champaignchris

Who is Perez? 8-) Agreed with your 8 thought in a very much pull them out of the hat order. Castro/Dewitt are batting 1-2 or 7-8. I wouldn't mind seeing Soto up a bit higher this year especially if he keeps his OBP hovering around .400 Oh GEEZ!!! Obviously that's supposed to be Pena.

DeWitt 2B Castro SS Byrd CF Ramirez 3B Perez 1B Soriano LF Colvin RF Soto C Or something to that effect. Those are the starting 8. Not sure how the batting order shakes out as there is no obvious lead off man.

They think that they'll have to raise their offer for Prince Fielder.

We're talking Adam, not Andy, right? The OP doesn't say. Assuming it's Adam, I suppose it's better than shooting yourself in the foot.

I agree. As I wrote in the "A-Gon gone" thread:

I was going to say the same. Hawpe's played 18 career games at 1B. If we're going to convert an OF, why don't we just use the younger, cheaper one we already have. That's my criterion for the first base acquisition: Is it better than just moving Colvin to first?

You know that beer commercial that's out right now where the hostage takers make up a list of ridiculous demands. I imagine the Milwaukee Brewer front office is doing the same thing right now with the Cubs in their negotiations to "free" Prince Fielder.

4 years and $56M would have been near the upper limits, but I wouldn't have been upset had the Cubs signed him to that contract.

I think these guys should all go in, and, yes, I'm over the steroids thing... Roberto Alomar Jeff Bagwell Bert Blyleven Mark McGwire Rafael Palmeiro Tim Raines I'm on the fence about Barry Larkin and Alan Trammell, but either they both go or neither goes. They had extraordinarily similar careers. Kevin Brown - I don't think he deserve to be in. However, some are already making noise about Smoltz and Schilling making the HoF. If they make it, Brown should too. Fred McGriff and Larry Walker are two guys that I don't really think should be in, but who I think should get a lot more consideration than they probably will.

I had completely forgotten DeRosa was on the Cards in 09 before this. Jose Vizcaino: Cubs --> every other team in MLB --> Cardinals Miguel Cairo: Cubs --> Cardinals Cesar Izturis: Cubs --> Pirates --> Cardinals Tony Womack: Cubs --> Cardinals Mark Grudzielanek: Cubs --> Cardinals Shawon Dunston was on the Cardinals in 1999 and 2000. That means a former Cubs middle infielder has been on the Cardinals every single season since 1999. That's too bizarre to be a coincidence.

Do the Cubs not understand the old saying that a bird in hand's as good as two in the bush? If the Cubs think they will compete in 2011, they should sign Adam Dunn to a three year contract right now, as he is the best 1B option out there. If the Cubs think they will compete in 2012, they should sign Adam Dunn to a three year contract as he will be one of the best four 1B options and they can lock him up right now for quite a bit cheaper than the others. If the Cubs think they will compete in 2013, they should sign Adam Dunn to a three year contract as he will be one of the best four 1B options and they can lock him up right now for quite a bit cheaper than the others. If the Cubs really don't think they'll compete again until 2014, I'm not sure why I'm even paying attention any more.

This was quite literally my first thought. If Hudson has always been a Hendry favorite, why wasn't he pursued at all in the offseason leading up to 2009? Why were we saddled with Aaron Miles's multi-year contract? Hudson ended up signing for 1 year and 3.3 millions. A bargain.

I'm perfectly OK with Chris Davis as our starting first baseman... ...so long as we can somehow get Chase Utley to be our starting second baseman.

Ryne Sandberg. Anyone notice January 31? Nolan Ryan, Ernie Banks, and Jackie Robinson. That's a pretty good day to be born for baseball players. EDIT: I now notice I'm about 5 posts late.

Lee has been absolutely extraordinary over the last three years. I'd love to have seen that in a Cubs uniform. But I've got to admit, there's something about him that would make me a bit wary about signing him long term. Maybe it's because he was nothing but average until he was 29 years old. I'm not confident that he'll be able to keep doing what he's doing and that what I would have to pay to sign him would end up being significantly more than he's worth. Maybe I'm completely off base. Maybe Lee's the epitome of the late-blooming lefty and will still be dealing at 37, 38 years old. I'm just not sure I'd really want to gamble $20 million a year for six years to find out.

This is a big ol' "Meh" for me. I put very little stock in Quade's record at the end of the year. This seems to be a, "We're rebuilding, so let's not spend a bunch of money on a big-name... Maybe we'll even catch lightning in a bottle," type of decision. It doesn't make me mad, but doesn't get me particularly pumped up either.

An article about using stats to understand why scoring is down says this: "[Doug Glanville] was a great fielder; in fact, he ended his career on a streak of 293 consecutive games without an error." Is it me, or does that number seem pretty insignificant for a guy who ended his career primarily as a bench player, who only had to field about one and a quarter fly balls per game he appeared in over that stretch. I mean, it's pretty easy to extend an errorless streak when you come into the game in the 8th inning as a pinch runner and then play one inning in the field. And I'm putting aside the entire question of whether errors and fielding percentage are a good way to evaluate fielding in the first place.

I hated this year. It wasn't fun to watch. But most brutal? I don't think anything that happened this year compares to how I felt after being swept out of the playoffs in '08. As bad as this team year's team was, it was nowhere near as bad as the 2006 team, which I still say is the worst Cubs team I've ever seen. 2004 was just a strange, gut-wrenching trial, in which one weird thing after another seemed to get into the team's way. They won 89 games. It felt like much less than that. They were a game better than 2003's playoff team, but missed the post-season by three games. 2003... 5 outs away. Ugh. 2001... the complete August collapse, beginning with that road trip to Sand Diego. Really, 2010 is going to go into the same mental file as 2005, 2002, 2000, 1999, 1996, 1992, etc. Just another bad year to go on top of a bunch of other bad years.

ok so his FIP in august was 3.68 and september was 3.28. isn't that "turning it around" from how he pitched earlier in the year? i don't think anyone believes that he's going to start posting christy mathewson ERAs every year. we'd just like him to pitch like he has for most of his cub career, that will be fine. Yup. The sub-2 ERA since his return isn't sustainable, but this recent run certainly would lead one to believe that he can be the pitcher who's been posting an ERA in the mid-3s for most of his career.

Weren't the '06 and '08 Indians that he managed two of the more under-performing clubs in recent memory when compared to preseason expectations?

As a Cubs fan, I appreciate that Sammy made a team, that was otherwise appalling, watchable for a good 8 year stretch in the mid-'90s through the early-'00s. The "team" the organization put around him in 2000, for example, was a complete joke. And the team has no doubt mishandled Sosa since retirement. He should have been allowed to announce his retirement at Wrigley. There should have been a "Sammy Sosa day" each year since his retirement, with Sammy singing the 7th inning stretch. It would have been nothing at all to the Cubs, while going a long way to mend some fences. All that said, you simply do not demand to have your number retired less than 5 years after your retirement. Fergie Jenkins didn't get his number retired until about 25 years after he threw his last pitch. Ron Santo waited a similar amount of time. Ryne Sandberg didn't get his retired until about 15 years after his retirement. Revered long time Cubs like Gabby Hartnett, Stan Hack, Phil Cavarretta, Rick Reuschel, Lee Smith, and Mark Grace have never have their numbers retired and likely never will. (Hartnett is the only one of those I mentioned who had a career worthy of having his number retired, but his case is complicated because the team didn't have uniform numbers during the first half of his career and they didn't keep the same number from year to year over the second half of his career. Still, there should be a flag up there with Banks, Williams, etc. Nine is the number he wore most often. Retire that. Or just put his name up on a flag without a number.)

I agree. I don't see the down side to Dunn. I'll admit to being one of those holding out hope that the Cubs can improve themselves enough in the offseason to make next year interesting.

And we traded him for two and a half years of Bobby Mercer (decent, but past his prime outfielder) and four years of Steve Ontiveros (bad third baseman, spent 6 years in Japan after leaving the Cubs at age 28). Madlock spent another decade in the league and put up Mark Grace-ish numbers.

Agreed. I just spend 20 minutes on Baseball Reference trying to figure out how we did not win the WC that year. It came down to 2 things: LaTroy Hawkins and bad luck. We played 5 games below our pythag and Houston played 3 above theirs. Prior had 16 freaking Ks against the Reds and lost and the obvious Victor Diaz game. Those 2 games just took the wind out of their sails and lost a ton. On September 24th, the Cubs were 87-66 and the Astros were 85-69. The Cubs went 2-7 to finish the season and the Astros went 7-1. The Cubs lost games 3-4, 2-3, 3-4, 1-2, and 4-5 - that's five of the seven losses by one run, where they never scored more than 4.

2nd in the National League behind the Brewers, .761 since the All Star Break. Team ERA is last in the National League since the ASB, 5.41, giving up an .810 OPS against.