dew1679666265

You're missing the point. I'm saying we gave up too much talent if Garza doesn't at least give us the numbers he did in Tampa or better. If he comes over and pitches pretty well, that's great but it still means we gave up too much talent for him. If he comes over and becomes an elite pitcher, then I look like an idiot. If he regresses at all to his peripherals, then we gave up too much talent even if he still is a nice pitcher. That's the point I was making.

Bruce Miles: There are some good Hendry and Garza quotes in there.

With Dooley's connections to Louisiana prospects, I'd love to see Miles go to Michigan. If nothing else, it might ensure that we keep AJ Johnson.

We were that before making this trade and this doesn't put us all that much closer - especially if adding Garza's money makes us more likely to move Fuku. This is just speculation on my part, but we were already really close to the budget before adding Garza's $6 million. Does this trade put us over the budget and does it mean that we now have to trade somebody like Fukudome? If so, then we might have hurt our chances of competing this year by going from Fuku to Colvin in right field. I might be wrong, or we might have traded him anyway, but if adding Garza costs us Fuku, then we might have gotten slightly worse overall, for 2011 at least.

He may, yes. But why has he outperformed them? It could just be the way it is, it could be random fluke, it could be a great Tampa defense. Why he's outperformed them will tell us whether or not he will continue to do so in Chicago. It's never enough to just take results at face value and not look any deeper. When you find out why a player has posted the results he has, you get a better idea of whether or not he can improve upon/regress/hold steady in the future. Garza has gotten good results to this point, but there are reasons to potentially believe he may not continue to do so. That's worth considering. In a way he does and in a way he doesn't. He is still young and even after arbitration won't be paid huge money, but is a marginal upgrade over the current roster and cost valuable minor league resources. It's the right type of player to target, I think we just gave up too much.

If adding Garza makes it more likely that they trade Fuku, then all the more reason to dislike this trade.

I've said before that Garza could be a guy who simply outpitches his peripherals and if he is, then this is probably a decent to good trade. However, I don't know that for sure and simply looking at his numbers makes me concerned he may regress back to his peripherals. If he does that, it was a poor deal. Tampa has had a much better defense over the years than the Cubs and FIP and xFIP neutralize for defense. Thus, it could well be that Garza was helped by the great Tampa defense to post the ERA/WHIP numbers he did and he won't have that defense helping him in Chicago. I don't know the answer and if I'm going to buy into a trade where we give up Archer and Lee, I want to know the answer beforehand. Trading top prospects should be reserved for sure things and I'm not convinced Garza is that. Hendry may know that answer and if he does, great. But if he's not certain Garza will keep up the ERA/WHIP numbers coming over to Chicago, then making this trade was not a good idea. And it's not just FIP and xFIP I'm looking at. Garza has a 7.10 K/9, 3.18 BB/9 and 1.07 HR/9. Wells has a 6.59 K/9, 2.78 BB/9 and .93 HR/9. Garza strikes out half a batter more per nine, but also walks nearly half a batter more per nine and gives up slightly more homeruns per nine. Maybe he'll keep outpitching those too - and I hope he does since he's now a Cub - but since he was a luxury item that we had no need for, I don't see why we felt the need to take that gamble with two very high ceiling prospects unless Hendry is sure about why he's outpitched his peripherals and that he'll continue to do so.

He's better since Tebow graduated.

I've made the comment previously that I'm going to trust Hendry on this one even though I don't like the trade at the moment and have argued pretty strongly against it. I really think (maybe hope, I'm not sure) he's seen something with Garza that makes him think he's a good bet to really improve. It's a gamble, and one I don't think we should have taken with the information I have, but I just hope with how hard Hendry pursued Garza, that he saw something there he really likes. There's no reputation at work here, no situational obsession (he's not a lefty, not a speedy leadoff hitter, etc). So maybe Hendry and his scouts truly believe he's bordering on a breakout.

When you trade for a guy with questions, the expectation is that those questions knock his value down some and, thus, you give up less in prospects. However, by dealing two of their top five prospects, the Cubs paid full price for Garza. By trading Archer and Lee in the same deal, I would have hoped the return would have been a player I was confident would be a significant difference maker to the team for the present and future. Not a guy who has performed much better than his peripherals indicate, is about to get a whole lot more expensive and could just as easily regress to his peripherals as improve to the #1/2 starter Hendry and others hope he could be. Had we given up less in the trade, Garza could have come over, regressed a bit to his peripherals and the Cubs still would have come out ok in the deal. However, we paid for the potential Garza possesses, so to make the deal make sense, he must fulfill that potential. I would have cut off negotiations at Lee/Guyer/Chirinos/Fuld/one more prospect the level of Lee (high ceiling, but a long way away). That way we're still giving up good pieces, but if Garza quits outpitching his peripherals we didn't give up so much that we end up losing the deal. If that wasn't enough to make the deal happen, then move on elsewhere or don't add another starter at all. We didn't need another starter anyway. To summarize: The more you invest in a player, the more important it is that player produces at the highest level possible. The Cubs invested a lot in Garza, so it's that much more important that he continue to outpitch his peripherals (or improve them).

Exactly. And the Cubs will only be paying Garza $5-6 million for this coming season with the likelihood of it going up into 10 million and higher for the following two seasons. Yeah, as I've said for this trade to make sense Garza has to continue his production from Tampa at a minimum and probably improve upon it.

And even with that miserable average, he managed a .732 OPS and 1.0 WAR. Assuming his BABIP improves (it almost certainly should), there's really no reason to think he won't get his numbers back to where they were in 2008 or 2009. The "hit under .200" thing doesn't mean much when his IsoP and IsoD were so good. And has still been pretty productive. He's only a question mark if the Cubs feel the need to move him, which could be said about any player. The Cubs have plenty of questions, but Fukudome shouldn't be one of them and Pena is one of the most likely to be answered in the affirmative.

The only player that it may hurt the big league club anytime soon to lose is Archer and he's really the only guy I have a big problem with being in this deal. Between Flaherty and Lake, there's a decent chance the Cubs get a second baseman who can be productive at the ML level with Castro at short. We can also still trade Colvin if a deal presents itself because we have Soriano under contract for 4 more years (and going nowhere), BJax coming up and can always find a decently priced, productive FA OF (Byrd, for instance). I'm not that sold on Guyer being highly productive anyway. The rest of the deal is basically AAAA filler (Fuld and Chirinos). In trading Archer, though, we eliminated the possible upside he had of being an ace at minimal cost for a guy who might still have ace potential, but who we're paying $5-6+ million to. If he doesn't continue to outpitch his xFIP, then he'll be overpaid pretty quickly. For Garza to be worth the cost both in money and prospects, he'll have to pitch at least as well as his ERA/WHIP indicated in Tampa, if not better, and continue to outpitch his peripherals (or improve them). That's a steep hope.

That's the thing with the Garza trade, is it makes us a better team and gets the current team closer to a World Series. However, it doesn't get us so much closer that it was worth giving up the prospects we gave up. That's my problem with it. Hendry didn't go get a bad baseball player or anything. Garza is good, just not that good.

The good thing about this trade is that we didn't deal from areas of weakness. After dumping Archer, we still have JJax, Carpenter, McNutt, Cashner, Diamond and some intriguing arms in the low minors. After Lee at SS, we have Flaherty, Lake and of course Castro. Guyer doesn't really hurt that much, since we still have BJax, Colvin (for whatever you think of him), Szczur and others. Hendry didn't weaken any already weak areas, so we should be able to rebound from the losses.

He makes it more likely that we reach the postseason and in a weak division that's fine. Being more likely to make it isn't worth giving up two of your top 5 prospects for a guy whose peripherals are very similar to Wells, though. I'd have loved Garza if we could have gotten him at a good price. But there was really no reason to overpay the way we did. He's just not been good enough to warrant it.

This sums up my thoughts very well. I just don't see the Cubs getting the better end of the value here.

And then he returned to the pitcher he was the next year. Because he didn't give a [expletive] and more or less reduced the amount of breaking pitches he threw the 2nd half of the season to save his arm His ERA in May was 4.10, in June was 4.81 and in July was 4.09. He had two good ERA months last year (April and August). That doesn't look like a guy who was tearing it up the first half of the year. His WHIPs in May and June were 1.2, the level of his 2007 and 2008 years.

Bud has announced that Jeff Fisher will return next season. Good news, now lets get any staff changes out of the way and draft either Gabbert or Locker.

Gonzalez will also put up 3-4 more WAR per season than Garza if Gonzalez keeps up what he's been doing the past couple of years. Well yeah, that's kinda besides the point. A team has two assets, money and players. Just because one of them is similar to another deal doesn't mean it would make sense to make such a deal. You don't think the same deal for Gonzalez would have made sense? I think it would have been a clear win for the Cubs, even considering the huge monetary difference between the two.

Gonzalez will also put up 3-4 more WAR per season than Garza if Gonzalez keeps up what he's been doing the past couple of years.

You're also not as big a fan of Archer and Lee as I am as well. This may work out, I just don't like the package we had to give up. If we're going to give up two of our highest rated prospects, I'd like to see us get a guy more clearly an elite performer than Garza has been. My only question with the trade is whether this package (or slightly better) would have put us in the running for Adrian Gonzalez. Of course, there's the huge difference in future dollar commitment to take into consideration, as well. Given what I've heard about the Red Sox package, I think it may have. Very hard to say for sure either way, though.

You're also not as big a fan of Archer and Lee as I am as well. This may work out, I just don't like the package we had to give up. If we're going to give up two of our highest rated prospects, I'd like to see us get a guy more clearly an elite performer than Garza has been.

And then he returned to the pitcher he was the next year. Garza doesn't even have to really improve his ERA/WHIP numbers to be a good addition for the Cubs. He has to continue to outpitch his xFIP, though, and do it after going from a good defense to a much worse defense. It's a gamble that could work out or it may not, but since we gave up Archer and Lee it pretty much has to or we overpayed severely.

Is he just outperforming it or is he getting helped out quite a bit by a good Tampa defense? The total UZR/150 for the Tampa defense last year was 3.1, while it was -14.9 for the Cubs. DeWitt over Theriot may help that a little this year, but Lee to Pena will hurt it. I could be overrating UZR, but it's a gamble by the Cubs. If Garza has really been performing closer to his xFIP and the defense has helped him, this is a really bad trade by the Cubs. However, if Garza is just simply a pitcher who will always outproduce xFIP, then this will probably be a decent to good trade for the Cubs. If I'm giving up Archer and Lee, though, I want to be more certain of why Garza's ERA and xFIP are so different.