A heavy emphasis on the vertical passing game, and we'll see how their receivers do as the weather turns bad. In response to Cuse's question about who the Colts were playing with, on offense they had Wayne, Moorehead (yes soul, he is the son of Emory Moorehead) and a practice squad player Craphonso Thorpe for receivers. Clark missed the game, and their two tackles were a practice squad tackle and a guard because all 4 of their regular tackles got hurt. Those really hurt the Colts last night (the defensive injuries didn't hurt that badly because the Colts still played well on that side of the ball even with 4 starters out). Add all that into a poor game from Manning (only about 3 of the 6 INT's were his fault, but that's still a ton for Manning), and one of the worst special teams games of all times and the Colts still lost by 2. That game honestly didn't worry me in the slightest. The Colts have to figure out how to beat the Chiefs and Falcons with nobody healthy (which should still be possible) and then they will hopefully have most of the people back by the time the division rivals come calling.

I think most Colts fans were expecting the loss anyway tonight, which certainly softens the blow. To have the players out they did was incredible that they were still in the game. If they don't get some of these players back, I have no idea how they're going to field a team next week. They barely have the mininum number needed in 4 positions: wide reciever, offensive line, defensive line, and linebacker. They already released Luke Lawton and kick returner because they have so many guys hurt, and I have no idea who else they can release. Here's a breakdown of guys that weren't playing by the end of the game. #1 receiver #3 reciever starting tight end starting left tackle starting right tackle backup left tackle backup right tackle best defensive end best defensive tackle backup defensive tackle both starting outside linebackers dime safety

And now it goes the other way. That was interference on Weddle on the 5, or else Moorehead would have caught that.

Yeah, as a Colts fan I'll even admit we got away with one there :D. I do agree with soul though that I hate when that's interference simply because the pass was underthrown that much, but Jackson needed to have his head turned towards the ball for it to be legal under the rules.