scarey

Valbuena is young, and Valbuena is an everyday major leaguer. Yeah, the love for Valbuena is [expletive] weird, too. He's had a good half of a season, but he's been garbage up until this point. He's over 600 PA as a Cub and has 3.4 fWAR in that time. It's not a hot month or two buoying him, he's a good player. I'm just unclear on why having a good young player at the major league level has anything to do with holding onto hope that Vitters turns out.

You say that like it's a mark against him. If it's not what he wants, I don't want him to just settle because it's "close".

I admit to be a critic of the trade. I was not thrilled with the 2010 production from Matt Garza. Also, I thought Hak Ju Lee was going to be producing the way Arismendy Alcantara has been producing since that trade. Finally, I thought we'd be seeing a couple "down" years in Wrigley and felt investing in this type of starting pitching at this ime wouldn't pay off for when the Cubs were competitive again. I'm happy to have been two-thirds wrong.

I hope they really play up the DON'T CARE Jay Cutler persona.

Good to see Gioskar Amaya has bounced back decently. Average up to .270. I would love to see him come close to matching his IsoD from last year by the end of the season.

Other midseason publications and writers had Almora ahead of Baez, so I'm not surprised to see Almora where he is. I'm more surprised by where Baez is.

His peripherals look much better than Peralta's. I'm pretty happy with this guy. If he continues do perform the way he has this year, I would say definitely a top 30 guy. Maybe he even sneaks into the top 20, although that could be tough with the lack of big league promotions.

There's also the fact that we're getting into a roster crunch in terms of middle infielders right now. It is awesome to have so many middle infield prospects, but they have to play somewhere. Right now, Lake, Watkins, Alcantara, Baez, and Bruno are all guys that could take reps at the same level and position as Torreyes potentially could. I'm not saying that Torreyes is not more as valuable as all of those guys. Recent signings and draftees are forcing guys up into the higher levels and if you can get good value for a guy like Torreyes (which they did), you have a little bit more incentive to pull the trigger on such a trade.

Weird because one year they got to the ECF, the next year their superstar tore his acl in the first game and last year we made it to the second round despite injuries to Deng and Hinrich. Not sure where we being tired comes into play. I guess you could make an argument that we could have beaten Miami in the ECF but that's a stretch to say we lost because we were worn out. Or you could say playing so many minutes in a strike shortened season contributed to playoff injuries to Rose and Noah. How could playing too much cause Rose's ACL to tear? It doesn't work that way. And plantar fasciitis is just a thing that you have; you don't get it from playing too much and sitting doesn't make it go away; it's just about whether there is pain or not at a particular moment. I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that Rose's ACL tear was due to being over played, but the way in which he hurt his ACL actually could have been caused by fatigue. It would be one thing if someone fell on his leg and it bent the wrong way. That obviously would be directly from the impact of another player forcing the injury. However, he was making a pretty standard movement (by his standards at least) when he went down with the injury. Something he's done probably thousands of times in his life. If his leg muscles were fatigued, they very well could have prevented his body from correctly bracing his knee for the impact of the movement. However, the fatigue would more likely be acute fatigue from playing a whole NBA game, not from over use over the course of a season. Also, there's the more likely possibility that it was just bad luck. All I'm saying is it isn't ridiculous to hypothesize that the injury was a result of fatigue. Unreasonable to assume? Sure.

Look, you are the one who tried to equate this to trading for the 16 year old. They didn't have to trade stuff to sign him. They could have just signed him, and he wouldn't have been the only one. So, sign Mejia and not have an opportunity to sign Jimenez so you can hold onto Feldman/Clevenger/Torreyes is what you're saying?

No, because they could have signed without making any of those trades. Do you honestly think that Hoyer is going to acquire all that IFA pool money and not use it? That has nothing to do with what you asked. The extra pool money isn't allowing them to add the elite guys, it's allowing them to add the 2nd tier guys after spending their own money on the elite guys. First of all, how could you possibly know that. Second of all, the Cubs have targeted players that they want to acquire. Some of those guys may not get the big bonus money, but they have people in place to evaluate these players. If they don't use up all their money on big bonus players, the guy that signs for 50K could be a must have according to their evaluators, but the market set their value low for whatever reason. Jason Parks talked in the BN interview about not favoring pulling in all big bonus guys. There's a reason for that. There's value in those lesser bonus types (Castro, Lake, and Candelario are great examples). Theo and staff didn't just throw out a bunch of trades and see what kind of money they got back. They had a figure worked out based on what kind of money they already agreed to pay out to these players. They did the work today to secure that figure.

No, because they could have signed without making any of those trades. Do you honestly think that Hoyer is going to acquire all that IFA pool money and not use it?

I feel like the IFA money is being undervalued here. When you look at the money figure the Cubs got out of it, I agree it does not look impressive. However, think about it in terms of player acquisition. The Cubs signed Jefferson Mejia for just under the amount of pool money they acquired through the moves today. Now, I know Mejia is far from a sure thing, but he is a kid with a ton of upside. If I told you we traded Feldman, Clevenger, and Torreyes for a 6'7 220 lb 18 year old that can throw in the low 90s with top of the rotation ceiling, would that make you feel any better?

Are you people really unfamiliar with the internet colloquialism "want"? I'm not saying I like it. I'm actually quite annoyed when someone posts "want" or "love" after an Instagram picture of a meal. But it makes sense.

I did. nothing It's a poorly written opening. "That is to say" suggests he's going to explain what he meant by that opening line, but he does not do that. You shouldn't have to google translate such an opening. Translation: Jason Parks is a well respected authority on minor league prospects. Did you really not understand that, or are you being purposely obtuse? Of course it's not proper writing style, it's Brett's style. It's how the man talks in person.

Was Loosen injured prior to being sent to Arizona? I'm too lazy to dig for the info, but his return has been night and day from his start to his season. I have to think there's a reason for that.

Yes. I know a lot of fans think the Bulls should trade the pick--and they can if they get good value, but some people are fine trading it for average players that won't change anything. I am completely fine waiting this thing out with the confidence that the Bobcats will continue to be terrible and hoping for a top pick in the future. That is the the kind of thing that can completely change a franchise... not some trade for Jason Thompson. Well, all they have to do is suck next year, get Andrew Wiggins and maybe that pick isn't so valuable. Not trading it for immediate value is a gamble. With the movie coming out later in the year, what are the chances Wiggins picks up the nick name Ender? That would be an awesome moniker, especially if he ends up hitting some game winning buzzer beaters for Kansas.

No, the 5v3 was just over and it was still a 5v4 power play when that goal was scored. That's my point... if they had scored 5v3, they still would have been able to play the 5v4 power play, correct?

I love that even when the Hawks do score on the PP, they do it wrong. Put that puck in 3 seconds earlier, and they would have still had a 1 man advantage. Right?

The Ted Lilly comp is exactly what I've been hoping for with him. Although he was a 23rd round pick when he signed and Travis Wood was a 2nd himself. I thought Ted Lilly myself when I heard he likes to change speeds a lot. Minus the curve of course, but if he knows how to use his change up I think that would be even better than a plus curve.

I'm by no means an expert on fielding, but as long as their primary objective is to make sure Lake get's reps in preparation to play big league 3B, isn't it pretty much ok to let him play SS? Of course he won't be turning double plays and ranging to his left much at third, but fielding from the left side of the infield is all that he should really need to be doing.

Do you feel that Ha isn't capable of playing at center? Or did you just overlook him? I can't say for sure if he'll stick there and be good enough to be a starter. The guy has started more games in CF than anywhere else in the outfield this year, so it appears he's at least a capable defender there. He's also posted an .811 OPS and a fantastic .103 IsoD (which is all the more admirable especially given his approach just two years ago). He won't turn 23 until October. I keep wondering why he doesn't get talked about more. He could be a nice stop gap before Almora arrives.

Keeping in mind that the Cubs do in fact need to field a team next year (and I for one am optimistic for a competitive one), I would be in favor of seeking out a trade for Schierholtz. He is definitely an asset, but I think the Cubs could turn around a replace him in the upcoming offseason. The free agent list isn't pretty, but Hoyer should be able to snap up someone like David Murphy on a relatively frugal contract. Murphy is having a deceptively bad season with a .228/.270/.397 slash line to go with a .230 BABIP and a 21.4% LD%. I like his chances to bounce back to close to his 126 OPS+ 2012 production.

I like Emery's reaction best.

Based on the one game I watched him live at last year (in other words, grain of salt and all that), I thought he was a naturally fantastic defender with incredible range and arm strength... but VERY mechanically unsound. He made a lot of off balance throw and his approach to the ball was always to cut directly to the route of the ball and field on the fly rather than round on the route to put himself in a good fielding/throwing position. I have to wonder if he is working on proper mechanics. I would think that if you tell the guy to take a different approach, it's going to mess with him if it's not naturally what he's always done. The other thing I noted about his fielding was that he doesn't like to give up on plays. Again, only one game, but I noticed him make several throws to first base that had no chance to get the runner. He even made a catch on a pop up to shallow center field that the centerfielder clearly should have made the play on. He didn't make any errors doing this, but I could easily see him rushing and throwing the ball away, or not transfering the ball to his throwing hand well, or just misfielding it. Just a theory really.