The Other 15

When did they have someone as good as Dobbs? Was last year that long ago? Last year they also had a good bench in case you were kidnapped by the Taliban and missed it. Mike Fontenot and Reed Johnson were both very great off the bench last year, and Ward/Hofpauir, Blanco, and Cedeno rounded out one of the more solid benches in the league. Miles, Gathright, Hoffpauir(hopefully), and Johnson/Fukudome will be a better bench than a lot of people think. Granted Bako will be a waste of space aside from the 1 day a week he catches. We wont have the power we did last year, but it will be better than a lot of teams have. No, that bench still doesn't look like it's any good. I feel like you're almost just throwing out random names. Let me try. "McKinley, Roosevelt, Harding, Coolidge, Taft, Hoover, now there's a bench with some depth and versatility." Let me get this straight with the mods. Me calling this post, and this style of rebuttal, [expletive] would qualify me as the offensive poster instead of posters that use random nonsense when their argument is shown to lack simple comparative observation skills? Got it. Back to topic. You badnews (I get the moniker clearly now) say something about wishing for Greg Dobbs. A couple of people point out that they have had someone as good as Dobbs as recently as last year. You also add, "they just have a bench that suck at a wide variety of position." Again, it's pointed out that you have no clue because the Cubs bench was among the best in the NL and all you have as a retort is to change the argument to some sublime rattling off of dead presidents? Yeah, I should be banned for calling that style of discussion [expletive].

His fetish for LRLRLR lineups is ridiculous when it results in GEOVANY SOTO batting 7th. SEVENTH? For crap's sake, Lou... What is your chief complaint? Soto batting 7th or Lous propensity for LRLR? In either case you're building a mountain out of that mole hill. What is the dramatic difference between 6th and 7th spots? With Aram and Font directly in front of Soto, he could see more AB's with men on base than Lee who is batting 3rd.

Ha! I agree. While the season could have ended up playing out completely differently, I remember vehemently wanting the Cubs to sign Pudge before that year. Hendry should have brought back Lofton for 2004 as well, even with Patterson coming off the injury. IIRC, Lofton settled for a backup role somewhere else anyway. Then again, I wanted to sign Jason Schmidt a few years ago, didn't mind the Juan Pierre acquisition, and wanted Girardi instead of Piniella (the jury is still out on that one), so who knows? Why is the jury out on Lou/Girrardi? What has Joe done? If you want to say he kept Florida in the race for one year, then you have to say he ended a 13 Year playoff streak in New York too. Lou has done what he was brought here to do. Get to the playoffs and be a unquestionable leader (for better or worse) in that clubhouse. Now, it's the players turn to step it up in the playoffs and quit playing like the weight of the world is on them.

When did they have someone as good as Dobbs? Was last year that long ago? Last year they also had a good bench in case you were kidnapped by the Taliban and missed it.

That's some kind of math that has dropping Marquis as cheaper than trading him for half his salary. Must be the same math Crosby is using here: "I want to play," Crosby said. "I don't care where I play as long as I'm somewhere where I can play every day. Ideally, I want to play shortstop. But it kind of goes in progression: If I can't play shortstop every day, I want to play somewhere every day. If I can't do that, then I want to get in there are much as I can." Bobby, baby, you're a career .239/.306/.380 hitter who has put up worse numbers than that each of the last 3 years. That makes you Neifi Perez, not someone worthy of a everyday job babe. The real progression you're looking at is bench, Japan, then insurance sales.

Rosenthal might want to mention that Pedro needs to be "lights out" (as he put it) for more than one inning and against better hitters than the Spanish Isle of The Netherlads, to get such a contract. That outing was as meaningful as a good side session.

Genius. Manny/Boras turn down a 2/45 contract because it had $25 mil deferred over 3 years with no interest. A few days later they accept 2/45 with 25$ deferred over the next 3 years - at no interest. Something tells me that if Hendry was involved in this, everyone would be crucifying him because he offered Manny the same deal when it was more than clear that there was absolutely no other bidders. It'll defiantly be worth paying Manny $10 mil a year for the two years he'll be producing. I wonder how it will be when they have to pay him $8.33 mil per for three more years when he is ether being productive for someone else or retired. No winners here. Dodgers come out ahead early and Manny got more than the $20 mil he ran away from Boston. But he probably gets a better contract next offseason after collecting 20 from the Sox and he probably has another ring

Low risk high reward. Nobody is saying he should give him a large amount of money. At this point he'd likely come very cheap. What would it hurt? There's nothing wrong with taking a gamble on a talented player - hell even a broken down 37 year old could be a decent experiment. But don't you think that this is taking it a bit too far? That's a bit off the deep edge when there are obvious reasons why any GM would pass.

Just a couple of numbers to interrupt this "Pedro is so awesome, I wish he would ask me to prom love fest." 1.57 and 1.43. Yeah, Hendry is a complete incompetent idiot for not rushing to get a 37 year old that hasn't been able to stay on the mound the last 3 years.

Out of boredom, I watch this entire piece. I don't know if, I should be laughing or feeling horrible because I want to laugh. The entire story is obviously a fantasy born out of his heroics as a 16 year old playing a pick-up lob game against kids 9, 11, and 13 after Sunday School in a 100'x50 church parking lot. I don't know what to make of the not so subtle racial overtones but it's clear he has some issues with someone that makes his life a living hell. How many times has he gone through this story in his head with Marmol and him involved in a duel of the century between good and evil at Bush? Check out each random thumbnail pic on his youtube page http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=TheLifeofElias&view=videos&start=20 Look at the natural expression. This kid cried a great deal during his development.

hopefully by "the past" he means "three or four years ago" Or, it could be that the Cubs were simply doing regular ST scouting of two teams

So Boras and Manny turned down a 2 year/$45 mil deal down because it included $30 mil in deferred money over 3 years but they accepted a 2/$45 deal with 30 mil deferred over 5 years? Is that right?

Is this epic battle of Good vs. Good the prophecy's told us about, can the universe handle such a confrontation? The upside down, backwards visor wearing turdablls dream matchup. He can use hip adjectives like "wicked" and whine at the same time. "YES! What a wicked pitch by Marmol! JESUS, Soto! What are you swinging at?!!!" "YES! I gotta text Justin-Tyler (also sometimes referred to as J-Tie when I'm feeling oh so hip-hop) Soto got all of it! CHRIST, Carlos, WTF was that?!!!!!"

He's loading up the roster with deadline trade chips to draft more Bobby Crosby's.

Yeah. Poor guy. How can one reasonably expect to live any sort of comfortably on a lousy $10 million a year? I wonder if he can qualify for welfare on that sort of pay. Juan Pierre is making like 10 million a year, isn't he? I can understand him not wanting to play for that annual salary. I'm not saying that it isn't a lot of money, just that it makes a lot more sense for him to turn it down knowing that info. Is zero dollars for zero years more palatable? Back to the basic question. With little to no interest from the rest of baseball, what terms are Boras and Manny expecting, market value? I don't hate him for turning down the deal and trying to get a better one. I find it comical that his camp thinks it has some kind of leverage. No matter how much he helps the Dodgers, they're not going to guarantee him anything more than what he turned down. Considering that they keep running back to him with new offers, why do you think they're suddenly finished doing that? They've made a few early offers. One for a single year, and the latest a 2 year deal with deferred money. That's not exactly running to him with new offers. They have stayed in the same money area that they started. I haven;t heard of another offer from anyone. It's March. I think if the Giants were sincerely interested they would have made an offer by now. They are likely waiting to see the talks with the Dodgers fall apart so they can get him cheaper. Most teams yearly profit margin is what Manny is asking for. With the state of the economy not hitting baseball on a everyday basis yet, few teams are going to be willing to outbid the Dodgers. McCourt indicated that with the recent economic downturn, the Dodgers' financial parameters might be different from what they were even four months ago. "Every day things are changing, and we need to be mindful of that,'' McCourt said. "We kept our offer virtually where it was in November. And you know what? The world isn't anything like it was in November. So we're going to start fresh and look at this the way we'll look at it sometime next week.'' That doesn't sound like a guy who thinks he's in a weak bargaining position. I predict Manny and Boras will take the first offer (1/$25 mil) if the Dodgers resubmit it and try their luck again next year. Clearly, the one thing we can almost safely predict, is that the dream of a 3 to 4 year deal is not going to materialize in this market. At the end of the day when you pimp your way out of Bostons $20 mil in '09 for the Dodgers $25mil, one can safely assume it was all about the money for that turdball.

Good to see Heilman solving the pitch count issue by throwing two pitches with one motion. Very efficient on the shoulder.

ooh i do Allright, let's do it. I'll take all the unders on Pecotas predictions. You chose over/under on my picks .279 BA, .350 OBP, .480 SLG, .830 OPS, 18 HR, 21 2B, 2 3B, 75 RBI, 81 R Nine categories, how confident are you that I'm wrong on 7 of the nine?

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/9274196/If/when-Manny-signs,-will-he-be-happy? Funny. I bet if the roles were reversed, Casey Blake turned down a couple contract offers, and Manny made that exact same quote, people would be blasting him for being a clubhouse cancer or something like that. haha the situations wouldn't even be close to the same. i love the people who are defending manny on this one. THE DODGERS ARE NOT BIDDING AGAINST ANYONE ELSE. almost everybody is taking significantly less than what they hoped to get this year, but manny think he's above that. 2/45 of rmanny is more than fair, but that's not even the point. why would the dodgers offer more when nobody else is? does manny not understand how it works? eff him. Again, let me stress this; I am not talking about money, and it does not seem as if Manny is either. But regardless of any of that, Manny most certainly has the room to negotiate here. He already has plenty of money, and he doesn't need to be playing to support any kind of livelihood. He doesn't need the Dodgers. He can afford to wait around a month or two into the season if he has to and wait for a team who is willing to give him more than 2 years. The Dodgers, however, seriously need Manny. Without him, they're significantly worse. Either way, I just have a hard time faulting a guy for trying to get a contract he wants. I don't know how you can say it's not about the money. It's all about the money - lots of it - 3 to wet dream 4 years of it. He forced a trade from one of the best teams (In possibly the worse way to do it) to get out of a $20 mil option. Not because he didn't think that was a lot of money but because he wanted more than that for more years. More years is more money. He'll probably take the Dodgers first offer and delude himself into thinking that someone will give him the 3-4 years he want's next year. At this point, it's his best option by far to get that. If he sits and waits, it would be for more money not principle.

Who wants to bet that Weiters does not hit more the .279? Does not hit more than 18 HR's? And has a OPS under .830?

Yeah. Poor guy. How can one reasonably expect to live any sort of comfortably on a lousy $10 million a year? I wonder if he can qualify for welfare on that sort of pay. Juan Pierre is making like 10 million a year, isn't he? I can understand him not wanting to play for that annual salary. I'm not saying that it isn't a lot of money, just that it makes a lot more sense for him to turn it down knowing that info. Is zero dollars for zero years more palatable? Back to the basic question. With little to no interest from the rest of baseball, what terms are Boras and Manny expecting, market value? I don't hate him for turning down the deal and trying to get a better one. I find it comical that his camp thinks it has some kind of leverage. No matter how much he helps the Dodgers, they're not going to guarantee him anything more than what he turned down.

There's no way they try and play Fontenot fulltime, and that doesn't save them $5m, when they replaced him with Miles, who makes $5m over 2 years. You got evidence to the contrary that Font is not in the everyday plans? DeRo was great, he'll come back to earth but I don't wish that on him. But he wasn't going to sit on the bench making $5.5. He just happened to be the odd man out in the new plan to have Font adding a LH bat everyday - not for 290 AB's. It saves them $3.3 mil this season. When you raised your payroll by $13 mil tha's nothing to sneeze at. I think he's saying that there's no way that they're going to let Fontenot play against most left-handed pitchers. He's a platoon player, and so his limit was somewhere around 450-475 AB's anyway. There were other ways to find him those additional at-bats. For example, if they had pursued the Fontenot as backup SS idea (which I agree that Fontenot is poor there defensively but so is Miles) they could have had him take Cedeno's 82 at-bats there last season. Cedeno got 4 starts and Patterson 1 at second base against right-handed pitching. Give those 5 starts to Fontenot and you have another 20 AB's. Then you look at at-bats DeRosa got. He started 63 games at other positions. Between Ramirez, Soriano, and Bradley, it's likely that DeRosa could even get more games backing each of them up this year. If he got 80 (45 from Bradley, 20 from Soriano, 15 from Ramirez) that's another 45 AB's for Fontenot (taking out the games where a left-hander would be on the mound). So now Fontenot is near 400 AB's and DeRosa has over 500. Then if you wanted to give Fontenot his full complement of at-bats, you could rest DeRosa a few extra days against right-handed pitching and they each could have around 450 AB's. It wasn't an either or situation. You could have given Fontenot close to as many at-bats as he'll get this season and still have enough AB's for DeRosa to be happy and productive. I think he's saying that there's no way that they're going to let Fontenot play against most left-handed pitchers. He's a platoon player Everything about Font is limited to argue one way or the other so how come you can determine he's no more than a platoon player. Given that, he has been pretty productive vs LH pitcher to assume he'll need to be platooned. Again, judging by the fact that they chose DeRos to use in a payroll saving move, that's more evidence that they think Font can carry his weight vs most LH pitchers. I know everyone is in love with 2009 Mark DeRosa. That's why so much of this offseasosn has been criticized. But by June, when we'll be reminded that that players doesn't exist anymore, we'll see things differently.

There's no way they try and play Fontenot fulltime, and that doesn't save them $5m, when they replaced him with Miles, who makes $5m over 2 years. You got evidence to the contrary that Font is not in the everyday plans? DeRo was great, he'll come back to earth but I don't wish that on him. But he wasn't going to sit on the bench making $5.5. He just happened to be the odd man out in the new plan to have Font adding a LH bat everyday - not for 290 AB's. It saves them $3.3 mil this season. When you raised your payroll by $13 mil tha's nothing to sneeze at.

They wanted another LH bat in the everyday lineup. Fontenot gets that done. Why is everyone completely discounting the idea that the Cubs want to play Fontenot full time? If they feel he can match DeRosas average production (so far the data says he can) that saves them about $5M. Not only were they looking to be more LH, but they were looking for a LH impact bat. DeRosa was in the way of that if you made up your mind that Font deserves a fulltime shot. DeRo is not sitting on anyones bench for $5.5.

Not a single mention of Fukus granny vs Tokyo Giants? Hey, if two starters missing their turns is reason to worry, Fuku being Fuku should be reason for optimism.

If it was their obsession to "get more left handed" that forced DeRo out of town, then the obsession with getting more left handed was bad Yeah, I believe that is at the crux for this discussion. Was it so important to get a LH bat for the middle of the order like they seemed hell bent on doing, and adding another LH bat in the lineup at the expense of DeRo. For that to be answered, we'll have to wait and see. I'm all for lineup balance when feasible, but not adding less productive players for the sake of getting more lefty. I'm not positive that Fontenot is automatically categorized as "less productive" than DeRo. Less experienced, less of a certainty, sure. DeRo was not going to sit on the bench if they decided to give Font a chance so we can forget debating about why they didn't keep him incase of injury. Round and round we go. One of my biggest issues with this trade was that I was afraid it was made to "get more left handed." As I said, you don't add in a less productive player just because he's left handed. Let's put it this way: If Hendry had decided to go with the best players he could as opposed to filling spots with lefties, our lineup would have DeRosa getting the majority of ABs at second, some at third, a few in left and quite a few in right. For the ABs DeRosa didn't get at second, Fontenot would have filled in. He also would have been our first batter off the bench. But, since Hendry decided to prefer the side of the plate a player hit from as opposed to their talent level, we will have Fontenot getting the a large number of ABs at second and Aaron Miles getting the ABs (most likely) against lefties. When Aramis, Soriano or Bradley go down, we will fill that spot with Miles' ABs. Aaron Miles or Micah Hoffpauir are now our best bats off the bench. How is scenario 2 better than scenario 1? As I said, you don't add in a less productive player just because he's left handed. You have to let go of the idea that DeRosa would have been a wonderful backup. This team is not in that financial realm under any scenario to keep him as a backup. The move was made because they felt Fontenot not only makes them more LH, but likely better for the long term. These moves were made to (a) lock up Demp and (b) add another quality hitter in the middle of the order (Bradley). Under your scenario you still have DeRosa in the lineup but Fukudome as the everyday LH bat with Font getting some AB's mixed in. Now they have Bradley/Font/Fuku and Miles getting AB's mixed in. I have to say, going forward, I like the that more than DeRosa/Font/Fuku and Edmonds. Especially since I'm not that sold on Edmonds and DeRosa being able to repeat last season.