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I would say the statistics have shown that bunting can be used in more situations than that. 1st and 2nd with nobody out for example can be very helpful to bunt, especially if it's a weaker hitter or if you need 1/2 runs. There are others that also apply. And quasi sac bunts are also useful (like Kosuke used to do with a runner on 2nd where he would do a surprise bunt and hope to beat it out but have a sacrifice as the worst outcome). It's very rare though when you want to bunt with one of your 2-3 best hitters (although the more of a straight power/low batting average the guy is, like Pena or maybe Soto, the more times he would have a situation where it could be beneficial for him to bunt in certain late inning situations.)

I forgot about the combining of sacrifice bunts/flies. But even so... Would I like everyone to know how to bunt? Sure. Even Albert Pujols is probably going to have a couple times in his career where it would be slightly beneficial for him to lay down a bunt. But it's not like you can teach a player to bunt and have him pick it up and be great at it. Bunting requires repetition and a certain amount of skill. Some pitchers have been trying to bunt for 10-15 years and are still not good at it. Carlos Pena has been working hard on bunting for at least a couple years now, has much more of the field available to him then a typical sac bunt would, and still can't get the ball down all the time. So it's almost certainly a waste of time to spend a lot of time working on bunting with a good hitter who is not naturally skilled at it in order to trust him enough to call a bunt for the 10-20 times in his career where it would make sense for him to bunt. It's more likely that he'll never be good enough at bunting to make it worth it to take the bat out of his hands.

Bunting is for people who can't hit. Sac bunting is. There's definite merit in bunting for a hit, for certain players. How true. All the great players know how to bunt. According to STATS, Babe Ruth had 113 sacrifice hits and Lou Gehrig had 106 sacrifice hits. They knew the fundamentals and when asked by their manager to lay one down, they did it. They also played in the deadball era when 1 run meant a whole lot more than it does now.

I like a lot of this, but trading Dempster and Byrd just isn't a good idea unless a team is offering amazing deals for them. I'm not saying they're untouchable, but the Cubs don't have to and shouldn't frag their team for 2012, and moving those guys just creates big holes that likely can't be filled adequately that quickly. So, the 2012 outfield would be Soriano, Byrd, and Jackson? Yikes. What's yikes about that? That's average offensively and defensively with some upside.

Like you said Looper and Wellemeyer were not going to be options. Best case scenario is they go to AAA and be mediocre and be just as bad of options as Coleman has been. That left just Silva. Silva was a high priced veteran player, getting passed over by a kid with no ML starting experience. It could have been foreseen that he would have an issue with not getting a starting spot. The bottom line is Hendry traded away an effective, cheap starter in Gorzellany for basically nothing. Gorzo would have been the perfect 6th starter. He did it part of last year. He was cheap and wouldn't throw a hissyfit over it. The question is, do you keep a guy who you expect to be poor in the bullpen just to be a 6th starter if needed? If the Cubs starters had been healthy, Gorz would have been paid 2.1 million dollars to pitch once or twice a week in mopup situations. Instead, the Cubs got some intriguing prospects for him (of course most of that intrigue is now gone). It's an interesting question though-is depth enough reason to pay a guy to be a long reliever?

So do you want a laissez-faire type manager or not? This article seems to mostly contradict what you've said you want in a manager. In fact, Showalter seems more like the manager you would want. Please correct me where I have missated you, but I feel like I'm missing something after seeing this.

I'm not sure Jackson and Ha are exactly rushed with these promotions though. There were certainly things they could both work on at the level they were at, but they won't be woefully overmatched at the next level either. And it does help the CF dilemma that was caused by Szczur moving up, and he absolutely needed to move up. I'm hoping Flaherty will get to come up to the big leagues in September, and don't really care which level of AA and AAA he plays before that.

Definitely. I don't think anybody wants the Cubs to become the Mets (or even the Cubs of the last few years). Decide on which positions you're going to let young guys grow in. Find impact guys at the other positions and be willing to sign them to big deals. If there are positions left over, then try to find short term fixes that don't hamstring you if they don't turn out well. In this case of the 2011-2012 offseason, they can sign their impact guy (Pujols or Fielder), identify two positions where prospects can play (CF and 2B) and then between 3B and SP they can sign either one impact guy and a bargain guy or two short term fixes (which would probably be Ramirez+risky starting pitcher). Doing that gives the Cubs a decent chance to compete next year while still preserving tons of flexibility since they would only have 3 guys signed beyond 2012 (maybe 4), 2 beyond 2013, and 1 after 2014 (assuming that Fielder/Pujols get a long deal and they don't sign Ramirez or the pitcher to more than 2 years).

It seems to be that the entire premise is that the prospects in the Lee trade were nothing more than organizational filler. And I really don't think that was the case. Lopez after the Garza trade was the 15th best prospect in the Cubs system. He's pretty much killed his value this season, but he was a raw pitcher with considerable projection. If the Cubs can get a better version of him and a couple other guys for Pena then they should take it.

I do agree that teams would put too much focus on his mediocre ERA and not enough on how well he was actually pitching. If the rumors are true, however, that the Red Sox have an interest in him then they probably are looking beyond the ERA and realize he's been a very good pitcher. That said, I do agree that he almost certainly won't bring back at least what we gave up in prospects so it doesn't make sense to trade him. The biggest reason, I think, is that we gave up so much to get him that it'd be hard for any team to be willing to match it, no matter how well he was pitching. The mediocre ERA does make them less likely to even try, though. His career H/9 is 8.6 while it's 8.9 this year. Not much of an increase at all. And like I pointed out previously, his BB/9 is still better than it was in 2009 and still very close to his career BB/9. His LD% is up over previous years (23% this year vs 19.1% in previous years) so when he's getting hit he's getting hit a little harder. He's not giving up many more hits, though, meaning he's less hittable overall this season. Most of that can be explained by the poor Cubs' defense. It's not a coincidence that the Cubs have had three OFs who have been poor this year (Soriano, Reed, Kosuke) in the outfield for a number of Garza's starts. Campana has helped, but even still he's stuck between two guys who have struggled defensively this season. I know it wasn't your main point, but I have a hard time believing Campana is better defensively than Johnson. Johnson is still really good on balls that he can get to, but he's not that fast anymore. Campana is one of the fastest players in the league and has elite range. Especially in CF, that range is much more important than any of the other factors.

I'm hoping he has at least started to realize that now. Barney has been in the 8th spot 3 games in a row (2 against a left-hander and one against a right-hander). In fact, last night's lineup was probably the best one of the year.

It's technically not the only option, but it's by far the most likely one. What is to stop Crane Kenney from handling things until the new guy is hired? Isn't that what happened last time? After Lynch was fired, MacPhail (team president) served as gm until Hendry was hired. Kenney would have no idea what to do as GM. He's a businessman and handles those aspects of the Cubs well, but he has no qualifications for the GM role.

The Cubs have had two main problems: they haven't gotten enough from their farm system, and they've been afraid to spend the big bucks on impact players because they need to fill too many holes since they don't get enough from their farm system. The contracts they've given out haven't really been that bad overall (with 2-3 major exceptions), but the problem has always been that they've had to give out too many of them to the good to great but not elite type of players. Which points the finger at Hendry and the lack of player development. Probably scouting was even worse. The Cubs in the first half of the last decade had terrible draft after terrible draft. That meant very few players were available from the system in the second half of the decade. The Cubs are just starting to see some results from the better drafting/scouting over the second half of the decade, but it will still be several years until the results from the Ricketts increasing spending on the draft/internationally shows up. And yes, the horrible treatment the minor leagues was getting was Hendry's fault. I think it's been corrected at this point, but that was a huge mistake that set the Cubs way back. Would you mind to give us a little primer (not being sarcastic) on how bad drafts are anyone's fault and how the minors were mistreated. I was under the impression the baseball drafts were largely a crapshoot and that player development is how you emphasize the minors (though that is a bit of a crapshoot too). I'm easily not the most qualified person who can answer this question. But I'll give you a couple answers that are a bit simplistic. The draft can be a great deal of luck especially in the later rounds (although buying overslot guys help your chances). But you should be able to hit on a decent percentage of your first 3 rounds-those are the guys who should be well scouted, and while injury and projection can cause players to not turn out it's nothing like the lower rounds are. The Cubs kept their player development director the same but replaced their scouting director in the middle of the decade. From 2002-2005, they had 15 top 3 round picks. 3 made the majors-two relievers (Petrick, Veal)D who had cups of coffee for one year, and Jake Fox. Many of the players did not even make it above A ball. From 2006-2009, they had 11 top 3 round picks. 5 have already made the majors (Colvin, Cashner, Donaldson, Carpenter, Lemahieu), 2 more are almost certainly going to (Jackson, Flaherty), 3 more have a decent chance (Vitters, Thomas, Kirk) and only 1 has busted so far (Shafer). The players are getting much farther in the system then they used to, and since it's basically the same player development people I'm assuming that scouting has a decent amount of importance. I think scouting and drafting well are important. The reason I partially blame it on Hendry is that he was a former scouting director himself. He should have realized that some of these players were not particularly good risks to take.

Nope. He's only been on one All-Star team almost 10 years ago and he wasn't invited to be in the Derby that year (Bonds, Sosa, Berkman, and Sexson participated for the NL that year). With the new Home Run Derby format, this was the first year he would have been eligible to be selected. I've seen some invitations issued by Fielder and Ortiz and I've even seen the rumored American league lineup, but I haven't seen any confirmation on who has accepted those invitations.

The Cubs have had two main problems: they haven't gotten enough from their farm system, and they've been afraid to spend the big bucks on impact players because they need to fill too many holes since they don't get enough from their farm system. The contracts they've given out haven't really been that bad overall (with 2-3 major exceptions), but the problem has always been that they've had to give out too many of them to the good to great but not elite type of players. Which points the finger at Hendry and the lack of player development. Probably scouting was even worse. The Cubs in the first half of the last decade had terrible draft after terrible draft. That meant very few players were available from the system in the second half of the decade. The Cubs are just starting to see some results from the better drafting/scouting over the second half of the decade, but it will still be several years until the results from the Ricketts increasing spending on the draft/internationally shows up. And yes, the horrible treatment the minor leagues was getting was Hendry's fault. I think it's been corrected at this point, but that was a huge mistake that set the Cubs way back.

Yeah. All those trades were examples of little talent received, and even less talent given up. I'd consider Hendry the winner cumulatively of those trades, but it's mostly been shuffling of spare parts. You really think Harden was "little talent" or "spare parts"? Harden's the main exception, but even he only gave the Cubs a year and a half and his 2009 wasn't that great. He's a big reason why Hendry gets a win cumulatively though.

The Cubs have had two main problems: they haven't gotten enough from their farm system, and they've been afraid to spend the big bucks on impact players because they need to fill too many holes since they don't get enough from their farm system. The contracts they've given out haven't really been that bad overall (with 2-3 major exceptions), but the problem has always been that they've had to give out too many of them to the good to great but not elite type of players.

Yeah. All those trades were examples of little talent received, and even less talent given up. I'd consider Hendry the winner cumulatively of those trades, but it's mostly been shuffling of spare parts.

They don't have to be a GM. They just have to be employed in some capacity by another club for it to be almost impossible to hire them in season like this. How many great GM candidates are currently completely unemployed? By late August/September teams will be much more likely to give permission for interviews. And I would agree that Hendry is not great at mid-season trades (although he is pretty solid). But he is probably better than the alternatives inside the Cubs organization.

If they're firing him, then they would be waiting for other teams GM's to become available. Those GM's have contracts too and can't leave their teams during the season. Of course, they also could be waiting because they felt the flaw in the organization was somebody other than Hendry and have decided not to fire him.

A lot of Painting going on! :P Seriously?? I don't think teams cutting players happens as much as people say (because the kids see the writing on the wall too) but this fits the same profile as some of the Indiana cases. Molock was not as good of prospect anymore after the injury. Purdue didn't need him anymore now that they have two other point guards coming. And Purdue needed to open up a scholarship in order to pursue guys like Harris. There was probably a secret hope that Molock would leave, and now he has. How much was his decision and how much was Purdue's decision/pushing is up for debate.

The only starter from the opening day roster that has not yet been on the DL this year. And it's correct. 4/5 starters, 4/8 starting position players, 2/5 bench players (with another one demoted), and 1/3 of the key relievers so far now have hit the DL.

Good move by San Francisco here. Not only is Soto less likely than Castro to get a single, but this also probably forces the Cubs to keep Hill in the game. If Castro had ended the inning, they would have double switched Soto in. Of course, if Soto ends it here that doesn't matter.

It could have been a good move, but wasn't necessarily the right one. If Soto had batted, the Giants could have just pitched around Barney/Castro here and had a pitcher bat to end the game.

How bad are Doug Davis and the Giants offense if Marcos freaking Mateo is shutting them down over 4 innings? I like Mateo ERA under 4 now. Decent K's. I like him too but he needs to miss more bats. Mateo has been excellent in the strikeout department this year. In fact, that's been the only area he's been excellent in. I'm not sure he can make much improvement in that area. Hopefully he can stop leaving his mistake pitches in the middle of the plate like he was earlier in the year.