Little Slide Rooter

Probably because: - he's a OF who can play all three spots (but isn't the best CF out there) - who doesn't have much power - around the same age - offensive value is heavily tied to batting average i don't know., the disparity between the walk rate of the 2 players just makes it hard for me to consider them alike. Judging by the walk rate, power, and left handedness seems more like Kosuke than Byrd.

I was thinking that as well. Weren't the Angels said to be interested in Soto recently?

Good article. As has been discussed, he is similar to Byrd, but Byrd is RH. Any way they eventually become the platoon? Byrd is a .781 OPS vs. LHP and a .750 OPS vs. RHP. How eventually can it be? Byrd will be gone sometime between tomorrow and next October. Besides, I already read on a Bruce Miles tweet that he'll be the starting RF and specifically not a platoon player.

holy mother of frack.... A professional athlete with a hot wife? You don't see much of that. For some reason, Anna Benson is my default association with that. I forgot about her. I guess she faded away with her husband.

holy mother of frack.... A professional athlete with a hot wife? You don't see much of that.

DeJesus is hardly the type of player you trade away your top prospect to make room for.

It definitely gives me hope that better things are on the horizon. Team Epsteins game plan has been to acquire young players who can help us win now, but mostly for the future. DeJesus doesn't exactly fit that mold especially on a 2 year deal.

Because Hendry would have given him 3/35 with a 15 mil player option and full NTC. I'm of course being facetious. Mostly.

Not a fan. Nothing against DeJesus who's basically Jacksons floor but even if we do move Byrd or Soriano it probably means either Jackson's blocked or we're out of the Cespedes sweepstakes.

So add Pujols, Johnson, Headley, Cespedes, Hamels, Darvish and Gio Gonzalez? That's madness. A ton of money and a ton of prospects. Also in that scenario you'd have to at least partially take into account the money the Cubs would be eating on Z and Soriano. I think Theo will try and position the Cubs to compete in 2012, but not go balls-out crazy trying to win the WS next year, especially not a the expense of half of our top 15. I think 2-3 of Pujols/Fielder, Cespedes, Darvish and Stewart/Headley would be the outer limit of what we could reasonably expect for this offseason. I think you're being a bit ambitious there. The package for Headley doesn't seem unreasonable. However, if they want Rhee they can just pluck him in the Rule 5 so we might have to give them something else. As for Gio, it would be a great rotation and all, but assuming we signed Hamels(or Cain) and Darvish and added them to Garza with that lineup we'd be good enough to save the rest of the prospects and the back of the rotation could be between McNutt, Cashner, Wells, Samardzjia, Struck etc.(might need Cashner as the closer if Marmol's traded) Also, I don't know how much we'd need to spend on Kelly Johnson. With what you've proposed a lineup of 1. Jackson CF 2. Castro SS 3. Ethier LF 4. Pujols 1B 5. Cespedes RF 6. Headley 3B 7. Geo C 8. Barney/Baker/LeMahieu/Watkins/cheap gritty white guy 2B would more than suffice.

I think that the other player would have to be someone like B. Jax, Szczur, or McNutt. The Reds likely wouldn't want to send him to us, but they say they want a front end starter, and of the teams with front end starters for sale (A's, Rays, White Sox if you conider Danks front end) The Cubs are the best fit because we're the only one who can afford to extend Votto and I doubt that The Rays or A's would deal Shields, Gio,or Cahill for a 1 year rental and The Sox don't have room for him unless they can find a way to move Dunn or Konerko. Then again, there's the possibility of the Giants sending them Cain.

Yes, they are different situation, but Fielder/Pujols are much better than anything the Cubs added that year. And while you did have core hitters to build around, you also had black holes at SS and CF to worry about. Those Cubs didn't have anybody like Starlin Castro on the squad poised for a breakout. And it's not like that 2007 squad was all that special. They still ended up no better than average at best on offense, being weighted down by a lack of power and patience (they ranked 15th in walks and 11th in HR, and were 8th in OPS). I don't think it will be hard for the Cubs to construct an average lineup, or better, following the addition of a stud 1B. The '07 team wasn't all that special but with or without Fielder or Pujols, there's nothing we have right now that would be as good as what we had then. I believe it was something like Soriano, DeRosa, Lee, Ram, Jones as the 1-5. With what we have now built around F/P they probably wouldnt be pitched too all that often. Castro is likely the 2 hitter and even if we also got Cespedes there's no reason to believe he can step in and immediately be a heart of the lineup bat.

Dont take this as me being against signing Fielder/Pujols, because I'm not. However, a lot of people seem to be equating the potential of this offseason making the same kind of difference as the '06-'07 offseason did, because it is a very different situation. Soriano, DeRosa, and Lilly were great additions at the time, but remember, in addition we had the return of Derrek Lee and we already had Aramis, and Jacque Jones was a very solid bat as well. so we were essentially adding 2 potent bats to what was a ready made lineup with existing 3-4 hitters. Even if we did sign Pujols or Fielder and Cespedes, we woultn't be adding them to the core that we had then, they'd be the key guys and we'd need to build around them, so this being said, while I think that we could be dark horses if everyone was healthy and we had some rebounds from key players, I think it would still be at least 2013 before we could get back to where we were then and that's assuming we could add 1 front end starter and 1 mid rotation starter to replace Z and Demp and keep Garza.

But now who's going to do whatever it was that he did?

Interesting insight and certainly the first list I've seen with Austin Kirk in the top 10. Also, interesting that Lake doesn't even crack the top 15.

but he eats babies.

unfortunately, levine is still a moron. i have no idea why i am reading this. Bryce Harper hasn't contributed to the major league team yet. Maybe we can get him for Marmol.

If the Cubs are able to sign Fielder/Pujols, I fully agree. If they missed on both, I wouldn't mind taking that chance near as much. Granted the WS most likely wouldn't, but from a Cubs perspective, Dunn is much more likely to rebound into usefulness than Soriano. Except that right now, Soriano is far more useful than Dunn. He has some value, whereas Dunn just had one of the worst years of any regular in the history of the game. Where he goes from here is hard to predict, but he has a long way to go. Soriano is pretty much what he's going to be and will only decline if anything. If he can keep up what he did in 2010-2011, he'll be useful especially to an AL team as a DH who can play some OF and a lefty killer. As for Dunn, he's younger and can offer a much greater reward with a full rebound, however if 2011 was in fact what we have to look forword to with him, he's absolutely worthless. A lot of people are saying that his best chance is going back to playing (poor) defense. To sum it up, Dunns more likely to rebound and his rebound can offer a better reward, but if both players are what they are, then you're better off with Soriano. It's a roll of the dice.

Pretty much what he is, but he was billed as something more so we may as well see what he can do.

Bernstein seems to forget that Theo did sign high-priced free agents in Boston too. Seems he's another of those guys that thinks Hendry was always signing the best free agents on the market. Or that Soriano and Pujols are comparable players, somehow. Or that signing free agents to the major league team was somehow going to keep them from building a productive farm system. He just wants to preemptively tell everybody why he wasn't wrong now. I guarantee he'll bring it up today and mockingly talk about listeners emailing or texting "See Bernstein, they ARE going after Pujols and Fielder...You were WRONG..." Bernstein seems to think that The Cubs rebuild should be comparable to that of small market teams. I like him, but he just doesn't seem to get that teams like the Cubs, Red Sox, and Yankees are going to operate differently from the Royals, Rays, and Astros. If the persuit is serious, I'm very confident that we'll end up landing one of them. However, The Nationals seem to be becoming a force to be reckoned with and they are reportedly very interested in Fielder as well.

I'd take Figgins, Wells or Zito. They'd be the best matches. Zito and Wells are most similar contract wise. However, I dont knopw if the Angels would do it for Wells as he is still a better fielder and hitter and when the Giants traded Sanchez I think they pretty much ensured Zito a rotation spot. Figgins would be an interesting thought and another one I'd love to do is Adam Dunn, but we might end up having to eat all of Sorianos salary and some of Dunns for that to happen.

If we could get a decent prospect package, I'd be willing to eat a huge chunk of the salary. However, I don't know how much other teams are going to give up for a declining 35 year old. He still has those hot streaks in which he can carry a team, but their becoming shorter and less frequent. I'd be surprised if we could get a package any better than what we got for Sosa even though Sosa only had one year on his contract at the time.

Yeah, that is the general consensus on those 2. However, one possibility is that the Red Sox and Padres compensations could be that after the Rule 5, they'll get their picks of those who were Rule 5 eiligible but not picked, say the Red Sox get 3 and Pads get 2 and they alternate chosing in which case Rhee and Antigua are sitting ducks,

At this point, I have Ian Stewart in the same boat as guys like Brandon Wood and Josh Fields. I wouldn't go out of the way to acquire them, but if they were available for next to nothing, sure why not. I'd be interested to see what if anything Rudy J could do with some of these one time top prospects.

I would do the Detroit deal for Porcello and Turner without thinking twice. Me too, but I really don't see them giving us a 20 year old top 25 prospect and 22 year old middle of the rotation guy who still has room for improvement just for Garza. Remember the 1-4 in their rotation for the next 3 years at least is Verlander, Scherzer, Fister, and Porcello so they're not exactly starving for pitching.