Clem Fandango

In the Cubs organization? I think he's traded to an A.L. team, possibly this offseason, in a package for pitching. I'd still like to keep him around though and see him progress more. Here's a question... if Vogelbach was on an A.L. team does his ranking on lists adjust higher given his ability to D.H. full time in the future?

Man the ball makes a nice sound coming off his bat.

Just came to post this as well. It will be interesting to hear his reasons. Probably related to the fact that he is 68 years old. Which is still like 10 years younger than I expected him to be when I read that. I thought he was in his mid-late 50's when he was managing the Pirates.

Soooooooooooooooooooooooo...

I like Straily but I don't see them moving him given his team control and low cost

No thanks to Cespedes, yes please to Reddick.

Given his propensity for injury I'd imagine he'd come relatively cheap, and while he's a pretty good starter when healthy he has too much trouble staying that way, so he could probably be a fairly useful bullpen arm to limit his injuries... though $8 million for a bullpen arm is a tough pill to swallow, and I don't see Beane eating salary in a trade.

Pedro railed on the Dodgers last night for how they handled Kershaw this postseason, saying that we shouldn't be surprised to see him with arm problems next season. How many reminders of Wood and Prior are allowed in one week? He's not wrong, they rode the [expletive] out of him this offseason I don't see anything different from the last couple seasons. He threw 41 less pitches than he did the last two and 38 more than 2010. 104 pitches per game this year after 105, 105 and 106 the last three years. The only difference is the four postseason starts. I was super drunk last night, meant to type postseason not offseason. Starting him on 3 days rest with a 2-1 lead in a series just so they can close out the series victory at home is bad form. If they want to use him because he's capable of shutting down the opposing team to ensure the best chance for a victory, they should have confidence he can do it on the road if he absolutely has to... oh wait that's exactly what he did the first game of the series. They were going up against friggin' Freddy Garcia, they didn't need to throw Kershaw out there to close them out. And if they lost, it's not like he's gonna huff dong on the road when he completely stymied them earlier in the series. Throwing Kershaw out there on 3 days rest was a very self-centered thing for the Dodgers to do, epsecially considering he was coming off a game in which he threw 124 pitches.

Pedro railed on the Dodgers last night for how they handled Kershaw this postseason, saying that we shouldn't be surprised to see him with arm problems next season. How many reminders of Wood and Prior are allowed in one week? He's not wrong, they rode the [expletive] out of him this offseason

I'm hoping for a good bounce back year from Gioskar Amaya

I agree that Shark should be considered for an extension, but from all accounts it seems like he's not interested in signing an extension. I seem to recall the FO saying signing Samardzija to an extension this past offseason was a priority, but Samardzija wasn't interested. If that's the case, and he'd rather test free agency, then trading him while you can get the max return for him possible is not a bad idea. My understanding was that he wanted too many years and wouldn't back off of a NTC. That's possible, I wasn't too familiar with the details, just that they couldn't agree and as a result left his future with the club up in the air.

I agree that Shark should be considered for an extension, but from all accounts it seems like he's not interested in signing an extension. I seem to recall the FO saying signing Samardzija to an extension this past offseason was a priority, but Samardzija wasn't interested. If that's the case, and he'd rather test free agency, then trading him while you can get the max return for him possible is not a bad idea.

There's around 20 pitchers total in baseball that you can feel confident will start 20+ with an era around 3.00. And Shark isn't even one of them

I wouldn't mind targeting Jedd Gyorko, honestly.

If our infield suddenly went from Rizzo/Barney/Castro/Valbuena to Rizzo/Baez/Castro/Bryant, I wouldn't complain.

I like to think he has two other kids names Zel and Zevoe

Aramark ran the food at my college. They are horrendous.

http://i.imgur.com/vB9B5.jpg

My daughter was eight when I started the site. Now she's a college freshman. Heh... Mike Trout was still in Little League

Tom Ricketts = neely crenshaw

Short of trading them big league guys and eating their contracts, I don't see who they have in their system they can send for what Tampa would ask for Price

Starting this now even though it's not the offseason yet because I didn't want to create a separate thread for this Max Scherzer bit from Rotoworld... Obviously if someone trades for Scherzer the whole point would be to extend him. If the Cubs decided to target a big pitcher via trade, which one of Scherzer or Price would be a better fit/smarter option?

What the WHAT? http://www.bleachernation.com/2013/10/10/obsessive-new-manager-watch-moving-on-from-girardi-considering-martinez-not-considering-guillen/

Tom Tunney can go [expletive] his own face.

Nah, just a guy that has filled out finally and they probably want to test him to see if he can handle AA. Always considered raw, guess its possible he could find a utility role in the majors at some point. He was also the last minute replacement for Baez at SS. I guess they could have sent Hernandez instead, but he looked overmatched at Kane County. Logan Watkins seemed like the best candidate to replace Baez. Couldn't they have sent Alcantara? He seems like a logical choice for the league and a Baez replacement.