Backtobanks

Fixed: For: Aybar, Figgins, Kendrick, and Lackey. =D> =D> =D>

Meph, 16 days ago you accused me and/or my source of fabricating a story. You should know this: I will continue to post rumors from sources, who I believe to be credible based on my history with them regardless of how unreasonable or unrealistic you think the trade scenarios are. I am not in the business of fabrication. I am always very clear on this board differentiating between deals I've heard vs. deals I am suggesting. And considering that Bruce Miles (who I think we can all agree has an absolute stellar reputation for facts in addition to being very generous with his time here), has chimed in twice in the last 7 days that there may have been/may be some discussions going on, at least now I feel good for my source, who you unfairly through under the bus. The information that the 2 teams had or are having discussions was not only credible, it was real and confirmed regardless of what your stamp of approval may or may not think. 1 pt. for Hoops. Those of us that have posted on this site for years know it's more like 1000 pts. for Hoops.

While I don't disagree, when the rumors are big and then turn out to be a dud, it makes the offseason longer and more drab. First, the Roberts rumor still seems somewhat alive, but my point was that it's very possible that the rumors that don't happen might be the fault of the front office and not the "insider" who had accurate information.

Whether he had inside information or not, it was interesting reading. Rumors, speculation, and inside information are what makes it possible for baseball fans to get through the winter. None of us know if he really had inside information about trades, but it is possible that some of the "information" has been quashed by an overly-deliberate GM who despises leaks and an idiot owner who changes his mind on a whim.

Better yet, start a new thread about the trade so that those of us who don't want to read all of the "fluff" can read and post there. Leave this thread for the "fluffers".

I disagree. Just because it might prove to be the longest thread ever (and for whatever reason, posters are trying to do that), does not necessarily translate this thread into being "the best ever". If you ask me, there's too much fluff in this thread for it to be considered to be one of the best. Yeah, probably 80-100 pages of fluff.

The Oriole insider named Peace 21 has decided to quit providing inside information. Much of the information and speculation about Bedard and Roberts has come from the Oriole insiders. From Orioles Hangout: Just want to let everyone know that my days of providing inside information here on OriolesHangout have come to an end. Im sorry if this puts a damper on things. But I feel that the position im in, I dont want to jeopardize my career away from OH. I feel like I have burnt some bridges along the way of providing inside info, and dont want to burn down anymore. Aswell I feel I am jeopardizing the integrity and career of my source as well. He is a family friend, and I dont want to go further with info and potentially hurting his credibility. I will continue to post here and share my thoughts on everything Orioles. But from here on out, I wont be providing any inside info. Thank you for your understanding. Peace.

I don't know why one of the moderators doesn't end this thread. Reading posts where two people are arguing about something that doesn't have anything to do with the topic is ridiculous. The Cubs won't be acquiring Greene or Peralta. If the Roberts trade happens, he will bat leadoff, until then Soriano bats leadoff. It doesn't matter whether we agree or not, the only opinion that matters is Piniella's.

That's what Hendry should do. Tell MacPhail that this is the offer (Gallagher, Murton, Cedeno, or whoever) for the next 24 hours, after that I reduce the offer.

This is what I mean about people thinking that increasingly outrageous deals are "decent." RynoHawk, I do not understand your post. Jay Payton is due $5 million in 2008, and at this point in his career he's like a .740 OPS guy against lefties and a .690 guy overall probably. He is no more of a fallback option than Sam Fuld or Eric Patterson, and he's probably worse than Angel Pagan and definitely worse than Craig Monroe. Plus, all he does is bitch about lack of playing time. So you're saying it's okay to trade our top pitching prospect, our 2nd best position player prospect, an outfielder in Murton who I think could only be a step away from becoming a Conor Jackson type hitter, and a shortstop who's fairly high risk/high reward, for a pure pricey salary dump and 2 years of Brian Roberts? Are we trading more than the Red Sox did for Josh Beckett yet? Yeesh. I'm sorry. I grow increasingly baffled by the reasoning that goes on in this topic. Soon enough we'll be rationalizing how trading Soto, Hill, Marmol, Pie, Gallagher, Murton, Cedeno, Wuertz, and DeRosa for Roberts, Payton, and Danys Baez is a fair deal. Here's how it works. People hear about the Cubs being interested in Roberts, and they get excited. They hear a few rumored packages and decide in their heads what is a realistic offer and what they'd be willing to give up. They want to believe that it will happen. Then someone posts a link of the latest rumored offer, which is a bigger package than the previous one. They don't like it at first, but then say "ah what the hell, it's only a little bit more, and I've got my heart set on Roberts." This goes on and on as the deal slowly gets pricier and pricier until it looks nothing like the original one. Then it's "well, screw it. we've spent all this time on it, might as well cave and get it done." The biggest problem with this mindset is that it appears Jim Hendry has it as well. Do you know something that the rest of us don't know? Has Hendry made this ridiculous trade? Why don't we wait and see if a deal is made before we criticize Hendry on the deal instead of wild, unfounded speculation.

What do you mean? Jim hasn't done anything yet. There have enough conflicting rumors that we should have learned by now that we don't know for sure what the deal on the table is, or if there is one. So why criticize Jim before we know if he's done anything wrong? Amen! I think I posted basically the same thing about 30 pages ago. Everyone is jumping all over Hendry and nobody has a clue as to which players have been mentioned. About the only consistent name in the rumor is Gallagher with all other names (and how many) being pure speculation.

There's no way that the WS win 92 games this year. I agree with the prediction of about 80 wins. All of my posts in this thread were about the fact that Kenny Williams should trade his assets for prospects because the Sox aren't going to win this year. MacPhail has really set the pace for the Orioles with more prospects coming whenever he trades Roberts. MacPhail has picked up 10 young players for trading 2 of his stars. I wonder what kind (and how many) of young players Williams could have gotten for Buerhle, Konerko, Dye, Vasquez, Garland, and Crede if he decided to rebuild.

A .750 ops split is not good. Not really, but it's a lot better than what the Cubs have currently. Is there anybody currently available that could consistently give the Cubs better? Monroe hits lefites better than Payton does. Just because a guy is slightly better than what we currently have doesn't make it okay to trade for him. Paying a guy 5 million for a poor split is unacceptable. A perfect argument for withdrawing from the Roberts trade.

I can't believe there isn't a market for Marquis when teams are looking at Colon, Lohse, and Tracshel.

Besides the money issue, I've wondered about the negativity over Payton. He could back up all 3 OF positions and would be a good right-handed bat off the bench or to relieve Pie or Fukudome.

Wow... is there a trade you wouldn't do, I'm curious? This is getting ludicrous. We're getting into insane territory here. Giving up our two best pitching prospects plus an outfielder and a shortstop with some definite upside for Brian Roberts? The White Sox gave up their two best pitching prospects and a nothing guy in Ryan Sweeney and got back Nick Swisher, who won't make any money for the next five years, this is fairly preposterous. I also don't like the equivocating. "Well Gallagher was already in the deal and Veal is a strikeout lefty who has control problems and Murton and Cedeno there's no place for them..." I don't think the Braves, when they were trading Saltalamacchia and the rest for Teixeira said "Hey, we've got no place for these guys, let's just give them away for anyone." Come on here. At the beginning of the offseason people would've thought twice about giving this package for Carl Crawford, now we're falling over ourselves to give this package for Roberts? I'm wondering, what would the price be if Roberts didn't get caught in the steroids business? People are letting their resistance break down. In another two weeks people will be saying "Felix Pie, Sean Gallagher, Geovany Soto, Rich Hill, Carlos Marmol, and a PTBNL who turns out to be Josh Vitters, well, it's a high price but this is BRIAN ROBERTS we're talking about." I also don't like the message this sends - jerk us around for 3 months and then take us for everything we've got after jacking us bad in the Trachsel trade. We're in a cycle of just overpaying horridly through trades that has to stop. I also don't think any prospective throw-ins make this trade any better. Jamie Walker? That just illustrates how low we sold on guys like Ohman, it wouldn't surprise me if Ohman put up better numbers than Walker this year. Sherrill's one excellent year in '07 doesn't mean anything more to me than the various one great years many lefties put up in their career. This just looks awful to me. Well said! I've argued all along that Roberts is a marginal upgrade at 2B over DeRosa and to give up that much seems ridiculous. Maybe Hendry ought to talk to the Diamondbacks about Hudson, if for no other reason than leverage in the Oriole talks. Personally, I don't think Hendry would make the mentioned deal. Getting back Payton and Sherrill would help even out the deal somewhat. It might be okay to trade those four players if we're talking about Bedard or Santana, but not Roberts.

:shock: For which professional sport? 'cause it won't be baseball. Sounds like someone is forgetting 2005. Of course you are going to say 2005 was a tremendous fluke and you can't base your opinion on that, and you may be right. But like I've been saying all offseason, I think they have a shot. Not a very good one, but they have one. Their staff can either be really bad or really good. Floyd and Danks have to play to their potential, but if they do, their offense is good enough to lead it to a wild card. Floyd and Danks would have to play way over their potential for the Sox to do anything. As for their offense, let's not forget that some of these guys are getting old. They will be in a battle for 3rd place at best.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: Obvious to you I'm sure, but there are still people floating around here who think Theriot will be just fine @ SS. Apparently two people who think Theriot will be fine @ SS are Hendry and Piniella and unfortunately their opinions are the only ones that count.

You guys think Cedeno could get some of the CF duty against tough Lefties? I have no idea if he's any good in center, but if he's serviceable, that would further the chance of Cedeno being a valuable member of the team. We have a huge hole @ SS, regardless of what our organization thinks about Theriot. I expect it will become apparent to even them if Theriot is given the starting job. I think thats rather obvious. Lou has shown no real signs of sticking with a crappy player when he has a better option floating around. Lou is shooting alot of BS. On Friday's Chicago Tribune Live, Lou pointed out that the only spot open for competition is CF and never once mentioned Cedeno as a possibility at SS. I think Cedeno is going to be traded because Lou doesn't have the confidence in him to give him a chance to compete for a job. If there is one thing we should have learned about Lou last year, it was that everyone was given a chance to compete for every job. Everyone acts like Lou was Dusty-stubborn last year. If Theriot starts slow or has a bad spring training and Cedeno is lighting it up, you are crazy if you don't think Lou will make a switch. Matt Murton disagrees...but otherwise I think this is a fair statement. I'm sure Lou had at least a little something to say about acquiring and using the likes of Monroe, Kendall, Trachsel, etc. over Murton, Soto, and Marshall/Gallagher. I've posted before saying that Lou will play a youngster as long as the youngster is "lighting it up", but at crunch time he wants and plays the veterans.

You guys think Cedeno could get some of the CF duty against tough Lefties? I have no idea if he's any good in center, but if he's serviceable, that would further the chance of Cedeno being a valuable member of the team. We have a huge hole @ SS, regardless of what our organization thinks about Theriot. I expect it will become apparent to even them if Theriot is given the starting job. I think thats rather obvious. Lou has shown no real signs of sticking with a crappy player when he has a better option floating around. Lou is shooting alot of BS. On Friday's Chicago Tribune Live, Lou pointed out that the only spot open for competition is CF and never once mentioned Cedeno as a possibility at SS. I think Cedeno is going to be traded because Lou doesn't have the confidence in him to give him a chance to compete for a job.

Don't let Lou off the hook on this one. Obviously, if Lou wasn't satisfied with Theriot, he would tell Hendry he needs a SS. As for the comment about not trading DeRosa, I guess that shoots down the DeRosa + Dempster for Burnett rumors.

They might ask him, and Soriano might say no. If the Cubs somehow landed Roberts and Figgins, I could see Soriano agreeing to move down in the line up. If it's just Roberts, I think Soriano will say Roberts fits nicely in the 2 hole. There really is no reason to move Soriano down in the line up. Soriano scores runs in the lead off spot with the best of the lead off hitters in baseball. Jimmy Rollins was arguably the best lead off hitter in baseball last year with only an average OBP. Those 88 XBH's is what does it for him. Soriano has the capability of 88+ XBH's also, as he posted 80 XBH's last year in 135 games. I'm of the persuasion that could pretty much care less where Sori hits in the line-up, assuming it's in the top 5. But how ridiculous is it that "ask him" and "might say no" are real possibilities. I mean, when did it become the players choice? Does this not make anyone else feel...I dont know what word I'm looking for here....saddened to a point? Stop and think of all the possibilities (and the extra money the Cubs might have) if the manager actually ran the team. Murton could easily be a cheap, solid LF for a long time if Soriano was told to play CF or RF. You might have been able to get a Santana or Bedard with Pie as trade bait. How many more runs could the Cubs score with Soriano hitting 5th? Unfortunately as others have pointed out, Soriano gets what he wants (play LF and leadoff), Fukudome gets to play the position he wants (RF), and the inmates run the asylum.

I know why - because Hendry is the only one who will pay such a ridiculous price for Roberts. Can we wait to see what the real deal is before we label it "ridiculous"? Nobody has a clue as to which players are involved and yet posters are warming up their rants about Hendry.

Hoops, this goes back to something that we agreed upon quite awhile ago: Hendry has a public position on Pie (untouchable, starting CF) and a private position in which he is listening to offers for him. I have posted before that I think Lou is like many other managers in that you go with veterans over rookies when you have a chance.

The "experts" have been saying for a few weeks that Bedard would be more expensive (in terms of players) than Santana because Bedard had two years to go on his contract.