CubColtPacer

I don't mind a sale but a Marlins type firesale is too much IMO. At most, you trade the players whose contract is up after the year (Lee, Lilly) and the players who may be blocking players (Fukudome, Silva). You shouldn't be opposed to trading anybody, but for example let's take a look at Ramirez. He would be traded in a Marlins type firesale at the worst time for value and would be replaced by no worthwhile prospect. There's no reason to trade him this year other than an emotional one. This season is also likely one of the worst times to try to trade Zambrano. I can understand the desire to want to do a big firesale, but it would end up being pretty shortsighted IMO with all the dead money. The Cubs should do a transition year next year where they let Cashner and Jackson get long looks in the rotation, Colvin getting PT in the OF, etc. That gives all the benefits of a firesale and gives the Cubs a chance to contend or trade players like Ramirez or Z when they have a little more value. They don't need to look to contend but there's no reason to save money just to have roster filler play either. By the start of 2012, the Cubs only have 54 million committed. If they're willing, they could easily have 3 pre free agency pitchers in the rotation (Wells, Cashner, and either Gorzelanny, Jackson, or Coleman). They could have 3 pre free agency starting position players (Soto, Castro, Colvin (or maybe Brett Jackson). And they'd have 75 million to fill in 5 position players, bench, and bullpen. And that's assuming none of the prospects that the Cubs get for their current players work and the Cubs haven't found deals for Z or Soriano during that time frame. So I just don't see why you would do a big firesale. Why would you commit to losing until at least 2013 when the team could accomplish it faster using a less drastic but still just as disciplined approach? A Marlins type firesale is rarely the best approach for a big market team.

If I'm remembering right, wasn't the Nady deal done before the ownership change? The later reports make a lot more sense that Dempster deferred his contract during the offseason when the money was likely frozen during the last portion of the sale.

Gorzelanny has no options left.

So you're OK with increasing his workload from about 95 innings to 150? That seems like a pretty big jump. It's not really that bad. 150 is not a lot of innings overall. If Cashner's max was 95, I'd be more worried, but with his 120 last year he should be able to do 150 next year even with going to the bullpen. Other pitchers have made similar sorts of jumps. I think the big question becomes then, why now and why Cashner? The bullpen has been pitching better lately. It's about to get another decent to good pitcher when somebody leaves the rotation next week. Stevens has pitched just fine in his two outings so far and he'd likely be the one sent down for Cashner. If the Cubs felt they needed more help, they already had Jackson waiting in the AAA bullpen. So why the sudden reversal to want Cashner in the majors? How is that better than the other options especially when Cashner could have had his innings he needed by being called up into the bullpen around the All-Star break? They are sacrificing 30 potential innings next year to get 10-15 innings this year. That's an awfully hard choice to make when he's not even going to be the primary setup man. Putting him in the bullpen this year was almost inevitable to keep his innings down and it will have benefits to him of being able to see major league hitters who will challenge him more. That's not a problem. It's just too early.

Who are all these top prospect SP that the Rays and Red Sox moved to the pen without having innings as a starter? Price and..... Dude quit while you're behind already. You sound like Dusty with this "that's how they've always done it" logic. Why don't you address the previous post he made? What post was that? He asked for guys that were starters in the minors, broke into the bigleagues as relievers, and then ultimately settled in as starters. Such a list has already been provided. The larger point I was making is that normally dextermorgan and many others here are clamoring for the Cubs to eschew conventional wisdom and be more progressive in their thinking (embrace OBP, ignore pitchers' ERA and W-L, and so on). Two examples commonly cited are the Rays and Red Sox. Those clubs have broken the mold, so to speak, and have been very successful. So why are we clinging to conventional wisdom and standard practice in this instance? It's inherently contradictory. If Cashner throws 40 innings in the pen this year, how many innings would you be willing to let him pitch next year? Is there a max pitching limit you think he should stay under?

Cashner did throw in the fall league last year so those 19 innings probably need to be added to the total. It still is too low of a number to be the highest number he's seen before entering a season where he would be projected to be in the Opening Day rotation.

What "all other practices"? Scenario A, Cashner remains in AAA and throws another 80 IP as a starter in 2010. Scenario B, Cashner comes up to MLB and throws another 40 IP as a reliever in 2010. Why would Scenario A inherently prepare the guy better for the MLB rotation in 2011 and beyond? Getting acclimated to the bigleagues may very well be more valuable longterm than logging more IP in the minors. Meanwhile, he's helping the big club this year. Scenario B is problematic for 2011 because of how much they'll have to baby him next year. He will be a 150-160 inning pitcher before they'll have to shut him down. That's putting a strain on next year's team. There are definitely advantages to Scenario B. But the Cubs could have had their cake and ate it too in this scenario. They could have let Cashner start for another month or two and then brought him up. He would have still been able to be a factor in a possible stretch run while building up that inning count for the year which would allow him to be a possible 175-185 inning pitcher next year. They also would have avoided any possible Super 2 issues. The horrible logic of why Jackson was moved from rotation to bullpen to rotation and now Cashner from the rotation to the bullpen is probably worse than the actual move itself though. It gives the 2010 Cubs possible help in return for a very suboptimal situation coming up in 2011. It hurts Cashner's development of his changeup and his ability to show that he can keep his stuff deep into ballgames a little bit, although I feel those questions have been mostly decided already. Maybe the biggest problem is what happens next. The Cubs haven't given players like Stevens or Parker a chance even after they impressed in the minors (Stevens is in the majors but hasn't really gotten the chance to grab that right-handed setup role yet that the Cubs seem to be looking for and probably won't get that chance if Cashner does come up). Jackson apparently impressed them out of the bullpen but got sent back to the rotation anyway. If Cashner comes up to the major league bullpen, is he in a no win scenario for becoming a starter? Pitch too well and they'll want to keep him there for fear of losing a dominant reliever and pitch badly and he might never really get that chance to start. We know they want Cashner to be a starter, but if they have changed their minds so many times despite getting the results they wanted, then what keeps their mind from changing again? If Cashner comes up and pitches this year, becomes a starter for 150-160 innings next year, then hits 180 the year after that, the move becomes a fine one that was just slightly mistimed from being an ideal situation. Between the risk of what may happen, having the ideal situation being so easy to implement, and that ideal situation still giving most everything the team wants to accomplish with this move, it still makes it a rather poor decision.

His last game prior to last night was great. He kept Philly scoreless in 6.2 and only gave up three hits. Looks like you might be thinking of the game before that. Regardless, I don't like sending him to the pen (should be Silva) but I'm sure you're right that it is going to happen. I think he meant that he had to leave the Philly game because of the line drive off his hand. So between that injury possibility and his bad start, he is almost certainly the candidate to go to the bullpen. There's also been one thing that hasn't been mentioned. I'm not sure changing Silva's role is the best idea for his health. He's had shoulder problems the last couple of years and switching his workload could make him much more likely to be hurt.

It rained during nearly all of the Bears-Colts Super Bowl. A warm rain in Miami is not nearly the same as a cold, rainy, windy February night in NJ. But it was a factor, which you are unhappy with. Are you upset that the conference championships are in potentially bad weather locales and could favor one team or the other? The conference championship games are different because that is an earned advantage. Teams have the privilege at playing at home because of their stellar performance. And while I wouldn't consider the Bears-Colts game bad, it still resulted in a sloppy game with multiple unforced turnovers. That isn't really what I want to see in a Super Bowl. Miami's still a great Super Bowl site because that doesn't happen very often.

Ideal conditions can just as easily favor one team over another. If a team has to play all year in elements, why should they be forced to adjust their game to a dome to end the season? Pretty much every team plays the majority of its games in decent weather. Every team has to be built to play in decent weather because if they can't play in that sort of weather, they won't make the playoffs. The majority of teams are only going to have a couple under 40 degree games with significant rain/wind/snow. It's potentially introducing something for the Super Bowl that most teams are not seeing much during the year. Or think of it this way. Does a team play as well in elements as they do in normal weather? Hardly ever. So why would you create an environment where the team that wins plays their overall B game and beats their opponent who plays their C or D game? We want to see at least one team and hopefully both teams play at the top of their game and the best way to do that is to have decent weather.

Look, I know Colvin is the "flavor of the year" but who exactly do you want to bench to start Colvin? There's no problem rotating him in a little more often. The dude's hitting over .300 with an on-base of almost .370. Obviously our other 3 outfielders are doing well also, but there's no harm in giving him one of Fukudome's starts here and one of Soriano's starts there. It'll help keep everyone fresh. The problem is that the Cubs are in such a left-handed heavy stretch (4 out of 6, 6 out of 11). So Fukudome really has to play all the other days. Soriano is the best hitter in the lineup right now so he needs to be replaced only sparingly. Today or tomorrow might be a good day to give Byrd a day off but the starts for Colvin are going to be hard to come by right now.

Until the ending, I enjoyed the Colts-Saints game much more than the Colts-Bears game because it was played at such a higher level. I would hate to see the Super Bowl ruined by bad weather. It's fun to watch bad weather games but there is a lot more luck involved than in a normal game. It makes an uninteresting game more interesting but the better team is also less likely to win than normal.

Fine, but you cannot count DLee and Ramirez then, because there is no way that anyone thought that they would be making that cheap of money as soon as they were up to resign. Lee signed a 3 year deal as soon as he got to the Cubs for 22.5 million. While just over the minimum we're talking about (although just by 500,000), that's a move a Royals team could make even when inflating it slightly to indicate today's dollars. Ramirez was still in his arbitration years. The Royals could have picked up his 6 million for 04 then either paid the 9 million or so he would have gotten in arbitration in 05 (the Cubs gave him a long-term extension after arbitration figures were exchanged that year) or they could have traded him after his big year for more talent. That's what lower middle market teams are supposed to do (and that's really what Kansas City is. They aren't a ridiculously small market team anymore). They have lots of playing time to offer so they find undervalued talent, give them time and then either build around them or trade them for even more talent. Ramirez and Lee aren't the strongest examples as they are right on the edge of the contract situation, but the Royals still have plenty of money to sign a player or two like that if they weren't wasting most of their money.

That's just not true. Hendry has made plenty of good moves that would've been possible with any payroll. Moore hasn't made any. when? Off the top of my head: Barrett, Dempster, DeRosa, Byrd, Gorzelanny, trading DeRosa, Karros/Grudzielanek, Lee, and probably Ramirez(although 6M was a little more in 2003) Um, that's ridiculous. No way he could pull those off with "any payroll". How long has Moore been a GM? Hendry has been a GM for 8 years, obviously over time he's going to pull off a favorable deal or two. Moore will have been a GM for 4 years now this summer. And while any payroll might be overstating it, the Royals have a payroll over 70 million now (their payrolls have been 67, 58, 70, and now about 75 since Dayton became GM). They could have handled any of those types of moves that TT mentioned. Instead, they have much more dead money than the Cubs have, they have more invested in the bullpen than the Cubs, and their two big free agent acquisitions are Gil Meche and Jose Guillen. And then on position players, they're giving 10-12 million combined and playing time to the combination of Betancourt, Ankiel, Kendall, Bloomquist, and Podsednik. And when you consider that we're only talking about players who have to have playing time while making less than 7 million a year (players which both teams can afford), Moore should have a lot more chances at that than Hendry. He signs a lot more of those type of contracts. The fact that Hendry has had many more successes at that than Moore even though Moore has many more chances is pretty horrible for Moore.

It looks like Marshall will be a free agent after the 2012 season. So the Cubs still have a long way to go before worrying about that. And if the Cubs keep him in the bullpen, I doubt you'll see many teams wanting to risk converting him to a starter at the age of 30 if he's still being an effective reliever.

If you did it as a strict platoon, then you'd be able to expect a .780+ OPS just based off career averages. You can never do that strict of a platoon though. Fontenot would see a few at-bats against left-handers in non crucial situations and Theriot would probably see more at-bats than that against right-handed relievers. If both performed up to their averages you'd probably see a .765 OPS or so between them. As I said in the other thread though, I'd be in favor of it. It looks like they've turned Fontenot into another version of Theriot. Fontenot talked earlier in the season about how they were changing his swing and it looks like they've sapped most of the power out of him. He has only 1 home run and that one was the grand slam in Cincinnati where he snuck it down the line where it is only 325 feet. His fly ball percentage is the lowest amount of his career (27%). His line drive percentage is way up so far (28.1%). He's not walking very much but there's a huge change in his strikeout numbers so far. Over 20% the previous 2 years and down to only 9.3% this year. He's swinging at the most pitches of his career but he's also had easily the best contact percentage of his career. So Fontenot is swinging at an early pitch and hitting a lot of line drives without much power. He's not walking much but he's not striking out as much as Theriot has the last couple years either so his BABIP is not bad at all (actually unlucky when compared to his LD percentage). I question to make too much out of 97 AB's but based on both the statistical and quotes from Fontenot himself it looks like they are making him a different type of hitter. I definitely support platooning them though. Theriot's K/BB percentage is getting uglier and uglier and he doesn't have the power available to provide much upside in that department. Fontenot is likely the better option most of the time and even if they are turning him into Theriot it's been an improved version so far with the potential for a little power.

This situation seems eerily familiar: Pitcher A: 17 IP, 8.47 ERA, 2.18 WHIP, 14 K/11 BB, 2 HR Pitcher B: 16 1/3 IP, 8.26 ERA, 2.39 WHIP, 19K/14 BB, 4 HR A is Grabow now. B was Scott Eyre in 2007 at the end of May. This says a couple of things. First that this is the reason you don't give multi-year deals to average relievers because they have periods like this and then you're stuck. Second is that there's no reason to do anything drastic with Grabow. Stick him in low leverage situations for a while and let himself pitch out of it. Pitchers like this bounce back and have periods of dominance all the time.

I don't disagree with any of that but I think you're giving The Cubs too much credit for creative thinking. Yesterday seemed like the perfect opportunity to have Zambrano piggy back Silva. They could have easily taken Silva out after 5 then have Zambrano pitch 3 or 4 depending on the lead. INstead they're having Zambrano pitch a sim game today. I think it's more likely they are trading Lilly for an upgrade somewhere hopefully other than bullpen. The question is where. Second base? That seems to be the only position available. And what team would trade away a good hitting middle infielder and yet want Lilly? This decision is really complicated because of trade value considerations. If the Cubs want to trade Silva or Gorzelanny for value within the next 6 months, then they either need to trade them now or keep them in the rotation. Putting Lilly in the bullpen deflates his value at the deadline or possibly makes the Cubs less likely to offer him arbitration. That leaves Dempster and Wells. Dempster is excellent at consistently having long quality outings (he's gone at least 6 innings in every start this year). Wells had the one disaster start but is pretty good at efficiently eating innings as well. Add in that the Cubs feel that Gorzelanny and Silva would not transition well to the bullpen (which I tend to agree with) and it becomes very complicated. A trade of Silva probably makes the most sense at this point but I don't know who the trade partner would be. Some scouts are probably happy to see that Silva has transformed how he pitches against left-handed batters who have killed him throughout his career. It's just hard to know how many innings a club needs to be able to say he's legit for them to be willing to pull the trigger on at least a decent part of his remaining contract.

Fukudome was actually slightly better after the All-Star Break last year than he was before the break. The 2008 and 2009 seasons were so different for Kosuke that there really isn't a pattern to be gleaned. In 08 he wasn't red hot in any month but slowly got worse from month to month. In 09 he was hot in 3 months, cold in 2 others and mediocre in 1. His worst month in 2008 was August and in 2009 it was his 3rd best month. His worst month in 2009 was June and in 2008 that was also his 3rd best month. Kosuke has proven to be a streaky player. Anything other than that is hard to get from the data. Trying to lump his previous two seasons together is a nice temptation to have but a close examination shows two dramatically different types of seasons. The seasons were so different that it isn't worth trying to pick out individual pieces of data that happen to match up because the statistical noise is so strong.

I don't see any way that a 35 year old third baseman who just posted a high .700s/low .800s OPS and has an injury history would get a 3-4 year deal worth more than $14.6 million (what he's making next year if he doesn't opt out). If he opts out and Hendry re-signs him, I could see a 2-3 year deal to bridge the gap to Vitters, but I can't imagine it'd be more than $10-12 million, if that. Ramirez will only be 32 this offseason.

I think 85 is about as good as it will get, and that means the bullpen has to stop sucking and Lee and Rammy start hitting. If that actually happened, I could see 90 wins fairly easily. I'm not sure about fairly easily, but I agree mostly with the point. I could see the Cubs go on a 90-95 win pace the rest of the season if that happened. A 93 win pace for the rest of the season would give them 88 wins overall. That could definitely happen. This team could do a few things to help themselves. Giving Fontenot more of the playing time at 2nd would help as apparently the swing changes he's made has made him a low strikeout line drive hitter. It's hard to say that a .309 hitter has actually been unlucky with balls in play, but Fontenot has so far. I'm not sure I see him continuing this exactly, but right now Fontneot looks like a Theriot clone with more upside. Moving Ramirez down at this point is probably warranted. It's been long enough for him and Soriano that at least swapping the two of them right now seems like the right thing to do. Castro apparently might be seeing some more time in the 2 spot in the order even against right-handed pitching. He's also probably a Theriot clone with more upside right now so he's a better fit for the 2 spot than Theriot is. As for the bullpen, it will partially depend on how this 6 starter thing shakes out. I have no idea what will happen there and a trade or a movement of one of the starters there could provide the 3rd good arm the bullpen needs.

Stop with the name calling and all the different images immediately.

Baker will get more pinch-hit at-bats though. He's the only right-handed player off the bench when the Cubs face a left-handed starter (except for Hill who doesn't really count in a pinch hitting discussion). Baker can also play all over the field which gives Lou more options to work around with his other players. The Cubs also have more left-handed players that need to be replaced with a right-hander for certain at-bats against LOOGY's, so it's good to have 2 good right-handed bats on the bench. 3 left-handed bats on the bench is pretty redundant because the only player that needs to be substituted for if a right-hander on the mound is Baker. Since Tracy is the 3rd of those left-handed batters, it's unlikely the pitcher's spot is going to come up 3 times and need pinch-hitters. So yes, Tracy is likely a slightly better backup to Aramis, but Baker beats him in every other area. Not to mention the fact that Tracy is already down in Iowa. If the Cubs need him in case of an Aramis injury, he can be called back up. If Baker leaves, the Cubs might not be able to keep him. And if Theriot or Castro gets hurt, the Cubs will want Baker as an option.

Not shocked at all. He isn't much of a power hitter at this point of his career. And major leaguers aren't as likely to let him use his speed to take extra bases. He has plenty of time to continue to fill out and hit for more power. He already has the most important part of the equation which is making solid contact consistently.

Several little things that have come through over the last couple days: Marshall is now listed as the primary 8th inning guy. Grabow will also get some 8th inning work. Caridad will get some chances to prove himself. From Lou: From Hendry: Is that the first time we've seen Cubs management say that Grabow has reverse splits? The Cubs also explained more of their thinking behind Z to the bullpen. Apparently they were a little concerned about his velocity dropping and figured moving to the bullpen would improve his fastball velocity like it does for many. It didn't improve the velocity at all which is why they are pulling the plug so quickly on it. As for who is going to the bullpen when Z returns, I honestly have no idea. Lou had quotes of why they didn't move Dempster or Wells. Hendry says that they felt Silva and Gorzelanny are not fit for bullpen duty. So it could be anybody.