Little Slide Rooter

I thought we were officially paid off on Bradley/Silva.

They aren't even listed in the espn poll. All that really means is that they don't expect the Cubs to be players because they havn't heard of any interest, but as we know, The tends to keep his biness on the down low.

Someone posted this on the MLBTR chat: Dierkes response was that he had not heard. Edit: Dierkes pretty much debunked it a few posts later.

Definitely 2 good, young players that can help us win now and in the future.

And what if Joey Votto becomes available for next year and wants a 6-7 year deal? Do we worry about his anxiety disorder? What about Hamels or Cain? They'll easily command 6 years if Buehrle got 4 and Wilson 5. Pitchers are even more risky than hitters on long term contracts. Should we just pass on every bid FA and keep racking up guys like Ian Stewart, Daric Barton, and Joe Saunders and safer free agents like David DeJesus and hope that our 18-19 year olds all hit ter ceiling in 4-5 years because that sound like a perfect recipe for a perennial sub .500 team until we can finally produce some real talent from the farm and even then, you still need to either spend or trade. Even the Brewers who produced Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, Rickey Weeks, Yovanni Gallardo, and Corey Hart in like a 3 year span needed to deplete what was left of their farm system before they were able to really compete, and while we have more money than they do, what are the chances that we produce 5 impact players like that in a short span. He'll, we havnt produced 5 players like that in my lifetime.

You don't know what mediocre means. One of Fielders mediocre down years is better than anything we could expect from a good year from any of the other available options.

I'm going to guess this is why the market is eerily quiet and no magic has happened.

I don't remember the last time when he majority of the big name free agents were off the market by early December leaving guys like Josh Willingham ad Michael Cudder as big news. I know Willingham's under rated but in years past this would not be newsworthy.

Soriano and Bradley really shouldnt be lumped together either. Soriano was the top guy on the market, and I believe that it was the Phillies and Angels who had similar 5 year offers in the table for him before Jim Hendry jumped in attempting to outbid both them, himself, and the richest emporers in the history of China. Sorianos 1st 2 years were great, '09 was pretty bad and the last 2 have been productive. Had we given him. 5 year deal or even a 6 it would be over or at the last year an it wouldn't be considered the epic failure that it is. Bradley, on the other hand while many of the stat heads were in love with him it was considers questionable from he beginning especially on a 3 year deal with his history of physical injury and mental problems which humorously came together when he hurt himself while being held back from attacking an umpire.

By drafting poorly, having crappy instruction, a small crappy front office, and an overall poor organizational baseball philosophy? I agree with you on Fielder, but I don't agree that we suck right now because of some big questionable contracts. We dont suck because of the big , questionable contracts, we suck because of the players they were given to. The only one who was colossal waste was Bradley. If we get the same production from DeJesus that we did from Fukudome, it will be a great value. If we can get Zs production from even a 3/30 pitcher it would be great. However, when handing out huge contracts hind site is 20/20. Cubs aren't to only team with these in our hands. The Giants wasted a great deal of money on Barry Zito and Aaron Rowand and they came out of it just fine. If every team in baseball was scared to hand out anything bigger than a 5 year contract because of the potential risks attached to every player then all contracts would be 3-5 years but when it comes to elite free agents there's always going to be someone willing to take the risk, this if you want to sign an elite FA you best be ready to sign up for 6-7 years or 5-6 for a pitcher.

i'm not really saying what they should do, more what i think they will do. teams generally don't relegate high-paid star players to part time duty until their production has reached poor levels, and soriano isn't quite there yet. But if that high paid player is on a clear decline and can only really mash lefties, and the opportunity comes along to possible acquire the right left handed partner for him for cheap, that recipe doesn't come along much either. It's not like they'd be going out and signing another 19 mil guy for the platoon. The main point is that paying an extra 5 mil in left field if we could get Scott for that is a smarter decision both production and money wise that eating 95% of what Sorianos owed and replace him with either a lesser player or another expensive player.

Pretty much. In fact, he's probably more valuable being played that way even if he get a fraction of the ABs of his lefty counterpart than if we just released him or traded him for 5% salary relief and some 27 year old AA piece of junk. If we did get Scott for say 5 mil, and the platoon worked as planned we'd be getting nice but overpriced production for around 24 mil/year rather than the ridiculously overpriced production we'd get from Soriano for 19 mil, and again, if it worked so what if the guy getting more ABs is making around 1/4 the money of the other guy. Besides, if we could learn to love Jim Edmonds we can learn to love an insane racist sociopath.

Still waiting for Tim to change it to StarlinFan. I like FielderFan though :-k I'm kinda hoping you change your name to FielderFan, also. Hey, we still have a resident Brewers fan called El Caballo despite the fact that Carlos Lee hast been a Brewer in over 5 years and I'm pretty sure we still have a Prior based screen name or 2.

Would you go as high as 3 years, 33 mil? Id prefer something more like 2/25 with a vesting option.

If one looks at that list, and favors not signing Fielder, it seems to me one resigns the Cubs to small-marketdom. At the same time, he's even more valuable to an AL team because his negatives can be hidden so much more easily. So if Seattle/Texas/whoever values him highly enough to offer him an 8-year deal upwards of $200 million, I wouldn't want the Cubs to match. Agreed. I can't imagine us trying to beat that kind of deal anyway. I could see one of those teams givng him that kind of deal where he can DH when the time comes, and he'd likely accept because even if we offered him 5-6 years at a higher annual dollar amount, when that deal expired he'd probably be like Giambi/Vlad/Matsui/Thome signing a series of 1 year contracts until the leagues done with him.

I would also like him on a 2 year deal, but I doubt that Scott and Carlos share my sentiment.

He re-upped for 1 year with Boston last week. Similarly, what ever happened with Andrew Brackman? To answer my question MLBTR says he's close to signing a major league deal with the Reds.

Fielders defense is certainly suspect, but in his off seasons, he's hit over 30 HR and OPSd in the .870s and in his on season his OPSd in the 1.000 neighborhood. If there's someone soon to be availble through FA or a trade that we could make given what we have to offer, I'd very much like to know who it is. Hint: nobody who has been mentioned so far in this thread is it.

My guess is that one of Soto or Castillo are the starter and Clevenger is the backup. Either Soto or Castillo are traded or Castillo starts in Iowa.

If nothing else, he can help us bring in the redneck market that the White Sox, Cardinals, and Brewers have cornered for so many years.

It is when your stated goal is to acquire assets. In trades you relinquish assets, and presumably your younger, more valuable to the long-term stability of the franchise ones, at that. Correct. I we want to acquire someone like Danks, Shields, Gio, etc. it will be very costly, and yes it improves the current team, but you've weakened the farm system.You can then hit the international FA market and draft more guys, but then you're back to the craps table. Baseballs most successful teams in recent years have been the Yankees, Red Sox, Philies, and Rangers who have built with the combination of free agents, trades and the farm system.

Racist or not, Scott hits lefties to the tune of .268/.357/.501/.858 and Soriano righties at .286/.349/.533/.883 and so between them both, you see they licked the platter clean.

This team isn't going to contend until they add several impact players. But the thing is, none of them has to be a 1B. There are openings all over the field, and there's flexibility to move a guy like Castro or Soto to a different position if push comes to shove. I could live with a guy like Fielder as the final piece to the puzzle. I hate him as the first piece to the puzzle, because the risk is too great that he begins to decline before the other pieces are in place. I just don't see his productive window as being very long, despite his age. I know this is not the consensus view. But who are these impact players, where do they come from, and how do we get them? Kemp's off the market. I can't think of any other impact players hitting the market in the next few years.

If we don't plan on signing Fielder or making any big moves, but want to build for the next 2-4 years, Alonso gives us our answer at 1B. Leake is a 24 year old potentially front end starter As far as I'm concerned, they can keep Heisey who strikes me as a younger Ryan Spillborghs and send us another of their top 10 prospects and I'd be all for it. We could then maybe turn around and trade Soto and a few smaller pieces to TB for Davis or Niemann.

My question to the anti-Fielder faction: If we don't get Fielder and end up with someone like Daric Barton, what is your realistic prediction for this team contending again? Even if Smoak becomes available due to ther Mariners signing Fielder, he's still a high ceiling 25 year old so they won't just send him our way for cheap, and The Marlins have said they don't want to move LoMo and if they do they'll get better offers than what we have. Even with Carlos Lee and his history of mashing at Wrigley how much salary would we expect to Astros to eat and what would we give up in return for 1 year of his services? Some people seem to have this idea that Epstein will be able to build a winner without any big spending, and with Boston, with the 1st WS he already had a strong core and for the 2nd he did what he did with big spending, big trades, and a very strong farm system. Even with David Ortiz, he was coming off a .272/.339/.500 season when The Red Sox got him so we can't exactly equate that to Ian Stewart or Daric Barton. The Red Sox have been very good for a long time. Since 1995, they've finished below .500 once. Jim Hendry knew how to build a contender. Trouble was, he wan't able to keep the team a contender. This is what Theo was hired to do, and I look forword to the ride, but to anyone who wanted a GM with a history of turning a small market team into a perenial winner, Friedman was the guy.