Little Slide Rooter

Because the Iowa Cubs are attempting to join the Frontier League.

The truth is that a lot of people don't seem to get that fact that a professional sports franchise goes far beyond those in uniform. It's a business. There's the team itself, and then there's the organization. Theo Epstein's in charge of the team. He decides what players and coached are added or subtracted. He decides how much he's willing to play which players and coaches. Then there's Kenny. He's the president of the Chicago Cubs as a business. His job is all about money. As a result, any input he puts into player acquisitions, it's strictly about overhead. Back in the Trib days, he may have had some say in the team itself. The team winning or losing is not his problem. Making money is, and the only reason he may have stuck his nose into Hendry's affairs would have been if he increasing the overhead, without enough revenue coming back to make it worth while, from a business perspective anyway. In regards to what his role in the organization is suppose to be, there's no a need for him to be a "baseball guy." It could actually be argued that he'd be better off not being a baseball fan, so he isn't swayed by trying to win at all costs, which would be a conflict of interests for him. That and the year that he stole Christmas from that orphanage.

I'm not sure what 2.5 weeks at Iowa is going to do for him; the AFL would be far more beneficial for his chances of making the 40-man. At this point it's not just a question of beneficial, so much as a question of why not. I'm sure I'll be accused if having an irratinal love for the guy, but we should be evaluationg anything resembling a big league ready starter. If all goes right, our 2013 rotation could be Garza-Vizcaino-Samardzjia-Wood-Volstad. Then again, it could also be Samardzjia-Wood-?-?-?.

@KevinCapie: #Chiefs mgr Kopitzke on no Soler Wednesday: "He's got a little something. Hopefully he'll be back tomorrow." A little something?

Does anyone know what Nick Struck throws and what type of stuff he has? I'm not getting what's keeping him at AA at this point, especially with the impending Rule 5 protection decision.

Part of my thinking in my post was in reference to the people I've talked to (primarily on here) who don't consider guys signed to 4 year contracts as "long term" options (i.e. BJ Upton). Their definition of long term seems to be (if I'm not misinterpreting) much longer than that. My thinking was if Law shares their view on what long term is, then he wouldn't consider Barney a long term option. I tend to agree with you on this, though. To me, 2-3 years is mid term and about 4+ years is long term (roughly). If they only plan on keeping him through his arbitration years, that's really not long term, especially with the recent trend being for teams to lock up their young, star players through theyre prime with 8+ year contracts. By long term, he could also be referring to the Cubs long term plans, IE the Baez/Soler/Almora era, and by then, I wouldn't expect Barney to be around.

The Angels are reportedly looking for bullpen help. When you're offense includes of Pujols, Trout, Trumbo, Morales, and Hunter and a rotation of Weaver-Greinke-Haren-Wilson, there should be no excuse to be a fringe contender.

Jesus, I was just gonna comment on what was your second Zoolander reference in as many days, and there's number 3. I'm unconvinced that WSR isn't Zoolander. Well my family does know Billy Zane (true story)

He's a 30 year old journeyman of 12 pro seasons. He's the consummate AAAA roster filler/7 starter.

Could be that like someone said above, he'll be great to have through his arbitration years, which are up in 2017, unless someone elase emerges by then. It's not exactly long term but is far from a stop gap. Then again, he could view him as more of a utility IF. Of course, he could also be insinuating that Barney's most valuable as a short stop. I could be wrong, but isn't Law in the Castro destined for 3B camp?

I don't know about 2017, but Volstad looked an awful lot like a 5 starter last night, unless you go with the "it's the Astros, so it's the equivelant of 26 runs" mind set. He makes 2.66MM this season, and I can't imagine that price going up by much via arbitration.

Am I alone in the shut him down and see him in the spring camp? If that's going to have teams interested in trading for him try to lowball us, [expletive] em. It also gives us the chance to get an extended look at Raley, Rusin, and Struck to help decide which, if any get rostered. I'm still all for an extension, and I'd anyone still wants to bowl us over with an offer, I'm all for that as well. There's no reason that we should be going in to 2013 in a "lost/tanked season" frame of mind.

That was a facetious comment, and I'm well aware that they are not going to build a dome for an A ball team, and if so it would cost more then Hendry would have paid for a loogy or utility infielder, which was also a facetious dig on Hendry over paying for role players.

Now it's just getting to be ridiculous. How much could it cost to build a dome their? Probably less than a Hendry era loogy or utility infielder I'm guessing.

It seems like he was getting more Ks early on, but he doesn't seem to walk much of anyone.

No. what was he talking about? I wonder if he's finally gotten some new info on him, because his Twitter comments on Vitters still seem pretty meh, for the most part. Nothing super specific. Just thought the Cubs were doing the right thing and was adamant that he had made "real progress" at AAA this year and went on about he's still only 22. He also basically said that if he had to guess who would actually contribute next year it would be Vitters and not BJax At this point I'd tend to agree with him, if Vitters isn't traded. And KG has a real Jeckyll/Hyde thing going on with his non-Twitter and Twitter personas. He gets trolled a lot and gets asked a lot of dumb questions, and he trolls back and gives dumb answers. Cubs and Blue Jays fans are apparently the most ravenous, which is why he seems to have this reputation for being down on Cubs prospects, IE Szczur, Lake, and most recently, Vogelbach.

He has apparently been quite good this year, but my last memories of him involve wearing a Brewers uniform and getting knocked around for several years. However, I don't see him as a front end starter, and that's what we need. Between Wood, Volstad, Raley, Struck, and whatever we can scrape up via trade and ST invites we can put together and solid enough 4-5.

Or we could just focus on our FO being too smart to overpay for a guy who's always been a 4-5 starter who's having a career season.

If Garzas healthy, 2012 Shark is the real deal, Vizcaino recovers and hits his ceiling, Wood does what he's done most of the season, and Volstad can avoid that one inning in which he gets hammered, it's actually quite a good rotation. Vizcaino's the most iffy. I don't doubt that he can be a good big league 2-3 starter, though I'd be very surprised if he were by 2013.

Maybe as a ST invite, but we're not exactly talking about a young guy waiting for a breakout season here. I'm actually very surprised that he's only 28. It seemed like he was with the Brewers for ages. Bhahahahaa, the same guy pimping Brooks Raley as a future rotation centerpiece thinks all Villanueva is worth is a ST invite. Do me a favor and bring up the post where I claimed that Brooks Raley is a centerpiece of anything.

If Volstad can deliver another quality start, perhaps we could begin to think in terms of counting on him as a 5th starter. If all goes well, Garza-Shark-Vizcaino-Wood-Volstad could be a decent rotation for several years. A lot would have to go right though.

How much of the racism, be it from fans or media is actually due to expectations more so than race? Sure, there will be a few racist meatballs in the bleachers, but they're far from a fair representation of the general fan base. While I don't necessarily agree with the boos or criticism, I simply disagree that it's race related Lets look at paleyers who are the most heavily booes and criticized over recent years: High paid free agents who were either in prolonged slumps and/or gave off the impression that they werent trying: Aramis Ramirez, Alfonso Soriano, Milton Bradley, and Carlos Zambrano.The last white free agent that came in as a "savior" was Todd Hundley, who flopped and fans wasted no time booing him out of town. Other than that, they were all secondary free agents who never really gave a reason to boo, such as Dempster, Lilly, and DeRosa. Jeromy Burnitz? He was what he was. By the time he got here, there was no question that his best days were behind him, and the monster season in Colorado wasn't going to fool many people. When Latroy Hawkins was blowing every other save, was he really booed any more than Kevin Gregg when he did the same? Also, top prospects who were heavily hyped, and struggled or went through prolonged slumps: Corey Patterson, Felix Pie, and now Starlin Castro.There really havn't been any recent white players that were viewed as saviors, or came up overly hyped in recent years. Of course there was Mark Prior, but his issues were injury related and he was never awful when on the mound. Even if fans wanted, they wouldn't have booed him from the bench. Samrdzjia sure heard his share of boos when he was horrid. Ryan Theriot? he was never viewed as much of anything. He just came up and was "gritty" and seemed to give it his all, getting a lot of little slap hits.There were plenty of white prospects who busted, but they never made it to the big leagues, at least as Cubs. If Vitters and Jackson continue to have a combined OPS in the low .600s, they may start hearing some boos, especially if it's next year and the games matter. But if, say, Dave Sappelt were to come up as a 4th OF and wasn't very good, would he get booed? Doubtful. For the same reason that Reed Johnson and Jeff Baker never heard many boos. Because nobody really cared.

Maybe as a ST invite, but we're not exactly talking about a young guy waiting for a breakout season here. I'm actually very surprised that he's only 28. It seemed like he was with the Brewers for ages.

The closest thing to consolation is that so far, there's nobody from the 2010 round picked after Simpson that really makes me want to :banghead: . Zach Lee's the obvious, but even he's getting by off of reputation so far and hasn't been particularly impressive, though I've never seen him in action and I'm going off stats. Kyle Parker, Jesse Biddle, and Gary Brown would have obviously been better picks, but again, none of them are :banghead: worthy at this point, and I think. There's also Nick Castalannos and Mike Olt, but they were far down in the supp. round. Besides, I think that they were dead set on a pitcher at the time, so Parker, Brown, Castalannos, and Olt would have been out anyway.