Backtobanks

Yeah, Jed's already said that was the plan. Yeah, you have to give Lahair a chance to see if he can hit at the ML level. If he can he becomes a decent pinch hitter/backup 1B-OF.

Knowing the Cubs luck, your scenario happens and Soler is sent to the Red Sox as compensation for Theo.

If you look at numbers, the only real advantage Volstad has over Wells is age. So if you look at numbers, Volstad has the advantage in age. If you look at scouting and pedigree, Volstad has all the other advantages as well. What exactly is Wells' advantage? Wells' advantages are in ERA+, K/BB, WHIP, K/IP, BB/IP, etc. Volstad's advantages are age and size. Again my original point was that Volstad and Wells will be fighting for the 5th spot in the rotation and neither should be considered the obvious choice.

If you look at numbers, the only real advantage Volstad has over Wells is age.

Soto might get you something, but I'm not sure Marmol will get much in return because we would be selling low.

I just can't see Wells in our rotation. I think he's the odd guy out and if things are even between him and. The others, he's the one that's put in the long guy role or traded. For some reason, I think Shark is going to complicate things even further and win a spot. Then, it becomes both those guys, unless there's an injury. Obviously it will come down to who shows more in spring training, but Volstad's stuff would be better than Wells' stuff in relief.

Downsides: injuries to the rotation and Castro, Soto repeating 2009/2011 levels of performance, less power on this year's team, LaHair being a 4A player and Rizzo regressing. I could easily see this team being worse than last year. Really, Castro might not be able to do what he has done? I look at Castro and I see Grace, Carter, Madlock, Santo, Williams and Banks. Castro will probably have a better career than all those guys.(Also, I have no clue how you decided to lump those 6 guys together.) Madlock might be a good comparison although Castro seems to have the potential for more power. As for Williams and Banks, Castro has a long way to go to be mentioned as HOF worthy.

From MLBTR: •Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com suggests the Brewers, Cubs and Astros are all fits for Edgar Renteria, who intends to play in 2012 (Twitter link Heyman must have been drinking to include the Cubs.

From MLBTR: Word from Joel Sherman of the New York Post is that the Yankees are "quietly — but diligently — still working to trade" Burnett to create additonal payroll flexibility for both Eric Chavez and one of Johnny Damon, Hideki Matsui, or Raul Ibanez. GM Brian Cashman lacks leverage, as Burnett hasn't pitched well over the last two seasons and will be battling this spring to crack the Yankees' rotation. So if Burnett's free agent value is around $12MM over two years, Cashman might have to let a team take him for $8-10MM over that span. That could be the possible savings for the Yankees against the $33MM owed to the 35-year-old.

Signing Edwin Jackson or Roy Oswalt to a short-term (1 or 2 year) contract would be pointless given the Cubs' situation. It adds a few wins to a sub-.500 team. Who cares. The best you can hope for is to trade them later on. That may be one way to acquire prospects, but it surely must be the least efficient. Yeah, you completely missed the point. Had the Cubs front office wanted to, they would have been able to field an over - .500 ballclub while staying within the budget and without saddling the payroll with poor long term contracts. Is it the optimal way to acquire prospects? Absolutely not. But there would have been some semblance of competing during the process. And we'd still be able to make moves to leave us better off in the long run. I'm guessing the Cubs did make inquiries into guys like Oswalt and Jackson. It's pretty clear Oswalt doesn't want to play here (or anywhere in the Midwest), and Jackson turned down a 3 year deal with the Pirates (who are similar to us) to take a one year deal with someone else. Theo can't make these guys come here, and he shouldn't overpay for them so that they do want to come here. For once, we have a management team willing to show restraint, which is why I won't be upset if we lose out on Cespedes because the Marlins gave him $70 $80 million. Last year, we headed into spring training with a bad team that, if everything went right, could be above .500. This year, we head into spring training with a bad team that, if everything goes right, could be above .500. The difference is that we'll be relying on young-ish players taking a step forward, whereas last year we were relying on old guys repeating career years. I never understood the desire to overpay and give up assets this offseason for a better shot at 83 wins. That's basically been the Cubs' strategy for the past 20 years. This team would really need everything to go right to have a shot at .500. Gigantic rebounds by Dejesus, Soto, Dempster, and Marmol in addition to breakout years by Lahair, Stewart, and T.Wood might give them a shot at .500.

not a chance I guess we'll never know, but I would think that a GM signing him to an extension or a FA signing would have a few worries before giving him a gigantic contract.

From MLBTR: •Jackson turned down a three-year, $30MM offer to sign his one-year deal with Washington, tweets Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com. Pretty gutsy (or stupid) move to turn down a pretty decent 3 year deal for a 1 year deal.

I wish him the best of luck. Having said that, his "night on the town" probably cost him millions of dollars on his next contract.

Not too likely with free agency and the fact that the Rays are pretty much a small market.

I don't think there are too many trades at this time because everybody is heading to spring training. Also, I would think Selig would have to update any compensation on whether the player is property of the Cubs at the time of the decision.

For the right price and no NTC it might make sense. Trading Garza for multiple prospects that are 1-3 years away from the ML while plugging Jackson into the rotation and possibly flipping him or Dempster at the deadline makes sense for a rebuilding team. Obviously, the right price is the key.

Actually it's been about 5 generations of bookies.

Possible reasons the Cubs might be 6-1: 1. Signing Theo 2. Pujols out of NL Central 3. Fielder out of NL Central 4. Braun's 50 game suspension but the real reason the Cubs were listed 6-1: Vegas opened the betting line on 2015 early.

Tim, are you saying NSBB isn't real life? :lol:

Maybe they meant 60-1.

Which you then bizarrely tried to turn into whether the 2012 team will win more games than the 2011 team was projected to win. Because using how many games they actually won would be "hindsight," and that would be bad for some reason. It's because veiled in all of this is the fact that he's trying to make it a Hendry vs. Theo thing and defend Hendry on the basis that the team should have performed better but just underperformed. I'm just trying to give a balanced view. There are many posters on NSBB who would never give credit to Hendry for anything good that happened while he was GM. There are also many posters on NSBB who will never admit that Theo could actually make a bad move. I'm sure that the latter group will say that we shouldn't count wins and losses from 2012 & 2013 because he has to rebuild the whole system. The situations are completely different because Hendry was told to spend money to build a winning team, minor league system be damned. Theo's plan is the complete opposite.

There's never been any disagreement that the 2012 Cubs will be younger, cheaper, and have better potential than last year's team. The discussion was whether the 2012 team will win more games than last year.

I never said that the prospects have to be in the majors to establish their value. Prospects that show promise in A ball would have a lot more value if they were successful in AA or AAA.

That's exactly my point. The Cubs of last year were projected to be much better than they actually were. Injuries played a major part, but down seasons by some players also contributed to the terrible season. My posts have emphasized that it was Hendry's job to put together the best team on paper, but he couldn't always be faulted for the injuries or bad seasons that certain players had. There were many years that the Cubs were considered contenders "on paper", but they underperformed. Likewise, Theo's job is to rebuild at this point by getting the best prospects possible, but there's no guarantee that they will perform as hoped or expected. Combining the track record and expectation level of last year's BOR before the season would certainly be greater than this year's BOR track record and expectation level, but things don't always go as planned.

You've repeatedly downplayed the savvy moves they've made because the players are "question marks." If you don't get why Wood, Maholm and Volstad represent a rather significant upgrade over last year's rotation, then I can see why you would be missing out on the euphoria. You are using hindsight to compare this year's BOR to the results from last year. At this time last year the BOR was Zambrano, Cashner, and Wells. Obviously we didn't know the problems and injuries that would occur, but the expectation level of last year's BOR certainly would match this year's.