frostwyrm

Walker at 2.5M plus Cedeno at 350K is a very solid middle infield at a rock bottom price. There's no reason to gamble on Nomar.

Furcal won't even come close to giving us the same bang for our buck that Cedeno can give at $350K. I'd much rather spend Furcal's 8M on AJ Burnett

It's about time. Hendry needs to run up a white flag so big even Dusty will be able to see it. I would also like to see Hollandsworth and Burnitz moved ASAP. Neifi too, but that's probably a pipe dream.

I can't agree with that at all. In 2003 Karros put up a .683 OPS vs. right-handed pitching, despite getting more than his fair share of at bats against the weaker righties in the league, and it was well known going into the season that Karros could only hit lefties. Choi should have gotten all the starts vs. righties while he was healthy enough to play.

It seems obvious to me that Hendry will have to release Neifi for Cedeno to get regular starts.

I don't think it's even close. Neifi has historically been terrible outside of Coors, although he has had a run of moderate success at Wrigley. Take out the Coors factor and Neifi would have some of the worst, and possibly THE worst, career numbers of his generation.

So Dusty won't audition kids in the middle of a playoff race, and he has also has reasons for not doing it after the race is over. So when do the kids play? Do we have to fall out of the race in July in order to develop a position player?

Pitchers' W-L records are not worth the paper they are printed on or the internet bandwidth they consume.

If Dusty is determined to play Neifi we could call up Cedeno and put Neifi at 3B while ARam is out.

No point in calling up Cedeno if he's just going to rot on the bench again.

He's only had one season of superstar type numbers. I don't want to give him the huge contract and then see him go back to being just very good and not great.

I suspect Dusty made this statement for Hendry's ears. Dusty is telling Hendry he won't bow out gracefully and he won't willingly be the fall guy for the team's failures. I think Dusty also knows that Hendry doesn't have the balls to fire him.

I was on the fence about Nomar until this back issue became serious. Now I don't want him back even if he is cheap. He is no longer reliable enough to be a "Plan A" for a contender.

Hmmm, valuing a player's offense based on batting average, RBI, and low K rate. If this were 1975 I would say that is state of the art thinking.

I'm done with Nomar. I want to see what Cedeno can do.

Why do you think Perez will be the starting shortstop next year? Read the very first post in this thread. It said the Cubs are likely to not re-sign Nomar, and they'll probably bring back Neifi. I did read it. I read it to mean they'll bring back Neifi in the same way they brought him back in 2005, as a backup. If Neifi returns to back up Nomar the predictable result is that Neifi will be the co-starter and not actually a backup at all, just as in 2005. I don't think Nomar can be counted on to be an everyday player anymore.

When you sign a horrible player to back up a known injury risk you are taking a foolish gamble. A lot of us here on this message board knew Perez was very likely to get a whole lot of playing time. Now if he were Cal Ripken's backup that would be different. Which is my central question? Does Perez get the blame or Hendry/Baker for being stupid enough to think that Nomar would be healthy? We all knew Neifi was going to be bad offensively. And I hate the fact that it sounds like I'm defending this scrub, but Neifi is being Neifi, which I'm trying to figure out why there has been lots of threads created about him when we all knew he was horrible. Maybe I'm burned out from posting since March that our outfield had the potential to be horrible, even if Patterson put up his short career numbers. And I could go on and on about how bad Perez was going to be. I guess I spent a lot of time talking about this horrible lineup all season that I'm almost immune to it. Hendry/Baker get the blame. My point was that Neifi wasn't really a true backup IMO. If a guy is backing up an extremely healthy starter(Ripken) he might have only a 5% chance of getting lots of playing time. An average starter, maybe 20%. An injury-prone starter, 40%. An EXTREMELY injury-prone starter(Nomar), 70%. At what point do you say this guy is no longer a backup?

Yeah, I remember when the team was not close to being competitive and Sammy was eating up 20% of the payroll all by himself. I have never seen a better time to let a superstar go.

When you sign a horrible player to back up a known injury risk you are taking a foolish gamble. A lot of us here on this message board knew Perez was very likely to get a whole lot of playing time. Now if he were Cal Ripken's backup that would be different.

We are out of the race, so if Murton struggles against righties just keep playing him anyway. At this point any AB that goes to Holla is a waste. He ought to be DFA'd, he sucks and Dusty doesn't even play him anymore. Lawton and Burnitz should be traded immediately. Finish the season with Patterson/Hairston/Murton in the OF, and hopefully Pie somewhere in the mix.

Perez isn't really having a career season. His OPS is only a shade higher than his career totals, and his OBP is a tick lower. Yeah, I'm aware of that stuff, but his career numbers are heavily padded by all his time at Coors. Overall I think this is his finest. As you can tell, Coors numbers have zero credibility with me.

Just out of curiosity, if you were the Cards GM, would you have resigned Tony Womack for 2005? Your logic inescapably leads me to believe you would have.

2005 Neifi Perez is perfectly analogous to 2004 Tony Womack. Both are utility players in their 30's with horrible lifetime numbers, having a career season. The Cards were smart enough not to gamble on Womack repeating, but the dumdum Cubs would have resigned Womack, just as they will resign Neifi for 2006. Players this bad and this old will not turn a corner and become good. If you are fortunate enough to get a good season out of these types count yourself blessed and then let them go.

All the people who don't want Murton starting next year might ask what other player could give us better bang for our buck. Do we really want to blow $5M on another Burnitz type, or pay Murton the league minimum?

This is shaping up to be a career year for Neifi, and it's not very good. Given his age and history I highly doubt he'll ever put up an OPS near this high again. Next year odds are he goes back to the .570-.600 range. I say if any team wants to gamble on Neifi for 2006 they deserve whatever they get.