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Because despite not taking walks right now, he's a 22 year old 4-5 WAR player at this point. You're not accounting for positional value (and having to move off SS is speculation at best, as right now he both appears to be greatly improved and grades statistically as one of the best at his position). You're also looking at him through an outdated offensive lens. Lots of people are guilty of looking at most players this way right now. The environment is much different than it was even a few years ago. Would you not agree that in order for this offense to improve and become more consistent our ability to work the count and draw walks needs to improve? Why not use our most valuable trade chip to make this happen. I simply see a player who epitomizes the over aggressiveness which has plagued our lineup for years and don't get excited over the premise of him being one of the key pieces of the franchise. You do realize Castro, at 22 with a ton of development ahead of him, is very close to being the best SS in baseball. What do you expect him to be in, say, 2-3 years? As David said, he's a 4-5 win player right now, he's going to get better. Yes he'd be even better if his walk rate improves, which I think it will (though to what degree I don't know). But still, he's still on track to be the best SS in the game with his current walk rate. It would, and should, take a stupidly great package to get him. Like two young, current ML who are also getting close to being stars, and that's a starting point. The fact is even if Castro is outproducing Andrus in terms of WAR, you can't have a lineup full of over aggressive hitters and expect to succeed. You can, but it is admittedly difficult. But that's because there are very few players with as elite of a hit tool as Castro (which you need if you're going to be overly aggressive) so it's hard to build a lineup of those types of players. Also, other positions require so much more offense that it's hard to be good at those positions with that type of approach. Castro definitely has flaws. He will likely never be the best Cubs hitter in his prime. But that doesn't mean he won't be the best Cubs player. Getting a .825-.850 OPS out of your SS (even if it's weighted towards slugging) with above average defense is more valuable than getting a .900 OPS out of 1B. As for Andrus, I understand your reasons for wanting to take Andrus right now. But he's pretty much topped out as a player, and Castro's room to grow in the power and patience departments gives him quite a bit more upside. So it really depends on whether you'd rather have the higher floor or the higher ceiling.

Jim Hendry says hi. It remains one of the things that irritated me the most about his reign. The second half of his tenure was really confusing in that regard (his last 5 off seasons starting with the 2006 spending spree). The Cubs were very active in free agency at that time while cutting ties with other veterans. With their patterns, they should have been one of the highest in giving up and getting extra picks during that time period. Yet IIRC, they received only 2 picks (Pierre, Kendall) and gave up only 1 (Soriano) in that time period. The new regime already managed to match that number of extra picks in just one offseason. They were willing to take the middle road that Hendry never was. It seemed like if Hendry wanted a player, he'd give him a multi-year deal. If he didn't, he wasn't willing to risk them even coming back for one year. The two picks he received he lucked into when those players signed before the deadline. As for the question on whether comp picks would really change the market for a player like Dempster, I think it increases the selling club's desire to deal the player, but as long as there is still some competition for that player's services I don't see it changing the price very much. Teams probably factored in the possibility of comp picks for players like Dempster, but I don't think they saw it as a sure thing, and I doubt it inflated their price by that much.

It's just that your opinion lacks any real logical argument in its favor. There is major league developmental time to consider, especially in this case when you consider Rizzo's struggles at the major league level last year. The more time he gets to adjust before games really become important, the better. I don't consider it nearly enough in this case to be worth the cost, but someone who values it highly might.

I'm pretty sure Castro was called up after the cut off for him, Rizzo is later in the season because of his service time from last year. (I could be completely wrong) edit - and while I was typing that I was proven wrong. Castro was in between the two dates. The Cubs got the extra year of team control (the one that's coming up soon for Rizzo) but they brought him up early enough that Castro will be a Super 2 giving him an extra year of arbitration.

I would lean towards yes, although in Castro's case they would have had to wait another month so the other position is perfectly defensible too IMO. There's definitely a practical aspect to waiting for dates. Do I think the Cubs should wait the 10-15 days on Rizzo to ensure an extra year of team control? Absolutely, because him playing in the majors for 10-15 days in the middle of the season is not worth the millions of dollars the Cubs would lose. Should the Cubs wait the extra month+ after that to ensure no Super 2? IMO, no. Even though the Cubs will still be costing themselves millions in that case, waiting would put it too late in the season for Rizzo to get a decent number of major league at-bats this year to be prepared for 2013. I don't think it's a horrible decision if they wait, but I think in that case the benefit outweighs the cost. But bringing him up right now? The benefit is tiny compared to the cost.

The Mets were able to trade for Hampton with some of the money that they saved from buying out Bonilla, but they didn't sign him to that ridiculous contract. Hampton signed that deal when he bolted for Colorado the next year.

Stewart? Wood? Stewart needs to improve his peripherals if he's going to be a hit. Right now both his results and peripherals are subpar. They're close enough that he could turn it around with some improved play, but it's going to take a little more than simply finishing normalizing his luck. Wood's peripherals are all over the place right now because of the small sample size, but he's been pretty terrible. For every peripheral that shows possible improvement there are 1-2 others that are worse.

I think you're dreaming. Theo would probably give Soriano away free for someone willing to take him and 10% of his salary. I hope he doesn't at this point (unless they decide they badly need the roster space). That would make Soriano worth approximately 1.5-2 million per year. It's quite possible that no team will never offer more than that, but I'd take the risk rather than guarantee 4-5 million coming back. If nothing else, the Cubs could probably get 4-5 million worth of value over the next 2+ years even if they move him to the bench. If a team offered much more than that though (10 million or so total) then I'd have to jump on that because the risk/reward changes dramatically at that point.

There have been reports that Golden State is trying to use their picks to acquire a high level wing player. Deng was on that list. Could the Bulls even be somewhat considering it? I doubt anything comes of it, but that's a really interesting news tidbit.

It was a gaffe, albeit a pretty common one. Theriot especially specialized in it. But it was definitely an error in judgement.

Whether true or not, this new CBA is a massive FAIL. Bud thought this would get players being drafted in line with talent and instead half the players drafted in the 5-10 rounds probably were barely draftable at best. I think that was their stated intent with the new CBA, but it wasn't the real intent. The owners wanted to cut costs somewhere, and this was one area that the union didn't care about as much. It seems like it's doing a fantastic job of achieving that goal. Now whether that's worth the loss of some talented players who will choose other sports, that's still a question. But this draft has worked out exactly as I think the owners hoped it would-most teams choosing to stay within the spending limits, and not having an arms race. They would love to do this with major league salaries as well, but the union will never allow that.

How much could the nagging wrist issues be playing into it? It's hard to say, but that's a problem that's not likely to go away anytime soon. So even if could be blamed on the wrist, that's still a big red flag issue for the Cubs keeping him going forward.

Stewart's peripherals have started to slip. He still should be better than he has been so far with some better luck, but there are starting to be some worrisome signs. I'm not sure at this point whether whatever swing change they made to reduce his strikeouts was worth it because of how many ground balls it's caused him to hit.

It requires a TON of begging and hoping he's a ring chaser, basically. BTW, I wouldn't think it's an either/or situation when it comes to the PG's and Young/Delfino. I think it's probably a situation where they'd like to add both. Again, by begging and playing up the "we're a contender" card. Personally, I don't see it working, but I guess I'm glad they're going to try. I think they can sign and trade the unguaranteed contracts for him, can't they? Then the Suns would be able to just drop them. You lost me. He's saying that the Suns could do a sign and trade with the Bulls for Nash for something like Brewer+Watson+first round pick. That allows Nash to get an 8 million a year contract, and then if the contracts stay unguaranteed the Suns could drop Brewer and Watson with no penalty. So Nash gets his money, the Suns get a first round pick out of the deal, and the Bulls get their player without losing anybody they were going to keep. The problem is the Suns would probably demand the Charlotte pick in that scenario. That's the only sort of scenario where I see the Bulls having a chance for Nash though. There are contenders that can give him playing time but not money (Miami, OKC). There are fringe contenders that can give him both (Indiana, Portland?). He could decide to stay with that amazing training staff in Phoenix. The Bulls are kind of stuck in between some of those groups. The playing time picture is cloudy, the money without a sign and trade isn't that great, and they probably can't be considered quite as good of contenders as teams like Miami or OKC. Edit: If it's just Korver that could be traded that way it becomes harder. The Suns would actually have to value Brewer or Watson in that scenario to want to keep them (of course if they got the Charlotte pick they'd probably be ok taking on excess expiring contracts).

Here are the top 10 in P/PA from last year and their minor and major league strikeout rate (I didn't include Fukudome since he doesn't have minor league statistics): Curtis Granderson- 18.9% minor league, 22.1% major league Jayson Werth- 20.1% minor league, 24.5% major league Bobby Abreu- 18.5% minor league, 18.3% major league Carlos Santana-14.8% minor league, 19.2% major league Jose Bautista-19.8% minor league, 19.4% major league Jamey Carroll-9.6% minor league, 13.7% major league Mark Reynolds-23.2% minor league, 33.1% major league Dustin Pedroia-8.6% minor league, 8.6% major league Brett Gardner-16.6% minor league, 16.8% major league Kevin Youkillis-18.4% minor league, 18.4% major league Brett Jackson has a career 24.8% minor league strikeout rate (close to 30% in AAA). Some of that is due to his patient approach, but it's unusual and not very encouraging for his rate to be so high, and to have such a spike against more advanced pitchers. where does adam dunn fall, though? but anyway, we'll make a bet. if jackson hasn't had a relatively productive major league career in 10 years, i owe you a coke. Here's Dunn's numbers: Adam Dunn-18.2% minor league, 27.9% major league I have no idea if Jackson will be productive or not. To do so, he'll likely need to prove that his AAA strikeout rate was a temporary high and not a trend. Even Jackson's cumulative 24.8% rate I could only find one player in MLB today that had a higher strikeout rate in the minors (Jack Cust, and that was not an exhaustive search so there could be a couple more).

Here are the top 10 in P/PA from last year and their minor and major league strikeout rate (I didn't include Fukudome since he doesn't have minor league statistics): Curtis Granderson- 18.9% minor league, 22.1% major league Jayson Werth- 20.1% minor league, 24.5% major league Bobby Abreu- 18.5% minor league, 18.3% major league Carlos Santana-14.8% minor league, 19.2% major league Jose Bautista-19.8% minor league, 19.4% major league Jamey Carroll-9.6% minor league, 13.7% major league Mark Reynolds-23.2% minor league, 33.1% major league Dustin Pedroia-8.6% minor league, 8.6% major league Brett Gardner-16.6% minor league, 16.8% major league Kevin Youkillis-18.4% minor league, 18.4% major league Brett Jackson has a career 24.8% minor league strikeout rate (close to 30% in AAA). Some of that is due to his patient approach, but it's unusual and not very encouraging for his rate to be so high, and to have such a spike against more advanced pitchers.

i can't imagine that he'd be up with the big club before september, so it will actually be nice to have him stay at one level, so we can see if this is just a hot streak or the result of real adjustments. seems like every other year he gets hot for like 3 weeks, the cubs spaz out and move him up a level. And even if this turns into an extended streak, there will be worries that it is PCL-fueled. i wouldn't worry too much about that. yeah, the PCL is a hitter's league, but iowa isn't a hitter's park and the average ops in the league is probably around .775. people really overstate how much the PCL inflates numbers, except for teams like albuquerque and las vegas. It's still a huge difference from all the other leagues. Iowa is 11th right now in OPS out of 16 with a .765. They'd be leading the Southern League by 45 points, the FSL by 3 points, and the Midwest League by 14 points. To look at it another way, the median OPS in the PCL is .777. The median in the majors is .720, in the Southern League it's .700, in the FSL it's .685, and in the Midwest League it's .686. And it's not just a Triple A effect either as the International League median is .696. The numbers from the PCL shouldn't be ignored, but it's really hard to adjust PCL stats because the league is so different than all the others.

It is. He does kinda have a good point on how ridiculously low Lebron's fouls per minute/game are and how he's likely not having fouls called on him that should be. At least he's getting multiple fouls called against him in the Boston series. Against Indiana he didn't even foul out of the series (5 total fouls in 6 games). In his defense though, for how active he is on both ends of the court he is excellent at being fundamental and not fouling. He should have more fouls than he's getting, but he's not a high foul type of player.

I love the skip you had in there. Refusing to acknowledge one of those years, but not being blatant about it. That's well done :-)

The report the other day was that Golden State was trying to complete a trade before the lottery started to make sure that didn't happen. They want the pick so badly that they're willing to give something up just to protect against the chance that they may lose it. Of course time is running out if they want to do a deal like that.

That's pretty incredible what the Spurs have done. They have the best system in the league. The Pacers have 2 lottery picks on the current roster with only 1 of them being a starter, and the highest pick on their roster was #10 overall.

I like this. I'm still interested to see how baserunners are handled (the potential issues that arise from a replay overturn are a lot worse in baseball than they are in football IMO) but if they can somehow work out a consistent system for that then this should be helpful to the sport.

First, I want to mention Garza's fielding. Is anyone else concerned that he has lost the ability to throw to first base on a bunt attempt? This isn't just a matter of him being a poor fielder in general (which he is) but the last 4 or 5 starts he clearly has no confidence in that throw. He started by throwing a ball into right field at way too high of a velocity, and then for a couple starts was trying so hard to not throw hard that he was bouncing the ball (including one hilarious throw where it went about 10 feet in front of him) and now yesterday returned to throwing it 100 miles an hour nowhere near the bag. I'm guessing it will get solved at some point, but it's always concerning when players lose the ability to do simple things they could normally do in their sleep. We've seen players get the yips before (although it's rare), and it's a hard thing to get out of. As for the rest of Garza, we're probably looking at the lowest part of his value this year after the 5 HR given up in the last two starts. But right now his peripherals don't look that good. His HR rate will likely come down, but it seems likely he won't get anywhere close to his nice HR rate from last year. He still has been a ground ball pitcher, but less than he was last year. The strikeouts are a little down, the walks are slightly up, and his BABIP is probably going to get a little worse. A nice pitcher still, but I would want a decent discount to possibly sign an extension at the moment to account for the possibility that last year is as good as it's going to get for him.

Hill did bunt right back to the pitcher who easily got the out at 2nd.

Gasol's salary is way too high for the Pacers anyway (even though he is a fantastic player), and Sessions is on the same level as Hill/Collison. I think Houston/LA could possibly work out a deal that wouldn't involve the Pacers in this scenario. The Pacers would possibly have interest in one of the Houston PG's, but I can't think of anything they'd want to send out that would be equal value.