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Who specifically are you talking about? Barney, DeWitt, Baker, Lemahieu? If you want a good hitting 2B, you actually need a pretty good hitter. It's a productive position nowadays. They Cubs have been plugging holes at 2B for a while now and they have only on occasion filled it with actual production. and Flaherty and others. The Cubs system is filled with middle infield options. And 2B is still not that productive overall-most teams tend to still fill it with poor hitting players.

I did forget about Silva and more importantly Ramirez, so 85 million is more accurate as a raw number. Still, like CCP's example illustrates, that gets eaten up quickly with the raises to other players coming up(and that example assumes we let Marmol and Marshall walk, which is a frightening thought at this point). Marmol's one of the two players under contract for 2013 so that's not an issue.

Ack, had a post then lost it. Long story short, the Cubs have about 64 million coming off the payroll the next 2 years . Considering Prince/Kemp/Reyes are looking at 17-18+ per year, that doesn't really leave you the necessary resources to fill out a rotation that would consist of Garza, Wells, and a pocketful of wishes. ? Am I missing something? Cots shows a payroll of $134 mil this year, $72.6 for 2012 and 28.8 for 2013. Even figuring the number of arbitration eligible guys they have, appears to be six, and the raises they'll get, that's a lot more than $64 mil coming off over the next two years. They could sign Prince and Reyes this year and have plenty of money next year for Kemp and at least one high quality pitcher. And still end up with a lower payroll than they have now. If you have 28.8 million in 2013 and you add Kemp/Prince/Reyes at 18 each per year and a high quality pitcher at 13, then you have a payroll of 95 million already. Garza/Soto will probably together be around 20 million by that point so you're already at 115. Wells will probably be 3-5 million by then so 118-120. Castro will probably be another 4-5. So that's 122-125 and that's only 10 players. So they would only have 10 million or so for the other 15 players. Unless the Cubs go to a complete stars/scrubs model, there's no way they can sign that many elite players.

http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r71/bcvm22/sigzeon/soto_lol.png Hilarious. I saw that on SportsCenter. Soto laughing after Guillen kicked his catcher's mask was amazing. Did the broadcast show a good view on whether or not that ball actually rolled foul? In the highlights I just watched on MLB.com, it was a field level view and it looked like the ball was right on the edge of the plate, but I couldn't tell. They eventually did a freeze frame of the play, and it looked like part of the ball was on the plate which made it a good call.

The Cubs didn't exactly blow up the team after the last playoff year. 6 of the 8 position players started both years. 4 of the 5 starting pitchers were the same and 2 of the top 4 bullpen arms. That's pretty good stability. And of the players they lost, one of the position players had a poor year the next year while the other one didn't even play in MLB that year. The starter was pretty good for his new team (but replaced with someone even better) and the setup guy was good for his new team but the closer was not. If the Cubs had kept everybody they still would have struggled.

The incredible plate coverage was a consistent part of his scouting report. It's one of the main things that scouts saw that kept them thinking Vitters could improve greatly. It hasn't really shown itself in his statistics until this year..

That's not a surprise. The only real possibilities are players like Pena, Byrd, Baker, and Grabow which would save very little money and net us no-name prospects. I'm not so sure about that. Pena has had two good months in a row-one more solid month and he could get us something decent. A big left-handed power bat is always useful to somebody. Baker is a question of need. If somebody happens to have a need of a person who mashes left-handers and can play all over the field he could get something back. I doubt the Cubs look real hard to trade him though. Another name that could get something is Fukudome. The Cubs might have to eat some money (because so many teams cannot add payroll) but he's been so good this year and is a relatively rare skillset on the market.

Yup. That's a big reason why the Cubs have to continue to pursue trades like the one they did for Garza (on a smaller scale). The depth gets squeezed the closer it gets to the majors. If you don't make moves to constantly be removing the depth, you'll have people either being lost because of 40 man concerns or languishing in AAA and losing any value. IMO that's the proper way to be using a system that is better with depth than quality.

I don't think you can list 3B as a likely upgrade, nor expect it to be easy to upgrade it. So you don't think they can find something better than a .750 OPS out of third base next year? Whether Aramis stays or goes, I expect better performance than that. Heck, I expect a much better performance than that out of 3B by the end of this year. 3B is not an easy position to find a great or even good offensive player at. It wasn't easy even 4-5 years ago and it's gotten much harder now. The Cubs best chance for one who's better next year is probably Aramis but that's far from from a guarantee. I fully expect Aramis to finish this season around .810 - .820, even after his poor start. If we keep him, I'd expect him to be easily better than .750 again. I know 3B production is way down this year, but I don't believe it would be THAT hard to find someone to post a .775 OPS there next year, which would be a significant upgrade over the current production of .745 from 2011 Aramis. I'd have a hard time seeing Aramis get that high. He'd probably have to average between an .870 and a .900 OPS the rest of the way and while I think that's possible considering his age and the lack of power around the league I would think that would have to be unlikely. As for next year, finding a guy who could post a .775+ OPS will probably be pretty easy. Finding a guy who will project to be that high will be difficult IMO.

I don't think you can list 3B as a likely upgrade, nor expect it to be easy to upgrade it. So you don't think they can find something better than a .750 OPS out of third base next year? Whether Aramis stays or goes, I expect better performance than that. Heck, I expect a much better performance than that out of 3B by the end of this year. 3B is not an easy position to find a great or even good offensive player at. It wasn't easy even 4-5 years ago and it's gotten much harder now. The Cubs best chance for one who's better next year is probably Aramis but that's far from from a guarantee.

2008-2010 OPS's against left-handers Castro-.897 Johnson-.842 Baker-.906 Ramirez-.810 Soto-.935 Montanez-.441 Dewitt-.759 LeMahieu-unknown Zambrano-looks to be around .800 (estimating from year by year split) They could get shut down tonight, but this isn't a bad lineup against left-handers. It would be a pretty incredible lineup if both Byrd and Soriano could play (with DeWitt shifting to 2nd) but it's still pretty good even without them.

Where do you find his current error totals? http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?sid=milb&t=t_ibp&cid=553 It may just be my perception, but I don't think he's made as many errors lately.

Just look at his data on fangraphs. You think it's the cold weather that's causing such a turnaround in GB/FB? No, I think it is mostly a sample size issue. I'm also mostly done with this debate. He's a decent pitcher who not a great pitcher and I don't think the Cubs should have traded for, that's my opinion. What about the fact that he's only throwing fastballs 55% of the time instead of over 70% like he did the last 3 years in Tampa? Garza's using his changeup and slider a lot more than he used to and that's causing more strikeouts and ground balls. All those numbers will probably normalize a little bit (including home runs), but Garza's numbers aren't just a sample size issue. He's completely changed his pitch selection on the mound.

I didn't know that was possible either (declining a club option and then offering arbitration). If that's happened then that should be true for pre-arbitration as well.

From Cots: http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/2003/01/transactions-glossary.html

Even if the Cubs can decline that option and still have him under team control (which I'm still not sure of because I don't know that you can decline an option and then still be able to tender a contract) I don't think the Cubs will be able to offer him anything they want. The 80% rule still applies in this case. Every site seems to be different on exactly how much Samardzija is making this year though so it's unclear on how much that 80% number would be.

I think declining either option would lose team control. That's probably why they were put in the initial contract-to make sure that he would have to have enough experience to go to arbitration by the end of the options. Even if the Cubs hadn't started his major league career until he ran out of options in 2011, that would still have left him going to arbitration by the time the club options ran out.

I thought the club option was for 6.5 next year which was just an impossible number for the Cubs to even think about. Learning the 6.5 was spread out over two different club options (3 next year and 3.5 the year after) makes me think he at least has a chance of being re-signed. Really though I have no idea what the Cubs have in him. He gave up HR's in 3 straight outings and hasn't given up one the rest of the season. The walks have been way, way down the last month and a half. And the strikeouts have been pretty consistently strong all season long.

Yeah, I'm wondering that too. Would that have been your plan to keep depth?

So you are ignoring trading Gorz? At the time the Cubs traded Gorz they had plenty of pitching depth and no place to put him. I don't consider that one a mistake. By the time Silva was released the equation had changed significantly.

You're ignoring McNutt getting hurt multiple times in two months and Silva, who was better than Gorz in 2010, quitting well after the trade was made. . Silva flipped out when asked to go to the minor leagues. Every major league pitcher is going to flip out when asked to go to the minors. Then the Cubs released him. He didn't quit. They knew, or at least if their scouts did any homework on the guy they knew, that Silva would not take kindly to a demotion to the minors. If he was their planned 6th guy, they should have kept him. That was probably the only real mistake in this pitching depth question. The Cubs by the end of ST knew that Wellemeyer was hurt and Jackson was hurt. Looper was likely to retire if he didn't get a major league job. They should have kept Silva around. I don't think it's normal behavior for a pitcher to refuse a trip to the minor leagues only to sign a minor league deal 10 days later with another team, but they should have known that Silva might not react normally.

Franklin started the year as the Cardinals closer until he blew up. Miller is a situational LH who rarely pitches to more than 2 batters. 28G/12.1. Saito is a closer. The only one close to Wood may be Latroy Hawkins-16G/15.1. Both middle relievers, but Hawkins has never been asked to close out a game this year. Wood is 24G/24 and 3 blown saves. And so it goes. Wood hasn't had the chance to close out a game this year either. He's been strictly a middle reliever/setup guy.

Was it to save cash or to get a pretty solid deal in return for a pretty average pitcher? Gorz's a nice pitcher and I was happy when he was here, but he's not so good that you pass up a deal where you get three intriguing prospects - especially when you consider that, at the time, we had Silva still around and he was similar to Gorz last year. I thought the Gorz deal was because there wasn't room in the rotation and the Cubs have said several times that he didn't transition well to the bullpen (which is part of the reason why Z was moved there last year). Gorz was also out of options so putting him in AAA was not an option.

That actually isn't that bad against a left-handed pitcher. Obviously it would be a lot better if the Cubs had 2 of Byrd/Soriano/Johnson back, but that lineup still has the potential to do some damage. It's certainly not worse than just about every lineup the Cubs have put out since the injuries started.

So the Cubs are 22-22 (not including one start from Wells/Cashner)) basically when Zambrano, Garza, and Dempster throw? Color me skeptical they'd maintain that ratio. Wait, given that the Cubs are .500 when their 3 best starters pitch, your assertion is that number has nowhere to go but down? No, he's saying that he's skeptical that the Cubs would also be .500 when Wells and Cashner pitched if they have only been .500 when the top 3 pitched this year. And while that might be true, with how bad collectively the top 3 have been the bar that Wells and Cashner would have to make would have been significantly lower and very reachable.