javy knows my name

Good to hear the sentiment is that when his time comes to play in MLB he will be given an opportunity to start. With Sveum saying you don't want a kid like that not to play and then following it up with saying he hasn't even had a full AAA year yet, it's more an indication he will start there to play everyday coming out of Spring. But I am looking forward to him being a starter at some point this year on the MLB club. That was the absolute perfect way to answer that question

Yess love him already.

I enjoyed the [expletive] out of that

Yeah, must have been.

?????????? I really wanted to respond, but I didn't know which part of it I disagreed with the most.

With this and the bunt tourney, I'm beginning to think that Dale Sveum is going to become everything people feared that Ryne Sandberg would be, but I'm willing to give it a shot. Welcome to Dale Ball. Exactly what I was thinking. Bunting tournaments, running out everything, fundamentals. Wasn't this what people criticized Sandberg for? Maybe Theo's rejection of Sandberg had more to do with him being Sandberg and less to do with his ideology. I'm also willing to give it a shot. Fundamentals can't hurt. Especially when guys aren't rampantly juicing and jacking 50-60 HR's any more. I say let the GM worry about sabermetrics. I'm OK with the manager pushing fundamentals. It's been repeated ad nauseum that Sweum is known for some out of the box thinking, i.e. using the same wacky shifts that people love Joe Maddon for. Lip service, I'm telling you. He is not, nor does he wish to be, Ryne Sandberg. To expand a little bit, I think there's a pretty big push to placate the media to a degree that the Cubs have never really done. They are bracing for a rough re-building season where they may feel it necessary to save face to an extreme degree via media anecdotes to offset the team's struggles. I think perception is a really, really big part of just about everything they've released (purposefully, at least) to the media. We have a shitty team for a year or two, but dammit, Dave Kaplan will love them because they play the game the white way and their lazy hispanics will be RUNNING BALLS OUT, etc.

I swear, I have to picture Epstein and Hoyer just laughing their asses off after saying this stuff and hearing our media slobber all over it.

*shoots self in face* Which part are you shooting yourself over? Hard to see letting LaHair/Ridling man 1st/LF in a rebuilding year as a shoots self in face thing. Eating Soriano's money? Perhaps. Admittedly, I was just throwing Ridling out there for the sake of throwing something, but I'll give a mild defense/comment on Ridling. He's gone from an interesting minor league name (and someone I wondered if the AA jump would eat him up enough to force him to repeat the level) to at least Jason Dubois-ish for me (just picking a recent corner guy that was a AAA masher) where I wonder if he can fill some sort of role in the bigs. He's athletic enough, with a solid arm, for me to think that he could probably be average, or a tiny tick below, in LF (he's fine defensively at first). Offensively, he had an interesting 2011, book-ended by two red-hot months, with 3 very mediocre months in between. He's clearly not that good to think that his April/August is representative of his ceiling, and statistically, there's enough to question whether or not his May-June is more indicative of his true abilities. I tend to think he's probably a tick better than his May-June. He's got a solid approach, and has more power ability than another big corner guy I liked once in Kyle Blanks. The swing doesn't look too long or awkward to my naked eye to think that he'll have a sudden major jump in his K rate (over a long enough sample size). He might not be anymore than a Jason Dubois-level, but besides a cool name, I think he'll be fairly intriguing to keep an eye on in our rebuilding year, as I think he could mash a ton in Iowa, and I think there's enough there to wonder if he could perhaps be a good big bat off the bench, corner defensive replacement guy. He gets sort of lost amidst LaHair (and I believe that LaHair is improved and will be decent at first), the new guys (Rizzo, Candelario, Vogelbach, Shoulders). Heck, he sort of got lost last year behind Justin Bour (early because Bour's start was that good, late because Bour's struggle was that bad). I wasn't really taking context into account. I just hate that we're at the dark, dark place where people can say those things and they don't sound that far-fetched.

It doesn't deserve any hits, either. What a piece of garbage that article is. I didn't make it all the way through.

hahahahaha

Yeah, no so subtle there. Language barrier or Soriano keeping it real?

*shoots self in face*

I don't think catchers "vary so significantly defensively". Absent any reason to believe otherwise, I suspect they probably vary about as much as any other position. The other guy was the one taking the rather confusing (to me at least) position that there is almost no variation amongst catchers, and significantly less than at other positions. That's not really what he said. He said the difference between an average catcher and an elite catcher is probably not as large (or impactful) as the difference between an average CF and an elite CF. I tend to agree.

I really like this as a fantasy team name. GR's fantasy team name.

I really like this as a fantasy team name.

I don't think that it means that there will be less sellers, but certainly more buyers. It's a zero-sum game. 30 teams total. If there are more buyers, then by definition there are fewer sellers. (Unless you think there's a third, "none of the above" category.) There is. ERRORERRORERRORERROR omg I about died at this

I'm thinking .315/.365/.480 .330/.400/.500 so, basically...he'll double in production and strongly contend for the MVP You don't think he has a .70 isoD in his bag of tricks? What's your main beef? BA?

I agree with the guy who said Dempster shows he has nothing left in the tank this year. I think Maholm has a killer first half and we shop him and his minuscule contract for two high-upside A-ballers at the deadline

I'm thinking .315/.365/.480 Like I said. .330/.400/.500

This guy is banned now, yes? He's basically illiterate, incapable of forming cogent arguments and just shows up to needle us every once in a while. He makes ElCaballo look like mlpeel.

Not as bad as he thought it would be is not the same as liking it. He's also basing the entire thing on the assumption that catching metrics are way off and Yadi is a 4 WAR player. Everyone knows that Yadier Molina was a 0.3 defensive WAR player the last few years. What this article presupposes...is maybe he wasn't? http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQeQQGEHH3dotOVXZCXxAOI_kLg2VInpSRjf35-Q0eguLksqkdshJTRQZeJWw SWEEEEEEET

Did you miss where the dude got flamed for making it?

Yep. And if you weren't cheering against Theriot toward the end there, I get to call you a liar.

Shark and Marmol are the only ones I even recognize. Name tags please Good gracious. Mouse over them with your mouse, for goodness' sake.

LOLOLOL yes please