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frostwyrm

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Everything posted by frostwyrm

  1. frostwyrm
    Lou could have made the catcher situation a lot simpler by not wasting plate appearances on stiffs like Koyie Hill and Rob Bowen, which might be the dumbest thing Lou has done all season. He could have requested that Soto be called up immediately after Barrett left. I doubt Hendry would have refused.
  2. frostwyrm
    Hendry will likely have to eat at least 2 mil to move Eyre. He might generate some interest as a LOOGY but nobody would want to spend $3.8M for a LOOGY, especially not an iffy bet like Eyre. Any GM who picks up more than $1M of his salary is just plain dumb.
  3. frostwyrm
    I'll be majorly pissed if Kendall's slump goes on another week and Soto isn't made the primary C. Kendall is nothing but a washed up player who had a nice hot streak in August. His slumps are much closer to his current ability level than his hot streaks.
  4. frostwyrm
    That's the thing. We have Lee, Ramirez, Soriano, DeRosa. At the other 4 spots we have Pie, Murton, Theriot, and Soto being possible cheap everyday options. Which one do you upgrade, and which 3 do you say are your starters for the next couple years? There's not a chance in hell Lou wants Murton as his longterm everyday RF, so Hendry will need to get someone. Pie is still a question mark. We don't know if he'll hit well enough in 2008 to play for a team built to win now, and Lou obviously has little patience with rookies who struggle initially. We don't know much about Soto either, in part because 105 plate appearances were stupidly wasted on Koyie Hill. Theriot is a cheap and reasonably good player that Lou actually likes well enough to play, so we have to keep him.
  5. frostwyrm
    The more I think about it, I don't believe SS should be a target for an upgrade. Having $90M tied up in 6 players in 2009 makes a cheap and tolerably good everyday guy like Theriot a must-have. The positions to upgrade are the ones where we don't have a cheap everyday option currently signed.
  6. frostwyrm
    Kendall's throwing is becoming a major liability and we all know he's capable of extended stretches of terrible hitting. I like the .919 OPS he put up in August but obviously he can't sustain that. If it were up to me Kendall would be on a very short leash. When his offense starts to cool down his playing time should be slashed very quickly.
  7. frostwyrm
    Theriot is not great but the Cubs will soon desperately need some cheap everyday players, considering that the 2009 payroll has $90M tied up in 6 players. Theriot should stick around at least til then, unless some amazing opportunity for a cost-effective upgrade becomes available, which isn't likely.
  8. frostwyrm
    We don't know how baseball-savvy the new owners will be. They might just look at the horrible 2006 record and see a playoff appearance in 2007 as a miraculous turnaround that validates Hendry's methods. It wouldn't surprise me at all.
  9. frostwyrm
    I was one of those who wanted to see the team blown up in the offseason and 2007 used as a rebuilding year. I still think that would have been the the right call 9 years out of 10. This expensive 2007 Cubs team is just as lame as I expected, it's just that the NL Central is worse than I expected. We all knew it would be a weak division but this is ridiculous. I want the Cubs to win the pennant but I'm fully aware that the division doesn't deserve to be represented in the playoffs.
  10. frostwyrm
    I do want the the Cubs to make the playoffs, but I understand what Derwood is getting at it. The Cubs really are a ridiculously mediocre team. They wouldn't be over .500 in any other division. The risk here is that if this overpriced mediocrity sneaks into the playoffs it will give Hendry job security plus a mandate to continue his usual brain-damaged methods for another few years. He's already done plenty of longterm damage and another 2-3 years of Hendry could screw up the Cubs for most of a decade. If they make the playoffs this year I want either a World Series win or an embarrassing 1st round elimination.
  11. frostwyrm
    Murton starting vs. RHP? Did Floyd break a wrist in batting practice?
  12. frostwyrm
    If he's used that way I would have no complaint, but I'm worried that Lou will try to squeeze as many starts out of him as he can and not make him available for long relief duty, which is where he could be most helpful IMO.
  13. frostwyrm
    Not a terrible move. Moore and Cherry were expendable. We have Marquis, Marshall, and sometimes Z getting knocked out of games early so a long reliever is desirable. Apparently Hendry wasn't confident he could get a long reliever from the farm right away.
  14. frostwyrm
    Yeah. Funny how Soriano had to move back to LF to be comfortable, yet Lou didnt seem to care how comfortable Murton and Floyd were. Its like he has to bat Lead off to be comfortable. Seems the Cubs are making a lot of concessions for Soriano. It doesnt make a difference if he is asking for them or not. Where I work we like to call these type of people High Maintenance. Besides the leadoff requirement -- Floyd, Murton, and Jones have all had to play out of position to accommodate Lord Alfonso. We used to think Sammy Sosa was a diva, but he was never this much trouble. At least Sammy was an actual major league star. Even in Sammy's disappointing final season with the Cubs he still had a higher OPS than Soriano and played a more demanding position. Nobody else had to play out of position because of him either.
  15. frostwyrm
    I wish Soriano had gotten time in RF during spring training. Having him jump from LF to CF was always a sketchy proposition. RF would have been far more doable.
  16. frostwyrm
    Naturally, I can't find the quote anywhere, but I definitely recall reading that Soriano prefers leading off because he sees more fastballs there. I'm working now, so don't have time to search for it, but I recall Soriano saying he'd play any position and hit anywhere in the order to help the team. That is true. As others have mentioned, he also expressed a preference for hitting leadoff. Unfortunately for us when a guy who just signed a $136M contract expresses a "preference" it carries the same weight as an average player expressing a firm demand. It'll be next year at the earliest before Lou or Hendry will feel comfortable deviating from Soriano's preferences.
  17. frostwyrm
    Soriano was really bad before the injury. He was. I'm beginning to think he's going to be prone to long slumps forever because he doesn't seem like to care much for coaching. It's always Lou needing to tip-toe around Sori's wishes. I hate that, I don't care the kind of money you make. We're going to be tip-toeing around this guy for 7 more years. It's really starting to get under my skin. It's been under my skin. The guy is hobbled with a bad quad but he has good HR power, yet the manager is too afraid to take him out of the leadoff spot. Who is running the team, Lou or Soriano? I don't think it's Soriano that's demanding to hit leadoff and play LF. I think it's Lou and/or Hendry that's looking at his numbers in the past (and the few ABs he's had when playing CF or hitting elsewhere in the lineup this year) and concluding that he has to hit first and play LF. I don't remember seeing Soriano make any demands about it, so I don't blame him. I blame our manager/GM. Probably true. They're still entranced by his 2006 numbers that he put up in LF/leadoff. Next year Lou will have to face the fact the 2006 was a career season that Soriano is extremely unlikely to reproduce. At that point Lou might consider batting him 5th and moving him to RF. We can only hope.
  18. frostwyrm
    Soriano was really bad before the injury. He was. I'm beginning to think he's going to be prone to long slumps forever because he doesn't seem like to care much for coaching. It's always Lou needing to tip-toe around Sori's wishes. I hate that, I don't care the kind of money you make. We're going to be tip-toeing around this guy for 7 more years. It's really starting to get under my skin. It's been under my skin. The guy is hobbled with a bad quad but he has good HR power, yet the manager is too afraid to take him out of the leadoff spot. Who is running the team, Lou or Soriano?
  19. frostwyrm
    I'm not so sure about that. At age 31 he is maybe just slightly above average for his position. When he gets to age 35 he'll be making $19M annually and it's very possible he won't even be good enough to be more than a bench player on a contender, like the Jeromy Burnitz we had in 2005, only playing LF instead of RF, and with less durability. I can't imagine that 19M will look like a good price for that player unless the U.S. adopts the Mexican peso as its currency.
  20. frostwyrm
    I've thought about that too. I'm sure even the Yankees wouldn't want this contract, and they overpay everybody.
  21. frostwyrm
    If I were a GM and Hendry offered me Soriano in return for absolutely nothing, AND agreed to pay $50M off the back end of the contract($10M annually over the final 5 years) I'd still turn him down without hesitation.
  22. frostwyrm
    What's really funny is that he's not even underachieving. He's performing exactly according to his career norms. This is why I predicted it would be one of the worst contracts in the history of sports.
  23. frostwyrm
    With a bad leg Soriano better hit some dingers or he's worthless.
  24. frostwyrm
    1.5 right? Ah, forgot about the Brewers. Mentally I've already designated the Cards as the competition.
  25. frostwyrm
    Cards are losing, so we'll still have a 2 game lead with a 67-64 record. What an awesome division.
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