neely crenshaw

Look back at the my post that shows what the play off teams have. Every team has one, and most have several. I take this as saying we can compete with Rizzo as our big bat if he brings his OPS up to .820. I can't see where that plays out in reality. Of course you can say anything can happen, and I'm sure there is some team that won with that type of offense. I am trying to judge what is likely to happen in real terms. It sure seems that except for that 1 in 100 season, the stats say you need either a big time guy (.900 or above), or a couple of guys above .800 and usually at least 1 way above.

Yeah, that's definitely what everyone here has been saying. You nailed it. Well I am looking realistically at it. I want us to contend soon. Unless you see the Cubs spending a bunch of money or making some huge trades- which I don't, we are dealing with what we have and a few small pickups. you must be saying we can compete with our current guys and some re-tread pick ups or we are just going to hope every player we have has a career year. I am saying I don't see us getting a couple big bats, so if we want our offense to get better and help us contend, Rizzo at .820 isn't getting us to even .500 ball.

allow me to introduce to you the .830 OPS all-star 1B http://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=/i/headshots/mlb/players/full/30399.png&w=350&h=254 Man, you guys are something. The point was brandon belt is putting up those numbers and no he is not considered an all star type first baseman. Craig also had an OPS of .872 at that time, not .830 that he has now. Of course even at that, there were Votto, Goldschmidt,and Freeman to go along with Craig. All of which were pushing .900 ops or above. So unless you count a getting voted in by the fans..when stats don't really matter or being the lone rep for your team, .820 ain't getting it done at first base saddest part is you guys are defending this by hoping he becomes Belt, is that really what you had pictured? I like him, he's probably my favorite player but it doesn't make me blind to fact that so far he is no where near what we were sold.

Christ! Brandon Belt is putting up .829 Do you call him an all star at 1b? On a contender low 800's won't cut it unless you had a stacked lineup of all hitters in that area. Contenders: StL have 4 guys .830 or above carpenter tops at .881 LA have Ramirez over 1.000 and puig at .946 plus Gonzalez right at .800 Atl has Freeman .893 Johnson and upton around .820 Pittsburgh has McCutcheon at .911 Cinn has Votto at .926 sin choo choo at .890 and Bruce at .811 AL Detroit has 5 guys above .750 with Cabrera over 1.000 Boston has 6 guys above .779 with Ortiz at .955 Oakland has Donaldson at .892 Moss at .857 and then Lowrie at .793 and Crisp at .772 Tampa has 6 guys between .746 and .834 Texas has 5 guys between .745 and .884 (Beltre) So everyone but Tampa has a guy pushing .900 or better, and they trot out 6 guys who very good. We have Scheirholtz at .773, Castillo at .746 and Rizzo at .734 Do you see a trend? Low .800 ops as a number 3 guys will not cut it. I am not saying he can't be in the lineup but he can't be your big bat at that output if you want to contend. Pittsburgh is the closest to our situation but they have that guy in the middle of the order that just rakes. We have no .300 hitters, no .800 ops guys and no 30 hr guys. Even the dodgers with their loaded pitching staff did not take off until Puig and Ramirez got in the lineup and started hitting. I am not dissing Rizzo, I am simply saying that if you think we can be a contender with our current lineup and Rizzo jumping up70- 80 points in OPS, your looney. With out knowing who we might pick up, we would pretty much need to find 3-4 other guys beside Rizzo to put up .750 to .850 ops, or 1 guy who is close to .900 and have no one from this season fall off at all.

So you just proved my point. Why did no one go nuts that we did not spend 100 mil on Sanchez? Yes, there is risk on every pitcher, and every player. Which again really magnifies my other point. Why does it make sense to use what will probably be all of your free agent (or everything but the re-tread money) on a pitcher who might be a number 2 but could actually be below that. The scouting reports all pretty much say he is good, but not great.He does not appear to be a guy that you base your entire staff around. So as fans you guys will be just fine trotting out our same lineup, same bullpen, our starting staff plus Tanaka. To me that sounds like another 95 loss season. I'm simply looking at this in a common sense approach. We have huge holes to fill. We need bats, we need bullpen help. To spend everything on a guy who isn't a game changer seems like a big gamble.

1.000 was a generality like saying he needs to hit .300. It's crazy that I say 1.000 and I'm crazy someone else .950 and that's fine. The idea is we need him to be better "IF" we want to speed up the re-building process. He was said to be a "generational" type talent at 1b. In my mind generational first baseman don't top out in the low .800's in ops. I know this is not what anyone expected. I simply said I didn't see much from the last year and a half that shows me he can be that type of hitter. A very good player-definitely. However, if he isn't the 3-4 hitter we planned on, we will have to buy or trade for 1. I've said it many times this summer, we need a Votto, right now we have a LaRoche. Certainly at 24 he can get better, but what I said was how quickly and how much better have a lot to do with how soon(or even if) we become contenders.

But to what extent is "better" going to be? and how quickly will it happen. I certainly hope for a Goldschmidt like jump in stats where he went from .250 to .280 to .300 at 23 to 25. However his stats coming up were much more consistent than Rizzo's, and I'm not sure we've seen anything that says he'll ever be a .280-.300/1.000 ops guy which we need him to be.

It's a blog, and one guys opinion there are 9 pitchers. 2 aren't pitching anymore 1 is a middle reliever 1 is a nice closer 1 (Darvish) is a nice young stud pitcher BUT it's clearly reported tanaka is not darvish of the rest who are pretty successful, he sounds like Ryu the most. Would spending a 100 mil on Ryu make sense, It's just that huge price tag to get rights that really bothers me and makes think the money could be spent more wisely elsewhere. What exactly do you think a reasonable stat line for him would be? and does that type of stat line gets us over the top next season? Do you think that we would spend much more than the 100 mil it may take to get him on our other holes, or do we again try to spot fix them with re-treads?

Fujikawa had great stats, unless you factor in his 5.25 era and was hit hard at times, dangerous for a closer. The reports all say he is not Darvish, he is not as dominate and his fastball usually sits around 90. Although he has had good strike out numbers at times, he has also had season where he does not strike out guys. The reports say that his fastball is very flat, and that he can get away with that in Japan but it will be hammered in major league baseball. No it's not playing in africa but judging by how some bad american hitters tear apart the league, the hitting is certainly not as good and they do use a smaller ball, which can certainly have an effect on velocity and spin on his breaking pitches. There are many successes, there are some failures and some that were ok, but certainly underperformed (fukudome?) Where do you think he comes in at in war? 2.0? somewhere in the 1's? Wood is at 4.8 also, and is 9-11, and we are struggling to win 70 games. Rusin is in at 1.1war. So what type of performance would you think we should get for 100 mil investment, and how does that alone puts us in the mix nxt year? IF he is everything you hoped for and more, does he outperform the first halves of Feldman and Garza? Who were pretty damn good. I just don't see how signing him alone does much for the team for next year. Of course i am hoping to not have another give up year and actually try to compete next season. If we are giving in and waiting until 2015 again, then I guess signing a young potentially good pitcher as your only pick up would make sense but if you are hoping to truly compete next year it can't be the only thing you do.

His numbers are ok especially with his defense. The problem is to speed along this rebuild we need a lot more. He can not be the 3-4 hitter on a contending team without a fairly significant improvement. Unless we are waiting for Baez to come up and be that guy, we have to sign or trade for a couple of true middle of the order bats, which will be expensive either in salary or loss of prospects.

Jesus, Samardzija and Wood were just used because of being here and we know them,it has nothing to do with actually re-signing them. The point was we are clamoring to spend 100 mil on a 25year old who has never pitched in the major leagues, who has had success in japan but scouts have questions about how his game translates to mlb. Several times I have seen it mentioned he has the POTENTIAL to be a number 2 starter. How about this, I don't remember anyone bitching because we did not offer 100 mil to Sanchez. A guy who at 28 was far more proven and probably will outperform Tanaka. We just fall in love with the unknown especially when we are spending other people's money. It does not appear we have much money to spend. With that in mind, we have so many holes to fill, throwing all of it at one guy with a mixed idea of what we are getting is a gamble. I' m sure you guys are right and he is all we need to become a real contender pretty much like our bullpen was so much better this year because we signed fujikawa.

Yeah because we don't have any other "generational" players that struck out like 33% of the time in their first taste of the big leagues. At least he's not hitting .141. he just started playing outfield, missed a lot of the early season with injury and has done very well in his debut. He can only get better with more work on the defense. Right now we wish Rizzo had his offensive stats. He has better stats than Rizzo, Valbeuena even Schierholtz. Basically every regular on the team(although on a smaller sample size) Only Scheirholtz has a better slugging percentage among starters As for war, Rizzo is 2.2, Scheirholtz is 1.7, Lake is 1.1 and Valbuena is 0.4. I am not saying sign him up for the next long term contract, but he should be one of the spots we can at least have hope for in the future. It's certainly better than watching jackson and vitters last year and seeing how far they were away from helping.

No I miss read wikipedia, which instead of writing it in a normal way like...drafted with 20th pick in the 2nd round, wrote it..he was drafted sixtieth...which I miss read as sixth in my haste. Either way 2nd round out of high school is hardly dog meat, and surely he was still highly thought of to go that high.

Ok so is the argument about whether Hill was any good or whether Hendry had talent in the system but failed to use it to it's max? My point was simply that we seemed to overvalue our prospects and failed to deal them for proven talent, AND never seemed to develop any of them either. I have more faith in the current administration in handling this, but my original comment was simply-it's good to have a stacked farm system but you have to use them correctly for them to help you.

So with this fine conglomeration of talent...who do you bat 2nd against a lefty? Sveum may have lots of things to complain about but the problem here isn't that he batted Barney 2nd 14 times all year but that there are any other choices to do so vs a lefty. Also note that Barney does have a.234-.301 obp vs a lefty, and has hit .200 with a.300 in the 2 hole. which is better than Rizzo, Valbuena,and Castro. It's not that Barney is a good option but we just don't have any real options especially vs a lefty

Actually I remember the talk about it at the time, I just quickly looked up one source. The point wasn't that he would win the CY, it was that generally guys who are considered candidates for it, aren't thought to be number 5 pitchers for a team.Whether you want to admit it Hill was very highly thought of, and a comparison to Zito at that time (a cy young winner and huge free agent signing) would be like comparing him to glavine in the 90's- pretty high praise.

No, that's what he and Hill projected out be as prospects before showing they were not capable of that. Hill was a 3 pitch pitcher with an average to below average fastball and a below average change. He was never viewed as a top of the rotation guy as a ceiling, more like 3-4 if everything worked out. Marshall was similar with a slightly better fastball and ceiling. Really, because people(media not fans) were picking him to win the Cy Young his rookie year and having that type of talent. http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2007/3/5/11735/47786 sounds like a 5 to me....

We are talking about a prospect- wood, samardzija or tanaka being seen as #2 or TOR type of guy. It doesn't matter what they were thought of when we got them, They both were thought to have TOR potential as prospects and they were both in the minors at 25.They weren't in the minors because they lost their potential, they were in the minors because they were still developing. That was only a reaction to the post that said if a guy had potential to be a #2 pitcher, and was still in the minors at 25, the front office should be blown up. Samardzija was certainly highly thought of prospect who had big time stuff, but was still a work in progress and still working in the minors at 25. Wood was the same, I would venture to say that either is still thought to be a potential #2, and we certainly have toyed with the idea that Shark is a future #1. Rather than use the 25 year old in AAA, I'll say this why don't we hear anyone calling for us to give either Wood or Samardzija a 100 mil? Which is at least in the neighborhood of what it will cost to sign Tanaka. Tanaka is talented and has success in japan BUT is not viewed as the prospect nor the finished pitcher that Darvish was. There are worries about his fastball and his lack of dominance at times. He is viewed as a POTENTIAL #2 in Mlb. He has never thrown a pitch here, you have no real idea how he will fare, my guess would be he'll be ok, but I don't know that he'll be great. Yet, we are talking about throwing huge money at him based on hoping he'll be very good. It just seems odd that we will jump at the chance to spend 100 mil on an unknown but would not even consider spending it on 2 guys we have now, that have already shown that they can have success in this league. I am not saying don't sign him, I simply think that with the way it seems our FO is spending money(or not spending money), it seems like a reach to spend that much on 1 player that may not even change a thing on your team.

So we signed Samardzija to a large deal out of college because we thought he might be a long reliever? No, he was signed as a prospect because he threw 99 and they thought he had the potential to have top end stuff. and Wood was drafted 6th overall to be a loogy? Both we hoped to be TOR guys as prospects. Most here feel Shark is a potential number1, and Wood has been our best this season. They are 28 and 26 respectively. We certainly want to re-sign them, but I haven't heard anyone bounce around a 100mil for either of them. It seems many of you are letting the unknown shine brighter than the known. As long as you don't know what someone brings for sure, you can pretend in your mind that everything is perfect with it. Is there anything in the scouting report that says Tanaka will vastly outperform Wood's 3.23era? Anyway, say we sign him to whatever we need to and he reaches all expectations. He comes in, and brings a low .3.00 era and that is our only move...where would we be? pretty much the same place as this year. We had 2 pitchers throw this well this spring -(feldman and garza) and we were still 12 games under when they were traded. We need a lot of help, and no matter what you say we can not bank on players progressing as the only other improvement. If we sign him great, but if it keeps us from signing much else it is a huge gamble and then I am not for it at all.

That's why you run with a low payroll and loaded farm. You can take advantage of the dumps to fill needs. There are always sellers and prospects are cash. Of course but with these deals talent had little to do with the deal. I'll admit both deals got good players, but you have to admit that Hill and Choi by themselves were much more valuable prior to being exposed. I'd guess we could have made both deals with others in place of Hill and Choi, their value was not the make or break on the deal. Hendry made a good deal with what he had at thta point but so many other times he kept his prospects as untouchable instead of getting proven pro talent. it especially hurts when we were very close to winning and a big move could have put us over. You can also wonder why with so much supposed talent so few were every developed.

No, that's what he and Hill projected out be as prospects before showing they were not capable of that.

good question...but having that be a serious question tells you all you need to know about our offense. Also do we think Russin can do this for a full season? He was very good in the spring, and has really thrown well? He's not an ace but can fill out the rotation?

I guess I'll leave it like this. If we are going to spend a ton of money and get what we need, then I say go for it. If we are as cash restricted as it appears, I can't see spending all of it on just this one guy as a good move. Realistically we could sign him and he is everything we hoped for and we still aren't much closer to competing without a ton of offensive players stepping up their game.

for the record he went from 500,000 to 3 mil his last year with the pirates, and that jumped to 6 mil the next, which pittsburgh certainly wasn't going to pay. Also Kenny Lofton was part of the deal, with a minor leaguer and jose hernandez also from the cubs.

Ok, if we I give you Hill- Aramis as the greatest trade and say that money had nothing to do with it, and Hill was just as valuable as Aramis, will you at least tell me who we got for Rich Hill, Patterson, Guzman, Brownlee, Christensen, Epatterson, Pie, Kelton, Dopriake, Montanez, Greenberg, Murton? you can even include Marshall as a one time top of the rotation starter that did get value as a lefty set-up guy(which certainly wasn't what anyone planned on)