brinoch

.659 career home OPS .849 career away OPS he swings at too much and doesn't draw enough walks, but he's still a mile better than any of the trash that we have available at SS. He might not be available, either. But upgrading SS is where I believe we can get the most bang for the buck. Even a marginally decent SS, like Alex Gonzalez from the Reds, is a huge step up from Theriot. Sometimes you can't get a superstar, but our SS production was so bad that we don't need a superstar to make upgrading worthwhile.

I'm all for more OBP -- don't get me wrong -- but Greene is a marked upgrade over Theriot, and that's really the point -- find upgrades for the weak positions, SS, C, CF, and RF. Given that RF was the best of the bad bunch, and C is covered by Soto, SS and CF are the best places to upgrade the team. MLV indicates that Greene is a 17.8 run upgrade over Theriot, that's a nice upgrade. So where's the problem?

I bet Pie would have a market with San Diego.

Good, now that everything is smoothed over among our fine posters... I wouldn't mind a Murton/Jenkins platoon in RF with Fukudome in CF -- as a last result. I'm more and more taken with the idea of signing Fukudome for CF, rather than RF. That would mean that one of our more valuable prospects -- Pie -- is expendable to be used in a trade for a SS. It's a pretty thin market for shortstops, unfortunately, and that makes a good deal that much more important. Personally, I would try to acquire one of Orlando Cabrera, Miguel Tejada or Khalil Greene; all three are likely to provide 16-19 runs more than Theriot over the course of the season, which is pretty significant. I know that SD is looking for a CF, so a deal including Pie could be a decent match. In the world where we can get Greene and Fukudome, I rather like that team. Under these circumstances, I could see us ending up with two options (second in parenthesis): C - Soto 1B - Lee 2B - DeRosa 3B - Ramirez SS - Greene (Theriot) LF - Soriano CF - Fukudome (Pie) RF - Murton (Fukudome) I think the first option is a better team, all in all.

I've always had a hard time convincing people how much they look alike. It seems so obvious to me. Agreed. It's pretty obvious.

Nothing wrong with sharing news heard on the radio, folks. Given that there are stories on ESPN, the NY Times, and CBS on this topic, I fail to see any problem with the original post.

That would be really awful. Unless that's Koyie Hill, rather than Rich Hill.

The last thing this team needs is to use up resources going after more bullpen arms. Heh. I agree wholeheartedly. Shocker.

Mostly I was talking about this strategy for the bullpen, not for each and every position.

Dempster is below market value because he's not very good, though since I believe closer is an overrated position, I believe Dempster does the least damage there. Certainly, as a starter, he's way overpaid. I'll take Sean Marshall over Dempster any day. The Marquis contract is especially egregious. But, frankly, rather than continue arguing specifics about player x or player y, I want to emphasize the trend: Hendry pays too much for crappy players. By the way, I make this complaint every offseason. It's not unnecessary or exaggerated piling on. This is a specific, valid critique of Hendry as the Cubs GM. And a further point, I don't care whether or not other GM's do this. That doesn't make it smart. In fact, to my mind, it demonstrates that baseball GM's consistently overvalue bullpen pitching. Given that we know reliever performance is highly variable from year to year, paying for past performance here is a bad idea. Instead, use your minor league system to develop a solid relieving corps, keep them through their early arby years, and either trade them or let them go as they get expensive. Let other teams spend their cash on relievers while you save money to sign a worthwhile starter or a slugging SS.

Since there's only one position player on the list, I'll simply note that Blanco's VORP is -6.1. The rest of the Cubs' catching corps wasn't much better, posting: Cubs Catching VORP 10.9 -- Soto 5.0 -- Barrett 3.3 -- Kendall -5.7 -- Bowen -6.1 -- Blanco -7.4 -- Hill Obviously, Soto was the best catcher we had all season, even accounting for his limited starts. Blanco, despite being injured most of the season, was worse than all but Koyie Hill -- who can't hit. Cubs Pitching VORP 46.7 -- Ted Lilly 43.5 -- Carlos Zambrano 40.3 -- Rich Hill 34.5 -- Carlos Marmol 22.7 -- Bob Howry 17.8 -- Michael Wuertz 16.7 -- Sean Marshall 16.5 -- Jason Marquis 8.7 -- Scott Eyre 8.2 -- Ryan Dempster 8.0 -- Angel Guzman 7.1 -- Kerry Wood 6.2 -- Kevin Hart 4.1 -- Will Ohman 3.9 -- Rocky Cherry 2.0 -- Neal Cotts 0.3 -- Carmen Pignatiello 0.2 -- Clay Rapada -1.6 -- Billy Petrick -4.7 -- Steve Trachsel -5.1 -- Sean Gallagher -6.7 -- Wade Miller The idea of VORP is to grade the value of a player over a replacement scrub would do. Here's a link to BP's definition (and that's where I pulled all these stats). Note that Sean Marshall, essentially written off by the Cubs, scores slightly higher than Marquis. Marquis provides little benefit for his $6.375M over Marshall's $400K. And Ohman, Dempster and Eyre? Look at Howry, Wuertz and Marmol. The top 3 in the bullpen are significantly better than the bottom 3 in terms of VORP -- fair enough -- except that the contract costs of the bottom 3 exceed those of the top three. A distinct inefficiency. The Cubs would be better off, were one to do a cost-benefit analysis, going with relative unknowns from the farm system and plugging them in as needed over high-price veteran relievers. Hendry's obsession with fixing a defined problem -- which changes from year to year -- leads him to overvalue marginal players and pay them too much. One season, it was the bullpen, so Hendry threw a bunch of money at it. Moreover, this demonstrates, again, the value of a farm system that generates a reasonable amount MLB talent. The Cubs have pitching coming out the ears; rather than trade pitching for "speed" and a "lead-off guy" (Pierre, Juan -- yet another "problem") the Cubs should pay money to sign the best hitting FA's and use their organizational strength to fill in the bullpen.

If you're looking to clear salary to acquire a free agent, your best bet is to trade (some or all of) these replacement level players: $6.375M -- Marquis $5.5M -- Dempster $3.8M -- Eyre $2.8M -- Blanco $1.6M -- Ohman $20.075M -- Total Yes, the Cubs have $20M allocated to relatively useless replacement level players. Hendry's prolific wastage on marginal players is legendary. It's been a source of continual disappointment and irritation, and serves among the primary reasons that the Cubs cannot go out and make huge upgrades.

Me=Happy. Why was Eddie Lewis on the team to begin with? Probably the age/experience factor. blah, that works even worse in soccer than it does baseball. But, he played in Yankee stadium...

Me=Happy.

Meh. Vance needed to get some repeated post smacks, don't cha think?

Cubs swap Jones for Infante, pay Jones Salary - $1M, board jeers So, we trade Jones for Infante an 1 million salary relief...ok, that's dumb. No, it's more like $3.5-$4M in salary relief, depending on what Infante gets from the Cubs during the arby process. Assuming, of course, that he remains with the Cubs at all.

I think it'll be important to grade Hendry's body of work for this offseason as a whole, rather than one piece at a time. If trading Jones for Infante means that the Cubs can truly upgrade the offense, then I'm all in favor of it. I still that Hendry's put too much money into marginal deals (See: Blanco, Henry and Marquis, Jason), but it's nice to see him dump Jones, all things considered.

Eventually, even the slowest coaches have to figure out that, gosh, it's tough to win games when you can't score a goal.

Because he's just about the best player in the world. He's also been playing at an extremely high level since he was what, 16? Oh, I knew the answer. It was just a rhetorical question. Either way, C. Ronaldo is the truth. True. And I'm not ashamed to be jealous of Portugal, Man U., and/or any other team he plays for. He's ridiculous.

Because he's just about the best player in the world. He's also been playing at an extremely high level since he was what, 16?

Any youtube's of it yet?

Being better than Tracshel... that's a REAL high bar. :lol:

Cameron's not a bad guy to have around for a 4th OF, platoon partner -- whatever. If he's cheap, signing him could be a low risk/high reward deal.

Indeed.

sure, but is that likely? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows? But there's no harm in coming up with creative ways to improve the Cubs. I kind of like the idea of acquiring Kazmir. Well it's not completely off the wall. The Rays are listening to offers for Kazmir. Here's a question would you trade Rich Hill+ the farm for one year of Johan Santana? Probably not. Once Santana's year is up and he leaves, there's nothing left to replace him. Plus, with the inherent injury risk of every pitcher, that's putting an awful lot of eggs in one basket. But it's not an easy decision. Santana would be phenomenal. I'm more interested in seeing Prior re-signed. Letting him get away would be incredibly stupid.