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This is also the only thing Starlin needs to overcome to become truly elite. Just because you can put the bat on the ball doesn't make it a good pitch to swing at. Like Castro, Vitters has good contact skills, but apparently swings at balls he can't drive. Laying off those pitches leads to walks, but it also forces pitchers to throw more hittable pitches, which will lead to more power and production. More high profile examples would be Sammy Sosa and Alfonso Soriano. People think steroids, but the bigger part of what turned Sosa from an average slugger into a monster was that he started laying off the pitches that he had been getting himself out on, leading to him getting better pitches to hit. The steroids helped, but they wouldn't have mattered if he had kept flailing away. And what kind of hitter would Soriano be if he simply took 90% of the pitches he sees that are off the plate low and away? Unfortunately, we'll likely never know. And Barney is the flavor of the month, but his lack of patience really reduces his value. This is all pretty obvious stuff, really. I think the problem is that some people think others are saying walks are the desired result. Walks are simply thy byproduct of being selective, which leads to across the board improvement.

Yeah, god forbid we want to see players developed who can discern good pitches to swing at from bad ones, making the pitcher get them out instead of getting themselves out. It's not like working counts is what almost all the best hitters in the game do or anything. I guess since the hack first mentality has worked so beautifully for the big league squad, we should keep encouraging the kids to flail away.

I think he's on some sort of stimulant right now.

I may get flamed for saying this, but I'd rather spend in this area in some ways than on the major league roster at this point. With the way things are going, with teams locking in their best guys for an extra couple of years, it's making it very hard to find bigtime FA's who are going to be in their prime for most of the contract they're going to wind up getting. You don't have to have a 135 mill major league payroll to consistently be a true contender, if you ask me. If it takes dropping the major league payroll down to 120ish or so, but have the ability to consistently spend bigtime thru the draft and IFA, then I'm actually all for it. The pipeline would be continuous and while you'd have to pay big money to keep some guys obviously, you'd also consistently have the cheap production needed to go around it at all times as well. In a perfect world too, you wouldn't be shelling out humongous money on volatile FA pitching either. You could home grow it and always have more on the way up as well. You don't have to have a 135MM payroll to compete, but in a market like Chicago, there's not much reason not to. I don't think we should have to choose between ML and amateur spending. But I agree that shaving 10MM off the payroll to allocate it to the amateur/MiLB side would be palatable, provided those allocating it are doing a good job.

Better to just let the pitcher use a shield. And clear out the dugouts, too. Lots of foul liners going in there. Dangerous. You seem oblivious to the fact that this just reinforces the point I'm making. No it really isn't. It's just reinforcing that we can all draw preposterously stupid comparisons.

Better to just let the pitcher use a shield. And clear out the dugouts, too. Lots of foul liners going in there. Dangerous.

Because those are essential parts of the game. Flinging out in a dive for a catch isn't. Ideally nobody would have to explain to this to you. Catching the ball is not an essential part of the game, huh? Fascinating. This is bad even for you. Don't you see? He's just trying to help us see all sides of the issue by adopting the affectations of an abject moron. It's brilliant.

Because those are essential parts of the game. Flinging out in a dive for a catch isn't. Ideally nobody would have to explain to this to you. Catching the ball is not an essential part of the game, huh? Fascinating. Your posts are being intentionally obtuse (I know some people are fond of that term, if memory serves). Or your posts actually are obtuse. But they're not clever. The former two are debatable, but the latter isn't.

The spending on amateurs (higher ceiling ones at that)this year has been really encouraging. As long as these expenditures aren't subtracted from the ML payroll, this is a really positive change of course.

What kind of prospects are we looking at getting back in this Soriano trade? In this scenario, we'd be paying $40 million of the $60 million remaining on his deal, so I'd want to get something of value back. I'm more of a Kosuke fan than most on this board, but I'm not sure he'll be all that valuable when he's signed for just under $7 mil a year through his age 37 season. If we got a modest return for Soriano and you could decrease Kosuke's deal to, say, 2/$20, I'd probably take option B. If we could decrease his deal by a year for the same total dollars?? He said he would like to stay in Chicago, so I imagine he'd take a 1-2 year deal.

How do you reconcile this with the risk of stepping to the plate? His entire season is at risk facing 90+ MPH fastballs. Those have been known to break bones, cause concussions, etc. From the Dept. of Things That Should Not Have to Be Explained: The goal is to keep him coming to the plate, because that's where his value to the team is. Not diving or running full-speed unnecessarily prevents him from being hurt so that he can keep coming to the plate. You wouldn't keep him from going up to the plate in order to keep him from being hurt so that he couldn't go up to the plate. Putting your money in the bank keeps it from being stolen. So does putting it in a pile and burning it. That doesn't mean that you have to reconcile doing the former and not the latter. Settle down bud. Just pointing out the slippery slope at work here. It's really not that slippery, but you're flailing trying to pour some oil on it. There's inherent risk in any sport. You try and reduce that risk where you can, especially when the situation calls for it. It's really just that simple.

How do you reconcile this with the risk of stepping to the plate? His entire season is at risk facing 90+ MPH fastballs. Those have been known to break bones, cause concussions, etc. You could think about it for five seconds and realize stepping to the plate is a necessity while throwing his body around like a moron isn't. So now we've reached the point where an OF diving to catch a baseball is tantamount to throwing his body around like a moron. Should he never slide on the basepaths either? Same basic motion, only more risk, with a fielder and a base a guy could jam into. Jesus jumped up Christ. Really?

So the better a player is, the more foolish it becomes for that player to give a full effort? Do I have that right? No, because "full effort" is far too broad a term. I am saying that the better the player the less I want them to put themselves at risk. If the Cubs signed Matt Kemp I'd be perfectly fine with him never diving again. I agree. Personally I cringe when I see ARam running full speed (I feel that way with Sori, but that's diminishing). I'm not even a Texas fan, but I cringe whenever I see Josh Hamilton diving. Some players are hardy and can take the abuse, but sometimes discretion is just the better part of valor. Sometimes backing down the intensity is better for the team.

So the better a player is, the more foolish it becomes for that player to give a full effort? Do I have that right? No, the less sense it makes for a player to hustle the more foolish it becomes. Like when a player is injury prone. When a guy is valuable but is injured fairly easily, where is the value in forcing him to fling himself around? Feeling that satisfaction in knowing he gave it all, even when your club is set back when he get hurt?

They're not automatons either. Folks act like a guy dogging it has no impact on the rest of the team, as if they're impervious to basic human nature. To a small degree maybe. Lack of hustle isn't some contagion that turns a contender into an also-ran.

We'd rather watch the lesser player hustle anyway. At least when winning is important.

Absolutely, given a good offseason.

Because the sausage king obviously lives in world ruled by cliche, myth and little league dogma. At least his posts do.

That may be the stupidest thing I have ever read on this board. I can't even understand what he's saying. He wants to win...but he wants to have the worse player playing? It's amazingly backwards, and it's a perfect illustration of how irrational the obsession with hustle is.

That may be the stupidest thing I have ever read on this board.

and Reed Johnson has the luxury of only playing a couple of times a week. I think a lot people don't realize how exhausting a 162 game schedule over the hottest months of the year is for an everyday player. If not playing balls to the wall all the time means they can play a couple of extra games a year (not even factoring risk of injury) i'm all for it. Every player needs to find a balance. The better you are the more valuable to the team you are so it's less important to run out every routine grounder or pop out for the .1% chance of an error that is difference between being safe and out or getting an extra base. This is what a lot of people don't consider. Soriano has a recent history of leg injuries. ARam has a history of leg injuries (we once lost him for a good chunk of time because he hurt himself busting it down the 1B line). Speed is not a part of either's game. What are we going to gain from seeing them put the pedal to the metal on every play? Nothing. What do we stand to lose? A lot more. There are numerous star quality players around the league who don't play all out all the time, and there's a reason they aren't being castigated for it. You want your great players on the field as much as possible, and the season is a grind. If busting ass melds well into your game (Marlon Byrd, for example), that's great. As others have pointed out, a lot of players have to kill themselves to have any value. But to say your sluggers should run full bore all the time or dive and crash at every opportunity the same as your part time scrappers is nothing but short sighted, dogmatic little league horse [expletive]. Every player is different, and you simply can't hold them all to some blanket hustle standard. Well you can, but to your team's detriment.

Exactly. I don't want to see Soriano going "all out". He'd be even worse, and probably hurt himself in the process. I don't want to see Aramis busting it down the line on every flyball or grounder, because he'll hurt himself. You don't just sacrifice your body at every opportunity out some misguided need to prove your commitment. That's just incredibly stupid, not to mention counterproductive.

No one is saying that. You just can't conflate hustle with being good. It helps, but sometimes people look at someone playing with their ass on fire and assume that makes them a better player. It does not.

It's the sort of scrappy crap meatheads devour. Flinging yourself all over the field =/= being a good defender. Soriano isn't a good fielder, but it has absolutely nothing to do with his lack of wallbanging and flopping about.

Soriano is getting paid a lot of money are there aren't any viable replacements anyway. Quade is a tool, but people need to get over the Soriano thing. Barring a miracle, he's our starting LF for the next few years.