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Butler played pretty well. They lost a great deal from last year, but they also got a great transfer guard that can drive. That is huge for them-because he drives, and then he simply kicks to all their 3 point threats that they have every year. They also play tenacious defense at times-they really had Indiana bottled up for a while, although the horribly tight officiating had everybody on eggshells and most of the people on the bench most of the night (5 players on each side had 2 fouls at the half, Indiana had White, Calloway, and Ratliff on the bench for half of the second half with 4 fouls-and the game was not a physical game whatsoever!) It will be hard to tell with Butler when the officiating becomes more loose (favoring the more physical teams, and not the free throw and 3 point shooting teams). They do several things well though: pretty good defense, pretty good 3 point shooting, pretty good free throw shooting, and like I said 1 guy who can penetrate. With all that, they might be able to make up some of their athletic deficiencies and their terrible lack of size.

I'm not sure anybody is in the Elite in the East right now-it should be pretty wide open.

I'm guessing lots of people wouldn't mind Meche. The minding comes up if/when he gets a longterm expensive deal and is passed off as the big time pitching acquisition of the offseason. Meche is a fine gamble at the back of the rotation and for short-term. He could give you 180 IP and 100 ERA+. He hasn't shown that he's likely to though, and hasn't earned the premium that other guys have, by repeatedly doing that or better. 1 year, $5m, great. 2/12, okay 3/27, and nobody else comes in? Uh-uh. If a risk like Meche accounts for 8% of your payroll, you aren't spending wisely. Now, if Meche got 3/27, but they also added Drew, traded little for Westbrook and switched out Izturis with Lugo. Okay, I'll live with it. I think goony just summed up my feelings of the situation perfectly there. It all depends on the cost, the years, and how they view Meche in terms of the overall offseason.

Something like: DeRosa & Agent: Well, Jim, were looking for something in the neighborhood of 2yrs/3 mil Hendry: 3 yrs/13 mil and that's my final offer!!!! If Derosa was looking for 2 years/3 million, then he would be crazy also-there were teams out there that were willing to give him 4 million per (like I posted, there was one site that had him projected to make 7 per after this offseason :shock:). The only thing that this deal was a little above market value was the addition of the third year-otherwise it was about market value for him. Now, one could argue that market value is overpaying him (which could reasonably be true), but somebody was going to pay him similar money.

While looking for information on somebody else, I found somebody's predictions for the top 40 free agents-anybody glad they didn't pay him this? http://www.all-baseball.com/firebrand/archives/024536.html

As most people I think know, Meche missed all of 2 seasons with injury (2001 and 2002). He came back, and has been brilliant at times and terrible at others. Most of the criticism says that it is simply a lack of confidence with him-when he's on, he will throw a great number of ground balls. It is possible he is just starting to re-gain that confidence from the long injury, but it's hard to tell. He's one of those starters that has the potential to break through, but it is an absolutely huge risk.

I agree. Meche is a decent candidate to be one of the breakout pitchers with his stuff and coming to the NL, but there are also probably better candidates out there. It really depends on the cost-are we talking 5 million, or 9.5 million? One makes it a decent to good move, and the other one makes it a bad to horrible move in my book.

It's the "guys who can catch the ball" of 2007. Imagine for a second that the 2007 infielders all produce at their career averages in 2007, unlikely, but not absurd. Lee - 155 games, 123 OPS+ DeRosa - 100 games, 90 OPS+ Izturis - 100 games, 68 OPS+ Ramirez - 140 games, 109 OPS+ Throw in a bad-nutted Michael Barrett - 130 games 91 OPS+, backed up by Blanco - 50 games, 66 OPS+ Man, the pitching better be really really good this year. I think that's incredibly unlikely. Ramirez has been well over that figure for the last 3 years, and so has Barrett. The others have a chance of hitting their career numbers, but that is the low end projection for most of them. While I agree that the pitching needs to be good this year, it won't have to be as good as the numbers above would seem to indicate.

Do any of the pitchers prefer Blanco behind the plate? I can't remember if he caught any of the pitchers primarily or not.

This wasn't surprising to me at all-the Cubs were not willing to go into this year that they are trying to contend with a young backup catcher. I think Blanco is still better than Soto-is it worth 2.5 million? I don't know, but I'm fine with this deal-again, not enthused and jumping up and down, but not particularly unhappy either.

I don't think they are looking at Drew either-in my opinion, it seems to be Soriano or bust now.

This was completely expected, just passing it along as it has come through now. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2662633

I think the infield is done unless a trade just fell into our laps. This offense can still be pretty good though-sign either Drew or Soriano for CF, get a platoon partner for Jacque in right (or sign another second baseman, or use Jacque/Derosa/Theriot in a 3 way platoon at RF/second base). That would make the offense competitive, and then it would just rest on a huge amount of factors to see if the offense was good or not (only some of them need to come true) 1)Can Murton get even better this year? 2)Can Jacque put up close to what he did last year? (I certainly think he'll be better then his years in Minnesota-for the most part, his splits are horrible in the Metrodome. 3)Which Derrek Lee will we see? 4)Was Barrett's approach change to hitting to all fields the reason why his hitting improved that much, or was it simply a career year that will not be repeated? 5)Same question for Soriano as Barrett, or if Drew, does he get hurt during the year? 6)What does the middle infield put up? (probably at least the same as last year-Izturis will be at least a little better than either Neifi or Cedeno's numbers last year, probably at least a 30 point jump in OBP over either of those two. A reasonable projection for Derosa probably would be about Walker's numbers last year, with a slight dip in OBP from Walker and a slight uptick in SLG-that's a compromise from Derosa's numbers before and his numbers this year) The only one that we really know for sure how much they'll produce is Ramirez, but the Cubs should have an average offense at least if they make those free agent signings and even 1-2 of those 6 questions goes their way next year.

Looks like we are getting Izturis and Derosa next year up the middle. 2007 is over before it even had a chance to begin. It's certainly not the end-we need upgrades elsewhere, but Izturis and Derosa are at least as good as most team's catcher/and either their 2b or SS, whichever is worse. We just happen to have our offense at catcher and our defense at SS and to a lesser extent second (lesser extent because Derosa is not as offensively deficient), while most teams have one good offensive middle infielder and the other one is deficient, along with most catchers. Upgrade some of the other positions, and this offense can still be good.

All of that fee goes to the Lions-Matsuzaka now has to go negotiate his own contract with the Red Sox in 30 days.

If I'm Boston, I refuse to sign him to anything but a long-term deal of 5 or 6 years. If Boras refuses, then Boston isn't out anything. You cannot cave in to his demands for a 3 year deal though-like you said, that's just way too much money.

Sorry to tell you, he was a B. It does mean now that Derosa doesn't lose us our draft pick as some of the other second basemen would (players like Durham and probably a couple others were type A's and would have lost us a pick), but I understand what you mean that it brings us closer to the quota as well.

What does this have to do with anything? Just because the Cubs may have been foolish enough to think about having this guy play 3B next year does not mean others were. And that fact, well, it's not really a fact, does not all of a sudden mean this is a good signing. Other teams were looking to make Derosa a starting third baseman though. The Phillies were one that I know of.

I don't know how you can say that. DeRosa averages what, 10 homers and 50 RBI's a season? Soriano can triple his HR totals and he can double DeRosa's RBIs. Average and OBP wise, he matches up with Soriano, but that's about it. You missed the point. DeRosa was crappy for two years then good for one, and now he's getting paid like a good player. Soriano was good for two years and great for one, and people are clamoring for him to get paid like a great player. Not to nitpick TT, but he is not getting paid like a great player. $4.3MM is not chump change, but it will hardly be a huge drag on the payroll in future years. Also, is there any indication that DeRosa did something different last year that helped him turn the corner? His numbers last year are pretty significant improvements and while his last 100abs were pretty bad, he sustained pretty good numbers for the majority of the year. The bolded was talking about Soriano. DeRosa had a career year, his struggles at the end of the year point towards it as does his astronomically abnormal BABIP. My hope is that Jaramillo helped him with something to get an increase in power, and that it sticks with Jackson's tutelage. That combined with a slightly lucky BABIP season could possibly get a .270/.330/.430 out of DeRosa. I would be happy with that season out of DeRosa. That would still put him among the top half of 2nd basemen in OPS, and his contract would be comparable to those around that number also. We will just have to see if he can get there or better or not.

If he puts up numbers like last year his contract for a second baseman will be very, very good. Of course, like you said he is not likely going to match his numbers. How far can he drop and still be market value? 40-50 points maybe? From looking around most of the 2nd basemen in the league in their contracts, that seems about right-let's hope he can reach there at least.

5th and 6th were by far his two primary spots.

Then I'd live with missing out on him. He made $675k last year. He would have taken $2m, because I cannot imagine another team giving him more per. I think the Phillies would have easily paid him more than 2 per. They were looking at him to fill a starting spot and had already expressed great iinterest in him. Then good for the Phillies. Let them overpay for a utility IF. Let's be clear: We didn't overpay for JD Drew or Barry Zito or someone who's actually good. We overpaid for a player who's somewhere between Mark Grudzielanek and Neifi Perez. I would agree that the contract is over what I would have paid him-but really all the contracts together so far, we're still under what we were projecting budget-wise going into getting out impact SP and bats. Let's see if we actually get those-that will tell the tale or not if this is a good offseason, not this signing.

Unless Lou asked Hendry to beef up the bench big time due to the day games and this might put a couple of young guys on the bench to save some dough.. Ding ding ding ding! I think you hit the nail on the head. But you still didn't have to run out and pay him 3x what he deserved. We way overpaid. If we paid him about $2m, I wouldn't care. If that extra $2m per is the difference between a crappy OF and JD Drew, I'm going to be bloody ticked. If we paid him 2 million, we wouldn't have gotten him. I'm not sure if that's what we would have wanted at that point, but he wasn't coming here for 2 million dollars. Then I'd live with missing out on him. He made $675k last year. He would have taken $2m, because I cannot imagine another team giving him more per. I think the Phillies would have easily paid him more than 2 per. They were looking at him to fill a starting spot and had already expressed great iinterest in him.

Unless Lou asked Hendry to beef up the bench big time due to the day games and this might put a couple of young guys on the bench to save some dough.. Ding ding ding ding! I think you hit the nail on the head. But you still didn't have to run out and pay him 3x what he deserved. We way overpaid. If we paid him about $2m, I wouldn't care. If that extra $2m per is the difference between a crappy OF and JD Drew, I'm going to be bloody ticked. If we paid him 2 million, we wouldn't have gotten him. I'm not sure if that's what we would have wanted at that point, but he wasn't coming here for 2 million dollars.

That's an interesting point-what if this opens up some options? I mean, what happens if they now feel they can sign Durham or Drew, knowing that they will be covered if they go down? There are many ways they can go with this signing, and I have no idea which one they will choose.