CUBZ99

The Cards had a bum that only put up a .690(ish) Ops. Now they got a guy that put up a .599 for almost 3X the cost. Good move. You're completely lost here. What they got doesn't matter. What Greene did doesn't matter. This is why it has always been pointless to argue with you. The magic Mepho dust says that a .599 OPS at $6.5MM is a good bargain for unknown players. Now you can see why most people don't take you seriously, or even bother to reply to your posts.

The Cards had a bum that only put up a .690(ish) Ops. Now they got a guy that put up a .599 for almost 3X the cost. Good move.

Yeah, they were pretty good last year. Do you even know who they gave up to get Greene? 2 relief prospects. From the New York ***&ing Post? Kind of hard to judge the trade without knowing exactly what was traded. If this trade did happen, nobody has a clue what was exchanged and whether it was a good deal or not. To make a statement saying "this is why the Cardinals win championships..." without any clue of whether the trade happened or what it was for is ignorant beyond words.

Yeah, the perennial playoff appearances, the championships, the good ol days... Don't forget spending top dollar to retain our best players like Greg Maddux. Honestly, that's maybe the one thing the Trib did well. Outside of Maddux, did they ever lose another player that they wanted to hold on to? I think he was the only one. The Maddux debacle was all Himes. The money was there, Himes let Maddux walk out of spite because he didn't like Maddux and his agent acting so presumptious by giving him a deadline on when to have their offer in, so he let the deadline pass and sent him the offer the next day to show them who was boss. Himes should have been publicly lynched over that one. I think the Trib's record speaks for itself. They owned the team for how many years? And made it to the playoffs 10% or less of the time? Don't see how it could get much worse than that for a major market team.

Yeah, they were pretty good last year. Do you even know who they gave up to get Greene?

Veal has had a real tough go lately. Didn't he just recently lose both parents? The kid may have more going on than the Cubs are willing to invest in. Callis has a valid point, if the Cub's instructors are not getting through to him or having any effect, it may not be worth it to protect him. Although, he has been wrong before, Hendry's evaluation of talent has been pretty spot on.

If Hendry gets Peavy, the Wood fiasco is forgotten.

Yeah when Towers pretty much said the Cubs are still in on Peavy, I didn't believe Lou comments. Who knows maybe Hendry is keeping Lou out of the loop more this offseason, compared to other years. Lou keeps talking about adding LH hitting, but there hasn't really been any serious rumors about the Cubs targetting one guy. Yet the Cubs are pretty much the only team in the Peavy talks right now. If the Dodgers get in on the Peavy talks we could have a problem though, since Peavy did say that the Dodgers were his first choice. But I doubt Towers would wanna trade him within the division, and if he did the asking price would be much higher. I'm guessing that Lou is completely in the loop. It is all a negotiations game. Lou is probably taking cues from Hendry and talking down the trade in order to make the Cubs look less desperate to get Peavy. The comments also take the pressure off Hendry, in that it lowers expectations.

No the Cubs couldn't. Gregg sucks ass. Nobody is going to give a quality prospect to get him except Hendry. I bet we would both be amazed at the number of GM's that consider Gregg to be a valuable commodity simply based upon the fact that he had 29(or so) saves last year. I have no doubt Hendry could get value for Gregg, the question would be, why would he want to? He just traded value for the guy, and 2008 Gregg is definitely an upgrade from 2008 Howry, at approximately the same price. It was mentioned in the Peavy trade thread that Hendry believes the Cubs have a two year window to win. I have no issues with him going all out in attempt to win everything now.

I think the real question is ... whether there is a team that Lee is willing to accept a trade to? I'm surprised Churchill didn't follow up with his agent on that question.

and put him in the major league bullpen? He's got to make the MLB roster or be waived. I'd rather give him a shot in ST and see if he can pull it together. It's unlikely, but I'd rather do that instead of just basically giving him away as an extra piece that doesn't really make or break the deal in any way. If one of those teams is high on him and they thing he's a key part of the deal that's fine, but I think they'd see him as a throw in type guy. Last year he was basically untouchable and now we're talking about giving him away as like the 5th piece in a trade. I doubt if we could get Scott out of the deal without Hill being included. Marquis is more of a salary dump for us than a positive piece for Baltimore, don't you think? If you don't want Scott, we could probably keep both Hill and Marquis, but why do that? I'm just saying that I get the impression that Hill owuld not be a deal breaker and that we could get the same package with another guy. I could be wrong, I'm just getting that feeling. If the Cubs could get anything for Hill at this point it would be amazing. He is about to get booted off the roster on the winter league team that he is playing with.

Oh God. Another winter with Bigbird and company. Hopefully this is real and Hendry can get it done by the meetings. OH seems to think the O's would be happy getting Pie, Hill and Marquis in the deal. If that is the case let's get this thing done.

Your pretty greedy. Isn't the fact that he is finally playing full time for licey and hitting over .300 a good thing?

If this is true, it is great news. Lilly would be a nice pitcher/with a decent contract and should attract any of those teams named. Lee should have some decent value also.

Dusty reads NSBB? Dusty has friends/acquaintances that check out these sites and occasionally relay info when it is that interesting. This is some pretty juicy stuff.

Very good attitude to have for a player trying to get playing time. Now Dusty knows how this kid feels, and the kid will probably go into spring training at a disadvantage without even throwing one pitch.

http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/030070.php http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/023929.php Perfect example of why defensive metrics are worthless. I knew somebody was going to post something like that. You can make pretty much anybody look good if you dig hard enough through that stuff. So you think Theriot is average defensively? Come on. I'm trying to avoid the dreaded "don't you watch the games?" line, but it's almost necessary. No way you could have watched him plau for more than 15 games and say that he is anything but below average defesnively. "Hey, there's a ball hit 2 feet to my right. I think I'm going to unneccessarily drop to my knees and field it because I have plenty of time with my rocket arm. Wait, he was safe? How is that possible?" Yes, I'm sure if you searched you'd find me talking about how limited Theriot's range appears to be, or how weak his arm is. However, PMR is nothing to scoff at, and I'm definitely willing to reconsider that Theriot isn't as bad a defender as he appears(just like Adam Dunn isn't as bad a hitter as he appears when he looks really bad swinging and missing). Using stats to get a realistic gauge of a player? There is a concept. What is it about Theriot that makes so many people blindly hate on him? He is not a superstar, but he is very serviceable SS.

For a SS last year Theriot was 2nd in ALL of the Majors at OBP. There are things that Theriot is not good at, but getting on base is not one of them. Also, how is Theriot overrated? He's a SS that gets on base and plays average defense. I don't see anybody bragging about how good he is or saying that he is one of the elite players in the game. I find it funny though that you complain about Hendry's lack of ability to scout talent, when you are so eager to replace a guy that gets on base with a guy that hasn't shown anything other than flashes of good play. In regard to Fontenot, Fontenot had a great year last year mostly because he was strictly platooned. If you look at his career splits, he has never had a problem hitting RHP. LHP has given him fits. Gotta give Lou credit for making the most out of his ability and to Fontenot for taking advantage of the opportunity.

Kind of hard to criticize anyone's talent evaluation abilities after making a statement like that. Theriot may not be the most sexy SS in baseball, but how can you honestly justify saying that Cedeno is better? IMO Hendry has done a pretty good job at evaluating talent since becoming GM. Sure he gets lucky sometimes like with Edmonds, Johnson, etc. But whenever he has gambled with those type of players he has done so at very little cost. It has never been Hendry's MO to vastly overpay for talent in a trade. In regard to Teahan, Hendry probably views him as a buy low guy that may have potential if he can be acquired at the right price.

If Wood accepts and brings him much closer to that budget, he couldn't afford any of those players, which would be the problem. Even if the Cubs can't afford any more players, the reward significantly outweighs the risk. If Wood accepts arbitration, the Cubs would be going into the season as essentially the same team that won the most games in the NL. The only major change would be having Gregg in the bullpen rather than Howry.

Teahen's numbers are not impressive at all. Are the Cubs concerned that Hoffpaiur couldn't put up a .715ish OPS in RF?

I've been wondering about just this scenario since the whole "Kerry is gone" story broke. It seems remote that Kerry would be back, accepting a 1 yr deal with the Cubs, but certainly not impossible :beg: This is why (sorry to say because Kerry has always been one of my favorite players ) I am calling bullHowry on the whole "I would have taken anything to stay" act. He CAN take anything to stay. Just accept the arbitration. But he won't. And it will be because he wanted a long term contract and was probably put off by the fact that Hendry would not give it to him so he retaliated by making Hendry look bad in the press. Hendry is doing the right thing not giving him a multi year eight figure annual deal. I think he will break down with another major injury before those three years are up. The magically healed shoulder makes me nervous. We have no clue what Wood is thinking. I'm guessing that the lack of rumors concerning him, makes it likely that he will consider accepting arbitration. A bullpen with Gregg as the third best pitcher would be spectacular.

You all know who you are. i i was looking at old threads on desipio the other day for some reason and there was a really good one where people were like "WE ROSTERED THAT WORTHLESS IDIOT GEOVANY SOTO AND LET ANDY SISCO GO???!?!??!?" We shouldn't really be laughing at anybody, people on here thought Matt Murton was good. Choi was destined for greatness. Bobby Hill for Aramis Rameriz WTF?? Signing Mark DeRosa for 3/14MM is Hendry crazy? Lilly at 4/$44MM what a waste of money, we should have signed Schmidt instead. Cubs should push hard to sign Fukudome........

Well a trade would definitely do some damage to the farm, we could restock rather quick if we don't resign Dempster and someone is stupid enough to sign Howry. With the picks from those two and Wood we could have 4-5 picks in the top 80 next year. We also had a pretty solid draft this last year so we have a lot of guys who can't be traded right now but could be solid in a few years, like Jay Jackson, Cashner, Ryan Flaherty, Chris Carpenter, Aaron Shafer and we signed that Asian SS that is supposed to be good but I forgot his name, he got a signing bonus close to a mil. I'm convinced that the Cubs should offer Howry arbitration. If he gets a better deal, the Cubs get two picks. If he accepts the Cubs offer they can see what type of shape he shows up in the spring, and if he is not in shape they can still dump him for relatively low cost.

I hope that Dempster doesn't sign with the Cubs. He had a career year during his FA year, let him go and get big money somewhere else. The last thing the Cubs need is to be stuck with another $10MM pitcher for another 4 years.