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This. I figure there are two options. 1) It's not really true. 2) Zambrano really did do something truly heinous that the Cubs kept under wraps in the media but somehow all of MLB knows about. I can't think of what that would be. I'm going with 1. I just think there are lots of pitchers out there like Z at this point and most of them don't have his baggage. So teams are exploring other options and some of them might have Z as a fallback plan. I was a little surprised at 80% though-I would think the Cubs could have gotten a team to bite at the 5 million mark.

Why would they care about his strikeout issues? He's pretty consistently had an ISOd of .100. His worst at any level was .078 in 15 PAs in rookie league ball where he still had an OBP of .533. I'm not saying his strikeout rates should be ignored, but his walk rate should also be considered. I realize it isn't a direct translation but his MiL BB/K ratio is almost identical to Aramis' ML BB/K ratio. As I've said in other threads, there are quite a few hitters in the Cubs system that I worry about when it comes to strikeouts, patience and pitch recognition and Jackson isn't one of them. The fact that he strikes out that much in the minors might mean that his swing can be exploited and that his numbers won't translate well to the majors. His strikeout rate is already dangerously high and most players rates go up when they hit the majors. He still had a strong season last season because he had a .358 BABIP. That isn't likely to continue in the majors. I still have high hopes for Jackson, but that is a huge red flag.

It looks like the Pacers roster is probably done without adding another shooting guard at this point. It would have been nice, but it wasn't really necessary. The Pacers look like they are going ahead with starting Paul George at SG who has grown 2 inches since the Chicago series and is now 6 foot 10. Whether he can still guard players like Rose at that height will be interesting to see.

There's been talk, but mostly from reporters who weren't referencing sources. All we know for sure is that Ricketts has stated that the baseball budget will be about the same as last year because the revenues were about the same. But he is going to give Theo that number and let him decide how to divide it between all the different areas Theo is in charge of.

The fact that the baseball budget will remain the same and it appears we can't spend as much on IFA or the draft would seem to suggest so. If the baseball budget is staying the same and we can't spend as much on the draft or IFA, that would indicate to me that the ML payroll would be able to be increased by the $8-10M that isn't being spent there. It depends on if executive salaries, training staffs, coaches, other minor league staff, scout salaries, and maybe even some equipment to upgrade scouting are recorded in the baseball budget. All of that is under Theo's control and therefore quite possibly under his budget. And he wants to upgrade most of those areas and that's going to cost money. Wrigley upgrades/Triangle building/McDonalds acquisition/other things like that are not under Theo's control and shouldn't be part of the baseball budget.

The major league payroll was between 130 and 140 last year (it's hard to pin down much more than that without knowing how players like Pena, Silva, and the trades done throughout the season were accounted for).

The fact that the baseball budget will remain the same and it appears we can't spend as much on IFA or the draft would seem to suggest so. Are player salaries the only thing in the baseball budget though? If you have a major league budget number, that's one thing. A baseball budget could include any number of things and is probably accounted differently from team to team.

This article says it's not until after 2014: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/sports/baseball/yu-darvish-situation-puts-spotlight-on-japanese-player-posting-system.html

I thought we were officially paid off on Bradley/Silva. Silva had a option with a buyout this year. It's hard to say if the Cubs absorbed that when they cut him last year or if they were planning to split it in their accounting like the original contract had it.

Eh? So it's no longer CBS gets the AFC road games and FOX gets the NFC road games? It could have something to do with flex scheduling. A couple weeks ago CBS was convinced to give a Denver game up to Fox because the Sunday night game (New England/Indy) was returned to CBS and a Fox game (Detroit/New Orleans) was put in its place. That left the schedule unbalanced so the Denver game was moved. Then apparently the league wanted to flex Denver/New England to Sunday night this week and CBS threw a fit because they felt they've lost too many Denver games already.

http://www.bleachernation.com/2011/12/14/obsessive-prince-fielder-watch-another-national-pundit-knows-the-cubs-are-in-on-fielder/ Unless we put some enormous bid on the Darvish posting (so enormous that they're basically sure they're going to get it), I don't understand how we wouldn't have the money. I think the bolded might be the most important sentence. If the Cubs are over 100 million already (which almost has to count Pena's salary otherwise I don't see how they are that high already) then they probably have about 30 million left. And if they feel they have a lot of other spots to fill, they don't think they can commit 20-25 of that 30 million to Fielder. Could the report be erroneous? Absolutely. But it makes logical sense if those 2 assumptions (where the payroll is now and how many spots the organization wants to fill) are true. They have the money for Fielder, but if they commit to him he would take up most of the remaining budget.

I think people are just saying the root cause is not enough cheap talent. That forced the Cubs to fill most all of their holes through free agency. They did rather well in free agency overall, but you have to be nearly perfect in free agency even with a large market to build an entire team and they weren't perfect. The large contracts prevented them from improving the team, but they were more of a symptom of the real cause for the problems of the team.

Ramirez thought he could do better than 1 year and 16 million in free agency. He got 2/20 with an option for 3/32, so I guess he was right? the mutual option is for a 4th year. he got 3 for 32 with a mutual option for a 4th year that doesn't appear to be disclosed, but if it's declined by the team he gets an additional $4M It's probably incentive driven, like a certain number of games played in the last two years of the deal. It doesn't appear to be a vesting option. It's a mutual option. It's just that the amount of that option hasn't been disclosed (but it probably has to be at least 10 million and probably closer to 12).

To be fair, I'm not sure the Cubs wanted him to pick up his option. They could have easily just been capitalizing on the fact that they knew he wanted a multi-year deal. By making Aramis decline both his option and arbitration, they saved 2 million and picked up a draft pick.

Probably not, in part because our douchebag color commentator was allowed to launch on him constantly and no one from the front office bothered to call him out on it. and also in part because the first thing our new gm did was pass on his option and, at least to all outward appearances, make no effort whatsoever to even talk to him about coming back. it's certainly possible that we considered bringing aramis back and it never leaked and his agent was too lazy to mention it an effort to up his value, but it looks more like we weren't interested in aramis at any price. and at this price, i think that was a mistake. if hendry were here, we'd all be talking about how he was infatuated with stewart and stupidly wanted to trust his scouts and find a diamond in the rough instead of just spending a very reasonable sum of money on a player who has actually had good and great seasons. but i suppose such apocrypha are only to used to describe the inner workings of front offices we don't have cute nicknames for. The first thing the Cubs did was pick up his option. Aramis was the one who declined his half.

Holy [expletive]... I don't know how I've never thought about this more, but I haven't. Would a team with more lefty bats (assuming things being equal in terms of productivity) have a significant advantage in the long haul because of this? I'm not sure how many LH are in the average lineup and how many more you'd need for this to actually have a measurable effect, but I'm just shocked it had never occurred to me before. Teams usually put their best OF arm in right field though so while having a LH hitter up will help a runner go 1st to 3rd it could hurt him going 2nd to home. Without going through everyone's roster, I feel like team's have gone away from that methodology(as well they should have IMO) instead positioning their OF based on range. The average major league team LF recorded 312 putouts and had 10 assists. The average major league team RF recorded 323 putouts and had 11 assists. So they're close to the same, but I'm guessing it's even farther apart if you just look at assists at home plate. Of course there are other things to consider that might tip it closer to even (the runner might hesitate with a ball hit to the left side and less than 2 outs but not one to the right side).

Holy [expletive]... I don't know how I've never thought about this more, but I haven't. Would a team with more lefty bats (assuming things being equal in terms of productivity) have a significant advantage in the long haul because of this? I'm not sure how many LH are in the average lineup and how many more you'd need for this to actually have a measurable effect, but I'm just shocked it had never occurred to me before. Teams usually put their best OF arm in right field though so while having a LH hitter up will help a runner go 1st to 3rd it could hurt him going 2nd to home.

http://www.hoopsworld.com/indiana-pacers-trade-oj-mayo/ This deal died. Yup. The Pacers are continuing to chase Jamal Crawford. I don't think they necessarily need another shooting guard, but it doesn't sound like he'll cost that much if he comes either.

I had that thought, but it's not like they're cratering his value with bizarre outliers. BIS, Total Zone, UZR, DRS, the Fan's scouting report, and everything I've ever heard about Prince as a defender all agree, he's a poor defender in the neighborhood of -7 runs. Nobody's disagreeing that Fielder is a below average defender, it's the matter of quantifying that I still consider suspect. And what I'm saying is that not only do all the quantitative measures agree to an almost uncanny degree, but even without their presence our best estimate of his defensive value doesn't really move the needle on his value at all. The Fan's Scouting report rated him a 19 out of 100, when the vast majority of 1B rate between 30 and 60. I have a hard time believing he's any better than a -5 defender; there's just no evidence, objective or subjective, to suggest that WAR is overstating his defensive shortcomings. I'm saying I have a hard time quantifying any 1B on a runs or wins level when it comes to defense. It's such an unimportant defensive position, that I really have a hard time caring. What makes 1st base an unimportant defensive position? I would be wary of equating easy for most people to play adequately with unimportant.

Definitely. 1st baseman are easily the hardest for defensive metrics to do, and metrics aren't that great yet for any position. But does anyone through scouting think that Fielder is even an average 1st baseman defensively? We can quibble over how bad but he is definitely below average. And the baserunning stats were presented here and they jive with what his body type would indicate-Fielder is an awful baserunner.

Nobody here wants that, as best I can tell. It's a figment of your imagination that you keep perpetrating as fact. It's the reality of the situation that the Cubs are in right now. At some point they have to take the plunge and bolster the team through significant FA signings because their farm system ain't producing enough talent right now to either make their team or make enough impact trades to fix things. The problem is also that the forecast of significant offensive FA being available is pretty barren for a while once Fielder is signed. I agree completely with the first two sentences. Where we differ is, the fact that the forecast of significant offensive FA being available is pretty barren for a while doesn't convince me that signing Fielder to a contract I think will be a mistake, and will hurt the team in the long run, is a wise choice. That's the thing though. The Cubs are a large market team with a large payroll and some big contracts coming off the books. They can afford a less than ideal contract here and there without terribly hamstringing themselves like a lot of other teams would. That's why I'm okay with overpaying for him by a not outlandish margin. I think those are the big two questions. 1) Is 6/150 an outlandish margin? What would you need to expect in production to sign him to that deal? 120 million? 110 million? 100 million? 2) As you said, the Cubs can afford to overpay a player or two per year without really hurting the budget. Do the Cubs value Fielder enough to be one of those players? Both of those are on a continuum. It's hard to pin down Fielder's production level because it's bounced around so much and because of his body type as he ages. It's hard to know if the Cubs should commit to Fielder without knowing what the plan for the rest of the roster is. I think both sides mostly agree that contract is overpaying for Fielder. The question is how much is it worth it to overpay anybody and how much is worth it to overpay because of the Cubs particular situation. And that makes it a very close call.

The teams under the cap all put in secret bids. Whoever has the highest bid, that team gets the player and pays that portion of the player's contract. If no team bids, then that player becomes a free agent and is free to sign with anyone. So the only way that Billups can go to Orlando is if NJ and all the other teams under the cap aren't even willing to bid vet minimum. But Billups has already threatened all the teams under the cap that he'll make their life miserable if they try to put a bid on him.

That's pretty much on line with what Aramis is scheduled to be worth. The Cubs do get a pick out of the deal. It's a close call on whether the Cubs should have considered a deal like that or not. It makes Aramis look very uncertain about his future as well if he opted out of a 1/16 deal just to take 3/36. Either that or he misjudged his market.

Kind of looks like the coaches poll. Wisconsin 15, Michigan 18, Illinois 19, Indiana 20, Michigan State 23. The AP poll has Wisconsin 14, Indiana 18, Illinois 19, Michigan 20, Michigan State 21.

It doesn't sound like the Mayo trade is done yet. But if it gets done, that will make Indiana just a little bit deeper. Bird has wanted the best bench in the league and with Mayo he'll be pretty close to have gotten just that. That will work well with the compressed schedule during the regular season, but it's not a model that has worked all that well in the playoffs.