frostwyrm

Same here. We could have given Soto a few weeks of everyday play immediately after Barrett's departure, then made a judgment about whether we needed another catcher, but that wasn't going to happen under current management. Lou and Hendry had to have a veteran catcher for the stretch run. Depending on rookies makes them nervous.

Essentially we traded Barrett and Blevins for Kendall. Seems like a bad deal to me. Barrett at least has a chance of bouncing back this year and Blevins has been very good in the minors lately. Kendall is just plain washed up.

I don't understand the Pierre/Mitre VORPs. If you look at what 2007 Mitre has done relative to 2006 Pierre then it shouldn't even be close

Why didn't we just stick with Barrett? I know Barrett had his problems but Kendall is a shell of his former self and we gave away Jerry Blevins to get him. How is this supposed to be an upgrade from Barrett?

I'll give Hendry some credit. This 2007 team is better than I expected and some of the offseason acquisitions look good so far. I still think things are going to get extremely ugly come 2009 because of all these hefty backloaded deals. But if you view this team as an excercise in "win now and damn the future" philosophy then it could be considered a modest success thus far.

Only major worry I have about Cuban is that he'll let his emotions influence decisions. Baseball requires a very Spock-like decision-making process. It's not like basketball, where the exciting players are usually the right ones to get. In baseball you have stylish players like Juan Pierre, who sucks. Emotional people tend to overvalue relief pitching too.

Ichiro's market value is not surprising given Pierre's 5/44 deal. Pierre is supposed to do all the stuff Ichiro does. Thing is, Ichiro does all of it at a vastly higher skill level.

If we get Dunn the obvious choice would be moving Soriano to RF and Dunn to LF. It would be backasswards to have it the other way around. Seriously, what team puts the clearly superior defender/athlete in LF and the inferior in RF?

Ah yes. The old "you can't win and develop players at the same time" argument. And the "give the kid a taste and he'll figure out the rest back at the farm" argument. Very Dustyesque.

The way they're talking I don't think Neifi will be back. Ending his career on a drug suspension seems oddly fitting. According to ESPN Neifi is losing $400K in salary, so Dombrowski has to be happy about saving some money.

Back in April I said I'd be shocked if Kerry pitched more than 10 innings in the bigs this year. Still don't see any reason to change that opinion.

It's certainly not stupid to sit Pie for Pagan against lefties. Really? Pagan has a .742 OPS against LHP this year, right? and .596 against LHP last year, right? Pie may not match those #s, but frankly I don't care. In 50 ABs, Pagan has a .281 OBP against LHP. Whatever Pie's #s are, the difference between them and Pagan's #s is less significant than getting our best position prospect regular ABs. I don't want Pie to be in a platoon, I want him to play every day and see all pitchers and learn to hit them. If Lou isn't prepared to do that, we need to send him to AAA (which is probably dumb b/c our CFs are so bad, that we might as well let Pie learn at this level and take advantage of his great defense). So, to reiterate, playing Jones or Pagan over Pie is just stupid. Pagan is the option that's really stupid. You could make a case that Jones has to play to boost his trade value but Pagan is just a low-ceiling prospect with no trade value. Having Pie lose starts to Pagan is indefensible.

This "Pie is here to stay" crap has become a punchline. How can the Cubs possibly have any credibility in the future when they say "(insert youngster's name here) is our everyday (insert position here) and he's here to stay."? Have the Cubs ever had any credibility about that stuff?

It's likely Neifi has played his last game in MLB. He was already on the bubble and his replacement would just have to be non-awful to take his spot away from him. If the Tigers do bring Neifi back that would be an indication of a horribly thin bench. If he's released it's doubtful any other team will pick up his contract. I can't see teams lining up to sign him for 2008 either.

Fans, parents, whatever.

Well of course every team's ERA is going to be outstanding when they basically say "hey let's throw out the bad starts and keep the good ones." It's kinda worthless. We're talking about quality starts, period, here. I'm not talking about the bad starts, so there are no stats that we're "throwing out" here. In the Cubs' quality starts, a stat people like to malign, they have a 1.63 ERA. That's all quality starts combined, whether they meet the minimum requirement or not. In games the Cubs don't get a quality start, the team record is 11-29. Great, so let's change the requirement to 7IP 3ER. 7IP 3ER equates to a 3.86 ERA, which is actually good. I'm sure the quality starts with an ERA over 4.00 didn't produce nearly as good a record as all the quality starts combined, reason being that a 4+ ERA isn't particulary good. You aren't just throwing out 6 innings, 3 runs then. You're throwing out 6 innings 2 runs, 6 innings 1 run, and 6 innings 0 runs. Is that not worse then just leaving in the 6 innings 3 runs? Best way IMO would be to require a min. of 6IP and an ERA less than or equal to 4.00 for the game. That way you would have to do 7IP if you allow 3ER, but you could still get a quality start by doing 6IP/2ER. This would elimate those mediocre games that are currently counted as quality starts. 4.50 ERA is not "quality" pitching.

Well of course every team's ERA is going to be outstanding when they basically say "hey let's throw out the bad starts and keep the good ones." It's kinda worthless. We're talking about quality starts, period, here. I'm not talking about the bad starts, so there are no stats that we're "throwing out" here. In the Cubs' quality starts, a stat people like to malign, they have a 1.63 ERA. That's all quality starts combined, whether they meet the minimum requirement or not. In games the Cubs don't get a quality start, the team record is 11-29. Great, so let's change the requirement to 7IP 3ER. 7IP 3ER equates to a 3.86 ERA, which is actually good. I'm sure the quality starts with an ERA over 4.00 didn't produce nearly as good a record as all the quality starts combined, reason being that a 4+ ERA isn't particulary good.

I think it's perfectly appropriate to jump on the minimum requirement. If the bulk of quality starts tend to exceed the minimum requirement by a significant margin then that's a good argument for making the minimum requirement more stringent. Quoting a 1.63 ERA just underscores the lameness of the quality starts that just barely met the requirement.

oh for crying out loud....did you even read the article. Yes, absolutely. He makes a point to note that the Cubs waited until Barret's value was at his lowest to trade him, which is completely a hindsight argument. In the offseason, when his value was high, there was no need or desire to trade him. Trading him at his highest value wasn't in anyone's thoughts. So its a nonsensical argument. The other notable names in his article (aside from Sosa) are people who have bounced around baseball, playing for numerous teams, and not sticking with any of them for more than 2 years. How much value do these career journeyman have anyway? Has any team received real value in trading for guys like Walker or Bellhorn? There were threads on this very board during the offseason about trading Barrett at his peak value. So, yeah it was in people's thoughts, just not the right people's thoughts. True. I wanted to write off 2007 so I would've made trading Barrett and Z my top priorities. Their trade value was very high in the offseason and even higher mid-season 2006.

Hasn't it occurred to anybody else here that the teams who sell high often do it because they don't try to contend every single year? They actually embrace the concept of rebuilding/retooling seasons. The Cubs don't. If a choice between being a longshot dark horse or helping the future the Cubs always take curtain 1.

I'm not buying the rumor, since I can't see any reason why the White Sox would want an expensive marginal veteran. They're not making the playoffs. Jones is the type of player they should be dumping, not acquiring.

In his next save opportunity Dempster must wear a mullet wig in tribute to the Shooter.

He didn't make a firm accusation. He just expressed suspicion -- he said Juan "probably" used roids. Suspicion is not illegal.

Ugh, Rob Bowen & Kyler Burke. Think what the Cubs could have gotten for Barret and Z if they had been traded in the offseason like they should have been.

Teammate of Ben McDonald, the other Orioles future superstar of the day.