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That's what he's reportedly demanding. I know he got only $10 a year two years ago, but whether or not you think he'll get close to what he's demanding depends on how much impact you think his awful defense had on depressing his value. I think it played a big role and, along with a really poor free agent class, the move to first base will help him get much closer to what he's demanding. Again, though, if I'm wrong and we could get him at 4/40 or less, I'd be a lot more open to bringing in Dunn.

Is the correct alternative to overpay for a guy who might only be really good for two seasons? This is a terribly weak FA class and there are very few first base options that are comparable to Dunn, especially since Pena's been terrible this year. My guess is that Dunn is likely to get what he wants or close to it. I'm simply not comfortable paying him 4/60 at this point. Especially when you then consider there will be two better options available after next season.

It's a perfect storm – Dunn is getting old, will likely want (and command) big, big money and there are two more attractive options that will be available a year later. I still really like Dunn, but not at 4/60 at 30 years old.

That's a definite concern, but will Dunn be good for 4 more years? Or would signing Dunn leave us with crappy production at first base after 2012 anyway? Also, Nick Swisher is a free agent along with Gonzalez and Fielder according to Cot's. He wouldn't be ideal, but would be an ok fallback option if we miss out on both big FAs.

If he comes at a reasonable 4/40 or so type deal, I'd be a lot more agreeable to Dunn. However, I think he'll get a lot more than that in a really weak free agent market and with his much improved defense at first base. Because of that, I agree with you.

i spent so much (relatively) money as a kid trying to get that frigging ron gant fleer rookie card I never got heavily into collecting baseball cards, but my brother did when he was younger. I inherited his collection which didn't include a lot of big names, but did have some awesome guys like Damon Berryhill. I still have those baseball cards at home somewhere.

I was always a big Mike Perez fan. I have no idea why, other than he might have been on the mound for the first ever Cubs game I watched. And I guess by always I mean for two seasons. Probably my first true favorite Cubs player was Kerry Wood. I remember listening with bated breath along with Harry when Steve Stone would update people on Kerry and Steve Rain's progress through the minors. As a little kid, my favorite player was probably David Justice since we went to so many Braves games. I liked Ron Gant as well.

Yeah, I'm really pulling hard for Vince. Seems like a really good guy and he's really been working hard the past couple of seasons. He has the potential to be a big time playmaker if he can just get a little more consistent.

First team Titans offense played well tonight. Nate Washington had a big catch, which was nice, and Vince sounded (was listening on the radio) pretty accurate. The Titan defense also completely shut down the Cardinals, though they were without Fitzgerald. Raisin, Thought you might be interested that talk is incrementally rising about Alterraun Verner having a real shot at winning the #2 cornerback job across from Finnegan. Apparently he's outplaying Jason McCourty and Ryan Mouton so far.

Purely on his in-game decision making and lineup structure, he's been bewildering at best. Theriot shouldn't have led off as much as he has, Soto probably should have started a little more than he has and I don't like that Z has been relegated to the bullpen for periods (though that may be as much Hendry as Lou). I don't feel comfortable saying the man doesn't care, though. He could have easily retired after last year and even into spring training this year and then again after his mother became ill (or worse). That he didn't makes me think he believed this team could win and wanted to be a part of that. I have no explanation why he didn't know Theriot hadn't walked for a month, however. It's been meaningless since Lou announced his retirement. JR argued that it was important that the Cubs fire him then and I said it really wasn't because at that point the playoffs were out of reach and we were a bad team. Firing Lou would not have shown that the Cubs were any more of a well-run organization than they appear now. If that's not what you were supporting then there's been a miscommunication.

Here's your whole post: I think this whole line of debate by you is out of character because you've based it all (in this thread) on your perception that Lou doesn't care. You don't normally make arguments like that and that's why I've carried the debate on. I know you have other issues with him, but found it odd that you so strongly carried on the "Lou doesn't care" point so much in this thread. I still don't get the idea that a well-run organization would have fired Lou by now. Maybe before the season, but very few organizations are going to fire a manager in the middle of an awful season knowing that he's announced he'll retire after the year. There's simply no real benefit to be gained by it and it'd be a PR black eye if the media chose to pick it up.

I would really love to see the bolded. I think it'd be extremely useful and interesting. As for the first part of your post, I'm fine with a manager preaching that and trying to get the players to follow it. However, I don't want a manager to run off a very talented player because he doesn't feel like the player hustled all the way to first on an easy groundout or something. It's not a popular viewpoint, but guys are going to dog it some over the course of a 162 game season. I'm ok with that as long as it doesn't affect their play and as long as they're productive otherwise.

What did you mean by this then: The only qualifier you have in there for why the Cubs are not well-run because they didn't fire Lou is because you feel like he didn't care before the season started.

I hate you for that. And I think the reason Bama-UT hasn't been massive outside of the SEC is because they're never national powers at the same time. Bama was through the Bear Bryant era and into the early 90s, then dropped off. UT picked up from there and was a national power through the early 2000s. Then when UT dropped off, Saban came to Bama and they picked up. UT-UF had the fortune of both teams being top 5-10 powers in the nation each year.

That's not a bad quality as long as you target the right person. And going by the link Raisin posted, they may be heading in the direction of targeting the right person.

From Bruce Miles' blog: Not knowing Theriot hasn't taken a walk in a month is pretty weird. I've wondered about Lou all season, but I don't know that the answer is he doesn't care. Frankly, I don't know what the answer is, but if he didn't care he's had plenty of opportunities to pack it in and leave and he hasn't. He may not care, but I don't think it's as obvious as you seem to and certainly not obvious enough for the Cubs to fire him simply because you feel like he doesn't care. The poor season we're having is more of a sign of how well the organization is being run than whether or not Lou is still the manager of the team.

It depends on what happens in those other 120 ABs where the batter originally struck out. If he has a .200 batting average in those ABs and grounds into 10 double plays, then he's not been a lot more productive with those ABs. However, if he puts up a .900 OPS with 30 doubles and 5 triples, then absolutely he's been better. A strikeout is only inherently bad because it's an out. It's inherently better than a double play, however, and if your focus is on making contact simply to make contact, your chances of hitting a weak ground ball on a pitcher's pitch go up.

The point of the thread is to outline the issues people have brought up in the past about their concerns over Ryne Sandberg as manager. It seemed that every time somebody brought up that Ryno would be a bad choice, somebody different would chime in questioning why he'd be bad and we'd have the exact same debate in numerous threads. So, the idea was to put all the complaints into one thread to reference anytime somebody asked the question as to why some people on this board don't like Ryno as a managerial candidate. Keeps the discussion more centralized and easier to keep up with, basically. No runs scored after Ty Wright's bunt and Tennessee lost the game 5-4.

But what if you're Adam Dunn who walks 40% of the time he steps to the plate and you draw a walk with a runner on second and none out? Then you have runners on first and second with nobody out instead of a runner on third and one out if you forced Dunn to weakly hit a grounder to the right side. A manager should play to the strengths of a hitter and downplay his weaknesses. If you can make a hitter more balanced without making him worse overall, that's great. But it's also rare.

I understand that, but why have him bunt in the first inning? Is that just when Ryno decided to have him execute his sac bunt of the week/month or something? Or is there an element to Ryno's thinking that you maximize your ability to score by bunting runners over? That's what concerns me. Those aren't the only two options, though. Making an out is very rarely a good thing and a good hitter of any type should not intentionally get himself out. Try to get a good pitch to hit and try to drive the ball somewhere – that should be the goal of pretty much any hitter up there – unless the batter is trying a drag bunt or something similar on occassion to take advantage of good speed and/or poor defense. Pujols is the best hitter in the game and could be the most talented hitter ever. There's a lot more reasons why guys like Dunn and Howard are not as good a hitter as Pujols is than just that Pujols doesn't strike out as much. Strike outs oftentimes are a sign of patience at the plate as well. A guy like Dunn is a very patient hitter who waits back for the pitcher to give him a good pitch to hit. That approach will allow you to get better pitches to hit, but will also put you behind in the count more often. It leads to more strikeouts, but it also makes you a better hitter overall. I'll agree on Howard, his strikeouts are largely a result of impatience at the plate and chasing pitcher's pitches. He doesn't have the patience Dunn does. A focus on not striking out can lead to increased double plays and poorly hit balls as well. If a hitter shortens up his swing and takes a poor swing with the intent to only make contact and not strike out, you're looking at a weak grounder right at somebody most of the time. That must be taken into account as well.

I couldn't tell whether he cared or not at the beginning of the year, I assumed he cared because he didn't retire at the end of last year. My belief that he cares was backed up even more when he chose to return to the team after announcing his retirement and then taking a bit of time to be with his ailing mother. If he didn't care, I see no reason why he wouldn't have just retired in July when he first announced it. What specifically tells you so clearly that he hasn't cared for months?

You sit Hill. You let the organization begin to move on. You demonstrate to everyone from Roast on up that you are in charge instead of constantly being in a reactionary state. Hendry is supposedly very close to Lou. Besides that, he is supposed to know the mental disposition of his men. He looks like he got caught with his pants down - again. He looks like he got caught with his pants down because his manager's mother took a turn for the worse and he chose to be with her? Unless Hendry himself is checking on Lou's mother's health, then the only report Hendry has is from Lou himself. If Lou said in July that his mother was doing better and that Lou would be fine the rest of the season, then I see no issue at all with Hendry staying on course. And, again, if you're worried about the Cubs' public perception here, one of the worst things they could do is fire a well-respected manager a couple months before he retires after he's announced he'll retire when his mother is sick. That's not a real employee-friendly appearance being given there. And playing or not playing Hill is pretty pointless at this point. Geo was hurt and Wellington Castillo is really unlikely to be anything more than a capable backup. A couple weeks or even 6 weeks aren't going to tell us anything reliable about Castillo's ability. Playing Hill at this point is pretty pointless, but playing him doesn't make a real meaningful difference either.

And what tells you that Lou doesn't give a crap anymore? I'd think the fact that his mother was sick and he still chose to stick around with the team because he thought there was a slim chance to compete is a sign that he cares and still wants to win. If you wanted Lou fired before the season or sometime previously, that's fine. But JR's main point was that Lou retiring now and not having been forced out a month ago is a sign that the Cubs are a terribly run organization and that they lack organizational control. If you didn't agree with that part, then what did you agree with?

I somewhat agree with JR here. Could the Cubs really not tell from his press conferences earlier this year that he'd lost it. He just didn't care that much - he'd given up. The fire was gone. He's been like a dead man walking for months. If his mother wasn't dying, he might sit through the last several weeks, but it is sorry that the Cubs didn't see that Lou had cashed in earlier or weren't strong enough to fire him/force him to retire then. I mean, his mother in 90-something. Does it really surprise anyone that she's dying? I can understand wanting to spend her last few days with her, but you don't retire 6-weeks early b/c your very old mother is going to die in the next few days. But why is it so important to fire Lou in a meaningless season that the Cubs' management now looks like it lacks "organizational control" because they didn't? Or that it was "hallmarks of a poorly-run organization?" I don't believe it's all that odd for a team to give a long-time, veteran manager a sendoff around the league before he retires. You may disagree with them keeping him on, but firing him really would not have made the Cubs a better team (at least significantly so). What good would the Cubs have derived from firing Lou this year instead of letting him make his "farewell tour?"

When a competitive zealot like Piniella decides to step away from the team on multiple occasions, yeah, I think you can easily deduce that his heart is at home and that's where he needs to be. It's a meaningless season at the point that he's taking time off. What good do the Cubs derive from firing Lou?