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From this ESPN report here: http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/page/rumblings110729/ranking-mlb-trade-chips What is the Phillies plan for 3 years from now? They seem to actively be getting rid of all their young players. Hunter Pence isn't old and has 2 more arbitration years left, but that's just one more big contract for them-and if they're getting rid of Brown and their top two prospects they can't seem to have too much ready to come up and provide cheap production. Edit: Of course, it never says they offered all three together. Still the general point is there-I understand improving your team, but how far do you do that at the expense of your future?

I was going off of CCP's estimate of what we would need, but I have to imagine that 45 million would be the high end for the two of them. I was being very conservative and only projecting 35 million between two of them (and projecting 20 between arbitration/minimum salary guys) If it was more then the budget would have to be shaved even more.

I don't disagree, but would point out that they are not very far from being able to afford all 3. It wouldn't take seismic changes to get all 3, and you have to keep in mind they're paying 33 million for SP production(Dempster, Z) they could replace for far less the following season. From my calculations they're 7-10 million short even after declining Samardzija's option, not re-signing Wood, and going with minimum salary players for the bench and most of the bullpen. That's a lot of extra money to shed. They could trade Byrd to do it, but they have nobody to replace him. That's also assuming none of Pena's money counts for the 2012 budget.

Right, that's comparable. IU succeeding in football, to the degree they can, would essentially have no effect on me. It's not like Notre Dame and IU are consistently battling for recruits, and it's not like I said I hope IU is gonna compete for titles. I just have a few friends who are fans, that's all. Not sure why it's such a big deal, and I certainly apologize for offending all the non-IU B1G fanboys. If IU became above average, they'd be battling Notre Dame for recruits. At least the top state kids, and maybe some solid Illinois kids. It would probably be more damaging to Notre Dame's recruiting for someone like Rutgers to get good rather than Indiana. Indiana/Illinois combined only produces 3 of 4 recruits per year for ND and most of those guys are more in Purdue territory than Indiana territory. It's pretty inconsequential. Rutgers? No. I agree it's not a huge deal. But NJ isn't an ND hot bed or anything. It would only be significant in that when there's a high-4 or 5-star recruit in ND and he fits ND's system, ND should get him (in ND's opinion and recruiting services' opinions, etc). If they don't, it's a black mark on ND to some degree. The more football programs they have to compete with in Indiana, the worse it is on ND. But the risk on IU becoming a legit football school anytime soon seems pretty minor. NJ hasn't been a huge hotbed only because there is only so much talent in NJ. But ND has consistently gotten good talent especially offensively out of there (in the last 10 years, they got Fasano, Olsen, Kamara, Ragone, Riddick, and Jackson on the offensive side of the ball, and a few others on defense). They got 12 players out of NJ over a 10 year period and 12 players out of Indiana (and most of the Indiana players are northern Indiana players who would likely come to ND anyway even if Indiana became good).

I would trade Ramirez for a good price. He's still a great player and the Cubs would miss his production quite a bit. It would be sad to see him go. But my thinking is this: the Cubs would have the opportunity to get 3 major pieces in the offseason: an elite first baseman, a great starting pitcher, or Ramirez. They can only afford 2 of them, and IMO Ramirez is the least necessary of those three because that's where the Cubs at least have OK options from within the system. Plus, the Cubs would get talent from the Ramirez trade and some of that talent might be ready next year to help the 2012 team. So I don't see trading Ramirez as giving up on 2012-it's just throwing your limited assets in a different direction. And if the Cubs are unsure about signing those elite pieces, trading Ramirez gives them more flexibility in the offseason.

Abreu is interesting enough to make this deal IMO even if 95% of the time we'll have forgotten about him in 2 years. If he cuts that strikeout down from 30 to 22-23 he would be a nice player. And while it's likely the Cubs paid some of his contract they probably didn't pay all of it so they might still have some savings from the deal.

Abreu must be quite the athlete. Already this year he has 12 HR, 19 SB, 5 3B, and a great arm? So a guy with some definite upside but very unlikely to reach it with that BB/K ratio.

I can't imagine Kosuke's value will be any higher than 2 players in the 15-20 range. I bet it will be lower than that, but I would be pretty happy to get 2 decent prospects back. This may be a dumb question on my part and I offer my apologies in advance...but it bothers me that instead of getting one top 10 guy in a trade like this we seem to settle for two guys in the 15-20 range. Maybe I'm a fool but I would much rather get one guy with a good chance at reaching his projections than two guys with a lesser chance. I probably would too depending on the situation and how close the rankings were, but that doesn't seem to be a choice that's usually given for a marginal player like Fukudome. Quantity is better than nothing.

I can't imagine Kosuke's value will be any higher than 2 players in the 15-20 range. I bet it will be lower than that, but I would be pretty happy to get 2 decent prospects back.

But it's not like we're 6 games back and can say, if we only had clutch hitting* this year, we'd be right in it. Instead you can say, if we only had clutch hitting this year, we'd be run of the mill bad, rather than terrible, and realize we're not 45 years away from contending. *I have no idea if our clutch hitting has been worse than it should be. It's only a little bit worse than it should be. Not enough to make a big difference (although combined with poor baserunning and a relative lack of productive outs probably contributes to the frustration about clutch hitting).

Right, that's comparable. IU succeeding in football, to the degree they can, would essentially have no effect on me. It's not like Notre Dame and IU are consistently battling for recruits, and it's not like I said I hope IU is gonna compete for titles. I just have a few friends who are fans, that's all. Not sure why it's such a big deal, and I certainly apologize for offending all the non-IU B1G fanboys. If IU became above average, they'd be battling Notre Dame for recruits. At least the top state kids, and maybe some solid Illinois kids. It would probably be more damaging to Notre Dame's recruiting for someone like Rutgers to get good rather than Indiana. Indiana/Illinois combined only produces 3 of 4 recruits per year for ND and most of those guys are more in Purdue territory than Indiana territory. It's pretty inconsequential.

Die in a fire, Jim Hendry. Unless we're also getting some good prospects back, why just give Zambrano away? It really depends on how much money the Cubs are giving. Just giving Z away and only eating say 3 million this year and 3 million next year could be a good deal for the Cubs. There are things to be worried about with how some of Z's numbers are trending. He'll have a decent amount of value for the Cubs next year, but if they have 15 extra million to play with they could find somebody who gets more value than Z does.

A Dempster quote from Fangraphs: There are multiple stats that would say that his peripherals are now the best of his career-even better than 2008. The chances of Dempster having a bounceback year next year are pretty high.

And Szczur with another double in the 2nd and Watkins with a home run.

I don't think Montanez fits the original point. Sneaky doesn't want to give chances to any player who was ever drafted high. He wants players who had minor league success who were top prospects before they hit the majors and struggled. Montanez didn't hit in the minors until he was old for the leagues he was playing in, and he had to switch from one of the positions that doesn't have much offense (SS) to one of the positions that requires close to the most offense (corner OF). That's not the same type of player as a guy like Maybin whatsoever.

Yeah, because I'm sure you'd be so bothered by it if the Bears won the Super Bowl and people here were gloating about it. I think he would since he's not a Bears fan.

I don't see how it's that easy to judge when to pull the plug with these guys. If they haven't been given enough time by their previous team, don't you have to give them enough at-bats to really give them a chance? Early results could just be the same adjustment period they were going through with their previous team.

Agreed. For certain teams in certain situations, these guys make a fantastic play. I'm not sure I would call it a market inefficiency though rather than some teams are in better situations to take the big risk to get the potential huge reward. The worst that can happen is that the player acquired flames out spectacularly over the course of a season and is kicked out of town, but for a contending team a player doing that can ruin a season. For teams who obviously need more talent though, it's a different story.

The downside of course is the playing time that you have to give these guys. How many guys are like Pie right now who is giving -7.5 million worth of value all by himself? It's hard to do a proper analysis without looking at all the top prospects who failed with their original team and where they are now. It's definitely a high reward play, but it might be a pretty high risk one as well.

I don't know about all time, but last year 5 out of the 17 runningbacks that gained 1,000 yards also had at least 500 yards receiving. Two others were above 450. that has to be an anomaly. Yes, an anomoly. In 2009 there were only 2 (including Chris Johnson who went for 2,000 yards rushing and 500 receiving) with no Forte. In 2008 nobody did it. The only person who did it in both 2009 and 2010 was Ray Rice. I skipped back to 2003 to see what it was like several years ago and 3 people did it that year. From looking at the lists, it seems to be that a decent number of players have done it once or twice, but they rarely do it more than that. That's partly because most runningbacks even if they are good receivers have to be in a certain type of offense to do it. Faulk did it 5 times (including a 1,000-1,000 year).

I don't know about all time, but last year 5 out of the 17 runningbacks that gained 1,000 yards also had at least 500 yards receiving. Two others were above 450.

Because winning the division shouldn't be the goal. If the goal is to win the WS, the division will come. This attitude drives me crazy. no team in the national league has the money to build a team to compete for a world series consistently. There are 2 teams in the american league that can look past the regular season year after year, but not one in the national league. this nonsense about competing for a world series would make sense if the world series title were just the best record in baseball and there were no divisions whatsoever. in baseball, you build to compete in the regular season and hope to get lucky in the playoffs. Minor nitpick-if the Phillies keep their payroll where it is, then they will have joined that group. They have the 2nd highest payroll in all of baseball this year.

If you're not going to celebrate a little bit when they win, why go to the game in the first place? Plus you have fans going to Wrigley for their first/second game all the time. It's a little bit of harmless fun that has nothing to do with how they may feel about the overall season. Celebrate what? The 2nd pick in next year's draft? Maybe they need a new song...it always reminds me of the 13 game losing streak in 1985, which I think was the reason it was made. Anyone know what they do at other mlb stadiums? Celebrate the win that many spent $100 or more to watch along with the time it took to transport in for the game (some from hours away), and then sat in the moderately hot sun for 3 hours to watch. It would be rather depressing to put all that time/effort/money into it and then not have some fun. If you live in Chicago and have been to quite a few more exciting Cubs games then it might not be that fun to watch this team, but if you fit that criteria you're probably not at many of these games anyway.

If you're not going to celebrate a little bit when they win, why go to the game in the first place? Plus you have fans going to Wrigley for their first/second game all the time. It's a little bit of harmless fun that has nothing to do with how they may feel about the overall season.

All of next year's guaranteed changes. Technically, the arbitration awards aren't guaranteed, but even the Cubs aren't dumb enough to non-tender Garza and Soto. I won't guarantee I'm reading it right, but it appears that the $72 mil covers Soriano, Z, Dempster, Byrd, Marmol, Marshall, $2 mil to Silva and Aramis' buyout. That leaves Garza, Soto, Baker, Hill, Wells and DeWitt as Arb-eligible and six pre-arb guys. They appear to have seven guys either becoming FA or have some sort of option year in Aramis, Kosuke, Pena, Wood, Grabow, Samardzija and Johnson. So what will it take to bump up the arb and pre-arb guys? Would $10 mil total do it? I honestly don't know what a good guess would be. If $10 mil is enough, that leaves roughly $52 mil to spend, if they leave payroll the same. With seven spots to fill, at least 2-3 would be in-house options, 2-3 would be cheaper FA options and the rest big-name FA. Assuming nothing else happens (ie. no one is traded) it leaves this- FA - possible replacement (spot on 25 man, not necessarily spot on the field) Kosuke - B Jackson Aramis - FA? Pena - Pujols/Fielder? Wood - In-house/FA/re-sign Grabow - In-house/FA Samardzija - In-house/FA Johson - In-house A couple of those will be filled in house, just not sure by who, a couple more could be. I'd say the two most likely to be filled by bigger names is Aramis and Pena. So, the question is, given who is coming back, plus the money available, who can they get that will turn this around next year? Does Wells and Cashner recover enough to fix the starting staff? Will (as an example) Fielder/Reyes provide enough of a bump to the offense? Maybe Aramis/Kosuke get re-signed to cheaper contracts. As always, this can all change as we get through the trade deadline and the waiver deadline in Aug. The arb and pre-arb players made 14.479 million this year. Estimating arbitration awards is hard, but I would be surprised if that didn't go up by at least 5-6 million next year if the Cubs don't non-tender/trade anyone. So there's probably more in the range of 40-43 million to spend, and that doesn't include Aramis's 2 million dollar buyout if the Cubs choose not to re-sign him (or Pena's 5 million depending on if the Cubs are counting that for the 2012 payroll).