davearm2

I wonder if SD would do this deal: Rizzo + Hudson for Marmol + Barney + $2million (2012) + $4million (2013). Obviously SD would flip Marmol asap for prospects while getting younger and cheaper at 2B. Cubs would have a $5.5 million committment to Hudson in 2012 and a $2 million buyout in 2013. Or just leave Marmol and the cash out of it. SD's price for replacing an old, expensive 2B with a younger, cheaper one is Rizzo.

Nobody is an ideal use of resources. Or maybe better said, the Cubs have a lot of resources and very little in the way of ideal targets to spend those resources on. Right. What I was going to say is, the Cubs' ideal use of (monetary) resources just got torpedoed by the new CBA. This would be finding another, albeit less efficient, way to turn cash into prospects.

Saving money isn't the Cubs' motivation here.

I can't see anyone complaining about those dice being rolled in Iowa.

i was reading the twitter quotes from theo about t. wood's cost-controlled years and torreyes having an advanced contact tool playing as a teenager in full-season ball and thinking "boy jim hendry really wouldn't have said stuff like this" i will also add that hendry never, ever would have made this trade. marshall is a good player and hendry never grasped the concept of selling high or acquiring young, cost-controlled assets for an asset that is very good but about to become expensive. Two things: Hendry never had the job security to make a "rebuilding" trade like this. (Granted, he may not have done so even if he could.) Advanced contact tools and teenagers in full-season ball are exactly the kinds of things scouts like Hendry talk about.

Hendry deserves bonus points for allowing the next GM to plot the team's course.

They almost certainly wouldn't accept that, but they might accept a 6-7 year deal written so Fielder could opt out after year 3 or 4. 6-7 year deal with an opt out after 3-4 years sounds great if we can backload it. $18m., $20m., $22m., $24m., $26m., $28m., $30m with opt out after 3 years. If your objective is to encourage Fielder to opt out, you don't backload it, you frontload it.

No worries, I'm happy to help :good:

You said intentionally tanking the season. As though the braintrust sat around a conference table and brainstormed ways to make the team as awful as possible. What they're doing is building for the present and the future, with the priority on the future when both objectives are mutually exclusive. Enough with the "they can do both" schtick. They are doing both, except in cases where it's one or the other.

What's even more ridiculous is the notion that they're intentionally tanking the season.

:good: Eyes on the prize people. If promoting the long-term dominance we all want means trading guys like Marshall and taking a step back in 2012, so be it. Scraping together 84 wins and hoping it's enough in a weak division is not what Theo and co. were brought here to do. They can and should do both. If there's a win-win deal out there, I'm sure they'll jump all over it.

Since we don't plan to contend for a couple of years, we have a couple meaningless seasons where we can shop Soriano at the trade deadline and hope some desperate team bites. It's not very likely, but since we're not trying to win I'd rather just hold onto him and see if somebody gets desperate or see if he has a big half season. The competing interest is finding regular playing time for guys like Brett Jackson and Sappelt. Personally, I'm not ready to slap the "4th OF" tag on Sappelt, so I'd like to see both Jackson and Sappelt starting in the OF sooner rather than later. That leaves DeJesus as the third regular OF, and a part-time (at best) role for Soriano. At that point, you kinda have to find a way to deal him.

So you agree then. Cool.

Obviously. They're already building for the next good team. Holding onto the guys I mentioned isn't advancing the process whatsoever, though. I'd rather see them traded versus just letting their contracts run out.

:good: Eyes on the prize people. If promoting the long-term dominance we all want means trading guys like Marshall and taking a step back in 2012, so be it. Scraping together 84 wins and hoping it's enough in a weak division is not what Theo and co. were brought here to do.

This is where I am, too. 2008 is long gone. The window of opportunity has slammed shut on the core of Lee, Ramirez, Soriano, Fukudome, Zambrano, Harden, Dempster, Marmol, etc. Half of those guys are already gone. The other half need to go too. None will be significant contributors on the next great Cub team.

Seriously. It's like the perfect storm of everything folks want the GM to do: * sell high on guys coming off of career years * capitalize on the over-valuing of relievers * get better value than what's available by offering the player arb (which is now nothing, if I understand the new CBA correctly) * roll the dice on young guys that have shown success but have taken a step back etc. etc. And that's not even considering the unknown prospects.

They'll look at and disregard. You honestly think an arbitration award has ever taken FIP into account? Why wouldn't an arbiter consider advanced metrics? Because the people hearing the cases aren't advanced baseball minds? You understand how this works, right? The team submits an arbitration number, and then presents evidence to support how/why their number is in line with the precedent for comparable arb-eligible players. The player and his agent do the same to state their case. The arbitrator then picks whichever number he feels is fairest, based on the evidence presented to him by both sides. Do you think Theo Epstein shows up at arbitration hearings and argues player value using pitching wins and losses, or runs batted in? Or do you think he argues the team's position using advanced metrics?

Joe Saunders: 4.78 FIP 2011, 4.65 career Travis Wood: 4.01 FIP in 2011, 3.75 career I was looking at standard ERA, the same way an arbiter would. An arbiter looks at whatever evidence is presented to him. They'll look at and disregard. You honestly think an arbitration award has ever taken FIP into account? Why wouldn't an arbiter consider advanced metrics?

Joe Saunders: 4.78 FIP 2011, 4.65 career Travis Wood: 4.01 FIP in 2011, 3.75 career I was looking at standard ERA, the same way an arbiter would. An arbiter looks at whatever evidence is presented to him.

We won't be ready to win in time to get enough value out of that contract. The outlook clearly looks bleak now, but do really think that Epstein and Hoyer came here to keep the team looking like it does not for the next 3 years? It was a joke, based on all the nonsensical ramblings of imaginary people in my head who don't want to acquire players who cost money. fixed

You are using those words in a different context than pretty much everyone else. What term would you choose for a player that's making more money than his production is worth? I'd say "liability" conveys the concept kinda perfectly. It's just semantics, though.

Given how bad he's likely to be if he doesn't get insanely lucky again, he would be a bad pickup for a team hoping to contend. There are better options than Reed no matter what situation your team is in. Yeah, I'm not onboard with the notion that Reed Johnson does not deserve a bigleague job at all. His value is limited to be sure, but he can fill a useful role, and do a decent job at it. Having said all that, going with a younger guy with more upside and long-term potential (even if a tiny amount) would have been my preference. Maybe a guy like Lastings Milledge, before he headed for Japan.

With the right moves I fully believe they could have had a shot at contending in a weak division in 2012. If nothing else, they could have set themselves up to be the favorites in 2013. Now, it's going to take some really good moves to simply have a shot to contend in 2013, and that's if the Brewers, Cardinals, and Reds don't make substantial improvements in the next year. We've had this Prince/Pujols discussion more than a couple times and I'd guess you're aware that I believe a drop off the cliff isn't likely for either Prince or Pujols in the next year or two. I think you can still get 4-5 highly productive years out of both. That's plenty of time to bring in either, sign Darvish or a FA next year, and be the favorites in 2013 with a chance to contend this year. If you have the budgetary room for Soler and Cespedes, even better. In that scenario, you've added as few as 2 and as many as 4 long term assets and should still have the baseball budget (if it's holding steady) to spend as needed in the draft and IFA to restock the minors. If the money's not there for all of that, then a full rebuild is more understandable. But if the funds are there, then punting the next couple of years is completely unnecessary. We'll simply have to agree to disagree about the Cubs' prospects in 2012. I would have been happy going after Darvish. I hope they do go after the Cubans. And of course I hope they are as aggressive spending money on the draft as the new CBA allows. You characterized Prince and Pujols as long term assets. I disagree. I would characterize them as short term assets, and long term liabilities. I think everyone agrees, somewhere down the road, they will cost you more than their production is worth. That's a liability, not an asset. Given that the Cubs (IMO) are not well-positioned to capitalize on the remaining years of elite production, taking on the long-term liability seems foolish to me.

So let's not try and improve the major league roster, let's try to improve the low minors. Your snide comment might actually have a thread of truth to it if the Cubs had actually done anything to improve the low minors. As it is, they replaced Ramirez with Stewart, and Marshall with Wood. Those new guys are major leaguers, FYI. See the point of a rebuild is to let go of the guys that won't be around by the time you're good again, and replace them with younger guys that can potentially be regular contributors, and help make you good again. Did I strike a nerve? You are correct those players are major leaguers but are hardly improvements to the major league roster. You seem to be very pro internal build through the minors until the Cubs are ready to win. I'm pretty sure that you grasp that building through the system is exactly what I referenced, improving the low minors. You don't seem to grasp that the Cubs aren't the Pirates they have sufficient revenues to compete most years. They should never have to throw away one, let alone two or three years in order to be good. It's not an unwillingness to spend money that's preventing the Cubs from competing this year.