questionmarkgrace

i was posting on this board regularly back then, and i'm pretty sure that absolutely nobody was upset about not keeping josh hamilton. I was but I cant remember if I posted it or not. I was more enamored with the fact that carl crawford called him the best player he ever saw in a sports illustrated article I read around the time. But realistically what a long shot dude had played what 10 games above single A got strung out for three years then comes back and he is a beast after skipping all of those levels. I did think when I first read we drafted him in the rule 5 that Lou must have thought that he was stud. Until like 3 hours later I read that we were drafting him for the reds all along.

Castro would probably fit the bill. Of course, his development is almost the very definition of "special circumstances." Seriously if it wasnt for his remarkable ability to make contact castro's poor plate discipline, inability to take a walk, and defensive play would be so much more of a problem. That he is gifted has allowed his talent to superscede these flaws. Flaws that he will most certainly need correct in order to continue to be a star.

if this is the case then he should have gotten rid of Hendry last year. that would really make no sense to let him be the gm this year and then tie his hands when effectively screwing yourself for next year. While I'm not a big fan of Ricketts and I dont think he is a very savy team owner, I doubt that he would be so short sighted. I really think that it comes down to the fact that the guys we want to trade no one really wants because they havent been playing well, carry enormous contracts, and perceived baggage.

yeah but he also said that Aramis still has no desire to be moved. Maybe its a ploy for leverage but he and his agent have been pretty consistent in saying this for the last two months. per rotoworld:

for a team that needs to make a lot of improvements. It seems like the most desirable guys that teams want: Aramis, Dempster, Garza, Jeff Baker, and Sean Marshall; hendry is not willing to part with. The big salary guys they do want to move are on a tailspin. Soriano, Fukudome, and Big Z have been terrible as of late. We may be looking at the possibility that Pena and Byrd are the only cubs who get traded.

Duh! I would be shocked if Hendry and Quade are here next year. and Ryno is gonna be our next manager. Book it! I would be surprised if a new GM comes in and the first thing he does to put his imprint on the team is hire Ryne Sandberg as manager. I wouldn't be surprised if Sandberg is hired before a GM. It makes sense just on marketability and I'm guessing the majority wants him. marketability? to cubs fans? the people that would want ryno as manager are the people who are going to buy tickets no matter how bad the team is. these are not rational people. and the majority of what wants him? the owners? the fanbase? the players? finally, hiring a manager before a gm makes very little sense, esp when the manager was turned down for the job just last year and has done nothing in the interim to improve his candidacy. this isn't torre or larussa or some other guy that baseball people think walks on water. He's got Leigh Valley with the second best record in the international league and is on his way to 4 winning seasons out of his first 5 managing. Whether that is an improvement, I dont know. But its not like Sandberg has done anything to hurt himself.

my mistake I thought he was 25 for some reason. and yes he most certainly should be at AA. Going back to the thread about dave bush and pitching depth. It just shows how little quality pitching we have for a guy like him to be pitching over his head. At any rate. My point was that we had a bunch of seemingly serviceable guys that were in AAA that looked like they could step in if need be for a start or two. No one anticipated Wells missing almost two months and Cashner missing what is looking like most of the year.

Right, but if Gorz was not an essential part of the team at the time of the trade, why is he all of a sudden now? Because the team is so bad and people start looking for more things to blame. Gorzelanny goes from being Gorzelanny to the lost salvation given away for nothing. Not at all. Gorzelanny was a nice player for the Cubs and they gave him away for nothing. It didn't make much sense at all at the time and it came back to bite them when they decided to go into the season with no 6th starter and needed two. It's also BS that people keep offering the injury excuse as to why the Cubs suck when the Cubs put themselves in the situation they are in. Besides Wellemeyer,Silva,Looper,and Cashner going into spring training they also had AAAA guys like THomas Diamond, Jay Jackson, ALberto Carbera, Robert Coello, and Coleman who they thought would be servicable if they needed a 4th or 5th guy. That they all flopped is more of an indictment of internal scouting and projection. Hindsight is always 20/20 and Gorz was good at times last year but he did seem to be expendable and like others have said people here liked the trade value received at the time.

Robert Whitenack was coming on really strong until he had to have TJ surgery. He hadn't pitched much in AA this year, but had been pretty dominant before his injury. The top end of farm took a hit when we traded Archer, called up Cashner (and he got hurt), moved Carpenter to the pen and with the implosions of Diamond, Jackson, and Chen. Coming into the year the latter three arms would have been expected to be, at worst, similar to what we've been running out there in the 5th spot this year and maybe better. The strength of the pitching on the farm is in the lower minors, however, with guys like Ben Wells, Luis Liria, Austin Kirk, and others. Whitenack was the biggest blow by far. McNutt not far behind but his numbers still arent that great at AA. But the top levels have been baren for a while. Outside of Cashner,Carpenter, and Smardzija who have we produced? On top of it any of our current pitchers who are worth looking at have been rushed up to make up for the lack of depth. So you have guys who are really young for their level, sometimes playing over their heads and possibly leading to injuries. Then you have guys like Coleman, Coello, Alberto Gonzalez, Bibbens-Dix, Diamond, Jackson etc. that they were depending upon as serviceable call ups but have turned out to be just brutal. A couple decent major league ready arms would go along way right now. Lets hope a trade or two can get us back one or two decent pitchers who can help now. So we can continue to develop these guys. Otherwise, we may really be regretting not drafting college pitching in the early rounds of this draft.

I have faced Neal Musser/Clayton Richards/Josh Lindblom (made it to MLB) and Dan Sattler (Arkansas Travelers- AA Angels team)... I also had 2 cousins who played college ball as pitchers as well (one of them was drafted by the Cubs twice- Drew O'Connell, but he never signed). I'm sure there are a lot of people on NSBB who has faced someone who can bring it. Even if that someone didn't even get drafted or anything. Don't know why you think it's something special to say or it's the only way to understand what you are saying. I've never said who I faced before on here before (at least not that I remember anyway) because I assume some/most of these guys on here have played baseball/faced good pitchers/etc... "we're happy for ya!"

Phil Rogers = pure conjecture.

I'm not completely saying Levine is wrong, but if he's been saying it for a while has anyone official confirmed it? I thought it was a club option for next year with a buy out, not a mutual option? That's what Heyman reported a couple weeks ago. I've heard a couple people say that his option was not guaranteed for next year if traded. But that he would want it to be picked up if he was traded.

This is frightening. Think of all this young players down there that are being repeatedly told to "stay aggressive" instead of being taught the nuances of situational hitting. This is another reason why this organization needs an overhaul from top to bottom. Otherwise the garbage gets filtered down to the younger players repeating the cycle of crappy play.

Well he has already lost some velocity maybe Dusty wants to finish him off for good. Seriously though the velocity loss has to have colorado nervous or they think that there is little chance of signing him long term. Eitherway they should get quite the haul because he is still an incredible talent.

a couple weeks back mlbtraderumors had a link to elias' mid season grades and had Pena as a type B. So that would garner what a 2nd round pick or a sandwich pick?

It's really not splitting hairs, though. Sure his BB/9 is up over last year, but the 3.13 he's posted this year is still below his career average of 3.17. Meanwhile he's striking out over 2 batters per inning more than his career average. If you want to just take his Rays days of walking batters, he's up over last year but still behind the 3.50 BB/9 in 2009. His K/9 is a full strikeout higher than his 2009 while significantly greater than that when compared to his 2008 and 2010 seasons. The higher WHIP is likely being influenced by a much higher BABIP than in his previous three years (.322 this year vs .270-.273 from 08-10). That could very easily be due to a horrid Cub defense vs great Rays defenses (which is entirely out of his control). The only thing about his numbers that is mediocre is his ERA and that's really the only reason he's not considered to be having a breakout season. maybe mediocre is too strong a word but my point I don't think that he has increased in value since we have had him because he is not dominating a lesser league. Because of this I do not think that we could parlay him into a better package of prospects than we gave up. I am well aware of his BABIP which is why I suggested he has had bad luck, for now the third time. A common misconception however is that BABIP is the indicator of luck when actually it only partially accounts for luck and partially accounts for normally hard hit balls. In other words if a pitcher is more hitable his BABIP will go up just as if he has bad luck. Right now, yes he is giving up more hits in the infield because of the cubs bad defense but much more hits in general are going to the outfield. A big question, is the batting average of balls in play is more luck based in the infield than in the outfield? Obviously outfield defense plays a role and the cubs defense this year is about 10-15 spots worse than the rays last year depending on the category. So part of the increase can be attributed to the disparity between a marginal outfield and a good one. But a .149 point increase? Some of this has to attributed to being more hittable as well. Hit trajectory seems to confirms this picture as his BABIP for line drives has increased by .100 points while on groundballs and flyballs has remained relatively the same. His stuff has been good but maybe he just cant control it right now which would account for balls left over the plate and hit hard or an increase in Hits/9; as well as increase K/9, and BB/9. 2011 BABIP on balls hit to the infield: .113 BABIP on balls hit to the outfield: .587 2010 BABIP on balls hit to the infield: .070 BABIP on balls hit to the outfield: .438 2009 BABIP on balls hit to the infield: .061 BABIP on balls hit to the outfield: .463 2008 BABIP on balls hit to the infield: .091 BABIP on balls hit to the outfield: .463

He's only been mediocre if you look at ERA (4.26) alone. His K/9 is up quite a bit, his FIP and xFIP (2.93 and 2.86) are excellent and he's been worth 2.5 wins. I know you pointed out that he's been unlucky and he has, but the only thing mediocre about his numbers is his ERA even with the bad luck. I'd want a ton for Garza, quite a bit more than we gave up for him. If we are splitting hairs, which clearly we are, his walks are up as is his whip against lesser competition than the AL east has to offer. Nonetheless, the point here is that we probably cant get more for him than what we gave up when he is not blowing people away.

Ah, I see. You probably don't have to be too concerned about trading Barney - as long as his offensive numbers plummet he probably won't be in much demand. If there were interest in him, I'd be opposed to trading him as well for scraps or a low A-baller. If somebody came along and offered something of real value or demanded he be included in a larger positive trade, however, I'd most definitely consider it. As TT said, I can't justify starting him if he continues to produce offensively what he has since April ended. He's too much of a liability, despite his defense. its hard not to be concerned about injuries when he has missed 1/3 of the games in 09 and 10. He has a chance to play his most games since his rookie season but his production is down. He is a bigger guy and those little nagging injuries start to add up after a while. It just doesnt project well.

He could still go to the bo-sox in a three way deal which is probably more realistic than the yankees. the yanks havent expressed interest in garza yet. Also there is no way the yankees trade two or even three of those guys for anyone short of Roy Halladay or Cliff Lee. Let alone 3 more prospects? thats just not happening. The reason why we traded so many guys for garza was because the guyer, chirinos, and fuld are AAAA'ers at best. Lee is a real nice looking prospect and archer had a great year last year but has regressed quite a bit from those sparkling numbers. the most telling is that his whip has jumped from 1.173 to 1.639. The fact of the matter is we wont be parlaying Garza, who has had a mediocre (albiet bad luck) first half for more than we gave up for him.

The sox' top prospects are really having some down years and most of them are at lower levels. And the pitching prospects especially are not faring well. I would be interested in Felix Doubront back of the rotation left hander and Ryan Lavarnway (19 hrs power hitting catcher) of the guys that are close as well as Bryce Brentz who looks like big time power hitting outfielder but is still at least a year away. I would imagine the cubs would want some serious pitching back in this trade that the bo-sox just dont have right now. If they really want garza they need to get a third team involved to trade us a legit pitching prospect.

also this guy ignores the fact that z will actually have a rehab start before the all star break. So its not like his back is broken. He definitely gets more crap than the average chicago sports player and I'm not quite sure why. Yes he has had his crazy z moments. But this year the chicago sports media has become paparazzi like with regard to him and it has been more often than not unjustified. Rosenbloom is trying real hard to become the next marrioti.

Yoenis Cespedes sounds like a legit major leaguer. Would love to see us sign this guy. http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Yoennis_Céspedes

the tough part about projecting him is that he was so abysmal with the bat the last 3 years. he hit well in 2007 but the last 3 years posted an OPS of .632, .596 and .628. now all of a sudden he's got an OPS over .800? He's younger than Soto was when he exploded out of nowhere. i'm not saying it can't happen, but with soto you had a truckload of power showing up. the biggest change for gonzalez is that he's making more contact and his batting average is way up, maybe a few more doubles too. i have a hard time getting too excited about him because his ceiling is probably darwin barney, and we already have one of those. I don't know, I think if he were in then majors now, he'd be putting up similar numbers to Barney, and Barney is 25 years old. Gonzalez is around the age most college kids are being drafted, so you never know. If nothing else, between him, Flaherty, DJ, and Motq, we could see if we can't sell high on Barney. unfortunately we never sell high. Eitherway, I'm glad to see that Marwin is hitting well in AAA as one of the youngest guys in the league.

Holy [expletive], how did I miss this? It is kind of amazing how off quade has been handling our pitching staff. mateo and stevens are two examples. his in game management, when to pull a pitcher has been very suspect as well.

I fully expected to see a "dempster to the dl" thread after I saw coleman was pitching on the mlbnetwork ticker. thank god he is only missing a start. Otherwise our entire starting 5 would have had a trip to the dl before the end of july. Man this season has been brutal for injuries.