Little Slide Rooter

Sounds like another case Scott Boras translating a brief exchange into an active pursuit.

Colby Rasmus: Good: Power. Center Field (and good at it.) Young. Bad: hates taking walks. Kind of a douche. Yes? No?

5 pages for a backup catcher. Eat your heart out Koyie Hill. Anyway, my personal take is that the stat gurus can convince me that David Ross is a great pickup as far as backup catchers go, but there's not enough sabermetric flavored kool-aid in the world to elicit any kind of emotion over it.

In their defense, they picked him off the scrap heap the year before and, he was looking like his old self when they called him up late that season. Probably wanted to lock him up before anyone noticed. And this was when they were trying to spend wads of cash on anyone who would take it.

A backup catcher is essentially a slightly younger bench coach who occupies a roster spot. Moving on.

Where are you even getting that?

By all means, send out the Bukie signal to tell me why I'm wrong, but isn't Jonny Gomes the guy you acquire at the waiver deadline or sign to a minor league deal and call up in September as a spare bat for the home stretch?

This happened, if anyone's interested.

According to the I Cubs website, Barett Loux is still on the roster. I could have sworn we releases him some time ago. Was he just injured last year, or what?

Lame. But I guess asking for more would be like going to a wake and shaking down the widow for the 10 bucks the guy owed you.

Asdrubal Cabrera: what happened to this guy? Injury or just a drop off? I didn't even realise he was a FA. After being one of the top young players in the game, he's coming off back to back dissapointing seasons. He's only 29, so could he accept a 1-2 year self gamble type of contract? He played 48 games at 2B last year, so he could be a fit.

They are doing a full Jim Hendry rebuild. I don't mean that entirely as an insult. Looks to me like they're essentially propping open the existing window for 2-3 years while they assemble something resembling a farm system. And there's really nothing wrong with that, as the alternative would be to shop Sale and Abreu, which would really bring in a hail, but decimate their fan base.

@Rotoworld_BB: Phillies show interest in lefty Travis Wood - Travis Wood | CHC http://t.co/aHtiIU6auY I'm just going to say this, and everybody's going to hate it, but that's never stopped me before; Dom Brown? Would 1 year of Wood, in which he's not even guaranteed a rotation spot be worth a fading glimmer of hope?

It would have been done during the meetings, but nobody remembered brought a hat.

In remember him news, Giants selected Brett Jackson from the DBacks.

Could you imagine the douch factor with Harper and Baez in the same glorious lineup?

Of course Bowden just mentions that Russell and Edwards could be enough to get Kemp. Screw that. I'm sure Russell and Edwards is enough to get Kemp. There's a lot of chatter about the Dodgers gunning for Jimmy Rollins. As desperate as The Phillies are in need of a rebuild, there's great 3 team potential there, and if need be, we have cash to throw around. Cubs get Kemp, Dodgers get Rollins and Phillies and Dodgers each get whatever's a reasonable combo of players and cash from us.

My penis would become immediatlely and hopelessly erect. Can I say that? If not, I apologize. But that doesn't make it any less true.

Recent high profile targets: FA: Furcal: No Bradley: Yes Pujols: No Fielder: No Sanchez: No (though talk didn't really heat up until the report that we'd signed him) Trade: Roberts: No Harden: Yes Peavy: No Granderson: No Garza: Yes And of course, Epstein: Yes

Well, I don't think he's replacing Hendricks, but I do think they could use another starter to have all those back end options compete for one spot instead of two. Not to mention Hammel and Arrieta have some injury history. And, pitchers. Well, adding (at least) 100 points of OPS to the overall catcher position sure won't hurt. I think the bigger point is this: there were 6102 PA total for the Cubs last year and 1586 (26%) of those went to Whiteside, Watkins, Olt, Kalish, Baez, Schierholtz, Baker and Lake. In that 1/4 of the teams' total at bats, those gents had an aggregate OPS of .566. If you can eliminate those horrendous results in over a quarter of the PA's, the runs will be there. Really, what it comes down to is these guys using the terms "contenders" and "favorites" interchangeably.

Now lets trade for Justin Upton and go to bed until March.

Do we still have to pretend like those last 3 are worth anybody's time now that we have Lester? I still have my doubts that Hendricks and his 87 MPH FB and 5 k/9 is nothing more than a poor mans Carlos Villanueva and not a #4 starter on a team trying to win. Really would like to see us add McCarthy yet at minimum. I agree with you on Hendricks...not enough success to show it can be sustained. I'd love to see Turner grow into the pitcher many thought he would be. Unless they end up doing some kind of bad contract swap with Jackson, the 5 spot is likely his to win or lose. I'm still hoping that Bosio works his magic on Turner. In what little I saw of Doubront last year, he looked to me like a guy who was a bit of coaching away from being as good as he was once supposed to me, and Wada's your consumate 5-7 starter/swingman. This being said, I'd bet on Wood being traded between now and roster decision time.

Meh. There are long term pitching options available out there just for cash as opposed to shelling out what few resources they have via their crappy farm system for a single season rental. That is a fairly good point; the Sox farm system is [expletive] as it is, why trade from what little you have for a rental when there are so many FA options out there (given the state of their payroll)? Maybe their plan is just to make their run this year and collect that pick when Shark walks, and not be that much worse off after 2015. Even then, trading prospects for Shark to get a non-top pick in 2016's draft seems pointless. If the idea is to compete in 2015 and beyond, why not go after one of the FA pitchers? And it's not as if any of this makes them favorites in the AL Central by any means, either. It's going to be tough sledding for them still. More puzzling to me is what Beane is doing. I'd be very nervous if I were an A's fan right now. Whatever, it's late and my brain is foggy. It wasn't surprising when the A's started shipping people off, but now it seems like he's in some kind of bizarre slash and burn mode. And yeah, the Sox acting like they can go all in for 2015 is weird. They have some decent young players, but it's a pretty small core without much of anything coming up behind them. They could make some noise if they shore up the starting rotation, but again, why not just sign someone instead of going for a one and done via trade? He's like the kid who went on a shopping spree, then dad got laid off and made him return everything.

White Sox should have a nice rotation for 2015, assuming Rodon is MLB ready. But as far as offense, are they just going to do what the Cubs did with Sosa for much of the 90s and stack a bunch of [expletive] around Abreu?

Something, something, Bukie something, but I say Castillo's younger, cheaper, and better, so to hell with it.