cubsfan26

You don't pay 5M + a prospect for good enough. Would anybody be satisfied with paying 5M for an averagish setup man as a free agent? Why are we ok with spending 5M + a prospect who could've possibly filled that spot? Because your getting him for one year at 5m, plus draft picks to make up for the lose of Ceda. You can't get set-up guys as good as Gregg for less then 5y at 15m these days on the open market, especially ones with closer experience.The problem with signing relievers is usually the amount of years and not how much per year. Since the relievers are usually good for a year or two of the contract but then drop off. Teams contending for the playoffs, can't count on could've possibly filled that spot. The Cubs needed to replace the lose of Wood, this is probably the best way they could. Some people are upset over this move, but how could have we filled this spot in a better way? I know some will say go with Samardzija, Wuertz, Gaudin and Guzman. But then you will also be the first people complaining that the bullpen sucks. When Wuertz struggles for a few weeks and ends up in Lou doghouse, Guzman gets hurt, and Samardzija goes through growing pains.

I really want Hermida as well, but I read earlier today that the Marlins won't trade him unless their overwhelmed. I don't think we have the prospects to do that. So it looks like were gonna have some veteran like Abreu or Ibanez in RF.

Then state it as the deal is: Gregg for Ceda + Wood and a 4 year guaranteed high dollar contract. How about: 1 year of Gregg as closer four first round draft picks $35M to spend elsewhere over 4 years vs Ceda + Wood Does that make anyone feel any better? No. Trading Ceda for Gregg wasn't the only alternative to not signing Wood. Yes, but was their a better alternative? We could have went on the free agent market, and signed guys for 3 years at 5-6m per year to replace Wood. Otherwise I don't see how we could have gotten a good late inning reliever with closer experience at one year and 4-5m(plus potential draft picks at the end of the season) for less then Jose Ceda. I can't think of a alternative situation that would be better then this. Yeah I know we could have just went with the young guys. But what contending major league team is gonna go with guys who have very little experience in important 7th and 8th inning roles?

Todd Walker? Michael Barrett= Kyler Burke and Geovany Soto starting everyday (ie: Rob Bowen to Oakland for Jason Kendall). MINUS JERRY BLEVINS. Plus Ryan Flaherty, after getting the draft pick for losing Kendall.

On the bright side, he managed to survive doing that with a horrible defense behind him, and he's moving to a good one. On the negative side, everything else. His K numbers are like Howry. And he's coming to Chicago. You know, to pitch like Howry. Yea, no... And why are we only looking at 2008 numbers? Especially when somebody already showed that his numbers were skewed pretty badly by an approximately 2 week stretch where he forgot where home plate was and when he did find it he got crushed. So we should discount the worst two week stretches of the other three pitchers? I was providing a basic comparison between all of those pitchers. Nothing too in-depth, but enough to give us a picture of how each performed in 2008. No but there's a good chance he was pitching hurt during that two week stretch that caused him to pitch so poorly.

IF that is the case I will poke out Jim Hendry's eyes and ... Seriously he has to offer arbitration. Has to. Hendry is not an idiot. There is absolutely no risk to offering it this year. I'm sure if Wood would have signed a 1 year/10MM+ contract, the deal would have already been signed. I'm sure that he is just acknowledging the fact that Woody isn't going to accept arbitration. This is true, it makes no sense not to offer Wood arbitration. Hendry whole reason for letting Wood go is because the amount of years and money per year. Hendry all along has been interested in resigning Wood for a one or two year deal. But Wood wants 3 or 4 years, and there's no way the Cubs are going to do that. It's sad to see Wood go, but this is the right move.

What I'm trying to say is we may have literally been better off releasing Jose Ceda. The fact that that can even be a stretch of the imagination is mind-blowing. I would take Gregg over Wuertz and Cotts. Possibly over Gaudin and Samardzija, it depends on what Samardzija is pitching. The guy we saw in July and most of August, or the guy in September. Gregg has pretty good stuff, I don't see him as some crap reliever.

Thats the risk here, but by replacing Gregg with Wood, we also get draft picks for letting Wood go. Then as long as Gregg is good next year he will most likely get us more draft picks. Odds are we will be able to replace Jose Ceda in our system. Hopefully the 4-6m we save, also goes to a good player that makes us better next season.

Gregg a free agent after 2009 or 2010? Another way to look at it, is the Cubs could get a bunch of picks from Wood/Gregg and hopefully one of them at least replaces Ceda. Then you also save money to use towards other players this offseason. Gregg isn't as good as Wood, but it would have been hard to get a reliever much better then Gregg for the price.

I doubt Hendry signs Gregg long term at this point. He would wait to see how he pitches at the end of the season, like he did with Dempster in 05, and Wood this year.

Wow that is some interesting logic Yeah, that makes no sense. this deal was done because of the decision to not bring back wood. it wasn't a choice between keeping woody and trading for gregg. The end result is, Gregg will be there instead of Woody. As for saving 4-5 million -- that seems like a pretty small amount of money for a team to be unloading an all-star pitcher with a 1.085 WHIP when they're already spending over 100 million and talking about taking on more. It's horrible logic to think this way. And you're not just saving $4-5M. You're saving $25-35 million over 4 years and you're not getting locked into what could turn into an awful contract based on Wood's injury history. It may not be an ideal situation, but sometimes you're forced to take the lesser of two evils. Plus the Cubs could always trade Gregg next offseason and get more in return, or get draft picks after 2010 to replace Ceda. Thats why I said this deal should be a wait and see situation. Because as long as Gregg pitches like he has for most of the last two years he will have pretty good value around the league.

You could look at it that way, or you could look at it like Gregg and 4-6m to spend on other players to upgrade the team for Ceda and Wood.

Looking at Gregg game logs last year, he was pretty good 5 of 6 with a 2.92 era or lower in each month. But from August 15th through August 29th, he imploded and gave up 12 earned runs in 6.2 IP(3 blown saves). He missed some time after that, so he possibly could have been pitching hurt. But if you consider that, and the fact he was 32 of 36 in saves, 3.54 era and 1.23 WHIP in 84 IP in 07, he's not bad. I'm not saying he's worth Jose Ceda(depends on if Ceda is Roberto Novoa or somebody good), but isn't a horrible cheap replacement for Wood. I dunno if we would have found a cheaper replacement on the free agent market. Remember Scott Eyre just got 2m, and Marte just signed a 3y-12m deal after having a 4 era this season.

Nope. Then again, I'm not calling Hendry an idiot, I just hate what he's doing here. I'm sick of him focusing on acquiring other people's middle aged relievers, whether it's via trade or free agency. It's not stupid to let Wood walk. It is odd to me to let Wood walk so you can resign Dempster. Hopefully it's not to resign Dempster, but to get Peavy and add a RF.

I agree, but we only traded a bullpen arm to get a major league bullpen arm. This trade could be horrible down the road, or it could end up being on Hendry list of good trades. It all depends on Ceda and Gregg, thats why I'm in a wait and see mode. I just don't think the league is as high on Ceda as we think. Hopefully replacing Wood with Gregg saves us money to allow us to improve the rotation or line-up.

He either sucks or he's awesome. There is no in-between with this man. Getting rid of Kerry Wood places another tally in the "sucks" column. If Wood gets hurt next season, and another team is paying him 10m per season for three seasons, this move will no longer suck. I been reading this board for years, and I just remember many of these same posters laughing at other teams for paying relievers 10m per season. Now since it Kerry Wood, everybody is upset and bashing Hendry.

Explain to me how Kevin Gregg is better than Michael Wuertz. Who knows if Kevin Gregg is or not, I have only seen him pitch against the Cubs and he has looked pretty good most of the time. But the fact that Gregg has these numbers after 68 and 84 innings. While Wuertz has only pitched in 40 and 44 two of the last three years(because he's been so inconsistent), gives Gregg the heads up IMO. All I'm saying is I'm not going to freak out about this trade, and gonna see how it turns out. I just feel if Hendry could only get a average closer for Ceda, his value around the league must not be what we thought it was. Because I doubt Hendry would be that desperate to get Gregg at this point of the offseason. Just because Ceda is valueable to us, and is one of our top five prospects, doesn't make him have more value around the league. For all we know Gregg could pitch closer to what he did in 07, and we could end up trading him for a better package next offseason, while Ceda might never be a good/decent Major Leaguer. So I'm not heartbroken or really mad about this trade, yes right now it appears like we gave up too much, but only time will tell if thats true or not.

I'm willing to give this move a chance. I agree Ceda should probably be worth more, but we don't really know his value around the league. Plenty of teams could have a bunch of question marks about him and not be that high on him. As much as were bashing Kevin Gregg, a guy who's saved 29 and 32 games the last two years with around a 3.50s era, that doesn't make much money also has pretty good value. So I don't think this trade is as bad as some on this board think it is. Because we don't really know how much value a guy like Ceda has.

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/8789624/Report:-Braves-on-verge-of-landing-Peavy It doesn't sound like Ken Rosenthal has been able to confirm this rumor.

The Giants would be stupid to sign Howry this month, but in the past they didn't wanna pay their first round pick. So sometimes they signed Type A free agents and lost their draft pick. It would be awesome if they ended up doing something like that again. But if they waited to December or January there would be nothing wrong with them signing Howry. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised at all if Howry makes some type of adjustment or gets a little velocity back and is good again next year. Relievers, especially veteran relievers can have many up and down years.

I don't understand why some think a package of Escobar, Hernandez and Reyes or Morton is so much better then anything the Cubs can offer. Escobar is a pretty nice piece, and has potential to get better then he is. But whats so great about Gorkys Hernandez? he hit 264 in A-ball and has had a 735 OPS the last two seasons. When did Hernandez become more valueable then Felix Pie? It's not like Pie is a old prospect or anything he's only around two years older then Hernandez. But Reyes and Morton are nothing special either and I would rather have Marshall then both. Morton might have good stuff, but he's sucked in the minors and majors. Reyes has pitched well in the minors in his career, but has sucked in the majors. Why do two guys with talent who have struggled in the majors still have good value, but Felix Pie doesnt? So say we offered Vitters, Theriot(or Cedeno), Pie and Marshall, that doesn't beat the Braves offer of Escobar, Morton or Reyes and Hernandez? If the Padres didn't think the Cubs offer was around equal to the Braves, I don't think Towers would continue to waste Hendrys time. I just think idiots in the media think Pie is worthless because he's struggled in the majors so far. Samething goes with Marshall I bet some are calling him a swing man, instead of a big league starter, because thats what he was last year. So I bet the Padres are alot higher on the Cubs prospects then some are lead to believe.

I doubt it would be Greene and Peavy, Kevin Towers even said last week that he probably wouldn't package them together. This Andy guy is covering himself by saying he doesn't know if it will happen or not and is just passing along what he heard. That tells me it's probably BS, and just trying to get rumor hungry Cubs fans to visit his blog.

If the deal is basically done, then why isn't it done? Plus if a deal is this close to done, why hasn't it been leaked to Levine, Olney,Heyman, Gammons, or Rosenthal by now? I'm not really buying this information, but will take it FWIW. When taking in info like this if a deal isn't done in the next 24 hours, I basically take it as BS.

Yeah some still think Escobar will end up being an Allstar type SS. He plays good defense, hits for average, and gets on base. His power isn't anything special right now, but he could end up being a 15-20 HR guy down the road. Getting Peavy without giving up Vitters would be a steal. I figured since day one if the Cubs were gonna get this deal done, they were probably gonna have to put Vitters in the trade. A package of Vitters/Pie with Marshall and other pitchers seems alot more attractive to the Padres, then Pie and others.

Peavy to the Cubs talk has really only been hot for a week or so, it still has a few months to get on the Brian Roberts level. The weird thing about the Brian Roberts stuff. I didn't even really want him all that bad. It just got to the point were It felt like he was a Cub already, after months of rumors saying that it should happen any day. So I just wanted the deal done, and him to be offically on the team already, or the trade talks done. Peavy on the other hand is a pitcher who I really want. So I don't want this to end unless he ends up on the Cubs.