Little Slide Rooter

Is what we all thought between November 2011-March 2012.

Yes, I do in fact believe Bryant will play baseball again. Actually, I've heard he's opting to forgo his baseball career to persue his true passion; needlepoint.

Ugh, Javy with the Golden Brett tonight.

It's never close until the mystery team gets involved.

Any update on Eloy Jimenez? Been a while since I've heard anything.

Why do you say that? Because he's lazy, smug, and pedantic. If you spend so much time sarcastically harping on plate discipline, you should probably make at least passing mention to Baez's vastly improved walk rate or Almora hitting for an insane average. He's addressed the walk rate as too small of a sample to count on. You can nitpick any of the evaluators we get info from, but I think Law is easily one of the best, whether he's condescending or not towards people. If this is in reference to Twitter, the reason a lot of these guys get snarky and condescending is because fans will ask questions about a particular prospect, and if they don't like the answer they gripe about it; sometimes they simply question his answer, but others will go the you have no idea what you're talking about. Then why ask to begin with? Almost as though they simply want afformation that the fringe prospect in question is a super star in the making and they were the first to take notice. Goldstein was becoming especially venemous in the end, especially toward Cubs fans who would troll him about Lake, and later, Vogelbach.

I think Paulino got of to a dynamic start last year, but then kind of faded. I don't believe he fell of a cliff or anything drastic, just faded.

2 Vitters walks. And Daury Torrez still with those beautiful K rates. And Aldbert Alzolay with 0/6 BB/K in 5 IP. In 52 IP so far, he has 10/42 BB/K and a 1.21 ERA in the VSL. Is he anyone worth following?

http://www.csnchicago.com/cubs-talk/what-cubs-are-looking-garza-deal At the off chance that Profar was discussed in a serious manner, I doubt that even the most delusional of the delusional would have thought Profar to be a piece in a Garza package, but rather the cornerstone of a blockbuster in which who knows how many players and prospects changed hands. I'd have to assume that one of our top three would end up in Texas as well in this mythical scenario.

It's shiny toy syndrome. Fans are more likely to gravitate toward the blue they've been hearing about for a while then the guy that came out of nowhere. It's also why teams continue to take, dare I say, fliers out on one time top prospects who's likelihood of reaching their ceiling, or even being replacement level big leaguers is minimal.

They can have both if we can get Feliz.

No fliers for me, thank you.

Then claims all the Rangers would give up are a couple of 24 year old pitchers in AA. If he's anything like our beat writers, he's probably wrong.

Also, this is a snip from the link. Perez would be a likely candidate, but could they instead take a page out of last year's play book and get Neftali Feliz, who's currently recovering from TJS?

He is. 2 separate deals. Wording sounds like it could be a 3 way. Obviously, the Mets wouldn't have much need for Olt, but it could be interesting. Then again, this could also be the same song and dance from November 2011-July 2012.

Here's another one to file under "if some guy said it, it must be true."

Ugghh, little pat on the head and words of encouragement from condescending Cardinals fan would not be helpful to me. It's easy to give your rival a half hearted pep talk when the rivalry's as one sided as ours had been the past few years.

And this.

The Rangers have 2 SP (Lewis, Harrison) on the 60 day DL and another 3 (Darvish, Ogando, Tepesch) on the 15 day DL. And if/when Cruz is suspended, they're going to need a OF/DH type or two, depending on if/when/for how long Berkman's off the DL. Soriano would fill in perfectly. With all of this being said, they still have the 4th best record in the AL, yet are fighting for the 2nd Wild Card spot; mostly because the rules state that an AL Central team must have a post season berth. If there's any team that should be willing to deal, it's them.

Agree. Third guy, fine. "Advanced" guy so they can more easily justify a trade in which one of the two primary guy is in A-ball, great. But he's such a remote long-shot in my book. Jackson, Ian stewart, we're 0-2 lately on those kinds of guys. Maybe it's time to get Olt and finish the strikeout. I'd say a 2nd piece. I'm not quite sure what people are expecting at this point, but if we could get someone's equivalant of say Alcantara or Pierce Johnson plus Brett Jackson and a low level guy in the neighborhood of Yao Lin Wang or Frank Del Valle, do you take it?

So long as Olt wouldn't be the center piece of the deal, I'd have no problem taking him on. He wouldn't be my choice, but he isn't devoid of value. Case in point, last year, he hit .288/.398/.579/.977 as an age appropriate (college draftee) 23-year-old in AA. Olt skipped Low-A entirely, and has progressed at a level per season since. He entered 2013 ranked as the #22 prospect by both BA and MLB. This is his scheduled AAA season. He started this season horribly. Apparently had eye issues. Took basically the month of May to get that taken care of, came back and hit .264/.364/.527/.892 in June with 18 BB against 36 Ks in 129 PAs for a 28% K rate. In the last 7 days, he's hit .316/.364/.474/.837. Clearly, he strikes out more than anyone would want him to. And whereas, the Cubs would want to work with him on that aspect of his game, he's not as much of a reclamation project as Arrieta. If the Cubs could get the Rangers to sell low on him and get a better prospect along the lines of Luke Jackson or Jorge Alfaro (would go crazy over CJ Edwards but I can't see that happening), that's a good return for Garza in my book. I don't care what anyone says, if we could get Olt as a secondary piece, I'd be thrilled. I really don't know what the primary piece would be seeing as a lot of their one time prospects are in the big leagues filling in for their banged up starters, but last I checked, they still had a pretty good system.

FWIW, all the runs came in the 1st, so hopefully he got that out of his system. Plus I would care more about what his stuff looked like than actual results. Especially in a first rehab start after an extremely long time. He's probably focused on throwing x amount of a given pitch and not trying to carve guys up. Pretty much what I've heard about these early rehab outtings. It's essentially a sim game vs. guys who are actually trying to beat you.

Arrieta dealing through 5: 1 H, 1 BB, 8 K.