XZero771679666304

I'll take the pool for 100 Alex. That depends on the pool. There are question marks around Ramirez, but he's near MLB ready starting pitching with an intriguing ceiling.

So there are no "if" clauses (WS/Garza extentsion)? I feel pretty good about the deal as is, but if you add Ramirez it goes from being good to great, imo.

It's a little premature for that comparison.

Inconceivable.

I'll be interested in seeing how much he actually signs for versus how much Garza makes in FA. If our financial situation keeps us from upping payroll this offseason, Gonzalez appears to be in the 4 or 5 year, 10-12 mill per, range. Which would basically replace Garza's 10.5 mill salary slot. At 26, if he DOES have frontline capabilities, he's a must-get for us, in my mind. I'd rather pay the extra $5 million a year to keep Garza. If 15MM per keeps Garza, that's great. But I don't think it would.

My landlord's husband has one. He's a huge gun guy, and one day we were talking about home/self defense firearms and he pulled one of those out of his glove box in let me inspect it. Pretty cool, I have to admit.

I don't know, this (failing to sign an early round pick) wouldn't be unprecedented for them.

I usually just devote my Tunney-related thought to hoping that he falls victim to spontaneous human combustion.

It has been said by others, but I don't think the Cubs ever thought they'd get 6K, knowing that having to compromise was always going to happen.

Seriously? That was never going to happen.

I'd like to see him extended, because that would mean it'd be a team friendly deal. But if he wants money, he'll take his chances with FA. It's a perfect situation for him, since he's not really an ace, but will be the best pitcher on the market and he'll get paid like one or close to it. I like Garza a lot, but there's no way he'd be worth what some team will give him in FA. On top of his not being an ace, he has to be considered a significant injury risk at this point.

Not gonna happen. If the Cubs don't receive good enough offers for him, I can see it happening. I don't see them just letting him walk...and I doubt they take a return that they don't see as a good haul. They won't let him walk for nothing, they'd make the qualifying offer and get someone's first round pick. But they'll trade him. All of this is theater to gain leverage. It behooves Garza to play along because if he's traded, the team acquiring him won'd have option of the qualifying offer, meaning more teams would be more willing to bid for him in FA. And in the end, Theo and Jed will almost certainly get a satisfactory return.

If it took including Russell with Garza to get Bauer I'd do it, preferably you'd want them to want Gregg over Russell (obviously). The Sox might be more interested in a Garza + Russell deal, given the state of their bullpen and that they lost Andrew Miller.

The fact that he's a brain dead troglodyte is more an issue, I think.

Ads on the old scoreboard is where I draw the line. To each his own, but you have to remember this is what the Cubs are competing with when it comes to getting revenue, revenue that is necessary to compete for talent. http://mlb.mlb.com/images/2009/04/14/mXYT8Esg.jpg It ain't pretty, but I'm sick of sacrificing wins for ascetics. I get it. My attitude has pretty much been that they can make Wrigley up like the mothership from Close Encounters of the Third Kind if it helps the team win ballgames, but I never would have thought they'd mess with the scoreboard. But I'd probably get over it pretty quickly.

Ads on the old scoreboard is where I draw the line.

I have mixed feelings about this, but at least he'll be getting consistent reps without all the rain delays. A+ still held challenges for him, but it's rough when you're missing games left and right. But Tennessee will be really interesting to track. Too bad Soler got hurt or he may have ended up there as well.

Ha. Someone should give Bruce a compound fracture of the lower leg, it'd be an edifying experience for him. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a compound fracture, either. I know that, I was suggesting enlightening Bruce about the difference between a minor and major fracture in the most direct manner possible.

Ha. Someone should give Bruce a compound fracture of the lower leg, it'd be an edifying experience for him.

If he does, I'll lose my [expletive].

OH, ffs dale

ERA down to 3.51, which is hard to believe after his disastrous outing against Cincinnati. He has only given up 3 earned runs in his last 29 innings. Now if we can just trade him before his arm falls off.

Dale had better not run Garza back out there.

So what you're saying here is that you do actually think that the hit rate has to be 100%, or close to. Because FOs are going to be seriously interested in many players at a given time, probably more than we're ever aware of, and the're going to land a low percentage of them. There are 30 teams in MLB, and many of them have serious money. You're not to going to go toe to toe against the field and win every (or even half of the) time. Do we know if the offer Puig accepted was the Dodgers' best offer, or was it clear they were going to keep going? We know (or we think we know) the answer to that question with the A's/Cespedes, which is why I find it troubling. Have you ever considered that the Cubs simply didn't value Puig as much as the Dodgers, and weren't willing to go as high as they were? That there may have been a cap on what they were willing to spend on Puig? Or do you think that because they were interested that they should have gone has high as it took? Because that's just not a remotely realistic expectation to have for the overall approach to player acquisition. You can't do that with every player you like (especially if you are under any kind of budgetary constraint). In fact, it would reckless at best. To that point, did the other teams that were bidding on more than one of these guys and only came away with one or two of them "fail" as well? You call this spinning, but I think it's just reality that is magnified when you need a bunch of players. And you can play the "what if/we should've" game ad infinitum with guys the Cubs (or any other club) were linked to/interested in at one time or another, and it's a useless, empty exercise. The question of whether or not we got the right guy(s) is one that can be answered, but not yet. I understand the ideal would be to remove as much uncertainty as possible by signing as many of these type of guys as possible, but this is a speculative area we're talking about and you have to pick your horses, you can't ride them all. Yes the Cubs were obviously willing to spend money on these guys, but maybe just not "as much as it takes" on every one of them. There are degrees to interest, you know. We're probably not having this debate if the Cubs weren't in such dire shape to begin with, but the competition isn't going to back off of a bidding war because the Cubs need players more.

The jury is still out on all three players, of which Soler is the youngest, so I can't honestly say. Right now, I might actually be inclined to prefer Soler to Cespedes, since it's become clear Yeonis isn't really a center fielder and his results have been mixed. And that he's six years older than Jorge. I really have no idea what to make of Puig yet, and probably won't until he gets more time in. All I feel confident about with him is that he's not going to maintain what he's doing now.