Cubswin11

I am looking forward to Joe Morgan's rebuttal

This sucks, I wasn't going to spend the money on MLBTV this year. But now it looks like I might have to.

I don't see how Dustbags doesn't give him 250-350 ab's. He will be their primary backup 2B/3B unless I am forgetting someone on their roster. He will also likely be a leadoff candidate when he does play.

They replaced Piniero's 5 win season with Brad Penny, and Wainwright and Carpenter each have injury histories and each threw at least 100 innings more than they did in 2008. Offensively the Cards are extremely top heavy, so if they have injuries or ineffectiveness to Pujols or Holliday, they're hosed. Even with them, the rest of the offense is so unproven/ungood that they aren't guaranteed to take advantage of having Pujols and Holliday. Really, a fairly significant portion of the projected difference between the Cards and Cubs is defense. Problem is, all the Cardinals' plus defenders play positions where the measurement isn't very good(Pujols, Molina), or don't have the playing time to have a lot of certainty in them being 1-2 win defenders(Ryan, Rasmus). To clarify, this doesn't mean that I think the Cubs are running away with the 2010 Central. Merely, that there isn't much of a gap between the teams, and no one should be surprised if either wins or if the race goes to the wire. i don't think that's really true for their offense. ludwick is a good hitter; schumaker posts a .360 OBP from 2B, and rasmus is pretty good and should continue to improve. plus pujols and holliday have very clean injury histories and aren't likely to miss more than 10% of their games, if that. oh their pitching is horrendous, but i still think they pretty easily have a better offense than the cubs unless braun or fielder miss a lot of time. Even with Braun and Fielder they lack OBP and power throughout the rest of the lineup, I think 3-4 the Brewers are better than us, but we should have a deeper more balanced (in terms of OBP and power) 1-8 than they will. Unless we have to deal with significant underperformances or major injuries again, and nobody in the division is at 100+ win pace at the trade deadline, we should be within a few games of first in July and be able to add a guy or two to give us a chance to win the division or WC.

Volquez will probably be back around the All Star break, last I heard. And he will be given no rehab starts and pitch a CG 158 pitches in his first game back and then be done for the year.

And the fact he will likely be taking ab's away from 1 of Rolen, Phillips, or Cabrera when he does play

Should provide for some interesting antics in ST with him and Dempster, but that's about it. He has less than a .01% chance of making this team unless there are catastrophic injuries, at which point none of us will likely be paying any attention to Cubs baseball if Keven Millar is seeing regular playing time during the season. I could also see this move at providing depth at 1B for us during ST, taking a realistic look at the roster who is going to be playing 1B outside of Lee, Hoffpauir, and maybe Nady or Hill?

If they sign Mauer long term, I wonder what that means to them potentially resigning Morneau long term (after 2011 or 2012) when he becomes a FA. If they sign Mauer long term, 1B seems like the natural position for him to shift to, to help prolong his career and be able to play in more games. I have heard 3B as a potential position swap, but 1B would likely be an easier transition. There is always the DH, but it seems like the trend going into this year is for teams to leave the DH spot open to multiple players instead of have one DH.

How many all-star games have been on cable? Is the NBA ASG on TNT? Or do they just have the rookie challenge/dunk contest/skills challenge/etc.?

I signed up fall of 2006, I can't find my login number to check my spot and I have emailed them twice to get the number and I haven't gotten any emails back.

NBA All Star weekend is their signature event and it is well done. It is the NBA's Super Bowl/Winter Classic. The NBA All Star weekend is a lot of fun to watch and entertaining, until the actual ASG which sucks. If I want to watch an organized open gym I will go down to my local YMCA.

I noticed that Jose Ceda didn't pitch last year for the Marlins (minors or majors) what was his injury?

Hopefully this will force to the Cubs to really consider Castro in ST instead of bringing him in to just go through the motions

I think Dye more or less turned down a bench/back-up role, rather than turn down $3.3 million.

Watching the 1999-2001 STL teams was some of the most entertaining football I have ever watched in my life.

Mariners and Royals are talking about Callaspo, per MLBTR, if he is available hopefully Jimbo does his homework and see what it would take to get him. Callaspo would be a nice addition to our lineup and provide a solid offensive option for 2B and back-up 3B.

Let's hope that he comes very cheap. With the amount of FA pitchers still on the market, and no teams rushing to sign anyone, if Park doesn't come cheap Hendry is just being [expletive] stupid. I'd rather we sign 2-3 guys to MiLB deals with ST invites and see if someone pans out than pay Park much more than $1m guaranteed.

Yeah... that would be alot of runs. Even with how crappy our rotation looks. That's closing in on 06' rotation badness

I was a little surprised by Truffle's comment on Gaub too. I've heard he has very good stuff and there has to be a reason for striking out almost 13 per nine innings in the minors. I could be mistaken, but I think Gaub gets by with average-slightly above average stuff because he has a deceiving/odd delivery that fools hitters more than his stuff overwhelms them.

i can't really agree on some of those. archer has extremely erratic control and may never make an impact. carpenter has a long history of arm trouble, gaub's stuff isn't really that great. watkins has zero power, hak-ju lee is like 18 years old, brett jackson has strikeout issues that could conceivably prevent him from being more than a AAAA guy, burke wasn't even regarded as a good prospect before this past season. the system is a lot better than it was but it's easy to see how a lot of these guys could or could not work out. I agree that these guys have flaws and things to work on and when all is said and done it's more likely than not that the majority of those guys never amount to anything in the majors, that's why they are prospects. I understand your reasoning with why those guys won't make it. Carpenter has managed to stay healthy for 2 years now, Archer obviously has his control issues but has the stuff to probably get time in a bullpen at some point, Gaub is a left (apparently has a deceiving delivery) so he will probably find his way in a bullpen role, Lee has amazing speed by most reports and could turn into a super utility guy if he can learn to play CF to go along with SS/2B, Burke was young/inline for the league he was in last year (even though it was a repeat) but he was a high-mid first round draft pick and was regarded highly by some coming out of HS when the Padres drafted him, B.Jackson seemed to improve on a lot of the concerns surrounding him going into the draft. But like you said concerns none the less and most likely many of the top prospects now will never find their way.

It's hard not to get excited about the top prospects in our system as they seem like guys with relatively high floors. The pitchers; Gaub, Cashner, Carpenter, Jackson, Archer, etc all seem like guys who can at least be serviceable 4/5 type starters or middle relievers, and the position players outside of Vitters, who is going to be a boom or bust guy IMO. But Lee, Castro, Jackson, Burke, Flaherty, Watkins, Lemahieu all seem like guys who can be 4th OF, or back up INF. Thos seems like a different breed of prospects for us in terms of guys at least being able to contribute at some point and not flame out. Now obviously not all these guys will make it even as backups or interchangeable parts, no system ever has that high of a success rate, but I feel good about our core prospects being able to contribute in some facet of the game in the coming years.

I really wish more college baseball games were on TV, I would definitely follow it more. Unfortunately I only get the Big Ten Network and get the few games (at best) a week they might show and it's Big Ten baseball so yea....

Vitters was on it last year wasn't he? He was on the lower end IIRC.

Those could also be expected to be a little higher, if the majority of the roster stays healthy and he isn't required to play everyday for a month+ and sticks to pretty much just being in a full-time platoon player/pinch hitter/spot start against RHP once a week. But yeah I take those regardless of the extent of his playing time.

For a minor league contract or ST invite I'd be interested.