Shilzzz

just saying for posterity that i want andrew friedmann

can there be made a camp Dempster to turn bullpen arms into starters again? never thought this guy would come around, honestly, but the cutter has been good for him

some cool talk on the most recent bp podcast about brett jackson, based on jason parks' recent 'prospects will break your heart' positional series. parks acted like all of his front office sources are IN LOVE with jackson, whereas scouts are a little lower, though still high enough. (if you listen though, keep in mind goldstein and parks swear a good deal) edit, just for good measure:

Nick Castellanos (Tigers-1s) - Supplemental Pick for loss of Free Agent Brandon Lyon boy, i'd take that trade 8 days a week.

hey cool falling into the same trap one is defending oneself against as if it weren't the case

you can tell wilkin didn't go to school for non-redundancy. yowzas

There would still be flops...many, many flops. right, absolutely. i guess my point was more aimed at how to curb the amount of flops, specifically with the higher ceiling guys. also, that the compensation of lack of obp skills by good hand guys is an interesting strategy that says much more about the cubs front office than surface level.

just to throw my hat in the thread, i am ecstatic that the cubs did as much as they have this year with amatuers (internationals incl). however, i still think the players they are targeting are so raw, and our organization so fundamentally flawed, that there is destined to be some big time flops, unless different front office people are brought in sooner than later. in an organ where patience is not practiced, and players seem to decline more often than improve, raw is not always the best thing. i think some of these guys profile as types that will usurp the obstacles in front of them (particularly dunston and baez, though maples is the poster boy for arms that hendry's coaches destroy or make bullpen fodder), and that we signed enough upside guys to make the cushion of failure more tolerable, but if one of vogelbach, gretzky, and hoilman end up being an everyday 1b in the majors we will have been fortunate. i also wonder if all these 1b is a further sign of ricketts and co having no intention on going long term with pujols or fielder, and rather stopgapping with pena (which is not the worst option, really). again, i think this is the best draft easily in years, if not as long as i've been alive enough to be a baseball fan, but i think that the whole keith law-is-a-dick-to-cubs-fans-and-prospects thing is kind of true in so far as most cubs guys don't pan out, and as a career move it's not the dumbest one to pick.

I'd like to hear Hollandsworth respond to ARam's last sentence. Dude bitches about ARam not making the players around him better. Well how come he never took ARam under his wing and tried to make him a "better leader"? Hollandsworth sucked so it wasn't his job to make his teammates better, it's on the really good players like Ramirez to make the other players better, and when they fail to do that we can say they actually weren't good. i think this is a fantastic line of reasoning. that quite often in any line of life, jobs or otherwise, people that are not as good blame people that are good for not halving their good-ness and communing it among the others, whether that is possible or not. it is a multifold scapegoat, the best kind for suffering fools like hollandsworth.

it isn't even cubs baseball at this point, it's cubs pieces of paper. sigh

i'd probably quit, too, if soriano was the one telling me off. haha

Just to throw a name out there I thought Andrew McCutchen. Sadly, another name was Juan Pierre, but Juan Pierre wouldn't be a bad outcome for an 18 year old HS kid in the big picture...A purely LH Bernie Williams also came to mind. Anyway, he might be my favorite draft pick. For some reason I get the feeling his talent got overshadowed by sheer numbers in this draft. Hopefully they sign him. This sounds like crazy talk, but I'd prefer signing him to Maples if it had to come to that. but does he remind you of any white players? :blush:

NL Pitching RAR: 1) Philadelphia, 213 2) Colorado, 173 15) Chicago NL, 35 16) Houston, -22

WAR amongst NL pitchers: 1) Roy Halladay, PHI, 5.5 2) Cole Hamels, PHI, 5.0 3) Cliff Lee, PHI, 4.6

this is pretty simple: if you are good, you get several opprotunities, if you aren't, you don't. zambrano has been good, but he is not quite so this year. so while he has "gotten away with it" before and been ok, this isn't like when bradley had actually been producing when he was given away, zambrano has a WHIP of 1.44 and an ERA of 4.82. what's more is his homerun rate has more than doubled, his strikeout rate has gone down, he is giving up more than a hit per 9 more than last year, and, obviously his ERA+ is down, but it is -40 from last season. his FIP is right in line with his baseball card stats, all while having a BABIP against that is a mere .003 lower than last year. i'm sorry, but that he has been good does not get a pass. is he replaceable? his current version is easily done so, yes. and though people are throwing casey coleman and others around, really, they wouldn't be much worse, if any. you could argue that zambrano has shown ability to be much more, but you could also argue that some of the AAAA guys have more of a ceiling at this point. whether he has been good means little in whether he should be retained in light of who he has been recently and who he likely is going to be going to forward, all other things considered.

talk about hyperbole... johnson to ojeda maybe, but castro to colvin? one of those is going ham, the other is going buddig slices

umfan, are you predicting that chipper jones won't retire this offseason, as well as the 2012 schedule mirroring the 2011 for the cubs series in atlanta? :wink:

can we discuss this as a part of the lineage of out-of-control-ed-ness that has gone on with the cubs players, as well as the resulting residual fiscal damage that has made winning even more difficult, since hendry has been general manager? moises alou and steve stone sosa/wood barrett zambrano on so many occasions bradley know i'm forgetting some, but there is a culture of tantrum with the cubs on hendry's watch. i'm tired of it. i don't even think zambrano is that good of a pitcher, fits aside. he's a 3 on a competing team. he's a 3 that thinks he's roy halladay, and blames everyone else for his own ignorance of who he is. honestly i hope zambrano retires. at least he'd be keeping his word for once. he will be back next year, all happy and talking about how he is going to win the cy young, the world series, and be such a great teammate that there will be a new award named after him. either way, he's an overpaid baseball player who is indicative of the folly of hendry, and further, unfortunately, the cubs. it just never ends.

if that was easterling and not tyler durden in your av, he would knock himself out and not be knocked out at all at the same time

to further this point, i was looking at both these guys' FB/HR rates, and if Castro can close the gap even partially, i'd imagine he'd be seen as the top shortstop in baseball.

WTF? as in WOW THATS FANTASTIC, your great muscle structure and bulging biceps amaze me?

man i'd still have to believe baez is the best overall talent drafted, as intriguing as the others are

well played, omc

here, starlin castro is god hi-fiving the universe of geovany soto, as described in two instances: 0 / http://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Starlin+Castro+ifHcR1AllZJm.jpg

the power is inside his brain http://www.infosurhoy.com/cocoon/saii/images/2010/09/08/photo3A.jpg