XZero771679666304

If Stewart's surgery helps him at all, a Stewart/Chavez platoon might get us in the neighborhood of 2 WAR. I might agree, but why platoon two left handed hitters?

Are we ignoring the offense? Not so much "ignoring" as "fantasizing that we get a competent CF and 3b, and that we don't put together possibly the worst bench conceivable out of the available parts." The offense was 70 runs below average last year, and that included -25 from 3b (Vitters/Valbuena/Stewart), -16 from CF (Jackson/Campana/Byrd) and -15 from Joe "I got my job because of a hot ST" Mather. Plus another -25 from Koyie Hill/Soto/Clevenger. If Castillo can hit a little bit, we magically decide to try to field average players at CF and 3b and don't do anything terminally stupid with the bench, we can have a pretty average offense. Finding a decent 3B is going to be a daunting task regardless of what the FO "magically decides to try" and do.

Deshaies would be excellent, and is my very clear favorite of the remaining names.

I'm pretty sure he wouldn't give up Myers for one year (or less) of Garza. I know I wouldn't.

Well that was predictable.

The performance risk, injury risk and age are the key factors when it comes to Hamilton, particularly the latter two. He has too much of a problem staying on the field to invest big money in him, and his age dictates those problems will likely get worse, not better. He's a risk that a big budget team looking to win big in the next year or two might be justified in taking, but he's got "buyer beware" written all over him.

No bidding. He's free to sign with whomever he wants.

That depends on if Levine actually knows anything, or if he's just pulling that from his ass.

Outside of getting Youkilis to agree to a 1-2 year deal as a placeholder, I don't see anything on the FA market. There are few attractive trade options, but they'd be expensive. It's a pretty bleak scene as far a options go, I'm afraid. I personally think that barring some unexpected options opening up, we'll see a best case of Valbuena or Stewart in 2013, maybe Villanueva in 2014 and hopefully Baez in 2015 (with Villanueva moving to second). There's a paucity of good 3B options around the league, especially young-ish types. Headley would be a spectacular get, but he'd come at a spectacularly high price. But maybe we'll see something creative and outside the box happen.

He's going to be limited at about 100 innings and probably kept in AAA for some of that. Slowly stretched out, 10 starts in Iowa, then six in Chicago is probably the best bet. Praying he doesn't get reinjured every step of the way. I would imagine the hopeful/tentative plan is to bring him up when whatever buy/flip pitcher they acquire is dealt around the deadline.

That I agree with too. Yeah, I have a strong suspicion that whoever signs Hamilton is going to wear that contract, and not in that "you have to overpay a bit for top talent" way, either. I mean really wear it.

Garza and Navarro had a pretty well publicized fight in the dugout in 2008, though I'm not sure if it was an isolated incident or if they had/have a problem with each other.

I am fairly convinced. Clevenger was [expletive] last year. Sub-Koyie Hill type [expletive]. True. But he's probably not *that* bad if given another chance, and Navarro's put up some stinker seasons himself. Yeah, I guess I'm pretty ambivalent about it. I can see reasons for it and against it, but the risk is minimal and Navarro won't be blocking anyone. He did have a pretty nice season (by backup catcher standards) last year, though.

I am fairly convinced. Clevenger was [expletive] last year. Sub-Koyie Hill type [expletive].

It was a fairly small sample size, but Clevenger was abysmal last year, he started off hot but it was a precipitous downhill ride after that. I'm not thrilled with the money (though it's a trivial amount), but I don't think Clevenger could have been counted on to provide anything, let alone motivation for Castillo to protect his job. I was pleasantly surprised by Clevenger's start last year, but by the end he looked about as bad as one could possibly look. I have to admit I watched probably 10 games after August 1st and didnt look at the final stats until now. I didnt realize that Clevenger dropped off that bad. Still I don't really see why we needed Dioner Navarro because he's a lot better than Clevenger... Part of it could also be that they want a vet to work with Castillo (who needs a bit of work on the defensive side).

It was a fairly small sample size, but Clevenger was abysmal last year, he started off hot but it was a precipitous downhill ride after that. I'm not thrilled with the money (though it's a trivial amount), but I don't think Clevenger could have been counted on to provide anything, let alone motivation for Castillo to protect his job. I was pleasantly surprised by Clevenger's start last year, but by the end he looked about as bad as one could possibly look.

What a farce.

Loria is a vile, filthy creature.

That's what I like. We talked and talked about controlling the strike zone, but a lot of these cheap pitching options we're going after seemed to walk the world. That they'd overlook BB a bit on a pitcher they don't intend to keep beyond the next trade deadline (say a potential signing like Liriano) doesn't scream hypocrisy to me. Now if they sign a pitcher with control issues to a 4-5 year deal, that'd be a different story.

If there had been the expectation that he needed to try to serve both at the same time, I don't think he would have taken the job. That may or may not be true. Taking on an obviously compromised franchise might have been just the challenge he was looking for. That's confirmation bias talking. Really? Thinking that an executive wouldn't take a job and immediately disregard the team's best interests to serve his whims is somehow a function of confirmation bias? No, I don't think so. If he took the job because he wanted to build it from the ground up, his way, he would have done so because it was already in such a sad state that scrapping the ML club wouldn't be clearly contrary to the club's best interests. No one is going to come in and play around with a franchise with no regard for the club's best interests. That's just crazy talk.

Here's a SP to flip, now we need one to keep.

This wasn't about what he would have done if there'd been a "bunch of talent," whatever that means. This is about why he did what he chose to do. No, this was about what he would have done if he felt like he could serve the present and the future at the same time; I said this: To which you replied: Which is [expletive] preposterous in and of itself (and it gets more ludicrous every time I read it, especially the bold part), but this back and forth clearly began around the hypothetical "what would Theo have done if he had felt he had the talent to win immediately while serving his primary agenda". Presumably, such a scenario would have involved more talent being here than there was.

Disagree. This wasn't about what they thought was or wasn't best for the franchise as it was when they took over. This was about trying something they'd always wanted to try and finding an owner willing to let them do it. That astoundingly presumptuous. Almost comically so. Let's see. We know Epstein was feeling burnt out by Boston. We know he's said that the pressure to win in Boston got to him and caused him to make mistakes. We know he had meetings with Ricketts during the summer to discuss the direction Ricketts wanted to take the team. We know he's talked about how he always wanted to see what might happen if the "business" didn't force him to try to win right away and just let him see what happened with homegrown talent. It's not hard to connect the dots. The case seems a lot stronger than "Epstein got here, looked around, and decided there was no chance he could build a competitive team." I was waiting for you to bring that up. It was obviously one of those "what if" daydream statements, but you've taken it at face value because it fits your agenda here. And yes, I think the new CBA altered their plans significantly (iirc, he made several statements to this effect), dictating that they would have to move what little they had in the way of major league assets to bring in talent instead of throwing money at the draft and IFA (which he saw the Cubs do in 2011, made a point of mentioning, and likely planned on doing when he took the job). And since building the foundation is their priority number one, they sacrificed the season (and the next) because there wasn't enough talent in the upper levels to do both. And yes, I think if there had been a bunch of talent waiting for him when he got here, he wouldn't have scrapped it to fulfill some fantasy of his by starting from scratch (which would have destroyed his reputation, because it would be a ridiculous scenario). I think is a much safer assumption than your connecting of dots.

Disagree. This wasn't about what they thought was or wasn't best for the franchise as it was when they took over. This was about trying something they'd always wanted to try and finding an owner willing to let them do it. That astoundingly presumptuous. Almost comically so.

That's such a stupid pointless comment. People clung to the notion of how ridiculous it was to think this team could lose 100 games this year until they lost 100 games. They put together a crap team that was designed to lose, and it lost. The fact that they kept Garza doesn't change that fact at all. They planned on trading him when they thought they could get peak return and missed an opportunity due to injury. They kept Rizzo at AAA longer than he needed because they were not interested in getting the most they could out of the 2012 team. The notion that some people still pretend that they didn't take a dive this year is mind boggling. I don't know if you need to pretend that isn't the case to convince yourself of something else, but they took a dive. Everybody knows it. Your line of thinking that accepting a lost season = willfully constructing the worst team possible is utterly moronic. The team could have been so much worse, right out of the gate. And trading Garza in the offseason would have been trading him at peak value. In fact they should have done so, and that's not hindsight talking. 2011 was his best season and there was no guarantee of him being as good in the first half of 2012. I feel that they really weren't undecided about trading or extending him And they kept Rizzo in AAA for as long as they did to make sure he was past his 2011 struggles and for team control reasons. They likely would have done this regardless, and rightfully so. Yes, they had no intent to win in 2012 and had nor problem scrapping the season completely once the deadline was passed. But if they had wanted the #1 pick, they could have guaranteed it before the team broke camp. But they didn't.