Clem Fandango

Padres need to move Kyle Blanks. Tigers don't really have a use for him with DH/1B locked up by Cabrera and V.Mart and LF is occupied by Delmon Young, though that's not saying much... but Blanks is inevitably going to be on the move and he provides a lot of intriguing offensive upside. I can't imagine a 3-way trade with these three teams involved without Blanks being involved. Padres have no reason to keep him on their roster with Quentin, Alonso, Guzman, and Rizzo on their roster at the moment

The thing about Rick Porcello is he was rushed extremely quick to the majors and while he's been in the majors for 3 years, he's still only 22 years old, I think there's a whole mess load of room for improvement with Porcello, but I wouldn't ever think of including him as the centerpiece of a deal for Garza

Further link... http://mlbbuzz.yardbarker.com/blog/mlbbuzz/marlins_interested_in_garza/9048817?new_post=true

I like Castro's potential, but yeah this isn't a whole lot for Quentin. Surely this signals the end of Kyle Blanks' tenure in San Diego

Disagree, keep until trade deadline, and hope he starts well and then trade for some pitching prospects. I think his value is not going to get any better than it is right now. He's getting old, there's no guarantee he'll be as good as he has been in the past this season, and the amount left on his contract is not burdensome enough that people aren't willing to take a chance on him. I think we can get more for him now than we can later. We'd have to hope there's a team in contention who desperately needs an outfielder at the deadline who would be willing to overpay then in order to get what we could probably get for him now a lot easier.

Well if we're gonna go down in flames I don't think I could be more happier with the pilot the Cubs have chosen to help right the ship. I shutter to think of what kind of firesale deals Hendry would have made.

Maybe they're retrofitting a "C" on all of his jerseys before making it official

How much injury risk is there to worry about with a backup outfielder? Oh no, we lost Reed Johnson with a tight hamstring, he'll not be able to not play for 7 days

He guaranteed that he was going to hit 30 home runs and he didn't! [expletive] HIM

They wouldn't move Myers for Gonzalez. I know Garza is the better pitcher, but if they wouldn't move him for Gio, they definitely wouldn't move him AND Moustakas for Garza. Vitters doesn't quite compare to Moustakas, that's a very one-sided proposal. While KC would make an ideal trade partner for us, I'm not so sure we'd be a fit from their perspective, as they likely know Garza would require a haul of players they likely aren't willing to give up. As much as they would probably like to have Garza on their team, they don't NEED Garza on their team. We need to find the team who has the need, and then pilfer them of their most prized possessions during their desperate attempt to win now. The Royals don't fit that mold, and they likely know it

This... unless Profar or Holland are involved, I don't want to deal with the Rangers. All the other guys they're rumored to be able to offer in a Garza trade make me wanna vomit. Harrison is the type of guy I would've expected to get back if they traded Marshall to the Rangers.

That's Cronos69, not Cronos006. We got the double agent, not the porn star.

I have to imagine if we'rei n rebuilding mode, some other 40-man guys are getting shipped off, or will try to be shipped off, i.e. Byrd, Soriano, Marmol, maybe Soto.

Really? As if that's supposed to help sway anyone's opinion?

That's a bit of an understatement Highest Prospect Rankings: Travis Snider: 6th (2009, last year as prospect) Colby Rasmus: 3rd (2009, last year as prospect) Kyle Drabek: 25th (2010, ranked 29th in 2011) I would gladly take any/all three of them off their hands in a Garza deal

Rotoworld always has nice summaries, here's what they wrote... The only one I'm remotely familiar with is Norris. His ability to hit for average has dropped pretty dramatically the past coupe of seasons, but he's got a whole lot of power/patience potential. He's been an OBP machine in the minors. Only hit .210 last year but still put up an OPS over .800, and drew 77 walks in 104 games. He's been trending downwards, though, so I'm not sure how much of that is cause for concern or just growing pains, as he's still only just 22.

Wow the Nats are going to be really awesome very soon! They're still the 3rd or 4th best team in their division. Next year, yeah... but if I were a Nationals fan I'd have good reason to be excited for the future.

Didn't see it anywhere http://espn.go.com/chicago/mlb/story/_/id/7380197/chicago-cubs-class-peoria-chiefs-losing-money-audits-show

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2011/12/nationals-to-acquire-gio-gonzalez.html Just in case people need to see a link. The latest on Rotoworld said the Red Sox were trying to push for a monster deal for Gio and Bailey.

Surprised this isn't getting more attention, then again it said the Marshall/Wood deal wasn't as close as expected about 2 hours before it went down. That and it's David Kaplan

He's absoulutely not necessary in any way shape or form. And that next line is BS. It's stupid. Why do we have to just accept the fact that anybody is here if we don't agree with that player being here? If the team signs Niefi Perez and you don't like it, you don't just have to accept that he's here. It's a freaking message board dedicated to the Chicago Cubs. The very reason for this site's existence is for people to discuss the team and it's players, good or bad. If management signs a crappy old veteran to a guaranteed contract (not confirmed as far as I know) then we have every right to bitch about it. It's a waste of bandwidth to discuss this move. Says the oblivious guy who keeps posting about how rational the move is and that we shouldn't talk about it in any negative fashion. Never said it was rational, just said it's nothing to get worked up over.

Well put. It seems like people are more upset about this because Theo and Jed did it and not Hendry. Fact is, Hendry gave $900,000 to a guy coming of a 74 OPS+ season, and while I thought the $1.5 was legit (my bad) it seems like they might give him what... $1.2 or $1.3 million... after a 122 OPS+ season? I don't expect Johnson to fully recreate those numbers one iota, but we could do a whole lot worse, and there aren't many options out there that can do a whole lot better at the price.

So this is working under Crane Kenney and not Theo Epstein? Pass

He's absoulutely not necessary in any way shape or form. And that next line is BS. It's stupid. Why do we have to just accept the fact that anybody is here if we don't agree with that player being here? If the team signs Niefi Perez and you don't like it, you don't just have to accept that he's here. It's a freaking message board dedicated to the Chicago Cubs. The very reason for this site's existence is for people to discuss the team and it's players, good or bad. If management signs a crappy old veteran to a guaranteed contract (not confirmed as far as I know) then we have every right to bitch about it. It's a waste of bandwidth to discuss this move.

This attitude makes very little sense to me. It's convenient to label him as the 25th man, but reality probably has him much further up the chart than that. He's a garbage old veteran who does nothing for the team now or in the future. Nobody is labeling this a franchise killer, it's just an annoyingly worthless signing in what has been a horrible offseason for anybody who actually cared about how well the Cubs perform in 2012. The Cubs current depth chart has Blake DeWitt and Brian LaHair as backups for our outfielders. The only legit OF backup we have on the MLB roster besides Campana is Reed Johnson, since we traded Colvin. There's no way they'll use Jackson as a backup OF, so he'll either start in the minors to get AB's or they'll move Byrd so he can start. In that situation then without Reed Johnson, Campana is the only other OF backup, and he kinda sucks something fierce. The AAA options we have are Lou Montanez, Brad Snyder, and Matthew Spencer (going off their AAA roster). Snyder and Montanez have a combined MLB OPS of .485 in their limited trials, Spencer has zero MLB experience and doesn't appear to be fit for a MLB team whatsoever. Snyder might have been the best internal option If Johnson ends up with a .680 OPS, what are the odds that it will be better than anything Montanez or Snyder or Spencer could put up? It could possibly be much better, which is depressing. Reed Johnson is a necessary evil, and his cost is not a burden, and as such people should just accept the fact that he's there and that it really won't make a huge difference one way or the other because whether you like it or not, sadly, he's more of a safe bet than our alternatives, and maybe Theo & Co. view that as a worthy of an extra million to gamble on.