CubsWin

The Cubs, rightfully so, have had for many years now the reputation of acquiring big name, but way past their prime, veteran players to short term contracts hoping to catch lightening in a bottle and fill a position for a year or two until something better came along usually some over-hyped prospect who would never materialize. Some people include guys like Ron Cey and Larry Bowa in this group, but they actually got the Cubs to within a game of the World Series, so I can cut Dallas Green some slack on those guys. I'm talking about when they brought in Fergie at the end of his career or Kenny Holtzman. They got lucky and squeezed some juice out of Gary Gaetti and then got greedy/foolish by bringing him back for another season in which he flopped. There's Terry Mulholland. Steve Buchelle. Howard Johnson. Jerry Mumphrey. The list is long and the rep well-deserved...until recently. I just checked the current 40-man roster, and the oldest position player on it is back-up catcher Henry Blanco who is 35 and won't turn 36 until late August. The next oldest position player will also likely be coming off the bench, Cliff Floyd, who just turned 34. The oldest projected starter is Mark DeRosa, who will turn 32 in about a month. When was the last time the Cubs had a line-up 1-8 where the oldest guy was 32? The average age of the projected line-up is 29. The oldest pitcher on the 40-man is Scott Eyre who is 34 and won't turn 35 until the end of May. After him comes Bob Howry who is 33 and won't turn 34 until the beginning of August. The oldest pitcher in the projected rotation is Ted Lilly who just turned 31 three weeks ago. The average age of the projected rotation (Z, Hill, Lilly, Marquis and Prior) is 27. Have Cubs officially stopped their over-the-hill, veteran stop-gap ways?

He signed a Major league contract, so they had to add him, I believe. Correct. They were obliged to add him when they signed him to the major-league contract. Have they dropped anyone yet? (I'd think Coats is the obvious choice.) I have to agree. Coats is the obvious choice.

So the Cubs were 4 games over .500 when Lee got hurt and Ramirez was horrible along with Jones and Pierre. Lee got hurt on April 19th. On May 1st, they were still 4 games over .500. With your logic (and small sample size), I suppose we can assume that if Ramirez, Jones and Pierre continued sucking and Lee never came back, they should have finished the season 4 games over .500 since they were able to maintain a 4 game advantage after the Lee injury. Come on, BBB, that's the kind of response one gives when they don't have much of an argument. I could've played devil's advocate to myself and come up with something better than that. You responded to (and twisted around) one supporting point, not the whole argument.

End of story? That's wishful thinking. What other team has weathered the collapse of their franchise player and major injuries to other star players, sometimes several at a time, and still got their team into the playoffs? When did Mussina go down? When did Manny go from being a 1.000+ OPS guy to an 800+ OPS guy? Rolen and Pujols have gone down, but not for as long as Lee did and not at the same time as losing Carpenter plus others. Come on, where is the fairness?

Yep. Build your team strong enough to overcome injuries. Because injuries are going to happen. Plain and simple. I agree that Hendry did a bad job of planning for Wood's continuing injuries, but you have to agree that the Cubs over the last 3 seasons have endured more injuries to major star players than any other team all while enduring the collapse of and trying to fill the void left by their former franchise player and central cog.

He fielded a contender in '03 with less than a $100M payroll that wasn't heavily backloaded. He then improved upon that team by trading Choi for Lee and acquiring Garciaparra (and Murton) while giving up basically nothing. But injuries to their two star pitchers (that had just completed fully healthy seasons the year before) caused the Cubs to fall just short despite a rapidly declining superstar (.253/.332/.517) in the middle of their line-up. Its not easy to stay in contention while your highest paid player is whithering into a has been right before your eyes, but Hendry managed to keep the Cubs in the playoff hunt in '04 finishing just 3 games out. He re-signed Garciaparra for '05 giving the Cubs their best infield in my lifetime while doing only an okay job of replacing Sosa on the fly. Sosa was declining so fast and was so expensive that, as hard as it may seem, Hendry actually improved the team by acquiring Burnitz over holding onto Sosa. But then Garciaparra got injured very early on and, once again, Wood and Prior got injured and underperformed. That plus Hendry's continuing inability to provide a good enough back up plan for those guys did in the Cubs playoff chances in '05. All that must be taken into consideration when you look at the amount of money the Cubs had to spend. Did Hendry make mistakes? Yes. Do all GMs? Yes. Did Hendry take gambles that didn't work out because of injuries? Yes. Did Hendry have some pretty major injuries to some pretty expensive players? Yes. Did he have his most expensive player plummet after a decent season in '03? Yes. All of those factors effectively lower the Cubs payroll for those two seasons. If we are to be fair and accurate, we must take that into consideration. It wasn't a sure thing that Wood, Prior and Garciaparra would get injured. If they hadn't, it seems logical that the Cubs may have performed like a 90-95 million dollar team should. Don't you think?

I consider his post way off base because it is so completely unbalanced. First, he assumes that the Cubs are going to sit Murton and start Floyd based on absolutely no hard evidence. Then he criticizes Hendry for it before it even happens. And finally he calls sitting Murton & starting Floyd a "classic Hendry move". Clearly, Hendry has made some terrible moves. But AmazingGrace completely forgets that Hendry has made many great moves making his post and opinion unbalanced. Didn't Hendry preside over the Cubs getting into 1st place in the first place? I think that counts as an up year, don't you? I'm fairly pleased with this off season, too, though I would have liked to see a different starting pitcher and possibly a different starting 2B. I also would have preferred he spend the money on Beltran instead of Soriano, but it seems like he didn't have the green light to do so back then. But to say the Cubs won only 66 games because Hendry did such a bad job that he couldn't have done much worse is unfounded. The Jones signing turned out well. Pierre was an improvement in CF, but he gave up way too much for him. He failed to have a viable back-up plan for Prior and Wood and that really hurt the Cubs. But its important to remember, the Cubs were 4 games over .500 the night Lee broke his wrist. Ramirez had a horrible first several weeks to the season as did Pierre and Jones. Cedeno was slumping far worse than most anyone had predicted. Dempster was pitching terribly. Lots of things went wrong that contributed to the Cubs winning only 66 games besides Hendry's 40-man roster. Did he do a good job last season? No, not really. But to hold him fully responsible for the results of the Cubs last season is unsupportable.

There are two big problems with your graph. One is that you are calling 2002 a "Hendry year" and its totally not. He was signed as GM in July of that year and had little time to alter the make up of the team for the 2nd half of the season. It is really unfair to hold Hendry responsible for any of the team's results in '02. That roster was fully set before he took control. The first chance he really had to put his stamp on the team was the '02-'03 off season, and we all know what happened the following year. But I don't hold him solely responsible for getting the Cubs in the playoffs that year. A lot of things went right that he couldn't possibly have been directly responsible for. Which brings us to the second problem with your graph. It uses the win/loss record as the sole judge of a GM. So many other factors go into whether a team wins or not than just the make up of the 40-man roster. A GM could put together the greatest roster ever and if enough season-ending injuries happen to enough great players, that team will also finish with 66 wins. Extenuating circumstances must be factored in. Last season was a disaster, not so much because of the decisions Hendry made, (the Pierre trade wasn't good) but because of the onslaught of major injuries to the team's best players and some really poor performances by others who had previously performed much better. It's wrong to blame him for everything that happened in '06. Just like it would be wrong to fully credit him for getting the Cubs into the playoffs in '03. The Cubs got on a roll, got some good luck, had guys stay healthy all year. Hendry helped bring about the result in '03, but I think he actually did more in '04 with the additions of Lee and Garciaparra along with a full season from Ramirez. Those moves allowed the Cubs to stay in contention even with Sosa declining sharply in the middle of their line-up. To be fair and accurate, Hendry's win/loss record looks more like this: 4 years prior to Hendry: 67 wins in '99 65 wins in '00 88 wins in '01 67 wins in '02 4 years with Hendry: 88 wins in '03 89 wins in '04 79 wins in '05 66 wins in '06 And to better understand those win totals, one must also include the extenuating factors each year, both the good (like career years) and the bad (like major injuries to major players).

I think this is a very well balanced view of the Cubs plans on handling Floyd based upon several different articles and repeated statements from Hendry and Piniella and not just based on one article written by Dave van Dyck in which he makes some wild speculation based on absolutely nothing that has come out of the Cubs front office.

I couldn't agree more. There is plenty that is worthy of criticism. Signing reserves to bigger contracts than they deserve. Having a weak bench. Not having a good enough back up plan for Wood. I hold Hendry responsible for not doing enough to get the Cubs into the playoffs in '04. So there shouldn't be any reason to make stuff up like AmazingGrace did. And just as there are things to criticize him for, there are also many things to praise him for. In any assessment of an GM, it is important to include both sides.

Mark this post down for best crow-eating candidate of the year so far. Where did Hendry say he was benching Murton for Floyd? If someone mused in an article that the Cubs weren't going to resign Aramis, would you believe him, too? Oh wait, that already happened on this board. Never mind. Bad example. If some guy writes an article in which he thinks the Cubs will let Zambrano walk, would you mark it down as a done deal and bash Hendry for it before it actually happened? Oy... Yes, you're right. Hendry is the guy who forced Todd Walker and Nomar Garciaparra to get injured so that Neifi Perez and Tony Womack could get all those at bats because he loves those guys soooooo much. And it was really the leprechaun that hides under Hendry's desk who pulled off the deals for Lee, Ramirez, Garciaparra and Murton without giving up much of anything. Those were just classic leprechaun-under-Jim-Hendry's-desk moves, weren't they. If we could get that leprechaun to be the Cubs GM...

Honestly, I'd be shocked if cracked Iowa's rotation before August 2008.Really? Why? From the early reports, Jeff is supposed to start at Daytona this season. If he performs well there, it is likely that he will be promoted to AA by July/August of this year. Absolute best case scenario has him doing well enough in AA during the 2nd half of this season to where he is competing for a major league rotation spot along with several other rookies/young arms in the spring of '08. But that isn't very likely, so backing off from that a bit would have him starting '08 in AA and getting to AAA in July '08. That timeline is still optimistic, but apparently, when I read what scouts are saying about him, there is reason to be optimistic with this guy. So I don't understand why it would be "shocking" to see Jeff reach AAA by July of '08. If he struggles at Daytona this season, which perhaps you think is likely, then Jeff making it to AAA before August of '08 would be shocking. I can see that. But if he pitches well enough at Daytona this season to get promoted to AA before the end of the year, then... Of course, there is always the possibility that he doesn't start this season at Daytona.

Its not the trib per se that is saying that, the above quote is pure speculation by Dave van Dyck. The only quote from anyone in the Cubs organization in Mr. van Dyck's article reads... That quote is in response to what will the Cubs do with Floyd. And it is the standard response from any GM who wants to maximize a sense of competition amongst his players to motivate them to perform at their highest level. It is one of the benefits to having a proven veteran like Cliff Floyd on your roster/bench. The other presumed starters in the OF know that they better be on or they will lose playing time. I've got no problem with that. All of them are professionals and mentally tough enough to use Floyd's presence in the right way. And if they don't, then they are not playing or thinking like a champion. There are several leaps that van Dyck takes and several places in the article where his musings fail to hold up under logical scrutiny. I'd take this one with a several grains of salt. Could Floyd wind up starting in the Cubs OF for the majority of next season? Sure. But it is likely going to take a major injury or somebody really underperforming for that to happen. In which case, so long as Floyd performs well, we will all be grateful to have him in there.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-cubs-floyd&prov=ap&type=lgns Given Floyd's performance history, if he is healthy enough to reach the plate 550 times, he will very likely produce enough to be worth 8.75 million. Its only fair to Floyd to pay him if he plays. I wouldn't read too much into the "coulds" of this contract. The more telling item is that only 3 million and only one year are guaranteed. To have a bat like Floyd's available to come off the bench, 3 million isn't unreasonable.

Why would the Cubs have to wait until June 15th to trade Jones or Murton. They can do that right now if they want to.

I think there is truth to this. But there are about 13 ways in which we could have room in the bullpen for Marquis. *1 Guzman isn't so dazzling that he needs to be in the rotation. Then there is space for Marquis in rotation (or relief). I hope/expect Guzman to look impressive. But to look so knockout good that he can't spend some Iowa time showing he can sustain the curveball consistently, less than likely. *2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12: If any of Prior, Wood, Guzman, Z, Lilly, Hill, Dempster, Howry, Eyre, Ohman Wuertz, Cotts, or Marquis is injured, there is room for both Marquis and Guzman. Pitchers are pitchers. The odds that somebody isn't healthy is, well, pretty high! *13: Cotts has options (I think), is 3rd lefty, has career/06 4.57/5.17 ERA's and 1.44/1.63 WHIP's. If everything goes so great that Prior and Guzman push Marquis to pen, it's not great travesty for Marquis to push Cotts either to Iowa or into a trade. Note: I'm assuming that Miller won't be so great that he's a must keep. I think he can make the team, if he looks good and they need a 12th man. But if there is roster crunch, I assume that Miller won't look too good to be disposed of, hopefully in a productive trade, but perhaps just via release or a rehab assignment. This is what I'm talking about. I'm happy that Hendry went out and got this number of options for the pitching staff. This is what Cubs fans have been calling for him to do ever since '04 when Wood and Prior combined for just 43 starts. After '04 and '05, fans were ripping Hendry, and rightfully so, for not planning for the worst case scenario. The moment he does, fans start asking well what if something other than the worst case happens and one of the young guys surprises? Or more than one? The Cubs have plenty of options. They can trade bullpen arms before June 15th if they need to. Some relievers have options as well as Hill, if he reverts, which I doubt. If good surprises happen, it won't be a problem. The point is, if the worst case happens again this season, it won't be as big a problem as it was in '04, '05 and '06. It took Hendry long enough, but he finally spent the money necessary to plan for the worst case when it comes to the pitching staff. Providing this many options is what we asked him to do, is it not?

When Marquis starts to suck? Is there any possibility in your mind that Marquis doesn't suck really, really badly such that he is untradeable between opening day and June 15th? I mean the way you wrote it, it was an absolute certainty. I grant you there is a decent possibility that he performs poorly, but his '04 and '05 seasons were pretty good. Does that count for nothing? Question: how certain were you that Hendry would never spend 300 million plus on free agents this off season?

Thanks for the report, vance. I'm excited about Guzman. I've been following his success in the winter league playoffs and now with Fleita's news that he has his curve back, there is even more hope. As far as what the Cubs should/will do if Guzman proves he is ready and Marquis or someone else is struggling, this is the problem we all wanted the Cubs to have ever since '04 when Wood and Prior missed so much time. We rightfully faulted Hendry for not having a good enough back-up plan. We can't have it both ways. The Cubs already have a bunch of young arms as options, but we saw how well that served the them last season. Would any of us be happy if Hendry relied solely on those young arms again? So JH got two more veteran options. Veterans who primarily have a history of not getting injured along with varying degrees of success at the major league level. This is a good problem to have. And my guess is that unless Marquis (or anyone else) is stinking it up big time, Hendry will trade one of his bullpen arms or buy time by moving people in and out of the pen until June 15th when he can trade Marquis.

Sort of. He got hurt in the first game of the season, IIRC and his swing struggled for a while when he came back. He did have a really impressive spring training with the big club. Perhaps that's what you are remembering.

I can't find any rumored terms outside of a player option for '08. The signing is not official yet, so no announcements are being made.

It seems like you are getting a little ahead of yourself here. There is a big difference between being able to throw off of a mound pain free and being effective at getting batters out. There is also a big difference between being effective at getting batters out and pitching like Mark Prior did in 2003. Bottom line, the best we can do is wait for spring training games to start and see how he does. But it is very welcome news to hear that Prior's strength building program he undertook this off-season seems to be producing the desired results.

He's got to pitch decently first. :( To be tradeable, unfort. so does Marquis. For the Cubs' sake, those mech. adjustments combined with a good relationship with Rothschild, Piniella, and Barrett/Blanco has to work. I was referring to Marquis becoming tradeable. That's why I bolded what I did. If Marquis fails, he won't have much, if any, trade value. But the Cubs should have several other options for his spot in the rotation. Angel Guzman and Wade Miller top the list, IMO, with Sean Marshall not far behind. Essentially, Marquis is a rather expensive, veteran insurance policy. Here's hoping he can regain his previous form with the help of Rothschild and pitch well this season and that one of the young arms (Guzman, Marshall, Gallagher, Veal, Samardzija, Marmol, etc.) can prove they are ready to step in for the '08 season. The Cubs could then trade him for something decent, I hope.

According to the Cubs Convention report on ChicagoSports.com, Big Z is looking for Zito money. He's got to pitch decently first. :(

For most teams, that would be true. But this franchise has been more than happy to give lots of times to guys who deserved nothing more than a NRI to ST. You had the recently released from SF Neifi Perez, and the released in ST Glendon Rusch. Then you had a handful of other NRI with no upside guys, like Rey Ordonez, Tony Womack, Enrique (he knows how to play in yankee stadium) Wilson, that all got playing time. In the big picture, it probably doesn't matter, but when this team signs worthless NRI guys, there's going to be a natural negative reaction out of fear that they'll actually play. They all got playing time because the starters got injured. Why would you leave that out? If your point was that we would have preferred to have gotten different and better back-up options, I agree completely with you. But the way you characterized it, the Cubs signed all those guys in order to give them playing time. And that's just simply not true. Rusch was picked up on a lark, and Rothschild was able to get a really good season out of him in '04 and a 2/3 excellent, 1/3 terrible season out of him in '05. Not bad for a scrap heap revival. All the other guys were either signed as back-ups or gap fillers during a starters injury.

They might be solid. It's hardly a given. That seems a bit harsh, don't you think? They might be solid? We're just talking about being solid, not all-star caliber at every slot. Of Soriano, DeRosa, Lee, Ramirez, Barrett, Jones and Murton, which one of those is likely to have a below average year for their position? Any of them? DeRosa is probably the shakiest of them, but is he likely to put up a below average OPS for a 2B next year? If none are likely to have below average offensive production for their position, then doesn't it logically follow that they are very likely to be a solid 1-7? Just curious. You mention circumstances that Hendry has brought about. Which circumstances are you referring to? Thanks. Harsh? Saying they might be solid is harsh? My lord, the level of angst people have when others don't praise this team is absurd. DeRosa could easily have a very bad year. Lee could easily have a year more similar to his non-2005 than his 2005. Ramirez has some injury issues, and there is always the post contract syndrome to worry about. Same with Soriano, who, by the way, could very easily just be okay. Barrett broke a nut. Plus he's got a lot of mileage as a catcher with general health concerns, and is backed up by Hendry Blanco, who will play a lot. Jones isn't even guaranteed to be on the team, and if he is, then he and Murton aren't a lock to be in the lineup at the same time. Speaking of Murton, he could have a setback, as a young guy whose hardly an established impact hitter, there's no guarantee. Furthermore, we aren't assured that Izturis will be batting 8th. What are the odds of any one of those things happening? It probably varies. But the odds are something will go wrong with one of those guys. The point is they aren't a lock to be solid, not in my book. The furthest I'd go is saying they are a lock to be better than last year, but even that could be wrong, especially if they end up with an unproductive CF and Lee somehow can't recover fully or gets hurt. Then, you're basically the same team as last year, with Soriano replacing Jones. Now, that'd be a disaster, and I'm not predicting it. But nobody can say it would be unthinkable. We are talking about a team that has had an average to terrible lineup for multiple years now. I'm going to make them prove it on the field before I hand them anything. Goon, let's try to keep the personal attacks to a minimum, shall we? I dare to question your opinion and you have to baselessly accuse me of having angst and needing you to only praise the Cubs. That's completely ridiculous and unnecessary. Try responding to the content of the post instead of injecting your personal comments please. As to the content of your post. I talked about what was likely. All you basically did was mention everything that could possibly go wrong, but never really talked about their likelihood. You said that the odds of each one varied. Can't argue with that, but how likely is it that Aramis Ramirez will suffer from post contract syndrome to the point that he wouldn't be "solid"? How likely is it that Soriano will revert so much to the point that he wouldn't be considered a "solid" outfielder? You mentioned a lot of stuff that would result in "disaster" but then said that you aren't predicting that will actually happen. Is that because all of these worst case scenarios aren't "likely" in your mind? If so, that's my point exactly. Hendry broke this team? Really... Did Hendry break Derrek Lee's wrist? Did he cause Prior's loose shoulder? When Hendry took over, what was the record of the team the previous 3 seasons? Wouldn't you have to know the answer to that question in order to know whether or not he broke this team? Good, fair questions, don't you think?