Clem Fandango

I half expect that, too... what's throwing me off is the (seemingly) legit Cubs news website and the lengthy report he put out breaking the news of the call ups. If he's trolling, he's trolling hard.

Did anyone anticipate his power coming so soon? I kind of expected him to top out at 15 homers when he was brought up in a best case scenario, due to age and learning curve against major league pitching. If he's already a 30HR guy at age 20...

It's probably just Magic Johnson and Manute Bol's corpse

ESPN did a Sports Science piece on Trout's jumping catch against J.J. Hardy http://espn.go.com/losangeles/video/clip?id=8232353

This is pretty damn cool... http://mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=23582611&topic_id=10025018&c_id=mlb

Of all the mid-to-upper-tier FA pitchers out there, I think McCarthy would be the best target. I like him a lot. Edwin Jackson is also out there after this season

Didn't know where else to ask this, but out of curiosity, is there a place that shows/does anyone know how many of Brett Jackson's strikeouts have been called strikes vs. swinging strikes? And/or how many of them have come in a full count?

Dodgers won the claim on Cliff Lee.

To be fair, according to a Flip Flop Flyball infographic, Dodger Blue and "Cubbie" Blue are the same exact colors.

Justin Upton Career Splits: Home: .302/.388/.538/.926 Away: .251/.327/.412/.739 Justin Upton is a product of his own ballpark and not nearly as great of an all around hitter as everyone seems to think he is. And he's owed $38.5 million over the next 3 seasons. And he's being out produced by Castro this season... Castro: 119 H, 13 2B, 8 3B, 11 HR, 52 RBI, 16 SB, 16 BB, .285/.311/.433/.744 Upton: 94 H, 14 2B, 3 3B, 8 HR, 44 RBI, 12 SB, 44 BB, .269/.357/.394/.751 Upton's ability to draw walks has been his only advantage over Castro this season at the plate. In everything else Castro has outperformed Upton considerably. Don't get me wrong, I think Upton has a lot of potential and he'd be a great player to have, but to think he's more valuable than Castro at this point is ridiculous. Oh and Castro plays shortstop, and he's shown he can play it well this season, which is kind of [expletive] important. Stephen Drew has a career OPS+ of 96, is injury prone, and would cost $10 million for one more season (mutual option, so it's not even guaranteed he'd stay) at the age of 30. He has put up a total of 11.1 fWAR since 2006 (5 1/2 years), including a whopping 1.4 since the start of 2011. And you want that to replace a 22 year old shortstop who has put up an 8.1 fWAR since 2010 (2 1/2 years) who makes league minimum and is under control for 4 more arbitration years? And that 8.1 is probably going to be closer to 9.0 by the time the year is over if Castro continues to perform the way he has. And Drew's 11.1 is inflated by one year where he had a 5.1 fWAR. Besides 2010 he's averaged 1.14 fWAR a season to this point. I know you said we'd also get one of Bauer/Skaggs/Bradley and also Corbin/Chafin, but we'd also be dealing Garza along with Castro AS WELL AS some of our prospects, no matter how small they may be. You have seriously misplaced values on these players by a wide margin. Castro is one of the most valuable commodities in the entire game and you're talking about as long as we have Upton (who Castro has been better than) it's okay to trot crap like Drew and a motley crew of prospects out there in the meantime? Okay.

THAT'S WHERE YOU SHOULD'VE STOPPED TALKING AND REALIZED THE ERROR OF YOUR WAYS

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqdjp6iojj1qf8bg2o1_250.gif

I mean, obviously at this stage Trout. You can still make a case for Harper, but honestly Trout is so damn good right now it's hard not to choose him over Harper.

You can't oust a guy like Matt Kata, man. He's too important to that AAA team

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/27548/julys-best-defenders-barney-tex-reddick

Acquire high priced veterans, trade veterans along with large portion of contract using money you can afford to spend, acquire high quality prospects in return. New Market Inefficiency and [expletive]

I actually think I saw a player recently who switched leagues who hit a home run and the broadcast it was on ignored the new league stats and just basically carried over his stats from the NL. Escapes me who it was though... I wanna say Ryan Roberts but I'm not sure if that's accurate.

Wil Myers might be ready for big league action, but the Royals aren't winning anything this year and he's still only 21. Waiting it out to gain an extra year of control while giving him a full year at AAA won't hurt them by any means. Also, if we're gonna talk about dumb GM's... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Littlefield

IIRC, he also asked to be traded a couple years back after they acquired Beltre and they wanted to move him to DH, so I'm sure leaving Texas will not be a problem for him if they're relegating him to a bench role

How high up are we on the waiver wire? Would there be a chance he falls to us? No idea. Was talking about an off-season trade. Ahh, gotcha.

How high up are we on the waiver wire? Would there be a chance he falls to us?

Where else would he go? Whenever Michael Young isn't playing DH, Napoli or Cruz are because Napoli can't hack it behind the plate all the time and Cruz is made of glass. Theo nly place he might go is 1B to replace Moreland. He doesn't have tremendous numbers, but he's not doing terrible by any stretch. Same with Murphy in LF. Unless they just plan to outright bench Young? That's an expensive pinch hitter.

Kind of confusing. I would have to imagine they might DFA Young and put him at DH? Or would they move Moreland off 1B?

Garza + Jackson for Ellsbury? Too much? Not enough?

He also just took over full time at 3B with the Chris Johnson move, for the time being.