neely crenshaw

True with the value, and I'm not against trading him if there was some return value, but I just don't think it's a situation that we better sell high because he is going to fail. He has had 2 consecutive solid years at AA/AAA and it's at least reasonable that he can get to that .280 and .800 ops. and Valbuena pre-injury had dropped to .225 and .700 ops(although ob% was still decent)

I can't see a "cub fan" buying this team and using his own money to re-build wrigley just to low ball spending and not try to win. There are too many better short term investments and he certainly could have pulled a "Loria" and held out for public funds for the stadium if he only wants to make money. I have always said there is no way that Theo signs on for this job unless he knows he can spend the money he needs to be successful. He pretty could have had the pick of jobs and if he fails here, he might be out of baseball, or least way down the list for any decent job.

The problem/frustrating part is that we really only dealt Soriano from our lineup. We are trotting out these lineups with 6 of 8 (sometimes 7) regulars still around. Not too mention that Lake and Murphy are currently outperforming Soriano-Valbuena and we are still putrid. So basically this probably gets even worse. (is that possible)

Obviously it's not quite what he is doing now but the last 2 seasons (AA/AAA) he's been pushing .300 and .800 ops for a team that has NO ONE hitting even .280, and 1 guy above .800 ops it doesn't sound too bad, and very possible that he can make a run at that range very soon, if not now. and he's 23, can play almost anywhere and seems to play them all well. Don't see what the rush is to get rid of him or give up on him. Heck you guys have given Stewart and Valbuena more leash than Lake, and he's played well.

It seems unlikely that we would have Rizzo and Abreu, unless they decided that Abreu could play OF. It doesn't make much sense to turn a great defensive 1B into a below average OF and then have what is probably an average to possibly below average 1B. You make yourself weaker at 2 spots- which might balance any offensive gain. Probably make more sense to have a below average LF, and a great 1b. Heck they got Soriano to be functional, and you can sub defenders as situations dictated to limit the problems. It would be nice to have a real middle of the order bat in our lineup.

I think it depends on your stance about 2014. It's hard to see the Cubs looking to compete for the play-offs with a SS that has half a year of AA ball or a stop gap-even if Stanton or Price are part of the deal. If 2015 is more the timeline, then it might make sense. It seems funny to me that we have a 23 year old SS that has put 3 solid offensive years at this level, and we're ready to dump him when he has a struggle even though he has been on an upswing since July and his fielding percentage is the highest of his career. He's certainly taken a dip, but so has a lot of our young guys. At least we know for sure he is capable of putting up good numbers because he has done it multiple times.

He's solid for what we had last year and this year. I'm still not against him as our 2b, especially if he gets back to the .260 avg, with a low 300 ob% if we can put together a lineup that leaves him at #8, not bouncing to lead-off, 2nd, even as high as 6th. If you have a team that needs him to lead off or hit 6th, you have a bad team. It would have been nice to deal him for value when he was at his high point. If any of our young 3b make a move to show they are ready, we could have a Valbuena/Barney platoon at 2b, which if Valbuena keeps his out put could rival our 3b production this season which would be a pretty awesome output for 2b. Barney is actually close to his MLB norms vs lefties this year. Anyway hasn't every young player we have up basically take a turn for the worse this season? Why is Barney such a problem? Is it really a huge problem that our defensive 2b has dropped 37 points in ob%, and 64 in ops from last year, as opposed to our star SS dropping 43 points in OB% and 121 in ops? or even Rizzo who has dropped 45 points in BA, and 20 in OPS. We certainly were more dependent on those 2 putting up improved numbers more so than Barney.

Sad part is that Hahn will get blamed and be fired and kenny will stay put as prez... bottom line is they are in trouble for a long time. They have very little coming up, they won't spend their way out of it and almost anyone that has come up seems to have bottomed out far below expectations other than Sale. On top of that who could they possibly deal to even start to re-stock? Rios..maybe.

I think you should probably look at freeman stats before you decide. I have not watched much so I don't know anything about his defense, I know Rizzo's is top notch. Freeman is what we need Rizzo to be offensively his line .311 .388 .478 .865 13 hr 44 bb Rizzo .240 .334 .447 .781 17hr 54 bb in roughly 40 more at bats, so the difference in walks is about 6 in 110 games and rizoo has struck out 3 more times than freeman 89-86. I don't know that I'd trade but it's hard to argue that offensively Freeman isn't better. Freeman is on his 3rd full season up, so we can hope that Rizzo makes the same step next year but it's hard to argue that what Rizzo might do in the future is as good as what Freeman is doing currently.

6th in the league. 16th in MLB I'm guessing he ment MLB since cano and mauer are in the AL

That's weird...because we didn't trade any of our good players for future talent at the deadline... Oh wait... First, I just mentioned it simply because I was surprised they were that close, shocked we're behind the mets Your statement would make sense if not for the fact that since Feldman was traded we are 14-14, since Garza was traded 6-7, and since Soriano(4-5). So unless you are talking about the big loss of Hairston and Marmol, we are actually playing at a better % since the starting to trade than our overall record. Other than that it's right on. By the way we've won 2 of 3 Rusin starts for Garza. Villanueva is 1-5 replacing Feldman, but he's had one bad start. he's lost 1-0, 3-1,3-2 and 6-5 (where he gave up 4). So maybe we win an extra game or 2 with Feldman... but maybe none. Then factor in the start of Lake in Soriano's place, and I am not sure where that big drop off from the trade is happening. but carry on, don't let facts deter you.. Hey, since we're talking about facts, how do you figure that the Cubs have gone 4-5 since the Soriano trade, when they've lost 7 of their last 8? I posted Sunday before we had lost to LA. So we had lost 2 to LA, went 1-3 vs Milwaukee and won 3 straight at SF. So we were 4-6 even if we were 0-10 since Soriano left it's hard to say it's because of that deal when Lake has posted .333 4 hr and .884 ops, hard to say we would have won more with Soriano. Again, I was saying that I was very surprised that we were that far down still. I was also just as surprised that the sox are pushing the Astros for the worst record. Didn't mean it as a slam.

For the record: Random Cub Musings.... Random= (ran'dum) adj 1. Having no specific pattern... I posted a random cub musing, it's kind of what the thread is about. No, it did not follow our bullpen posts, but in truth those actually belong someplace else, although they are random cub musings.

That's weird...because we didn't trade any of our good players for future talent at the deadline... Oh wait... First, I just mentioned it simply because I was surprised they were that close, shocked we're behind the mets Your statement would make sense if not for the fact that since Feldman was traded we are 14-14, since Garza was traded 6-7, and since Soriano(4-5). So unless you are talking about the big loss of Hairston and Marmol, we are actually playing at a better % since the starting to trade than our overall record. Other than that it's right on. By the way we've won 2 of 3 Rusin starts for Garza. Villanueva is 1-5 replacing Feldman, but he's had one bad start. he's lost 1-0, 3-1,3-2 and 6-5 (where he gave up 4). So maybe we win an extra game or 2 with Feldman... but maybe none. Then factor in the start of Lake in Soriano's place, and I am not sure where that big drop off from the trade is happening. but carry on, don't let facts deter you..

For all our "improved"play we are 2 games ahead of the Brewers and 5.5 ahead of the AAA Marlins, and behind the Mets.

It's only tough to deal with if you are one of the fans that actually think we're good, just having bad luck. This is who we are...we aren't terrible, there are some good things but we aren't there yet.

Let's just figure a way to get David Price and Stanton and call it a day...

You are putting the blame on the end guy but when you have scored 14 runs in 7 games you are lucky to be 3-4, not to mention your lucky to be in a position to have your bullpen blow it. We swept the Giants and scored 6 runs. So we are really lucky to have gone 1-6. Bottom line is if you continue to put pitchers in a situation where a run loses the game, they are going to lose their share of them. We are 3-4 relievers to basically be perfect every time the come in the game....that's not possible.

I still don't understand the deal. We have little to plug into left field, and are hurting for right handed hitting. We got a very low level prospect and paid most of his salary. We are basically paying Soriano to play for the Yankees in exchange for an A ball pitcher who might be a reliever, struggles with command. We actually got a better deal for Hairston, and we aren't paying him. To me that doesn't make sense.

I'll wait to see exactly what we get and what we pay but it doesn't seem to make sense. It sounds like we are paying most of the deal(over half), and getting a pretty low level prospect. I don't see why getting rid of Soriano was such a priority to basically pay him to play for someone else and get someone who may never get out of A ball. We also lost another right handed bat. If you thought our line up vs lefties was shaky before...

This is a nice haul that could get even better. The big thing is that we traded Garza for value and now we have mulitple prospects and can go sign someone for the money we would have paid to keep Garza. So in the end, we could sign a Garza type player(or garza himself) and we got prospects.

Ugghh, little pat on the head and words of encouragement from condescending Cardinals fan would not be helpful to me. It's easy to give your rival a half hearted pep talk when the rivalry's as one sided as ours had been the past few years. not too mention that they are so stinkin' loaded with young talent it's sickening.

Wow that is a pretty huge assumption there. 13-8/14-7? We have played better, but we are still wildly inconsistent on offense. I'm sure your counting on Soriano continuing his hot streak and helping to carry us to that type of mark. Which is a toss up. You also just glide over playing the west like they are terrible. We play 4 vs Arizona, and 4 vs LA and 3 vs SF. Most people would say all of those teams are better than us even with our recent play. Then we finish with Philly who is also better than us. We only have 3 games each with Colorado and Milwaukee. You would think we would do well against them but then again we are 5-6 vs them this season. So I would have to say there is a huge question about going 14-7 over that stretch. Also we start out of the break with 10 straight on the road and play only 7 home games over this stretch (4 of those vs LA). Truly I think if we can win 10 or 11 it would be great stretch. Bad news is that the rest of the month we then play St.lou, Cincy, St lou again, Washington, LA and Philly with only 3 games at San Diego. Even without a sell off at the deadline they will be hard pressed to play .500 over these 6 weeks. Despite your assumptions, this just isn't going to be a very easy stretch coming out of the break. On a side note, I would also bet money we don't go 13-8 or 14-7 over this stretch because we only play 20 games vs this group.

The problem there is that he gets a lot of value from his defense and I think most people are simply talking about his offensive performance. Right now he is being out performed offensively by guys like Brandon Belt, Chris Carter and James Loney. I don't think anyone had that in mind for him this season. His defense is top notch but talking purely offense he has been toward the bottom of first basemen.

we need any and all prospects to develop. I could care less who drafted them, we just need as much value as possible. It seems like some rejoice simply in being able to point out the old regimes failures.

It really doesn't matter for this season but we have no right handed outfielders off the bench. Our only true possible pinch hitter is whoever isn't catching, which means we have a problem if there is an injury late in a game. not sure why we felt the need to deal for this small amount, didn't we get more for johnson last year? He's signed for next year, we don't have an outfielder ready to replace him. hopefully a money slot is involved