17 Seconds

The thing is, you weren't just disagreeing with his idea. You came in here with an attitude and basically acted like he was an idiot for not understanding why Hendry didn't re-sign Wood, and then tried to tell us how he didn't want to pay that much for a reliever. We understand.

Mostly because Scott has been protected from left handed pitching. He's faced around a 4:1 ratio of RHP to LHP in his career, Bradley is a little less than 2.5:1. I meant to mention that. My point stands though. I think Bradley is a better hitter, but I don't think you can call one a platoon partner and the other an "impact bat". To me that implies that they're far apart, and I'm not sure they are. Plus it's also better that Bradley has faced RHP less, as he does not hit them well. He rakes against lefties and is not so good against RHP

Well to be fair, Scott and Bradley both have an almost identical career OPS+

I think people are more upset that we used one of our top pitching prospects/trading pieces in Ceda, not that they're afraid he's going to be great. Because Fuentes isn't really an injury risk? Why would the Cubs want Fuentes when they didn't want Wood? Your answer is health? Having a young, lights out closer that costs next to nothing on their roster had nothing to do with their decision? We have a young, lights out reliever, and we had him last year also. He's not replacing Wood in terms of value. We're still losing a dominant reliever no matter where Marmol pitches. Marmol is on the team either way. He doesn't replace Wood, he's just going to be pitching the 9th instead of the 8th. That's beside the point anyways, and you're twisting up the conversation and making it into things that we're not even saying. I don't really understand what you're trying to do, other than maybe start problems with me again because you don't like. You asked why somebody might not want to give a multi-year deal to Wood but might want to for Fuentes. The reason is pretty obvious. Nobody ever said anything what Hendry is thinknig. We're talking about what we would do. That's where this all started. The guy wondered why we're paying 4-5 mil for Gregg when Fuentes would have costed only a little bit more this year, and would have only demande a short term contract. He understands why Hendry did it, he just doesn't agree with it.

If it was all about money, we should have pursued a cheaper left handed option - such as Jeremy Hermida or Luke Scott. Then we don't downgrade at 2B. Or, we could have gone the free agent route, traded DeRosa and signed Adam Dunn. Then we don't have to worry about 70-some odd games from Hoff/Reed/Gathright when Bradley's hurt and we get very similar (if not slightly better) production. Trading DeRosa and then signing Bradley might be the worst thing Hendry could have done. The Marlins already made it clear that an offer for Hermida would have to blow them away, and MacPhail reportedy loves Scott, and we've already learned how fun it is to deal with him, especially over a player he loves. While I do like Bradley, I wouldnt have minded going after DeJesus from KC, they were trying to pawn off Teahen on us, and he wouldnt be an upgrade over anyone. He'd have been much better than Aaron Miles. :D Honestly, I'd have preferred to blow the Marlins away for Hermida than trade DeRosa for decent prospects (at best) and sign a humongous injury risk. Scott would be at the bottom of the list of what I'd like to see Hendry do, with trading DeRosa and acquiring Dunn likely at the top. The DeRosa/Dunn moves or the Hermida trade should be the direction Hendry went. Instead, he went the worst way he could have. If you love Hermidia so much you must also really like Fukudome since they pretty much were the same player last year except Fukudome being a bit better getting on base and Hermidia having slightly more power. I would like to see Hermidia actually come close to matching his 2007 production before considering "blowing away" the Marlins with an offer. Inplying that 2 guys are the same just because they put up similar numbers last season is pretty ridiculous. HERMIDA and Fukudome are in 2 completely different situations in pretty much every aspect.

I highly dbout anyone gives DUnn 5-6 years. Even if it was, I think it'd be easier to commit 5-6 years to a guy who is always healthy and just entered his prime, than giving 3 years to a guy who is constantly hurt.

I think people are more upset that we used one of our top pitching prospects/trading pieces in Ceda, not that they're afraid he's going to be great. Because Fuentes isn't really an injury risk?

Hendry already said he's not pursuing roberts this offseason

I was talking about Hendry since Piniella took over, the last two years. There's plenty of other good moves Hendry made between 03-05. The Pierre trade is one of the only trades I really feel are poor, and some of the other stuff you listed is very debateable. Soriano is a 17m per year player in this market, we don't know if we will age good or bad yet. Jones made 5.3m per year, and we got two solid years from him and dumped him before he lost it. I don't see how it's a bad move to sign a guy, but get rid of him before he's bad. Sometimes you gotta sign a guy for more years then you want to get him to come to your team, and if you got the most use out of him, then get rid of him before he goes into the tank thats still a good outcome. Same thing goes with Marquis, he's gone 23-18 with a 4.43 in 61 starts(with a good chunk of innings) the last two years, and been a solid 4-5 starter for us. He's been worth the contract we paid him for the last two years. Were now dumping him because we no longer have use for a pitcher like him due to better cheaper options on the roster. With all the free agent pitchers signings over the last two years, I'm sure Marquis deal would be on the postive outcome list so far. At the time we signed Marquis we need a pitcher who could eat up innings and who was durable. Fukudome looks like he could be a bust right now, but lets see how he does next season before we draw a outcome there. As for the Kendall/Blevins trade, keep in mind we got Ryan Flaherty due to having Kendall on the roster. The Steve Trachsel deal was crap for crap, we gave up two crappy guys to see if Trachsel can give us 4-5 solid starts. It didn't work out, but it didn't really hurt us either when you look at the crap we gave up. The thng is that number 4-5 starters don't get 21 million over 3 years. If you ewant to say we got what we wanted in a league average "innings eater" then fine. The problem is that he's not paid like one. This is what I'm talking about with Hendry overpaying. Marquis was coming off ana atrocious year and all indications were that nobody else would have come close to giving him what the Cubs gave him. And if Marquis was valuable enough to warrant that contract, we wouldn't be having such a hard time dumping him for one year when we're basically turning him into a 5 million dollar pitcher for the other team. Plus we're not simply "dumping him". We're being forced to eat one million and also take back a crappy reliever making 3.5 mil. That's 4.5 mil being wasted, which is almost DeRosa's 2009 salary. The Blevins trade still looks bad ewven with Flaherty. He had a really nice season with Oakland last year and we look really good in our pen. Even though Moore and Cherry weren't great prospects, they still had value and they were wasted on Traschel. Not to mention we then had to sit through watching Traschel get lit up everytime he pitched instead of actually giving the starts to a better pitcher that was already on the staff. I mean, all these prospects have valuable, you can't just throw them away because they aren't great. Also I don't really see how Soriano is a 17 million dollar player in this market. Manny can't even find a job, Dunn is going to settle for way less than we thought, I haven't seen Burrell's name mentioned once, etc. Soriano's cotnract is bad, any way you look at it. Even if you want to argue he's worth 17 mil a year right now, he's certainly not going to be for the next 6 years, especially considering he turns 33 next week and his body is already breaking down like crazy. It's only a matter of time before the performance starts to slip as well.

Other then Fukudome(who I still feel we haven't seen the best of him yet) what bad moves have their really been? We could even add making Wood the closer last year to that list as well, even when many were saying he couldn't stay healthy. In the last two years Hendry has made very few bad moves, and when he did it was often crap for crap. When a GM makes plenty of good moves, very few bad moves, and takes the team from the worse in the NL to the best in the NL in two years, he's doing a good job and deserves the benefit of the doubt on somewhat questionable moves until proven otherwise. Nolasco/Pinto/Mitre for Pierre Soriano for 8/136 Fukudome was overpaid Jones was overpaid and we ended up dumping him for nothing before the contract even ended Marquis was overpaid and we're about to dump him for basically nothing Jerry Blevins for 3 months of Jason Kendall 2 prospects for Steve Traschel Those are just the ones I can think of from the past couple years. I'm not even saying this to rip Hendry though, I just think you're skewing his track record in his favor by only pointing out his good moves when he's had his share of bad ones. The Dempster contract could easily be another one, Miles is way overpaid, and I'm scared of what the Bradley contract might look like Ceda for Gregg (imo) And again, I don't think we should be congratulating him for making the playoffs 2 years in a row (one of which was luck and because we played in an awful division) considering that he has an enormous payroll and has also pretty depleted the farm system. When you're using that amounts of resources we better be making the playoffs and be a serious contender. Plus you mention that he took us from the worst team in the NL to the best in 2 years, but he was the one that got us to being the worst team in the NL in the first place. I think overall Hendry is an average to slighly below average GM, but that's about as high as I'll go on him. I think he's really good at forming relationships but I think strictly baseball wise, he makes a lot of bad decisions and overpays a lot

The problem is you're only picking out his good moves and leaving out all the bad ones. Every GM has made some good moves and some bad moves.

I never said he was a good option or one Hendry was ever considering. I said he was an option, which he was for every GM. He could have made the same argument about Wood.

Maybe you should just stick to the topic instead of for some reason quoting a true statement I made in another thread Flexing your muscle is really proving nothing

A better response than "???" but it can "almost definitely wind up between" 3 and 3.7 as well. How about we wait and see what he gets before we pass judgment? That's true, I guess.....I'm not sure if this year's slow developing and most likely "cheaper" market for most FA will affect the process or not. I noticed AZ PHIL has the trio of Cedeno, Gregg, and Wuertz at 6.5 total in his guesstimate, so if that winds up being close, I wonder how it'd break down? Maybe 4 for Gregg and 1.25 each for Cedeno and Wuertz possibly? In any case $5 M is much to premature to bitch about when discussing Fuentes' totally unrelated to Gregg's contract. But pseudo GM's around here believe everything they post. It's related because he was discussing other options besides Gregg

Translation: You've just made arguments that have exposed everything I've been saying as BS, so I'm going to insult you and then put you on ignore so I don't have to back my claims up

Who's paying Gregg $5 mil? The Cubs. Sorry, since I don't work for the organization I guess I can't refer to them as "we". Jim Hendry has done a terrible job allocating his resources this offseason. Really? When? I went through the Cubs press releases dating back to Greggs acquisition and nothing on a 2009 contract. Cots.com still doesn't have 2009 terms for Gregg yet they have the Miles contract covered. ??? Is this another one of those things that another poster likes to describe as "we already covered this in another thread and we proved that..." or does anyone have a legitimate answer to my question? I assumed by your post that you understood why Gregg was likely to get around 5 mil. Silly me

You've defended nothing. You've seen a Cubs lineup fail 2 straight years, but you have shown nothing to say that the fact that they were RH had anything to do with it. You're looking for reasons when in reality they froze up. THAT is what is plain to see. If it did have something to do with them beng right handed, it's not the reason they lost. Okay so add one or 2 left handed hitters. Now you lose by like 4 runs instead of 5. Sweet. Either way, they got blown out because they couldn't handle the moment. During the regular season they hit good RHP just fine, but the postseason starts and they suddenly are helpless? Right. I think I know what the more reasonable theory is. And once again you end your post with a copout by naming 3 guys who have said it (by the way, did you know Lou and Jim work for the organization? What are they going to say? "We choked. This same group is going to choke next year too probably." No, they're going to lose for ways to change things, and this happens to be it. Again though, citing them is dumb. I've already explained to you why, you just are ignoring it. I'm sure I could find plenty of "seasoned veterans" who disagreed about the RHP nonsense. Hey, I'm pretty sure Mark Grace and Steve Phillips both said after the game that it was just a matter of them not handling the pressure. They must be right! Again, that's just a copout because you can't back up your argument, which is evident by the weak "I saw them play!" argument. As though good RHP suddenly become superhuman RHP in the playoffs. By the way none of this matters becuase DeRosa has hit RHP MUCH better than Miles has in the past 3 seasons

Search through the board, this has been discussed thoroughly. The Cubs hit good RHP well in the regular season too. And of course you use the biggest copout, which is that Lou and Hendry agree with it. What about when Dusty was batting Patterson Neifi in the 1-2 spots and doing all sorts of other dumb things? We can't question him, because he has years of baseball knowledge, right? Basically you're saying we can never question anybody in charge of running a baseball team, which is really dumb considering that they make huge mistake all the time. Really weak. Piniella seems to get the benefit of the doubt alot . Lou doesn't play Pie because hes not ready /good etc. but Dusty doesn't play him because he hates young kids etc. Lilly throwing 130 pitches in a game is ok because "Lou knows his pitchers"If Dusty did that..... i wasn't really comparing lou to dusty, i was just giving in example of how a person being in charge doesn't mean he's right all the time (or even often).

i'm just saying, it's really weak to just say "well jim and lou say it and they know more than you" and it pretty much tells everybody that you can't defend your argument. it's a copout. so next time somebody gives juan pierre 50 million or barry zito 126 million, you can't say anything...... ecause those contracts were issues by "seasoned veteran personnel decision maker" and you're just an message board poster. the truth is that these guys make mistakes all the time, and a lot of the time you can spot the mistakes right when they happen.

Not if A) he's not good B) we're facing a lefty anyways it's moot since the only way he's get at-bats in the postseason is if somebody it hurt. fontenot will be the primary 2B against rhp.

Search through the board, this has been discussed thoroughly. The Cubs hit good RHP well in the regular season too. And of course you use the biggest copout, which is that Lou and Hendry agree with it. What about when Dusty was batting Patterson Neifi in the 1-2 spots and doing all sorts of other dumb things? We can't question him, because he has years of baseball knowledge, right? Basically you're saying we can never question anybody in charge of running a baseball team, which is really dumb considering that they make huge mistake all the time. Really weak.

Have you watched Dempster pitch? He's so much better than those guys. I don't understand the people who don't think that Dempster is good. Watch his stuff; it's filthy! He was mis-cast as a reliever and still wasn't terrible. He will continue to put up 15+ win seasons for the Cubs. Wow, a "use your eyes" AND using wins as a measurement in the same post. That was a gritty post. You can use any measurement you like, Dempster was awesome last year and it should continue. Remember how awesome Adrian Beltre was in 2004? Man, he was so awesome. Dempster had major surgery and basically switched positions. I don't know what to say, I just think the the 2008 version of Ryan Dempster is who he is. I like the deal a lot. I don't get what you're saying. It's not like Dempster just started for the first time. He started in the majors for 6 straight years and he was awful for 5 of them. I mean, I'm not saying he'll be bad, but expecting him to pitch like last season is just unreasonable. Even the best case scenario has him regressing a bit. I'd say the best you could hope for is a low-mid 3's ERA. I'd expect a high 3's ERA, and I'd be happy with that. Saying "I just think the 2008 version of Dempster is who he is" just mean that you like him and that you want him to be that guy.

You talk as though that means he's a good hitter, and that a .342 OBP is good for a singles hitter. He's not a good offensive player. Not at all A .330 OBP in the leadoff spot isn't even remotely acceptable. That's seriously like the worst case scenario. You're basically giving the most ABs of the team to the guy who makes out at the highest rate. If you have a .330 OBP and you don't hit for power, you belong in the 8 hole, if that. We really need to stop acting like Miles is a good hitter. He's pretty much Juan Pierre but without the stolen bases. That's bad. Really bad.

More like Marquis, DeRosa, and a lot of money for Bradley/Miles/3 prospects

First of all, it has not been "proven" that the offense was flawed in that they couldn;t hit RHP and that's why they lost in the playoffs. They lost because they didn't hit. It's as simple as that. What WAS proven was that the Cubs hit RHP well last season. I thought we were done with the false " the Cubs lost because theycouldn't hit RHP" stuff. They just didn't hit. If they batted from the other side they still wouldn't have hit. Second, you seriously would bat Aaron Miles leadoff? Aaron ".329 career" OBP Miles? People complain about Soriano leading off because he doesn't take many walks, well Miles is much much worse than Soriano at that. The last 2 seasons he's drawn 25 and 23 walks. That guy doesn;t belong anywhere near the top of the lineup.