The Other 15

Which is why Greggs contract and Fuentes' contract are completely unrelated. Gregg will get paid based on option being picked up, age, performance, and similar players, while Fuentes is getting paid by FA market standards. Surely, you can see the difference. Which brings me back to the original poster who asked "And we're paying Kevin Gregg $5 million why?" It was a poor attempt to make Greggs acquisition look worse by comparing his salary to a high priced free agent. Lastly, Gregg will not go to arbitration and will sign a contract in the range of $3.4 to $3.8 that will be the middle ground of the arb proposals by agent and team.

A better response than "???" but it can "almost definitely wind up between" 3 and 3.7 as well. How about we wait and see what he gets before we pass judgment? That's true, I guess.....I'm not sure if this year's slow developing and most likely "cheaper" market for most FA will affect the process or not. I noticed AZ PHIL has the trio of Cedeno, Gregg, and Wuertz at 6.5 total in his guesstimate, so if that winds up being close, I wonder how it'd break down? Maybe 4 for Gregg and 1.25 each for Cedeno and Wuertz possibly? In any case $5 M is much to premature to bitch about when discussing Fuentes' totally unrelated to Gregg's contract. But pseudo GM's around here believe everything they post. It's related because he was discussing other options besides Gregg Fuentes was another option? Really? Signing a free agent closer was a option? Interestingly enough the GM didn't want to pay his FA closer top money at any risk that he avoided offering arbitration. Other than that, I couldn't agree with you more that Fuentes was a comparable option.

Who's paying Gregg $5 mil? The Cubs. Sorry, since I don't work for the organization I guess I can't refer to them as "we". Jim Hendry has done a terrible job allocating his resources this offseason. Really? When? I went through the Cubs press releases dating back to Greggs acquisition and nothing on a 2009 contract. Cots.com still doesn't have 2009 terms for Gregg yet they have the Miles contract covered. ??? Is this another one of those things that another poster likes to describe as "we already covered this in another thread and we proved that..." or does anyone have a legitimate answer to my question? I assumed by your post that you understood why Gregg was likely to get around 5 mil. Silly me Yes, silly you. Unless, of course there was a thread where everyone discussed this and it was proven.

A better response than "???" but it can "almost definitely wind up between" 3 and 3.7 as well. How about we wait and see what he gets before we pass judgment? That's true, I guess.....I'm not sure if this year's slow developing and most likely "cheaper" market for most FA will affect the process or not. I noticed AZ PHIL has the trio of Cedeno, Gregg, and Wuertz at 6.5 total in his guesstimate, so if that winds up being close, I wonder how it'd break down? Maybe 4 for Gregg and 1.25 each for Cedeno and Wuertz possibly? In any case $5 M is much to premature to bitch about when discussing Fuentes' totally unrelated to Gregg's contract. But pseudo GM's around here believe everything they post.

A better response than "???" but it can "almost definitely wind up between" 3 and 3.7 as well. How about we wait and see what he gets before we pass judgment?

Who's paying Gregg $5 mil? The Cubs. Sorry, since I don't work for the organization I guess I can't refer to them as "we". Jim Hendry has done a terrible job allocating his resources this offseason. Really? When? I went through the Cubs press releases dating back to Greggs acquisition and nothing on a 2009 contract. Cots.com still doesn't have 2009 terms for Gregg yet they have the Miles contract covered. ??? Is this another one of those things that another poster likes to describe as "we already covered this in another thread and we proved that..." or does anyone have a legitimate answer to my question?

I'd be interested in seeing your stats to back up that 10-12 win regression. And it is a little hard to make any such definitive statements until you see the final team they bring to spring training. Considering we were a 90 or so win team that managed to win 97 games last season I don't have to do much. Basically, all I have to say is that Ryan Dempster's ERA needs to go up a run and that Milton Bradley isn't Carlos Beltran and Grady Sizemore and I've covered my three wins or so. I'd put the Cubs right around 88 true level, right around 90 adjusted for the NLC. Wow, You're so smaaaaart! The way you wax poetic about how a 97 win team can regress to about 90 wins is so interesting. I'm sure you're so smaaaart, you already know that any 97 team can win 7 less games (shockingly, even ones with Sizemore and Beltran). This is why I love reading your posts. You save me so much time. Now I don't have to waste the season watching games. I'll just tune in to see a 90 win Cubs team begin a playoff series in Wrigley taking on the hated Diamondbacks. well then Honestly, I'm not this big of a jag-bag, it's just that so many people are so certain of everything they write that they forget the game is not played on a spreadsheet. Uber-intelligent arguments for Khalil Greene are more likely to stupid as then they are to look ingenious. Predicting 97 win teams to regress to 90 wins is more Colubmus conning the savages that he can move the moon to cover the sun than some insightful statement.

"You think Fontenot and Miles can hit .300/.380/.460 combined over 162 games? I just don't know what to say. That is inane. Fontenot could come close if he hits his 90th percentile. That's a 10% chance of happening....not very likely." Then, in another thread: "It makes perfect sense. Hendry's not a dumb guy. He knows that with Fontenot and DeRosa at 2B we have two guys who are essentially the same entity.."

Who's paying Gregg $5 mil?

Simple, he needs to be another teams prospect and he'll be loved here.

I'd be interested in seeing your stats to back up that 10-12 win regression. And it is a little hard to make any such definitive statements until you see the final team they bring to spring training. Considering we were a 90 or so win team that managed to win 97 games last season I don't have to do much. Basically, all I have to say is that Ryan Dempster's ERA needs to go up a run and that Milton Bradley isn't Carlos Beltran and Grady Sizemore and I've covered my three wins or so. I'd put the Cubs right around 88 true level, right around 90 adjusted for the NLC. Wow, You're so smaaaaart! The way you wax poetic about how a 97 win team can regress to about 90 wins is so interesting. I'm sure you're so smaaaart, you already know that any 97 team can win 7 less games (shockingly, even ones with Sizemore and Beltran). This is why I love reading your posts. You save me so much time. Now I don't have to waste the season watching games. I'll just tune in to see a 90 win Cubs team begin a playoff series in Wrigley taking on the hated Diamondbacks.

You seriously trying to tie Swish down with Aram somehow? Convenient to forget that Aramis has had a 5 year run of producing 125+ OPS+? WHere hav you seen Aramis drop to the levels that Swisher did last year? Yeah, more or less, he does suck when you have to use OPS+ of 92 and 101 to figure out what he'll likely produce. That's just if you want to water everything down to just OPS+ (which is absurd). I'm just curious, but can you list a few things you value higher than OPS+? Tell me, just off the top of my head, is someone like Furcal a bad hitter just because his OPS+ has been under 100 historically? Please understand that I'm not just here to rile up people, I have somewhat an understanding of numbers as well as anyone else who can open a link. The difference is that I'm not smug enough to believe I know everything because of it. It's often very convenient to find a single stat and use it as an argument on this site. If you think that's acceptable (with any single stat) then we'll just disagree. Furcal's main draws are his defense and speed. He's not a bad hitter but he's nothing special. And again, you obviously don't know how to look at any kinds of stats or else you'd see that OPS+ doesn't even have to be used to find out Swisher was a really productive hitter in 2006 and 2007. OPS+ is just the one that is easiest to look at and easy fopr you to understand (or we thought so, anyways). Stop acting like OPS+ is the only thing we have on Swisher. Since you know so much more than I about understanding how to read stats, how do you explain Swishers two bad seasons? Oh, that's right, just bad luck. BABIB says so, right? Furcal's main draws are his defense and speed. He's not a bad hitter but he's nothing special. Ohhh, interesting, there are other things to consider about a players value than just OPS+? How novel!

You seriously trying to tie Swish down with Aram somehow? Convenient to forget that Aramis has had a 5 year run of producing 125+ OPS+? WHere hav you seen Aramis drop to the levels that Swisher did last year? Yeah, more or less, he does suck when you have to use OPS+ of 92 and 101 to figure out what he'll likely produce. That's just if you want to water everything down to just OPS+ (which is absurd). I'm just curious, but can you list a few things you value higher than OPS+? Tell me, just off the top of my head, is someone like Furcal a bad hitter just because his OPS+ has been under 100 historically? Please understand that I'm not just here to rile up people, I have somewhat an understanding of numbers as well as anyone else who can open a link. The difference is that I'm not smug enough to believe I know everything because of it. It's often very convenient to find a single stat and use it as an argument on this site. If you think that's acceptable (with any single stat) then we'll just disagree.

i'll let someone else do it for me: i guess you can mock the BABIP argument if you want, but when a guy is hitting line drives 20.9% of the time and his BABIP is .251, that's bad luck. he's a good bet to post a line like .240/.360/.440, and could certainly be better than that. he's not great, but he's way better than the options the cubs have on the current roster. I only mock people that use one convenient number to back up their argument. Of course BABIP as it's place and it's limitations as well. When someone writes something like, " Swisher’s skill in hitting the ball and hitting it with authority didn’t change; rather, he simply experienced a lot of bad luck." that gets filed under the limitations side of the argument.

You seriously trying to tie Swish down with Aram somehow? Convenient to forget that Aramis has had a 5 year run of producing 125+ OPS+? WHere hav you seen Aramis drop to the levels that Swisher did last year? Yeah, more or less, he does suck when you have to use OPS+ of 92 and 101 to figure out what he'll likely produce. That's just if you want to water everything down to just OPS+ (which is absurd).

The Pedro deal wasn't really bad at all when he was signed. He was still 33 and really good. He was ridiculously good in his first year with the Mets and then the injuries started. You couldn't really have predicted that his body would have broken down that much that quickly. It was a bad deal for the time in the sense that they took a guy with a ton of miles and made him one of the highest paid pitchers at the time. That alone wasn't so bad as adding a fourth guaranteed year that absolutely no one was willing to gamble on. It was a gamble contract and they ended up missing the jackpot. Much like guaranteeing Lowe 60-something mil will be a gamble today.

Nothing if you like a station to station offense.

Didn't you just poke fun of Ibanez's SLG "for a corner OF" in another thread? Now a guy who sluggs .450 is an option? Who cares if he's cheap and young, he also needs to be good. Swisher is not. He's this off-seasons flavor of Brad Wilkerson circa 2004. Then 2005 came and, poof, all the wanna-be-sabermatricians dream of a "young and cheap" bat was exposed as nothing special. I know, I know, I'm about to get some BABIP based explanation about how the poor guy hit ropes at people all of last year. And I'm sure there will be another attempt to bring in how truly wonderful Greene will be in Cardinal red because he was another guy who was just unlucky. But little guys who hit alot of balls in the air will always be unlucky. He's not the LH bat I want in RF. And I don't believe for a second that anyone really does despite their arguments. Forget Bradley, this isn't fantasy, you don't pay someone big money to play 90 games. Forget Dunn, the Cubs don't need to follow the Dye, Konerko, and Thome middle of the order no matter how good those three can be when they're hitting HR's. Forget giving Abreau a deal that will suck in a year and a half. Forget projects like Swisher. Since Lou opened up his big trap about how they really needed a LH bat, it seems like that's all that's been focused on. They are intent on signing someone just for the sakes of signing someone. Be patient Jim, your offense is among the best in baseball as it stands. Before you know it there will be other "younger and cheaper" options available.

They just finished paying Pedro, who was on the downside of his career, $52.5 mil for 79 starts over the last 4 years so it's obvious that they have money to give a huge contact to another pitcher on the downside of his career. Replace one bad decision with another. If Lowe just changed his name to Lowepez, Minaya would add another $10 mil to his deal.

I wouldn't but with the way the market is going he may become affordable enough for us to find out who was right.

One Kerry Wood @ $10 mil for 1 year is better than Gregg and Fuentes. Hendry knows this as well which is why all the talk about the uncertainty in the ownership is holding him hostage is likely to be true.

It's up to Teix. If he wants to play on the east coast and be on a winner, he may have to take a page out of A-Rods book from last year and take Boras out of the mix. I can understand his interest in Washington and Baltiamore. Both are a stones throw from his home and both teams will pay him huge deals. The Sox might be pulling a Steinbrenner and forcing Teix to reign in his agent if he feels that the team he wants to be with is being driven away.

I love the certainty in everybody's posts.

If some team out there thought paying Marquis $10M to pitch for one year (let alone multiple years) was a good idea, then Hendry wouldn't be having such difficulty trading him. Assuming he repeats last season, it's hard to imagine a market that doesn't exist now would suddenly materialize a year later. Show me a previous example of a 32 year old starting pitcher, without injury concerns, accepting arbitration. It's really that hard for you to imagine a market for Marquis? Please now. Do some homework on starting pitchers contracts and tell me there won't be a market for a guy like Marquis. That's gibberish. Nobody is saying he'll get the same contract, but he will get a much better offer than a 1 year deal like arbitration.

This discussion is based on a SP, finishing his 3 year contract with a season comparable to say something like Garlands last season with the White Sox. I don't find that out of the realm of possibility. Am I to understand that you guys think a player like that, at his age, would possibly accept arbitration? I'd like to see an example where such a guy did. Relievers with injury histories and starters with history of being reliable (though un-spactacular) can not be compared. I'm sorry, but if Marquis just repeats last season, he will get a multiple year contract and would be a fool to accept arbitration.