Deeg
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Everything posted by Deeg
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Good to see/hear Javy is still swinging at pitches out of the zone. I would say low-outside corner. It was probably barely a strike. http://m.mlb.com/chc/video/topic/26663958/v43939783/must-c-consecutive-soler-baez-and-bryant-go-yard/?c_id=chc
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Holy crap - Travis wasn't the only Wood the Cub that had today after those three rockets. If you're weren't sporting after watching Soler-Baez-Bryant go back-to-back-to-back, you're not a fan. I'd like to see the Cubs win a game just to get people to stop talking about it, but wow - big picture kind of day. All three were hugely impressive shots - Soler and Baez moonshots pulled to LF and Bryant a 400-footer opposite field on a high-outside fastball. But Baez' was the most impressive, because Soler had a fastball meatball and put a Glenallen Hill move on it - you get the sense it was as far as he could hit it, and that was very far. But Javy reached for a low-outside slider and hit it even further without (for him) swinging that hard. Javy's HR just should not have been humanly possible.
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Russell is right now, at 21, a better defensive SS than Castro by almost universal agreement. Whether he's going the be the better player is of course an unknown - if it were a lock that Russell would be what the scouts project, he certainly will be, but we don't know that. But the difference in defensive ability is reason enough to keep Russell at SS. It's not as though we're talking about moving a franchise player (which Castro is not) for a punchless defensive specialist. As to whether Castro is traded, that's hard to say. I think he's the most likely of our bevy of SS to be moved, but there are a lot of variables - what the potential return is, whether Bryant looks like he can stay at 3B, Russell's timeline, et al. The Cubs will be in a lot better position to answer those questions this summer, and if Castro is moved that will probably be when it happens.
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Why Cub fans are so reluctant to accept this inevitability is beyond me, but in the end that they are is irrelevant. If it weren't for Russell being in the pipeline Baez would probably have already pushed Castro to 2B, but there's no point in moving Castro for Baez just to move Baez when Russell comes up. If you have to move Baez anyway, may as well do it upfront and save one position change. It makes absolutely no sense to move two better defenders to leave the weakest defender of the three at SS long-term.
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Russell's going to be the SS, period. It's just a question of whether it's this season or next, and what the major move that enables it to happen is going to be.
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That sounds pretty close to me. I don't expect either Castillo or Wood to bring back a real prospect or useful major league piece, but if the Cubs ate about half of Wood's salary they might just get something fringy. Jax is effectively untradeable, a sunk cost, so I suspect they'll get one last look at him and see if he can give them anything at all before they flat-out eat the money and release him. As to the 5th starter job, I think Wada has a good shot at it.
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Moncarda to the BoSox, $30M-ish.
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C.J. actually looks like he put on a couple of pounds.
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Ignoring it doesn't make ignorant people knowledgeable.
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You don't give up multiple elite prospects for the right to pay a guy $100 million over 4 years. The comparison with the Shark trade is almost as absurd as the notion that trading for Hamels is somehow going to guarantee the Cubs are great immediately. If you want to talk about multiple top 100 guys, it's for a #1 starter well under 30 with multiple years of team control remaining. The absolute most I would offer Amaro is a deal headlined by Almora, with a couple more guys in our 11-20 range. And he won't take it, so why bother? If Baez hadn't gotten the callup last season and was still eligible, he'd still be a Top 10 prospect, in all of baseball, maybe Top 5. Just because casual fans are too myopic to realize that a bad month in the majors didn't turn him into a bust doesn't mean the Cubs should bail on him. Absolutely no way I include him in any deal for Hamels, even if he were the only piece.
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http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131215041923/creepypasta/images/0/07/Post-25055-NOPE-not-doing-that-gif-S3vn.gif What about Hamels + 15 MM (or you can tilt the number a tad - just what was used before) for Baez, Almora, Cease, Black, Vogelbach Before or after the projectile vomiting?
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I wouldn't even remotely consider Hamels. Amaro is a lunatic that isn't worth dealing with, and it just doesn't make sense to give way big controlled talent for a pitcher in his 30s owed almost $100 million. Rather than another Lester-type contract next offseason, I think Rosenthal may have it right - the next big pitcher move is going to be trading for a young starter with a big arm.
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No way Lee would any more than a straight salary dump at this point. He's certainly making more than he'd be paid on the open market.
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Little league Champs
Deeg replied to Crack Wilson's topic in MLB Draft, International Signings, Amateur Baseball
I don't even know where to begin with that one. -
Little league Champs
Deeg replied to Crack Wilson's topic in MLB Draft, International Signings, Amateur Baseball
Nope. Not in the case of the Japanese, anyway. There's no country in the world with more thorough, accurate and verifiable record-keeping than Japan - it's an obsession. Also - you may not have noticed, but the average Japanese kid in the LLWS weighs about 90 pounds. Sure you get the occasional outlier but you have to remember, this is a regional all-star team, and Japan has well over 100 million people. -
Little league Champs
Deeg replied to Crack Wilson's topic in MLB Draft, International Signings, Amateur Baseball
Cheating in f*ing Little League. We see it over and over, but it never fails to disgust (or surprise) me. -
This theory has been trounced so many times it's not even funny. What's "killed" them in the playoffs under Thibs is Rose being dead. It's fun to pretend, I know. Why do you thing first Deng and then Butler have tanked in the playoffs over and over? Coincidence? Are they "soft"?
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Skiles did, eventually, overcome his own biases and realize he had to play Gordon 35 minutes a night. I think the biggest similarity between Thibs and Skiles is the "half-life" issue. These kinds of relentless rah-rah guys tend to see teams spike for a short period, then the team gets sick of it and tunes them out. And I don't know how anyone could dispute that Thibs relentless workloads for "his" guys have killed the Bulls at playoff time. I'm also pretty dubious of the argument that Thibs is flexible. He sat a healthy McDermott for weeks while the Bulls played basically 4-on-5 at the offensive end (3 when Noah is on the floor). He continues to pair Noah and Gasol when they're clearly the most mismatched of the Bulls four bigs. And Mirotic is basically out of the rotation now, so unless one of the bigs goes down again I think you'll next see him when the new coach takes over.
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Buster Olney @Buster_ESPN 34m34 minutes ago There is anger among the teams that Major League Baseball permitted Max Scherzer's deal to have such a high percentage of deferred money.
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That's a good analogy, for sure. Why give Thibs a guy like Hinrich that will play into his most meathead tendencies? And why invest heavily in guys like Mirotic (who can definitely play big-time) and McDermott (jury is still way, way out) who play a style of basketball Thibs will never embrace? I'm convinced this marriage is irreconcilable, and Thibs is gone after this year unless by some miracle the Bulls make the finals (and even then it's no slam-dunk). Irrespective of Thibs relative merits as a coach, with a relationship with the F.O. this dysfunctional he's doomed. Blame GarPax for their issues with roster construction, definitely, but Thibs brings a lot of this on himself. He runs his players into the ground and he's agonizingly slow to make adjustments either in-game or out. I think he has a lot of Scott Skiles in him.
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Well, this has been enlightening...
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Bob Nightengale @BNightengale 18m18 minutes ago James Shields had multiple 4 year offers before choosing the #padres. The #Cubs, a late entrant, offered 3 years and a vesting option.
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Chris Cotillo @ChrisCotillo 11m11 minutes ago The deal is done. James Shields is heading to the #Padres. http://sbnation.com/e/7741306
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Yeah, this almost certainly started as a tactic to simply get more money out of San Diego, but some of the competitors may have gotten a little more serious than the Padres anticipated. It's hard to say, but if Shields to SD was such a certainty, it seems like it should have happened by now. I think it's pretty straightforward. Shields is OK with playing in SD - he has a home there and they've made real improvements. But there are places he'd rather play, and he's waiting to see if any of them match what the Pads have offered. If SD was Shields' first choice I agree, he'd have signed. Why might they not be? Maybe after playing most of his career for small-market teams, Shields knows this is his last chance to go to an organization that's going to financially commit to winning every year. Shields may think the Pads, despite a one-winter aberration, have a poor track record in this regard. As to whether he feels the Cubs are trustworthy in that regard, who knows.
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I'm getting a "Nixon in the final days" vibe from Thibs at the moment.