Jump to content
North Side Baseball

Lefty

Verified Member
  • Posts

    1,150
  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Profiles

Joomla Posts 1

Chicago Cubs Videos

Chicago Cubs Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits

2026 Chicago Cubs Top Prospects Ranking

News

2023 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

Guides & Resources

2024 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

The Chicago Cubs Players Project

2025 Chicago Cubs Draft Pick Tracker

Blogs

Events

Forums

Store

Gallery

Everything posted by Lefty

  1. I am fully aware of the details. A deal isn't done 'til it closes. Credit spreads are widening. Stay tuned.
  2. The SLM deal fell through today and Tribune stock is down 2% in an up market. Just because the deal has started doesn't mean it will be finished. There is another huge step to go contingent on approval and financing. It is not a given. Tribune basically bought back half its stock and took on a huge amount of debt. If the Zell deal falls through the Tribune will just be another overleveraged company which has to repair its balance sheet.
  3. Exactly. The Ichiro extension almost guarantees that ARod won't be sacrificing anything to be covered in the 2011-2014 period.
  4. I am pretty sure that a team no longer gets draft picks as compensation when they lose a free-agent.
  5. Update to the opening post. Non-Barrett Cub catchers are hitting .129/.197/.198 in about 127 plate appearances. For the year Cub pitchers are .145/.165/.227.
  6. I always thought that his strikeouts would just destroy his game. But I looked at his L/R splits and he probably would be a decent platoon player in the major leagues. When you see some of the garbage that teams are playing at third, he might actually be an asset for us. My only reservation is whether Iowa can really have so many major league quality hitters.
  7. And sadly, that line would be better than what the Hill/Bowen tandem has contributed thus far. ...so doing nothing is really not an option. I remember after '03 we talked about how awful the bottom third of our order was; AGon, Miller and the pitcher. That's murderers row compared to Pagan, catcher and pitcher.
  8. He's gone, let's move on. His legacy of destruction survives.
  9. Micah Hoffpaeiour's wife used to post here. I wonder if we couldn't get some sort of family thread together.
  10. He's been playing First Base a lot, so I think he has a shoulder problem. Once that's better I am sure he'll be up .
  11. Cub non-Barrett catchers are hitting .157/.228/.241 as catchers in 92 PAs this season. Not sure we can keep that up and compete.
  12. http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070628/SPORTS/706280472/1247/SPORTS This seems outlandish. But the Cubs couldn't have been this wrong about the guy, could they?
  13. Isn't that the guy who gave him a backloaded 3/16 deal? If you don't make fun of him for a week, I'll pick up the slack.
  14. Major league baseball is a business with a product. Would you want to be forced to take in a partner you don't like or don't trust? In a free country you don't have to. Maybe you'd like to be a Venezuelan farmer.
  15. What does that mean for the Cubs? Initially it will mean status quo. My concern is if Tribune will be in limbo the Cubs may be further neglected. Maybe that's not a bad thing. But status quo means Hendry stays and I think that is the Cubs biggest single problem.
  16. Tribune stock closed below 30 today, well below the $34 announced price. It looks like the deal is in serious jeapordy.
  17. There's no E in "crow" maybe he's going to eat Russel Crowe :shock: I doubt he's Russel's type; a married woman. Love being wrong about this inning. But with the Cubs it's not mindless pessimism. They deserve every bit of it.
  18. Tribune stock closed today nearly 10% below Zell's offering price. The market is starting to discount the possibility that the deal will fall through. I posted yesterday that I thought the odds of the deal falling apart were 25%. Perhaps I was too conservative. It could be 50/50 based on Tribune's current stock price.
  19. Zell has said the sale will be after the season. But there is still a chance that the Tribune sale falls through if financing becomes a problem. There have already been other big deals which have been complicated by financing issues. With interest rates going up and markets bwecoming more volatile, I would say there is a 25% chance that a sale does not happen. An interesting possibilty is a Cubs IPO. The shares would not have full voting rights, but would probably pay a small dividend. Given the Cubs' popularity, it would sell at a big premium to its economic value. This would give a buyer some cushion to a worsening financial atmosphere.
  20. Is this a great organization or what?
  21. They still have him under control for 2008. They definitely can't trade him since he has no value, and they aren't going to pay him to recover for a year and then cut him without letting him throw a pitch. Even this organization isn't that inept. I suspect that if he can't pitch in 2008, they may not ask him to come back at any price, though. That's why he is gone. The only way the Cubs control him for '08 is to offer him arbitration. My previous post was off a little. He can't play for less than $2.8 million, not $2.3 as I posted. That is 20% below what he "made' this year. There is no way the Cubs offer him arbitration. They might try, though I doubt it, to offer him a two-year contract with plenty of incentives. But by that point the Cubs are on the same playing field as everyone else. Do you think the Cubs will outbid everyone? Maybe. Do you think Prior really wants to play here anymore? No way. If the Cubs wanted to keep him they wouldn't have allowed him to accrue service time. That way the Cubs would have had an advantage on offering a two-year contract if they so desired. They didn't go that route so I assume they have decided to cut bait. I don't believe in curses, but we seem to be a touch snakebit.
×
×
  • Create New...