dew1679666265

It may be nitpicking, but I don't think either fit a philosophy that includes "win now." Certainly not Soler, as he's a few years away, and it's debatable how much Cespedes will be able to contribute in 2012. That said, I do agree that given the apparent philosophy of the front office, I hope they're the top targets to this point.

Sappelt (or Soriano if Sappelt's the starter) is likely to be the 4th OF. The 5th OF spot would be between Campana and Reed. And if that's the case I'd take Campana over Reed in a heartbeat too.

He's had pretty bad back injuries recently hasn't he? If that starts acting up again, it could put him out for extended periods. The same could be said for Milledge, though. Sign him to a minor league deal or league minimum, he goes crazy, you cut him and find another bad 5th OF. At least with Milledge there's the outside chance for some improvement. With Reed there's only downside.

That's the best option.

With Lastings there's baggage, with Reed there's huge injury risk. With both players there's a decent to good chance that they'll miss the better part of the season. With similar risks, why not take the better, younger player?

Or keep Dempster and sign Kuroda anyway and then trade both at the deadline - after Dempster has had time to build his value back up - since we're looking at being $20-40 million under our expected cap. Obviously if you can get a really good deal go ahead and trade him, but I tend to think it's far more likely we get a better deal at the deadline.

I'd take Milledge over Reed in a heartbeat. Milledge will turn 27 next year, meaning there's the possibility (however slim) that he could get better. Meanwhile, Reed is 35 and has had nagging injury issues the past few years, meaning if he's healthy there's a very good chance he'll (continue to) decline. Some numbers: Reed 2011 line adjusted for BABIP: .252/.295/.396 Milledge career line: .269/.328/.395 At worst, they're very similar players with Milledge likely making less than Reed. There is the chance, however, that Lastings could figure something out and get a little better - making him the clear favorite.

Saving money isn't the Cubs' motivation here. If they moved him now, I think the likelihood is that the primary motivation would be a salary dump. I just don't see a team giving us what Demp is worth coming off the poor traditional numbers he posted in 2011. Theo may prove me wrong and sweet-talk a GM into giving something around his real worth, however. I do agree with you, though, that their primary motive is likely asset collection, which is why I think they'll end up moving him sometime before/by the deadline.

I like the Corpas deal more now knowing it's a minor league deal. No problem with the Sonnanstine signing either. Now if we could just nix the Reed signing (or make it non-guaranteed) there wouldn't be any moves Theo had made so far that I didn't like.

Or they could plan to have Jaramillo back up Soto to keep Castillo starting in Iowa. The way this group is going leads me to believe the former. But you could certainly be right. Yeah, wasn't disagreeing with you, just adding the third possibility. Though if we do trade Soto, I think we could get more value by waiting into the season and giving him a chance to hit his value back up again.

If Jaramillo had signed a major league deal, I'd agree with you. However, I'm pretty sure Jaramillo would be marginally cheaper than Koyie and is a bit younger and less proven as being terrible. Jaramillo on a minor league deal is also a non-guaranteed contract, tendering Koyie would have made his roster spot guaranteed.

Yeah, giving Soto for Davis would be a terrible trade. Brignac doesn't improve it much, if any. Neimann would be a bit more of an interesting start to a Soto trade, but much like with Travis Wood, I'd want a nice prospect or two to go along with him. Probably two, since Niemann's an older, not quite as good version of Wood.

Or they could plan to have Jaramillo back up Soto to keep Castillo starting in Iowa.

I agree that it's pretty close between Sappelt and Soriano at this point as to who is better. However, Soriano did post a .758 OPS last year with bad luck (.266 BABIP with a 19.9% LD%). Defense will drag him down, but I don't know that it's a good bet that Sappelt will be better. With contention not really an issue this year or next and production likely to be similar, I'd rather see if Soriano could build some value by having a hot start to 2012 and finding a desperate team than to start Sappelt from day 1. If you can move Soriano at the deadline, then you make Sappelt the starter. If you bench Soriano now, you kill any chance you might have of getting even a tiny bit of value for him.

I don't want to get into the Pujols debate again any further as we've hashed it out many times. However, I will say that my interest in Pujols had nothing whatsoever to do with sticking it to the Cardinals. That said, whether you believe passing on the players we have to this point was justified or not, we're still left in a situation where a sub-.500 talent team (better than our record, but still probably not quite a .500 team) has gotten worse to this point and there is very little impact talent left on the market. I see us in a situation where we're either in "must get" mode for Prince and a couple FA pitchers next offseason or punting 2013 because of our need for impact talent and the lack of it in either this market (trade or FA) or next year's likely FA/trade market. Since I don't see us going into "must get" mode for any of them (nor do I think it would be smart), I don't see any likelihood that we are competitive in 2013.

Two things: 1) Why is this necessary? Why is it necessary for Theo and Jed to completely dismantle a decent roster to a team that will be lucky to not lose 110 games for 2-3 years? If they can't rebuild the farm system to being a top 5-10 system while also fielding at least respectable teams, if not competitive teams, then I'm not sure they're quite as good as they were billed to be. Part of the benefit of being a major market team is that you have the resources to do more than one thing at a time. Small and mid market teams have to either build for the future or win now, large markets don't. Your plan completely ignores, in every way possible, the parallel fronts Theo and Jed are supposedly pursuing. 2) Prospects are more valued than ever in today's game. Look at the packages teams have had to give up to get flawed players like Gio Gonzalez and Trevor Cahill. Video game rebuilds like you proposed aren't realistic because in reality you'll either have to clean house of all your prospects just to add a couple premiere talents or you have to sit around and wait for the perfect mix of available FAs and your young talent maturing - and that isn't something that happens much. If you want premiere talent in the game today, you're going to overpay severely either in prospects or money and if you wait for your young talent to develop everybody into stars, then you're going to have the potential to be waiting far beyond 2015.

Every move they've made to this point has signaled a classic burn it down and start all over again rebuild. Some of the moves have been good (DeJesus, Marshall), some have been kinda neutral (Stewart, Corpas), some have been mind-boggling (Reed). But the common thread has been filling holes with cheap vets/high risk youth in the hopes that you can look respectable for a season or two while you rebuild the minors. I'll admit I'm still frustrated over missing on Pujols. I'd have been ok with 10/275 for a historically great hitter who fills a major need where we have 0 ML talent above rookie ball. I'd have certainly preferred that to doling out huge sums of money to multiple FA pitchers next offseason to have any hope of contending. Adding Pujols would be a big risk, but a calculated one and one that fills a hole that will be incredibly difficult to fill going forward. They're going to have to give up assets at this point to get a first baseman and we have much more money available than assets. My biggest frustration there, though, is that we reportedly didn't even make a competitive offer. On Darvish, that's not Theo/Jed's fault. They put in what they felt was a fair bid and likely were in line with everyone else. If the bid was $20 million or less, I'll be disappointed they didn't go higher, but they likely hit right around market value and it can't be helped that a team went way above market in a blind bid. I really wanted Wilson, but I don't fault them there either. It was clear he was going to the Angels and it would have taken a silly contract to pry him away. There are other free agents out there, but I have serious doubts about whether we'll pursue them. If the philosophy going forward is to not overpay for FAs, then that's admirable but it's going to guarantee an extended rebuilding process. Given the lackluster attempt at pursuing Pujols and the carelessness of tossing around needless millions (Reed and Corpas), I'm beginning to think the reports that they're not serious or don't have the funds for Prince are the more likely to be accurate. I could be wrong and I hope I am, but I've not seen anything this season that leads me to believe differently. If I was seeing some parallel fronts stuff, I'd agree. But the only improvements they've made to the major league roster have been Wood over our 5th starters and DeJesus over our RF. Third base is likely a major downgrade and they didn't make a serious attempt at improving first when Pujols was available. If they go get Prince and, say, Cespedes then I'll be wrong and happy about it. But I think the trend we're seeing is indicating otherwise. It's not about resources at this point, it's about opportunities. This becomes less a full rebuild and more a lengthy reload if we go get Prince, but if we miss on him what impact talent is out there? Nothing this offseason (Cespedes might be potential impact, but that's it) and only pitching next offseason. We'll basically go into the offseason absolutely needing 2 of the FA starters to have any shot at contending next year with how mediocre (optimistically) our offense is likely to be. First off how likely are we to sign two of those free agents, and how smart is it to give 6-8 years to one pitcher with a decent amount of mileage on his arm, much less two of them? And even if we sign two of the FA pitchers, we're still losing Dempster and Zambrano. Neither is great anymore, but both are still solid 2-3 win players (adding in Z's offense there). We're really only gaining a few wins over the two of them and may still have questions at the back end of our rotation - what if Shark doesn't cut it as a starter, what if Cashner doesn't develop enough arm strength to start? If we don't get Prince, I simply think there's way too many needs, questions, and unknowns to realistically think we can contend in 2013. But Theo's really good at what he does, so he may make me look silly on this. And I hope he does.

I guess I don't know what you're criticizing. Are you saying that the Cubs should have taken an extended period of not attempting to win games at the major league level in order to focus entirely on the farm system? If so, I strongly disagree with you. It's very possible to build a good, sustainable farm system while also making efforts to contend at the major league level. Plenty of big market teams have done it and the Cubs could have to - and they tried. However, their failure came in not targeting the right players. They focused solely on big time athletes with little to no baseball skills on the offensive side, and extremely hard throwers with little to no control on the pitching side. Too many of those players flamed out and that led to highly rated farm systems not panning out the way they should have. Their failure in the farm had nothing to do with their attempts at winning each season at the major league level and it wasn't due to lack of funds or resources put into the farm, there was plenty of both. The failure came in what types of players they targeted.

If Sappelt is a corner guy only, then I think it's a pretty big longshot that he's more than a marginal starter. I'd be all for some hybrid form of platoon between him and Soriano to try to keep Soriano healthy, but I wouldn't tank what little chance we have to get value out of Soriano on the longshot chance that Sappelt improves with the beat enough to hold down a corner OF spot. If he can play CF well, though, that's a different story entirely.

Assuming we don't sign Prince and instead go with, say, Rizzo, I see almost no way to build a contender for 2013. Maybe if Stewart breaks out, BJax develops quickly, we sign Cespedes and he pans out quickly, Castro continues to improve, and we hit on two premiere pitching FAs next offseason, we might have a shot at contending. But that offense still looks pretty weak with an aging Soto and DeJesus, Barney at second, a still developing Rizzo at first, and something in left (Soriano? somebody else? If so, who?). Theo may pull off some magic that stuns me and has us competing in 2013, but if we punt this year like it appears we are and go into full rebuild mode, I simply don't think the talent (offensive in particular) will be there for us to be a likely contender in 2013. At best we'll have the same shot at contending next year as we did at the start of this offseason - a longshot if we make some key moves.

If you want to play around with the terminology, then the more appropriate way to say it would be that they are making no effort to contend this season. Which, to this point, they have made none. And it would take some really ill-advised contracts (Edwin Jackson at 4 years and/or more than $12 mil, Oswalt at three years, etc) for this team to have any realistic shot this year. If they were trying to build the present, they would be doing something to improve the current team and so far they've only made the current team worse. I'm sure they'll do a good job building for the future, but I'd really like to see them fulfill the "parallel fronts" comments they made earlier in the offseason.

The same justification could be made for Theo here - he's not selling high, he's simply moving a guy who happens to have an expiring contract and got lucky that this guy also had a ton of value. Looking at the moves that offseason, I'm not sure the DeRosa deal was purely for monetary reasons. We signed Dempster that offseason and traded for Kevin Gregg and we later acquired Heilman. Our payroll also increased from 2008 to 2009I seem to recall that Hendry wanted to get left handed and DeRosa was the best value righthander he could trade, so he did it. It wasn't simply to sell high and no other reason, but then it rarely is only that.

Since we don't plan to contend for a couple of years, we have a couple meaningless seasons where we can shop Soriano at the trade deadline and hope some desperate team bites. It's not very likely, but since we're not trying to win I'd rather just hold onto him and see if somebody gets desperate or see if he has a big half season.

Are they going to be that good by 2013, though? That'd be a massive scalping if we got two players in the Garza deal who are good enough to have a major impact on the 2013 season. And with that offense, the bat we got would absolutely have to make a major impact for us to have a chance.

Like he didn't do when he didn't trade DeRosa for Archer/Gaub/Stevens, right?