Northside Blues

How quickly we forget Professor Farnsworth.

Remember when Carlos Zambrano was supposed to be our #5 starter? Behind Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, Juan Cruz and Angel Guzman?

Not likely unless New York wants to go completely back to the building blocks. Jose Reyes ($11m), Carlos Beltran ($18.5m), Oliver Perez ($12m), Luis Castillo ($6m) and possibly Francisco Rodriguez ($15m w/ buyout) are all coming off the books after this season. That's around $60m.

Weeks' bat is good enough to be at 3B, I understand shifting him from 2B to 3B marginalizes his value some, but he could be considered a 3B option on top of a 2B option Yeah but each of our 2B have more experience at 3B, it'd be easier to move them over (doesnt change the offense since Baker/DeWitt would be at 2B and Weeks at 3B or the opposite). Just leave him at 2B, and then we can upgrade 3B in a more traditional sense when there's something that fits.

Liriano has had a history of shoulder problems and has an "inverted W" (if you believe in that, I don't unless said pitcher has shoulder issues). One of the seasons I was talking about was TJS, the other was prior to his trade to the Twins when he was in the minors. He was damaged goods when the Twins acquired him.

Some other viable options are Garrett Atkins and Jorge Cantu, if they have backup solutions. I guess I can be the first to play the obligatory Pujols answer (I kid). Honestly, the Cubs have a chance to move Baker/DeWitt over there if we can get a better 2B/SS next year. The 2B market is attractive: Jose Reyes, Rickie Weeks, Kelly Johnson, Jimmy Rollins, and potentially Rafael Furcal and Brandon Phillips. Cano and Aaron Hill have options that will almost certainly be picked up. Bill Hall is another candidate. Honestly, all of those guys are I'd prefer at 2B long term (or Castro to 2B if Reyes or Rollins are interested). I'd absolutely love for the Cubs to get Rickie Weeks. We'd finally have a lead off hitter type player to shut people up, and on top of that he actually gets on base and is good. It's a win-win. I'd guess that Alex Gordon would be available on the trade market. They have Kila, Baker and shortly Moustakas/Hosmer/etc at DH/1B/3B.

I don't think you understand. He previously did a lot of coke when he was a failed top pick of the Rays. His life bottomed out and he rejuvinated his career, swearing off intoxicants and accepting God in his life. After several all star years, he is now getting rewarded with a $24 million extension over the next 2 seasons. The joke is that he's gonna go out and blow it all on cocaine, which is what he probably would have done 5 seasons ago!!! So, he's married to Eric Clapton?

That'd be a really bad trade for the Cubs, I think. You're giving up around 6 WAR (Byrd - 3, Wells - 3) for a 3 WAR guy who's 34. And then you're throwing in a pretty good prospect and Silva for, basically, a lottery ticket. I might do that trade if you take Wells out of it and pay a decent portion of Young's next two years. Otherwise, it really doesn't make sense. That's a poor way to think about it. The Cubs may be giving up 6 WAR for a 3 WAR guy. But WAR is stupid to use like that, another reason you never see me using it. If the Cubs were to give up Wells, what's the actual effect on our team? Nothing. We have two or three guys who are NOT slotted to be in our rotation who are just as good as Wells probably is (at least according to whatever projection system you want to use*). And whether or not Wells is going to be a 3 WAR guy going forward is another question entirely. Likewise, in CF, another position where we have some options. Defense be damned, letting Fukudome or Colvin roam CF will probably keep our offense at the same level, and lose us a win or so on defense. So we're giving up really 1 win. And really, Brett Jackson is probably a 1 or 2 WAR player right now even though his bat probably isn't ready. So either way we're giving up things from our strength so the total WAR is useless to us. A 3 win player on the bench isn't getting us 3 wins. That being said, I don't really see the point of this trade. Young's getting old and he's got a career .733 OPS away from Texas. Jeff Baker's OPS last year was .739. DeWitt's career OPS is .713, and he's young and he's got a higher OPS upside than that. So the trade doesn't really improve us anywhere. We're not really any worse off doing it, but not any better either. So what's the point? Unless Hendry thinks that Young is DeRosa 2.0 and will be fine away from Texas despite not being fine away from Texas yet. *Im not saying that this is really true. Wells actual skill level, as you know is pretty divisive around here, and I don't really want this to become the 10th thread about it.

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Risky. As others have said, Liriano is probably more of a health risk than Garza. He's already had two lost seasons to injuries. Im not sure how much I'd prefer Liriano to Garza. He's better when he's healthy, but how long is that going to be? I'd probably rather keep Garza and the one or two prospects we'd save. We've already got enough health risks in the rotation and on the rest of the team. Also, the monetary price of Liriano will skyrocket if we sign him long term, and if he does get hurt, that's just a huge -15m on our payroll.

Well that was original.

If he hasn't signed there needs to be a collective effort to cheer for him as much as possible. Something organizied by the fans prior to every Cards game. Ladies and gentlemen meet your Chicago Knicks! Is there the baseball equalivalent of a star that no one wanted? http://i.a.cnn.net/si/2007/baseball/mlb/08/07/bonds.record/p1.bonds.si.jpg He didn't want to retire and was coming off a season when he had a .480 OBP, 45th highest all-time.

I don't even think BP thinks the Cubs will be that poor. PECOTA's broke and they have no idea how to fix it. The Cubs are probably in the 80-85 win range, outside shot at 90 wins, outside shot at 75 wins too I guess. I am guessing that PECOTA's ridiculous pitching projections are the reason for such a poor win total. The offense by PECOTA should be fairly average. We pretty much don't have a league average starter by PECOTA.

The funny thing: Soto had a better EqBRR than Kosuke Fukudome in 2010, who hit lead off about 30 percent of the time for us last year. Granted a large reason of that is that Fukudome was thrown out 8 times out of 15 attempts, but I find it mildly amusing.

I am bored at work. So I am making lists. Top 10 by TAv. 1. .344 Albert Pujols 2. .320 Miguel Cabrera 3. .317 Joey Votto 4. .316 Prince Fielder 5. .314 Matt Holliday 6. .311 Ryan Braun 7. .310 Hanley Ramirez 8. .308 Kevin Youkilis 9. .306 Alex Rodriguez 10. .306 Joe Mauer 16. .302 Kila Ka'aihue 23. .299 Lance Berkman 26. .297 Dan Johnson 37. .292 Geovany Soto (Cubs Leader) 44. .290 Brandon Belt Top 10 ERA by SP 1. 2.42 Stephen Strasburg 2. 2.64 Felix Hernandez 3. 2.74 Tim Lincecum 4. 3.02 Mat Latos 5. 3.05 Roy Halladay 6. 3.09 Johan Santana 7. 3.09 Erik Bedard 8. 3.12 Jered Weaver 9. 3.14 Adam Wainwright 10. 3.17 Cliff Lee 70. 4.15 Matt Garza (Cubs Leader) Top 25 WARP. 1. 7.7 Albert Pujols 2. 6.8 Felix Hernandez 3. 6.8 Roy Halladay 4. 6.6 CC Sabathia 5. 5.9 Tim Lincecum 6. 5.8 Cliff Lee 7. 5.7 Johan Santana 8. 5.6 Dan Haren 9. 5.5 Justin Verlander 10. 5.3 Matt Cain 11. 5.3 Roy Oswalt 12. 5.2 Jered Weaver 13. 5.1 Stephen Strasburg 14. 5.0 Jake Peavy 15. 4.9 Adam Wainwright 16. 4.9 Ryan Braun 17. 4.8 Cole Hamels 18. 4.8 Hanley Ramirez 19. 4.7 Jon Lester 20. 4.7 Ubaldo Jimenez 21. 4.7 Troy Tulowitzki 22. 4.6 Ted Lilly 23. 4.6 Zack Greinke 24. 4.6 Matt Holliday 25. 4.6 Alex Rodriguez 50. 3.8 Matt Garza (Cubs Leader) All pitchers, eh? Also, Stephen Strasburg's #1 comp is Mark Prior. You can't make this stuff up.

Fantasy Baseball!

The drop in his production would only be due to 15 points loss on his BA, that would be almost the entire difference in his SLG and OBP. If his true level is 285, what's the likelihood of him hitting 300 over 500 PAs? Probably not to improbable.

The offense wouldn't be terrible. There may not be any stars, but none of our regulars have a projection under a 700 OPS. League average for OPS by position players was around 745-750 last year. Even if you factor in the fillers weighting the guys down and our pitchers (relatively above average hitters for pitchers), we're still going to have a team OPS close to 715-720, which would place us just below average.

.274/.368/.474/.842 Geovany Soto .230/.355/.469/.824 Carlos Pena .262/.338/.391/.729 Blake DeWitt .266/.326/.420/.746 Jeff Baker .285/.321/.386/.707 Starlin Castro .267/.303/.336/.639 Darwin Barney .280/.350/.485/.835 Aramis Ramirez .256/.363/.394/.757 Kosuke Fukudome .264/.325/.479/.804 Alfonso Soriano .283/.341/.428/.769 Marlon Byrd .253/.299/.430/.729 Tyler Colvin Let's regress everyone to the mean ridiculously. Also, Robinson Chirinos would be third only to Soto and Ramirez with an .829 OPS..... 5-5 4.75 ERA, 1.53 WHIP Andrew Cashner 9-8 4.10 ERA, 1.36 WHIP Ryan Dempster 12-10 4.15 ERA, 1.33 WHIP Matt Garza 9-10 4.71 ERA, 1.45 WHIP Randy Wells 12-11 4.32 ERA, 1.45 WHIP Carlos Zambrano 9-12 5.31 ERA, 1.49 WHIP Carlos Silva Ouch, in fact the only Cubs with sub 4.00 ERAs are Carlos Marmol and Kerry Wood. Fun with Comparables: Trey McNutt: Chris Tillman, Jaime Garcia and Trevor Cahill Tom Gorzelanny: Chuck Finley, Bob Rush and Dwight Gooden (yeah) Starlin Castro: Elvis Andrus, Roberto Alomar and Alcides Escobar Jae-Hoon Ha: Jay Johnstone, Al Kaline, Roberto Clemente (huzzah!) Brett Jackson: Justin Upton, Adam Jones and Jordan Schafer Geovany Soto: Josh Whitesell, Roger Maris and Johnny Bench (Whitesell has 142 career PA, Maris and Bench have a couple career HR over 142) Josh Vitters: Ron Santo, Fernando Martinez and David Wright (still hope I guess) Chris Archer has Nick Adenhart as a comp, does that mean that it gives him a higher chance of being out of baseball by 23? Tragic and sad and PECOTA uses this. One of Carlos Zambrano's comps (#2 actually) is Victor Marte. Yes, the Victor Marte with 39 career innings pitched who made his debut at age 28 in 2009. I know he's broke, but even if he were healthy, I can't get over the Strasburg projection of a 2.42 ERA. Yeah he's good, but no one's midline projection is a 2.42 ERA. So in conclusion, PECOTA is broke and BP can't fix it.

LF. The Os don't have a prayer at finishing third in the division. Tampa and Boston should be around 90 wins. I really don't know what to think about the Yankees with that rotation. But at worst, they have a better offense, better rotation and a better bullpen than the Os. Not sure I like their chances against the Sawx and Rays though.

Yes, and don't forget he's going to Giles Adam Wainwright's arm as well.

They're gearing up for the battle with the Jays for the 4th place parade.

There are a lot of high schoolers who played one position in high school that are drafted at another position and are never given a chance to stick there. A lot of right-handed throwers play SS in HS and are drafted as an OF, 2B, 3B and never play a game at SS. There are also a lot of guys who caught in HS, drafted somewhere else, who never played a game at catcher. If the Marlins thought that Gonzalez's eventual position was 1B, a position he may never have played in HS, it's probably a good idea to get him there as soon as possible to learn how to become a good defensive one. Also, even if he was not a terrible athlete in HS, there's still a pretty good chance that his coaches desired him playing 1B over the OF. A lot of high school, select, and little league coaches hide guys in the OF, and as a good baseball player overall who throws lefty, the only place they could stick him in the infield was first. Not saying that this is what happened to Gonzalez (he isn't even an average runner), but it's certainly something that happens to lefties in general.

Yeah but he was a college 1B, which is a lot different. All of the "bad" high school 1B, in theory, get weeded out in college against tougher pitching and three more years of working on (or not on) their fat. Lind is also a lefty. I wonder if there is a big difference between lefties and righties. A lot of lefties play 1B, but if they were righties they'd be able to play 3B or C, or possibly even 2B or SS. In a lot of HS coaches minds an athletic defensive 1B is a huge plus and they might prefer to have someone like Loney at 1B, than a "hiding" him in RF or LF. Looking at the 2nd and sandwich rounds since 2000 we have our first R/R 1B. The list of all is Jason Stokes ® Brian Dopirak ® Hendry Sanchez ® Mike Stanton ® Freddie Freeman (L) Hunter Morris ®* *Did not sign

He's left-handed. He'd be able to play 1B or LF. http://mt.nesn.com/.a/6a0115709f071f970b0147e1952059970b-500wi Top row, third from the right. Certainly not fat.