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Koyie Hill's OPS since the trade and Michael Barrett's OPS since the trade are now just about exactly the same :D

It seems like Soriano is the problem out there. He keeps coming after the ball even if somebody else calls it. I wonder if he even hears them out there (he may be using so much of his brain to try to catch the ball, because he doesn't have those outfield instincts of playing it for years and years, and so he may concentrate so much and tune everybody else out).

Pitch Counts Lincecum-32 Hill-22

Well 1 worthless bat gone. Jesus that Barret trade was horrible! Pretty much a DFA. At least Hendry can admit he's wrong. Hopefully Kyler Burke turns into something useful. :lol: He has what? one hit since he joined our system? He was something like 0 for his first 22 since joining the Cubs and now 10 for his last 21. The Barrett trade so far has been nothing for nothing. The Padres got a catcher who has an OPS under .600 since he's been there and an OBP of .264 with defensive problems. The Cubs biggest acquisition was a roster spot, which allowed Soto to come up and hopefully be the starter, along with a possible backup catcher in 2008 and a prospect that may pan out.

Well 1 worthless bat gone. Jesus that Barret trade was horrible! Pretty much a DFA. At least Hendry can admit he's wrong. Then why is Izturis here, with Cedeno hitting everything in sight at Iowa?? Same with Jones and Pie?? They are working hard to trade Izturis right now. As for Bowen, he'll be in Iowa soon. He still have a chance to contribute to the Cubs next year if he can get his bat more like it was for San Diego 2006/San Diego 2007. If Soto ends up starting, he has a decent chance to outproduce Barrett with the way Barrett is playing now. The fact that the trade opened up Soto to start may make it a decent one, even if Bowen and/or Burke never pan out (and Burke is starting to play better).

Probably just because Hill hasn't started in over a week, and hasn't played in that long (not including yesterday). I think most people understand why Lou would want to get him in the lineup tonight. Petrick is coming up though, and Hill was easily the most likely option to go down in his place. Now that we know that Hill is not going down, Soto becomes the most likely option to go down, and of course most people don't want that.

I'll say Jones is in center tonight, but I agree with everyone else.

Back on track? The bullpen has been amazingly effective for about a month. Dempster coming back to pitch his one inning (rarely with inherited runners on) when they have a lead in the 9th isn't going to make much of a difference. He's an average pitcher who has had success at times. By back on track, I mean get everybody pitching where they're supposed to be pitching. I wasn't denying that they have been good. Understood. I just don't really buy into the whole defined roles (setup, closer, etc.) in the bullpen thing. Use your best pitchers when you really need the outs and use your less talented guys when you can maybe afford to give up a run or two. Just my opinion. Which is exactly what they are doing (like this quote from yesterday): Dempster still adds another good arm to the back of that bullpen. The Cubs have been hurting for good arms, because they only have had 3 dependable arms down there (Marmol, Howry, Wuertz) and 1 LOOGY (Ohman) along with Petrick (who cannot pitch on back to back days) when he has been up. Now with Marmol, Howry, Wuertz, and Dempster, they can handle most of the close games without tiring out as much.

You don't care about getting a player back who's only allowed runs in 1 of his last 16 outings? Dempster coming back and being a closer makes the bullpen even better by moving everybody else down a spot.

Transaction #1 (second half) Drop Morgan Ensberg, Add Brad Hawpe

Dempster's still on schedule. He should be back later this week. This is probably a move just to help them until then. Koyie Hill is the only guy likely to be sent down (after passing through waivers). It's either him or a trade. Could be Floyd to the DL too. Yeah, that's true as well, but the last news on Floyd was that he'd be available to play either tonight or tomorrow night (of course he won't start if it's tomorrow because it's Zito on the mound). It would be a surprise if he suddenly went to the DL now.

Dempster's still on schedule. He should be back later this week. This is probably a move just to help them until then. Koyie Hill is the only guy likely to be sent down (after passing through waivers). It's either him or a trade.

Those are my thoughts as well. The fact that they finally found something wrong and he had surgery makes me feel a little bit better about it. Who knows how affective he'll be though. I doubt that he'll be at all effective during his first year back from major surgery. On the plus side, that would make him easy to re-sign for his comeback. Then the only question becomes-is he willing to re-sign with the Cubs for 2009? There has been some rumored bad blood between Prior and management, and it's hard to tell if he would jump ship at that point after the Cubs finished rehabbing him and go to another team.

I don't think that will be such a huge number by the time the bidding is done. It is likely IMO that the bidding will reach close to 1 billion just because of the number of buyers involved and the passion that some of them will have to really want to buy the Cubs (Cuban won't be the only one who won't look it as completely a business decision).

I watched Wuertz pitch to Barrett pretty often and Mike didn't seem to have any problem with throwing those same sliders to Barrett. are you denying that the superior defensive skills of Soto weren't helpful today and there would not have been a different result if Barrett was catching? I merely meant to speculate that the result may not have been the same today if not for outstanding defense by Soto. why are you parsing hairs with this point via some notion of observation that could not possibly go to Michael Wuertz's state of mind? might just be me, but if Wuertz had equal confidence to throw the slider in the dirt with any catcher with the bases loaded and a one run lead, he should be examined by mental health professionals. I was probably the biggest Michael Barrett fan on here and I certainly agree with defense over offense. it doesn't prevent me from seeing his shortcomings and how those flaws became worse this year and how his offense didn't make up for it. I wish he and his offensive ability was still here, but that doesn't change the fact that there are times when his poor D killed the Cubs, including a few games early in the year that were attributed to the pen, but blame was equally on Barrett's inability to block balls in the dirt. that didn't happen today, and that makes me happy. Oh, please. You are the one who first delved into Wuertz' mental state when throwing to various catchers to try to make your point. I merely pointed out that he's thrown to Barrett in many similar situations with fine results. I'm not trying to say what is or isn't on his mind. You are. Just throwing something in to the discussion, because I really have no idea how I stand on Wuertz's mental state here:

Um, there isn't a cap in baseball. Some people have been using the word cap to refer to a payroll limit set by ownership for some time now. It isn't technically correct, but I think we all know what is meant by now, no? Yeah, that's what I meant. It's easier to write cap to refer to the payroll limit than any other word or phrase-sorry for the confusion.

The Padres lose, and the Cubs move to within just 3 games of the WC.

That seems unlikely since the Cubs have control of him through next year. Unless he is done for 2+ years or Kaplan thought he was going to be traded, there's no reason to say he has thrown his last pitch as a Cub. There is a small possibility that the Cubs won't want to keep him next year. Prior will be 3 million against the cap, and if the Cubs don't like how his progress is going during the winter they can decide that they'd rather spend the 3 million somewhere else. I'd be a little surprised if they did that, but it is reasonable.

i don't see how marquis would make it disastrous, since after this year he'll only have two years left on his contract, and the cubs may not even be able to spend much toward next year due to ownership issues. Plus if there's a guy they really want to get in the 2008-09 offseason, they can probably defer some of Marquis' money or backload a contract offer to a free agent. Soriano's contract could certainly become an albatross down the road, however. Plus it will be hard to classify Marquis as a disastrous move when he still has a chance to be one of the better values of the offseason: San Francisco-Zito L.A. Dodgers-Schmidt Seattle-Batista, Weaver Phillies-Eaton Yankees-Igawa Cardinals-Mulder Rangers-Padilla Astros-Woody Williams Even if Marquis regresses over the next 2 1/2 years (not to 2006 levels but to bad levels) he probably still will have been better value than all those pitchers signed to similar or bigger contracts than Marquis in 2006. It could certainly turn out to be a bad move, but probably not awful or disastrous when you compare it to moves that other clubs made.

thanks for putting in cubspeak but, at the same time, all that other stuff is rather flukish. if derosa continues to outperform durham for the entire season, then i think you have to give some credit to hendry for preferring derosa to durham. i dont think so. because if durham plays like he normally does the rest of the year and derosa plays like his career avg the rest of the year, derosa will barely outperform him. Durham is having the worst year of his career and has the lowest obp since his rookie season. We can all agree that DeRosa has exceeded expectations this year. DeRosa's numbers are the expected numbers for Durham. If Durham crashes and burns next year again, then Ill say good job hendry. This really isnt that big of a difference. DeRosa wasnt too expensive like Soriano. It just probably wasnt the best move. If DeRosa even matches Durham offensively, he'll be way more valuable than him for 2 big reasons. 1) DeRosa is making a couple million less than him 2) DeRosa's ability to play 3B and RF has allowed the Cubs now to get better lineups in every day by getting both DeRosa and Fontenot in the lineup when either Ramirez or Floyd gets a day off. Durham would have to be significantly better offensively in order to offset those advantages, and considering his age/DeRosa starting to prove last year wasn't a career year, that becomes less and less likely. again, that's dealing with now, not when Derosa was signed. Of course the Derosa signing looks good now that we know he can play several positions well defensively and has proven that last year was probably not a fluke. Everybody already knew he could play several positions well defensively. That was no secret. As far as last year being a fluke, it's Hendry's job (and his assistants and scouts) to go over the tape and determine if DeRosa's performance was a fluke or a legitimate change at the plate that helped him improve his numbers. They determined it was legitimate, and it looks like they were right.

thanks for putting in cubspeak but, at the same time, all that other stuff is rather flukish. if derosa continues to outperform durham for the entire season, then i think you have to give some credit to hendry for preferring derosa to durham. i dont think so. because if durham plays like he normally does the rest of the year and derosa plays like his career avg the rest of the year, derosa will barely outperform him. Durham is having the worst year of his career and has the lowest obp since his rookie season. We can all agree that DeRosa has exceeded expectations this year. DeRosa's numbers are the expected numbers for Durham. If Durham crashes and burns next year again, then Ill say good job hendry. This really isnt that big of a difference. DeRosa wasnt too expensive like Soriano. It just probably wasnt the best move. If DeRosa even matches Durham offensively, he'll be way more valuable than him for 2 big reasons. 1) DeRosa is making a couple million less than him 2) DeRosa's ability to play 3B and RF has allowed the Cubs now to get better lineups in every day by getting both DeRosa and Fontenot in the lineup when either Ramirez or Floyd gets a day off. Durham would have to be significantly better offensively in order to offset those advantages, and considering his age/DeRosa starting to prove last year wasn't a career year, that becomes less and less likely.

so you ignore last year, his first year as a full time starter, because it was a "career year", but when he duplicates those numbers, it doesnt mean anything because hendry bought high? derosa was signed to a 3/13, compare that to the 2/14.5 deal of durham, and the 1/3.25, and I really don't think he overpaid. hendry cant see the future. there was little reason to think that DeRosa would continue his hitting. Durham would have been expected to add more bang for your buck. Isn't that what a GM's job is supposed to be? To project what a player is going to be like over the term of the contract? Apparently Hendry thought that the swing adjustments that DeRosa made in Texas were the reason for his success, and so far that has proven to be correct. He had reason to believe that DeRosa could repeat his numbers though with that major swing change.

The question is, how are you defining overpaid? Yes, most to all of those players were overpaid-to get a single free agent in last years market, you had to overpay. Lilly has a good shot to be the best value free agent pitcher of the offseason. DeRosa will certainly be the best value second baseman. Ward was easily the best bench player available. The only alternative to not overpaying guys though was to simply not sign anybody in free agency. Considering the Cubs made the decision to enter free agency, Hendry signed most of the best contracts to come out of the 2006 offseason. At least for one offseason, he was better than pretty much all of his peers. But again, it had nothing to do with Hendry being especially clever. It had everything to do with him offering above market value for everyone except Lilly, who was paid pretty fairly, and Aramis, whom he nearly, stupidly lost. He didn't just go out and sign all the best players though. He avoided Zito and Schmidt. He also avoided Durham, Lugo, and Craig Wilson. He was clever because as you said he targeted all the right players and got the best value for his money, rather than signing people like Schmidt and Lugo to ridiculous contracts. As far as market value, the only contract that I can see that nobody else would have signed the player to is Marquis, and even that's debatable (considering the contracts to Eaton and Meche). DeRosa was going to be signed as the starting 3B for the Phillies if the Cubs hadn't gotten him for about the same amount of money. Lilly was getting similar offers from 2 other clubs. Ward would have easily gotten 1 million from somebody else. Floyd had interest from 5 other clubs, but held out for the Cubs. Soriano's offers were at 120 million and climbing when he signed.

The question is, how are you defining overpaid? Yes, most to all of those players were overpaid-to get a single free agent in last years market, you had to overpay. Lilly has a good shot to be the best value free agent pitcher of the offseason. DeRosa will certainly be the best value second baseman. Ward was easily the best bench player available. The only alternative to not overpaying guys though was to simply not sign anybody in free agency. Considering the Cubs made the decision to enter free agency, Hendry signed most of the best contracts to come out of the 2006 offseason. At least for one offseason, he was better than pretty much all of his peers.

I don't really believe this. Yeah, maybe he could've gotten slightly more elsewhere, but how is $15M per year a huge discount. That price would put him 10th this year in salary, and while he's certainly a very good player, he's not at the elite level of guys like A-Rod, Bonds, Miggy Cabrera or Pujols. There have been reports that Ramirez would get anywhere from 100 million to one report that said the Angels were ready to offer Ramirez 130 million dollars. He's a big discount on last year's market where players like Soriano and Carlos Lee (both probably worse players and both older) got bigger deals.