UMFan83

A lot of the posters here have a certain mindset on how they want a team built because they think its the best way to build a successful winning team. Needless to say, our GM has pretty much gameplanned completely opposite from this mindset, and as such as pretty critical.

No offense meant, but why can't this go into the other Dunn thread(s)?

You honestly think, as it stands now (thats for wolf :wink: ) the Cubs are a 3rd place team? Yup, if that. The Cubs have done very little to address the glaring weaknesses that made them fail in 2006 (and 2005) including OBP and starting pitching in general. Neifi Perez - .266 OBP, 236 AB's with the Cubs Juan Pierre - .330 OBP, 699 AB's with the Cubs John Mabry - .283 OBP, 210 AB's with the Cubs Ronny Cedeno - .271 OBP, 534 AB's with the Cubs along with a hoarde of other players that saw significant starting in the cubs lineup, that shouldnt see any this coming year. Replace with Izturis - Career .295 OBP Soriano - Career .325 OBP Ward - Career .314 OBP DeRosa - Career .331 OBP League average OBP is around .330. I don't see how we got better OBP wise other then getting Lee's bat back in the lineup...

You honestly think, as it stands now (thats for wolf :wink: ) the Cubs are a 3rd place team? Yup, if that. The Cubs have done very little to address the glaring weaknesses that made them fail in 2006 (and 2005) including OBP and starting pitching in general. if i read this i would think that the cubs havent signed anyone good, thankfully i know better Lilly and Marquis may not be Zambrano and Prior at their bests but they are better than running around the Minor League pitcher of the week out there. If the starting lineup stays healthy they will score a lot and get on base a lot especially when you dont have a [expletive] in the manager position saying walks only clog the bases How are they going to get on base a lot more? I don't see it Lilly and Marquis are not great pitchers. Lilly is ok, but a number 3-4 starter at best. We would have been better off signing Zito or Schmidt for $15-20 million and then using Marmol/marshall/guzman/prior out there for the last spot. Feel free to call me out in the season if I'm wrong, but I just don't see it and I am not going to get burned thinking the Cubs are better then they really are when the numbers don't say it. Then if we signed Zito who would get rocked at Wrigley when the wind is blowing out or Schmidt whos arm might fall off ,you would go and complain saying Hendry shouldve known better instead of throwing 20 million at the. Nope, I would have said well at least we didn't lock up 2 spots in the rotation with mediocre pitchers The cubs have added Derosa, last year at least he had a OBP of .357 i will gladly take that over Neifi Perez and his .266. Cubs have improved there. Would you rather have put Cedeno out there with his .271 OBP? Would you not have complained if Hendry didnt do something about the middle infield? No I would have signed Ray Durham instead of going after a career .330 OBP guy with a career year at age 31? The Cubs added Soriano which has a .351 OBP and scored more runs than anyone on the cubs last year. He also had a .560 Slg which is 1 percentage point below Aramis Ramirez. Id gladly take this over scrappy who kept hitting the ball to 2nd base. I would take him too but there were better options for the Cubs out there. His career OPS is .835. You are paying $17 million a year for a guy with a .835 career OPS. Think about that. Again, good OBP last year in a career (and contract year) when he was the only viable power threat on the team (meaning he was pitched around and INT walked). Now that he insists on hitting leadoff, he will likely get pitched too directly as they would rather him swing away and K rather then put him on for Lee and Ramirez. But yes, there was an improvement here. I'd say this will give them 3-4 more wins next year Now add barrett who had a OBP around 370, Lee who will have a OBP up there, Murton around 360 give or take ect. You aren't adding anyone here other then Lee, which is where the other 5-6 win improvement comes from. BTW, Barretts career OBP is .328 not anywhere near last years .368. You might be guilty of being a Jim Hendry and only looking at last years numbers to assume future numbers. Yes those numbers should be weighed slightly more heavily then say like 2 years ago...but they cannot be taken as definite indications of how they will be in the future, especially when they are changing teams to different lineups. I dont see how anyone can say the cubs havent improved a lot. bottom line is that they won 66 games last year, had the worst OBP in the league (I believe) and had a really high starters ERA. So we pick up a couple of players that are known for having average or below average OBPs over their career, and then pick up some starters who have ERA+ below 100 and we are supposed to win 24 more games (I don't care that St. Louis won it with 83 wins, 90 should be our magic number)? I am not buying it. And this is without considering the Cubs will probably have a major downgrade subbing Jones for Lofton....but I can't comment on that because I don't know what major league players if any we get back. of course their will be injuries but who knows who will get injured and when. My comments are in bold

According to ESPN.com report, Griese has been receiving half the snaps with the first team offense at practice this week. Looks like the pressure is on for Grossman on MNF. This might be the most important game of the year. If Griese comes in for Grossman, Rex might never be a starter for the Bears again. http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2692193

You honestly think, as it stands now (thats for wolf :wink: ) the Cubs are a 3rd place team? Yup, if that. The Cubs have done very little to address the glaring weaknesses that made them fail in 2006 (and 2005) including OBP and starting pitching in general. if i read this i would think that the cubs havent signed anyone good, thankfully i know better Lilly and Marquis may not be Zambrano and Prior at their bests but they are better than running around the Minor League pitcher of the week out there. If the starting lineup stays healthy they will score a lot and get on base a lot especially when you dont have a [expletive] in the manager position saying walks only clog the bases How are they going to get on base a lot more? I don't see it Lilly and Marquis are not great pitchers. Lilly is ok, but a number 3-4 starter at best. We would have been better off signing Zito or Schmidt for $15-20 million and then using Marmol/marshall/guzman/prior out there for the last spot. Feel free to call me out in the season if I'm wrong, but I just don't see it and I am not going to get burned thinking the Cubs are better then they really are when the numbers don't say it.

You honestly think, as it stands now (thats for wolf :wink: ) the Cubs are a 3rd place team? Yup, if that. The Cubs have done very little to address the glaring weaknesses that made them fail in 2006 (and 2005) including OBP and starting pitching in general.

Just my opinion 1. Cardinals 2. Brewers 3. Cubs 4. Astros

I still might given the current situation

Just for fun post relavent statistical predictions for the starting 6 (as I like to call them). I am just going to use WL (useless stat), ERA and WHIP Zambrano - 16-8, 3.45 ERA, 1.25 WHIP Lilly (will be slotted #2) - 14-12, 4.16 ERA, 1.41 WHIP Hill - 11-10, 4.63 ERA, 1.32 WHIP (will be inconsistant, great at times, bad at times) Marquis - 10-15, 4.98 ERA, 1.57 WHIP Miller - 6-7, 4.05 ERA, 1.30 WHIP Prior - 6-3, 4.58 ERA, 1.61 WHIP My prediction is that Prior will start the season injured, start the season in June, will miss another 2 weeks with shoulder soreness and be very wild but with a good BAA when he does pitch. Miller will also get hurt at one point, and unless Prior happens to be healthy at that time, Cotts or Marmol will get a few spot starts.

Not that they are necessarily correct, but I like to read the mlbtraderumors comment boards for each signing. The site sucks, but the comments have some logic behind them and represent the general view of baseball fans. Anyways, they seem to be unanimous in believing that the Cubs offseason approach was terrible and that the Cubs are a disaster and the best .500 team money can buy.

As the roster stands right now, assume slightly above replacement level players to fill out the bench. Also assume no Jones trade or any other major changes. You can also make your own assumptions as to the health and ability of key players (such as Prior and Wood) I say 75, my roommate says 90 and calls me a pathetic pessimist.

Prior threw up a 7.21 ERA last season. Marquis had a horrible year. Judging him based on that one year is silly. He's shown the ability to pitch far above his current contract in the not so distant past. I'll trust the scouts over statistical projections and internet GMs in this case. Prior had 9 starts, Marquis 33. Prior was injured, Marquis was reportedly not.

If you can't make a case for a PJ Brown or a Chris Duhon, how can you make a case for Sweetney, our only low post threat

I highly doubt the Bulls would want 'no practice' Iverson on a team coached by Scott Skiles

Whats the best possible player we can get from Jones, Marshall, Mateo, and a mid-high range prospect?

Good points. I have hope Larry will get him ironed out and Lou and Jason won't have a Lou/Dibble round two. I guess its just hard to accept 4.4 when 2 years ago we were talking about Clement and his high 3 ERA being our 4th starter

You drank too many rum and cokes last night too? More than enough. Definitely feeling the after-effects of it. Join the crowd. Holiday parties are fun

Well this signing guarentees that we won't have a terrible rotation next year, but at the same time we are pretty much certain to have a mediocre/average one with little shot at having a good one. That combined with no emphasis on OBP yet again on the offensive side, and we are pretty much locked into a 75 win team next year. On the plus side, having all these awful contracts on the team + a crappy season pretty much ensures the end of the Jim Hendry trainwreck. Go Cubs!

I don't know what to think. Miller signs here to start and now he has to battle with Prior for a spot. Marshall wins the 5th starter spot last year out of Spring Training and now he looks to be going back to AAA after spending almost all of last year in the bigs. Meanwhile, we have these mediocre veterans we just signed getting paid $7-10 million to pitch for us and blocking up spots in the rotation. At the same time, obviously everyone was wanting Hendry to sign backups for Prior and after the disaster that was the rotation in 2006, we actually have tons of veteran options so that we aren't throwing rookies out there to sink or swim. But why did it have to be Lilly and Marquis? This rotation is terrible and we will be lucky to win 75 games next year IMO

It's "only" 3/20 according to the link TXCubsFan posted above Again, the link: http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/chi-061209cubs-story,1,5103592.story?coll=cs-home-headlines

Wow, Hendry is really emulating St. Louis now, just like he did the White Sox last year and the Red Sox the year before. Power hitting OF to go along with power hitter 1B and 3B. 1 Staff ace followed by 3 mediocre to bad veterans and 1 young pitcher with potential.

Dammit...I was hoping the Cubs would get him. Good job Jimbo Edit: viewtopic.php?t=37209 http://www.northsidebaseball.com/PremiumForum/viewtopic.php?t=37209

This is so random. Did the Royals strike oil under Kauffman stadium or something??

From 2001-2003, Dotel was a dominant reliever. It's not like he's never had success. He's most likely a big improvement over any other reliver the Royals trotted out to the mound in 2006. The best reliever they had with over 50 IP this season was Todd freaking Wellemeyer. Yeah but hes still recovering from TJS. There were a lot of more dire needs they could spend $5 million on then Dotel IMO