jersey cubs fan

He's 26 and a small righty. They tried him as a starter then moved him into the pen with mixed results. After 5 years of that they probably saw enough.

No way you saw that right, the Cubs are like 25-30/1. They are right in the middle and that is only because of how often people put money on the Cubs as a longshot. They are like 15/1 to even make the World Series.

Boras must have called a hit on Victor Martinez.

No. LaHair? They've made that statement a few times now. My guess is unless he bombs miserably in the spring he will be the opening day starter. I don't think they'll be starting Rizzo anywhere but AAA, regardless of what LaHair does in the spring. Hoyer came out and said that he made a mistake calling up Rizzo so soon and that spring wouldn't change his stance on Rizzo starting in AAA. I'd imagine he stays there however long it needs to be to push his clock back one year. That has been my assumption as well. I was talking about LaHair though. I guess if he's just beyond awful you could see some other fill-in at the position. But it's his for now.

But the sex cannon decision doesn't make a lot of sense, so that goes against what was said earlier. This acquisition doesn't make it more sensible to go after Garza. It actually allows them to make a similar impact while holding onto their prospects. A team with a lot of money tied up into veterans needs its prospects to start filling holes when those deals become harmful.

No. LaHair? They've made that statement a few times now. My guess is unless he bombs miserably in the spring he will be the opening day starter.

Oooh. I vaguely recall Tim arguing with me on that point at sometime in the past. But I may have said something stupider and not be remembering. I think it's probably supposed to be limb, because you are suggesting the thing holding you up may break. Going out on a ledge suggests suicide.

After the initial shock, this was my first rational thought. The Fielder move is surely a win-now move -- goodness, they must know that the deal is going to be really bad at the end -- so jumping in for Garza seems to make a lot of sense. Not really. They are already positioned to win now, at the very least their division. If anything this deal is more of a reason to keep their own prospects so in 3-4 years they will have affordable players to fill in for the aging fatties.

holy schnikes

I like it

"Darwin Barney's entire career says he can't consistently put up a .660 OPS in the majors" is a very different argument from "If you take out his best month, he's bad, so he's bad." I can buy the former, but not the latter. Well then stop trying to be a dope and formulating other people's statement incorrectly.

His second best month was July. Ranking them by OPS, it was April, July, May, August, September, June. I don't see a clear pattern there of declining as he kept playing. Like any hitter, he had some hot times and some slow times. His hottest time coming in April doesn't mean it should be disregarded, any more than a hot September means a guy has "figured it out." When it's a fairly middling prospect who outperforms expectations for one month at the outset of his career and then sucks the rest of the season there's no reason to pretend it was just another month in a long career. He sucked overall with the bat and he sucked major balls without April propping him up. He spent most of the season with a line that actually looked decent overall, which clouded some people's opinions about how he was doing along the way. But we're still just talking about a 26 year old with a 600+ PA supply of poor hitting.

April counts, but it's still an outlier with 5 consecutive months of significantly worse performance. I don't get why people make the "why doesn't it count" argument when people bring up the rational point that he declined as he kept playing. He sucked with the bat last year. There's no reason to pretend otherwise. He was below average in comparison to all hitters and in comparison to 2B.

What are you saying? His major league numbers are .271/.310/.345, that is across the board worse than the MLe you listed.

Well, it might be hard for him to match it because it'll probably take another 800 OPS month, which is unlikely considering how quickly the league figured him out and how incapable he seems of adjusting. His post ASB OPS was 50 points lower than the overall. Even if such a drop is something an offense can theoretically absorb, it is a real decline and certainly something we might be seeing with him.

FWIW, Soriano outperformed the Cubs total LF production last year, by 26 SLG points. Tyler Colvin, Blake DeWitt and Luis Montanez managed to drag Soriano's .243/.290/.474 line down to .248/.294/.448. If Soriano continues to decline you could still see a situation where his backup/platoon partner keeps the overall LF production in-line with last season.

You're so valiant.

Basically he's a boy scout who has been around football his entire life and would be nice to have on staff, but should probably never get a gig as a GM.

From the Tribune's "hey this is going to be the guy they hire" article:

I never said he had a great resume, just that he's clearly been involved with football related work his entire adult life.

A 31-year football veteran, Phil Emery enters his 14th NFL campaign and his third as the Chiefs Director of College Scouting. He previously served in the same capacity for Atlanta from 2004-08 before working as a regional scout for Atlanta leading up to the 2009 draft. Emery was an area scout for Chicago (’98-04). The Garden City, Michigan native served as the Director of Strength and Conditioning Services and as an Associate Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy from ’91-98. He was responsible for the development, administration and supervision of all strength and conditioning activities for 4,000 Midshipmen. In ’96, his program helped the football team to its first winning season in 15 years. Emery joined the Naval Academy after serving as the assistant strength and conditioning coach at Tennessee (’87-91). Prior to joining the Volunteers, he served as the defensive line and strength and conditioning coach at Saginaw Valley State (’85-87). He also coached the defensive line at Georgetown College (’84-85) after serving as the offensive line and strength and conditioning coach at Western New Mexico (’82-84). Emery began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Central Michigan (’81-82) after serving as a student assistant at Wayne State. Education: Western New Mexico (M.A.T. ’83), Wayne State (B.S. ’81). Family: Wife - Beth; Child - April.

He was a strength and conditioning coach/coordinator for several years and had experience as a position coach in the 80's. He's a football lifer.

The thing is it shouldn't take much to make the current squad a contender, but this guy, and Ruskell, do not appear capable of steering this ship over the next 5 years. That restocking of the defense is going to be a huge endeavor. And the "tweaking" of the line is going to be a job that is never done - not to mention they need to do more than tweak.

He was here for 6 years, not sure which ones those are, but from 1998 to 2003 they drafted some good to great players (Urlacher, Colvin, Kreutz, Holdman, Booker, Tucker, Brown and Brown, Parrish, Tillman, Briggs, I'd argue that Colombo and Grossman weren't terrible picks either, despite how they turned out). They were probably the most vital string of drafts for building what became the incredibly talented mid 2000's teams. Not hands down amazing, but for the Bears, pretty good.

I see no upside to this hire. It's essentially just delaying the eventually inevitable overhaul of the team. Complete status quo BS when they had the opportunity to take a tremendous step forward.