CUBZ99

Bruce Miles challenges your statement. paul sullivan challenges bruce miles "The Cubs plan to have Soriano play centerfield and bat lead-off, giving them three players who have hit 35 or more home runs in a season in their starting lineup. With Soriano in the fold, the Cubs will next turn towards acquiring a starting pitcher or two." so who is right btwn the two? Come on, Paul Sullivan or Bruce? Is there any reason to debate? I'm guessing he is playing RF.

Sorry, I had to post this. According to this blog, Drew is signing with the Cubs and Zito personally called Jim Hendry. :lol: :lol: :lol: http://www.cubsrumorsandnews.blogspot.com/

Amen! I have posted many times saying basically the same thing. Hendry is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. If the numbers are correct, he gave Soriano numbers he couldn't refuse. The longer you leave him in the free agent market, the more things that could happen. Nice post. It is still difficult to believe that Hendry set his sights on perhaps one of the best available FA in baseball this year, and got him. I'm very impressed.

That is horrendous. Hendry is ensuring that if he gets fired his fingerprints will be on the team for a long time.

Thoughts? Besides having a cool name, why would the Cubs want a guy that is worse than what they have now? The last thing they need on the team is a light hitting OF with a career .329 OBP and a career .700ish OPS. Lets hope the Red Sox don't put him on the market.

Depending on who else they're asking for, I'd do that deal in a heartbeat. Would the Marlins do Pie, Marshall and Wuertz for Willis? why even suggest this since hendry stated that he is not trading pie? the marlins would make out like bandits if hendry were dumb enough to try this deal out anyway. You're right, whatever a GM states is always 100% true. I'm sure Hendry hangs his phone up as soon as some other GM mentions Pie's name. I bet Cashman does the same thing when someone mentions Arod's name. I won't suggest any more trades that include Pie until Hendry comes out and says he's trying to trade him. First off, the Cubs can't trade Pie until they find a starting OF for 2007. Second, when was the last time we heard Hendry say someone was untouchable and then he went out and traded them? If anything, Hendry has been overconservative in not dealing his top prospects.

Depending on who else they're asking for, I'd do that deal in a heartbeat. Would the Marlins do Pie, Marshall and Wuertz for Willis? There was a blurb in one of the New York papers about this. Supposedly the Marlins are willing to trade on of their young pitchers for a cheap CF. I'll look at their roster and see if I can find the article again, but I believe it was Olson or Johnson. As a practical matter, Hendry can't trade Pie at the moment, because he is currently the starting CF.

Dude just can't catch a break. Was he the guy that was caught stealing from his teammates?

Wow, I never realized that Neifi Perez actually has a higher career OBP than A Gon. And us Cub's fans were complaining about paying Neifi $2.5?? :lol:

plus he is alot cheaper

Have you guys checked out his splits last year? Pre-All Star Break 2.95 ERA .216 BAA (not bad at all) He absolutely fell apart the second half of the season. Cotts also had some of the strangest Home and Away splits that I have seen. Is there a reason why his Away numbers should be that much better??

doubtful, he'll get big time guaranteed money. Define "big time." I would be shocked if he got anything less than $6-8 million guaranteed on a one year deal. And I wouldn't be surprised with a 3/27 type contract (and maybe more). It's not like he's coming off a 20 inning season. He "won" 14 games, and threw 190 innings. He's coming off 3 seasons where he's average 200 innings and 14 wins. A minor league deal is out of the question. A low base isn't going to get him, unless the incentives are obscenely high and easy to achieve. There is no way that Hendry would hand a pitcher with a 6+ ERA a 6MM a year deal. I realize some people have been upset with Hendry over the overpaying of Blanco, and DeRosa, but even Hendry is not that out of his mind. My guess is that he will be looking at a low base salary with lots of incentives, similar to Wade Miller's contract.

doubtful, he'll get big time guaranteed money. Define "big time." I'm pretty sure he said "big time" in jest. :wink: Edit: I guess he was serious. :oops:

Kaplan said the other night, Hendry loves Murton, but that he almost guaranteed that Jones would not be with the team to start next year.

How long before we find out who had the winning bid?

I agree. Meche is a decent candidate to be one of the breakout pitchers with his stuff and coming to the NL, but there are also probably better candidates out there. It really depends on the cost-are we talking 5 million, or 9.5 million? One makes it a decent to good move, and the other one makes it a bad to horrible move in my book. Someone give a quick scouting report on his stuff. Is he a fireballer, with control issues?

I think that's a bit strong: Walker's OPS 2003: .761 2004: .820 2005: .829 2006: .754 DeRosa 2006: .813 It's not as if Walker was some super offensive force at 2b. He was what DeRosa was last year: above average. I'm not saying that DeRosa will match his numbers from last year, but the difference between the two doesn't seem to be as large as you make it out to be. And I'll take a slightly lower OPS for the ability to turn a double play. While DeRosa's line from 2006 looks great and I pray to Kent he can repeat it, I can't ignore his 2005 line of 243/325/439 and his 2004 line of 239/293/320 and his 2003 line of 263/316/383. He has a career year last year in a hitter's park. If he repeats it great, but what if he puts up his career norm of 273/331/404? While not horrible, when combined with Izturis, it's some pretty weak production from the middle infield. Furthermore, we're paying over 4 million a year for that. Somewhere in this lengthy thread there was a poster that said DeRosa was hurt in 2005.

Looks like we are getting Izturis and Derosa next year up the middle. 2007 is over before it even had a chance to begin. Nonsense. That is silly. Why does it end anything? Because I think getting guys like Izturis and DeRosa indicate next to nothing has changed in Hendry's mind as to how to build this team. I have zero confidence in him finding anyone for the OF except for another Jones or Pierre-esque player and a couple of average journeyman pitchers. As soon as I see something that indicates he's adjusted his team building policy, hey, I'll be jumping for joy. Sadly, with the last 2 positions we've needed to improve significantly and he's made changes at, 2nd and SS, he's tanked miserably. Why is he going to be any different improving the OF or the starting rotation? With the exception of the bullpen, Hendry hasn't indicated at all he has what it takes to make the drastic improvements this team needs. Almost all of his trades and signings in the last 6 months are just staying the course and not rocking rhe boat at all. He's taking no chances on anything even remotely close to a big signing or trade. Hendry gets a high OBP guy for 2B and everyone is acting like the sky is falling. I'm very suprised at the reaction to the DeRosa signing so far. I'll admit his numbers haven't always been that great, but last year was a fine year and I can't imagine everyone would be that upset at having a .350+ OBP at 2b.

Yes, and Cedeno was supposed to be better than Neifi and any pitcher was supposed to be better than the 2005 version of Rusch and so on. If last year taught us anything, it was not to blindly hope a bunch of fringe prospect rookies would have important roles on the team. I'm praying that DeRosa can maintain his 2006 numbers next year and this signing looks better in August.

Yeah, how could you not be fired up over a guy who played major college ball for three years and then put up a tremendous .313 OBP in rookie ball? he started out very slowly, hit a groove in the middle and tired out at the end and he still had a .796 ops. give the guy some time to adapt to the pro's before condeming him to being a washout as he only had 265 ab's. Is this the same guy who was considered the #1 NWL prospect?

Yes, I think it was .348 of something like that.

I don't know how you can say that. DeRosa averages what, 10 homers and 50 RBI's a season? Soriano can triple his HR totals and he can double DeRosa's RBIs. Average and OBP wise, he matches up with Soriano, but that's about it. You missed the point. DeRosa was crappy for two years then good for one, and now he's getting paid like a good player. Soriano was good for two years and great for one, and people are clamoring for him to get paid like a great player. Not to nitpick TT, but he is not getting paid like a great player. $4.3MM is not chump change, but it will hardly be a huge drag on the payroll in future years. Also, is there any indication that DeRosa did something different last year that helped him turn the corner? His numbers last year are pretty significant improvements and while his last 100abs were pretty bad, he sustained pretty good numbers for the majority of the year.

DeRosa provides the Cubs with some insurance, if one of their key players get injured this year. By having a guy that can play so many positions, it will allow Hendry to call up the best available replacement and move DeRosa around if necessary. On a side note, does this signing mean that the Cubs don't have Eric Patterson in their future plans?

If he puts up similar numbers to last year I'm not going to complain much about the contract. But that is a pretty a big IF.

I truly hope that Hendry is not counting on any of the above named pitchers to start the season in the rotation. Last year they all proved that they weren't ready quite yet.