davearm2

In the article I read, there were some pretty definitive quotes from Crane Kenney to suggest the ISFA proposal has been rejected. For all intents and purposes, Kenney is the proverbial horse's mouth on these matters.

It makes financing for potential new owners a bit more of a hassle, but every potential bidder has already assessed the value of this team with and without Wrigley included in the price. This shouldn't change a whole lot unless some bidders out there were banking on the team being sold without Wrigley. If that's the case, those bidders will quietly drop out. Hard to imagine this being true, given that the Cubs have yet to release their financial portfolio to the approved bidders.

What's Pie hitting again? This whole "Pie just needs at-bats" war cry is beginning to sound suspiciously like, "but we'll make it up in volume".

The argument is that Felix has consistenly shown he needs 1-2 months to adjust to each new level and then starts hitting. He's not being given an opportunity to make the necessary adjustments and if you look at the ABs he's had the last 2-3 weeks, his OBP and avg. have been far better than they were in the first 3 weeks. You know this is a really common theme around here, how Pie has been so improved of late, and statistically there's some merit to it. But while hitting 143/200/143 through April 21st, Pie had a very unlucky BABIP of .235. While hitting 286/350/400 since then, he's had a very lucky BABIP of .391. There's much more going on here than simply saying, Pie's been far better in the last 2-3 weeks. Something on the order of half of the improvement he's shown is attributable to luck. Take two singles away to the latter statline to neutralize the luck factor, and you've got 229/300/343 on a .304 BABIP. That's still an improvement, yet still terrible.

Theriot stunk last year but kept his job with no threat of losing it to a younger more talented player. Reed Johnson has been allowed to fail repeatedly against RHP without a legit threat of Pie getting more time. Jason Marquis has been allowed to fail repeatedly, same with Howry and Eyre. And Jason Kendall was abysmal for months until the odd practice of September callups actually forced them to even think about replacing him. The fact that they are even considering Edmonds is more evidence that bad veterans are given priority over kids who need to produce. I cannot think of a better time to live through the struggles of a young kid than when you are scoring lots of runs and winning games, getting production from everybody else. Add in the fact that the kid plays better defense than any other option and will produce similar numbers against RHP than any reasonable replacement and you have a perfect situation for living with the struggles. I don't disagree with the second paragraph there. What I disagree with is the notion that once he's signed, the Cubs will be stuck with Edmonds for the duration. That's just not true and ignores many examples that show otherwise. Lou's not just going to sit on his hands for 400 ABs of 240/300/350 from Edmonds, or anyone else -- including Pie, obviously. Your argument seems to be that Lou should, in fact, tolerate 400 ABs of 240/300/350 from Pie. Well it's not gonna happen.

Terrific analysis Rob.

You act as if this team can't win with Felix. That's nonsense. The Cubs offense has been perfectly fine while getting nothing from CF against RHP. Clearly they can succeed with Pie in CF against RHP. Edmonds doesn't even offer an upgrade in that regard. Early in a season when you are scoring lots of runs and winning lots of games is the absolute easiest time to try and let a kid develop on a contender. This isn't low risk. The risk is that Edmonds hits in the 5th spot, keeps sucking, but keeps playing because the Cubs are absolute failures at realizing when a veteran is done. Jason Kendall kept blowing chunks for months while Soto was destroying the ball, yet the Cubs did nothing. This move could easily cost a game, not to mention delays Pie's development and reduce his trade value. There's no rational support for this move, only nonsensical "proven veteran" conventional wisdom BS. This is really quite misguided. In just one year with Lou at the helm, the number of underperforming veteran bats that have been launched is already pretty long: Barrett Izturis Craig Monroe Jacque Jones Floyd (more injury than performance) Bowen I put Kendall in this category too. He arrived in July, and by September he was already sharing time with Soto (Soto had 11 starts in Sept, Kendall 17; PAs were split 52 to 70). He lasted the year but there was no thought of re-signing him. That's hardly "doing nothing". I bet you'd have a real hard time finding other teams in the league that cycled through that number of veteran hitters in just one season. There would certainly be a few, but only a few. If Edmonds doesn't produce, then he'll get the boot too. Lou's been very consistent about that, with both the young guys and the old guys.

I'm hearing he'd LOVE to come here and maybe try to stick it to the Cardinals. How tragically ironic, then, that his playing here would probably do more to help the Cardinals than hurt them.

It's not a joke though to the best of my knowledge... So homophobia's cool then, just so long as the target actually is a [expletive]? I must have missed the offensive joke. I don't personally have any problem with homosexuality. Well when you earlier said "It's not a joke though to the best of my knowledge", what exactly is "it" that isn't a joke to the best of your knowledge? Given the context, it sure sounded as though you were suggesting that the lame gay jokes that Derwood was originally commenting about are OK, since Edmonds actually is gay. If that interpretation is incorrect, then I apologize. Regardless of Edmonds' actual orientation, however, the gay jokes are still lame and offensive.

It's not a joke though to the best of my knowledge... So homophobia's cool then, just so long as the target actually is a homosexual?

I think it's pretty reasonable to ding Cuban and the Mavs for their long-term vs. short-term decisionmaking in light of the Jason Kidd trade. That'd be the equivalent of the Cubs trading Rich Hill and prospects for someone like Randy Johnson. Hill is already significantly better than Johnson at this point. I'm not very familiar with the Kidd trade, but I have a hard time believing it would be as bad as Hill and prospects for Johnson. The Mavs trade was essentially Devin Harris and two #1 picks for Kidd. It was a high-risk, "win now" deal that so far has turned out very poorly for Dallas, and leaves them with 1 more year of a former allstar (Kidd) instead of 4 years of a possible future allstar (Harris), plus the draft picks. Find some other names to plug into a Cubs scenario if you don't like Hill and prospects for Randy Johnson. Maybe the same deal for, say, the 2004 or 2005 vintage Randy Johnson works better. At that time Johnson was still pitching at an elite level, but was clearly on the downside. That's basically Kidd now.

In the last 15 years, Loria has more World Series titles than any other owner besides Steinbrenner. Wrong. Loria has owned the Marlins since 2002. Prior to that, he owned the Expos for 2 years, in 2000 and 2001. So in 8 years of owning MLB teams, Loria sports a 620-676 record, 1 playoff appearance, and 1 WS title. Not a very difficult resume to top at all.

I think it's pretty reasonable to ding Cuban and the Mavs for their long-term vs. short-term decisionmaking in light of the Jason Kidd trade. That'd be the equivalent of the Cubs trading Rich Hill and prospects for someone like Randy Johnson.

Let me preface this by saying that I think Cuban would be a great choice. However, defending his ability to run a business really doesn't do much to further his cause to non-believers, especially in the Cubs case. The man is going to make an obscene amount of money with the Cubs no matter what he does; the question is, is he going to run his business like Jeffrey Loria or like Steinbrenner? And by like Jeffrey Loria, I would mean keep the payroll the same and not drastically change the team. Loria makes a ton of money by selling his young players high at the cost of the team's (continued) success. My finance major friend says he's the best owner in baseball because of his business savvy. I think he's an a-hole. There could be any number of different ways to define the best owner in baseball, and profitability is certainly one. Most fans would use some variation of wins and losses/playoff appearances/world series titles as the yardstick. The Marlins don't measure up too well on that scale, even after having won the WS in each of their two playoff seasons. Regardless, it's pretty hard to make a case for a guy being the best owner in baseball when his team is perennially at or near the bottom of the league in attendance (MLB ranks since 2001: 29th, 29th, 28th, 26th, 28th, 30th, 30th, 30th so far in '08).

They're not above making bad trades like everyone else though. See: Julio Lugo and Coco Crisp. I supposed the Crisp deal wasn't horrible at the time, but I'm sure they'd love to take both of those back now. They didn't acquire Lugo via trade, they just signed him as a free agent. I doubt the Red Sox are longing for Andy Marte, the main guy they sent CLE for Crisp.

I thought the BBTN guys were saying the Sox have someone coming off the DL in the next day or two, and Lowrie is expected to go back down to make room.

They did, in 2001.

That would be the worst defensive outfield baseball has ever seen! Fukudome and Soriano would be above average IMO Heading into the season anyway many folks viewed Soriano - Pie - Fukudome as one of the top few defensive OFs in baseball -- perhaps the best even. So it's pretty interesting that you could take one guy out and shuffle the other two around, and come out with the worst defensive outfield baseball has ever seen.

Veal's still walking over 5 guys per 9 IP (17 in 29.2, to be precise). That doesn't translate to "back on track" to very many folks.

Fixed. Lou and Gerald have been working with Pie on his swing since the day each was hired.

Curious why folks think Hendry would want Jones back, after the yearlong headache Jim had trying to unload the guy. Jones seems like a guy that has achieved ex-Cub for life status, along with guys like Hawkins, Patterson, Walker, Ohman, Barrett, etc.

Not necessarily. It's only +EV if the gain from a successful H&R outweigh the loss from a failure. The loss of a baserunner and the addition of an out is a lot worse for the offense than the gain from an extra base advanced on a hit to the outfield. Fair enough. I was trying to keep it simple.

The problem comes when you swing at Ball 4 and the runner is thrown out at 2B. Or you ground into a double play. Or hit the ball in the air and get the runner doubled off 1st. There's way, way, way too much risk involved in the hit & run for justifying its use on anything remotely resembling a regular basis. Well first you have to trust your hitters not to be swinging at ball 4. Next you have to trust your baserunners to have enough awareness to see the ball hit in the air and return to his base. And finally, the hit and run is to stay out of the groundball DP. Hit-and-runs backfire because the pitch is swung on and missed, or because the ball is hit on a line to an infielder. Hit-and-runs are advantageous on a groundball, or any kind of hit to the OF. If the odds for the latter are better than the odds of the former, then you've got a positive EV.

I love the hit-and-run call on a full count. You don't force your hitter to swing at a strike he'd otherwise let go, and obviously if the pitch is a ball, then you're fine. Just because a strategy backfires doesn't automatically make it wrong. Even good decisions can turn out poorly.

Burnett's definitely a guy to keep an eye on, but you're still going to offer Toronto enough to make them pass up the high draft pick(s) they'd get if they keep him. (Not to mention, before the discussion can even get off the ground, Toronto has to fall out of the race.)