Warren Brusstar

He's a prospect geek, so his inherent bias is to overvalue prospects vis-a-vis actual major league players.

Of course they should. But they won't. David, where are you?

I'm talking about the posts from David and others suggesting that this OMG JIM HENDRY ALL OVER AGAIN.

See also Maholm, Paul. Notably, there wasn't anywhere close to the same reaction as the Maholm signing even though we're paying him significantly more.

Over his last five seasons (ages 31-35), he's a 2 WAR player per 600 plate appearances. Getting a guy to put up a 0.4 WAR over 120 PA's (on average of course) is not so rare a value that you need to lock down a 35 year old without any real specialized skills in order to get that production. It's not going to give me a rage stroke, but it's a hangnail of a decision, annoying and pretty pointless. Lock down? It's a one year contract. For $1.0 million. This is hardly Aaron Miles, Part Two.

Over his last five seasons (ages 31-35), he's a 2 WAR player per 600 plate appearances. And he'll keep being one for as long as his .390 BABIP holds out. You mean the guy whose xBABIP is .371, on the back of a team-high LD%, and a 54% GB%? I just want to make sure we're talking about the same guy. If you actually, ya know, examine the data, there's not much luck involved in his BABIP.

Over his last five seasons (ages 31-35), he's a 2 WAR player per 600 plate appearances.

The results at the plate were pretty good, but almost certainly unsustainable. Holy crap, he walked 5 times and struck out 63 times in just 266 PA? I guess they were sustainable. .302/.354/.450 at the break. This thread is comical in retrospect. I'm not a big Reed Johnson fan. But he's an entirely reasonable 4th/5th outfielder, and amount of OMG THE SKY IS FALLING POSTS because we spent 1.5 million on a competent reserve outfielder was (and is) hilarious.

Castro + Garza for Profar is patently ridiculous.

Yep. A lot like Ryan Theriot in that respect. Without the noodle arm. Or the stupid attitude. And a brain on the base paths. I have never seen a player run into more outs on the base paths than Ryan Theriot.

Why would you move your all star 1B to LF for some kid? Make Rizzo play another position, or better yet, trade him for a closer. This is exactly the kind of condescending, patronizing nonsense I'm talking about. GMAFB. The mere suggestion that the Cubs see whether LaHair can play the outfield at a level somewhere above Adam Dunn -- an idea that arguably the best front office in baseball is apparently entertaining -- does not make someone a Kaplan-ish meatball. At least TT is addressing the position head-on. You resort to mocking strawmen that I haven't (and obviously wouldn't) suggest. I don't know what has you so upset, but I wasn't being condescending. LaHair is LaLord. Of course you were. You obviously aren't seriously suggesting trading Rizzo for a closer. Don't pretend otherwise.

Why would you move your all star 1B to LF for some kid? Make Rizzo play another position, or better yet, trade him for a closer. This is exactly the kind of condescending, patronizing nonsense I'm talking about. GMAFB. The mere suggestion that the Cubs see whether LaHair can play the outfield at a level somewhere above Adam Dunn -- an idea that arguably the best front office in baseball is apparently entertaining -- does not make someone a Kaplan-ish meatball. At least TT is addressing the position head-on. You resort to mocking strawmen that I haven't (and obviously wouldn't) suggest.

Again, I don't claim to know one way of the other. That people here think they know conclusively is comical.

What we need is more patronizing scorn at the mere suggestion that the Cubs consider playing LaHair in left field when Rizzo is promoted. I don't know if it will work, but anyone mocking the idea is an idiot.

It should be the only reason you go to Pittsburgh. Completely ridiculous. Pittsburgh is a terrific city.

no. it's stupid that it even gets brought up. if you're going to hand-wring about josh hamilton not being kept by the cubs in the rule 5 draft then you mineaswell just bitch about every awesome player that we passed on in the amateur draft and international free agency. Then why don't people just say that instead of freaking out about the fact that we traded the pick before the draft? As if that someone makes any difference. Either Hendry screwed up or he didn't. Playing semantic games about the order of events is silly.

3rd pick, but the point remains. Also, please see the 12 instances in this thread in which I've said that I don't blame Hendry for not taking Hamilton. My sole point is that the OUTRAGE about people supposedly mischaracterizing the failure to get Hamilton as a trade v. a missed pick is silly. As to Krivisky, I don't get your point. Obviously you think Krivsky is a moron. I agree. But grabbing Hamilton was undoubtedly a good move, no? The problem isn't that people innocently mischaracterize it. It's that there are tons of meatheads that think Hendry drafted Hamilton, then on a whim of insanity, traded him to the Reds. It's not semantics when there are people out there that think he actually belonged to the Cubs. Whether Hendry could have drafted him is immaterial, people think he did. You are correct in saying that Hendry could have chosen him, had they not made the deal with the Reds. But people that say "the Cubs traded away Josh Hamilton" don't get the slight differences in there. They actually think the Cubs drafted him then traded him. Whether you want to call it semantics or not, the people that think that just don't get how the deal went down. Please see the initial post starting this thread. That isn't even close to what the OP said, yet it got the same silly OUTRAGE that every single referenece to Hamilton gets on this board. Even if I were to accept that the order matters in rebutting the suggestion that Hendry "drafted Hamilton, then traded him," that's not what happened here, and isn't what happens many of the times that this issue is discussed. There's a lot of tilting at windmills on this subject.

3rd pick, but the point remains. Also, please see the 12 instances in this thread in which I've said that I don't blame Hendry for not taking Hamilton. My sole point is that the OUTRAGE about people supposedly mischaracterizing the failure to get Hamilton as a trade v. a missed pick is silly. As to Krivisky, I don't get your point. Obviously you think Krivsky is a moron. I agree. But grabbing Hamilton was undoubtedly a good move, no?

Those aren't similar situations. People argue that the Cubs drafted Hamilton and there was no reason not to keep him once we drafted him. In reality, Hamilton was the Reds' selection who the Cubs simply handed the card (or whatever method they use) in for and the Reds handed them 75K. The main point isn't that the Cubs never drafted him, it's that when they handed in the card with his name on it, they were making the Reds' selection and not their own. There was no option from that point on to keep Hamilton because of the previously agreed upon deal. It actually is important if the opposing argument is that the Cubs had Hamilton in hand and then decided they didn't want him. That's not true. They had an opportunity to select him had they chosen to do so before agreeing to the deal with the Reds, but once the deal was consummated there was no real opportunity to back out on the deal - and no reason to whatsoever. You see that all of this is semantic nonsense, right? The Cubs had the first pick. They traded the rights to the first pick for $75k. They could have chosen Josh Hamilton. The chose not to. There is no material difference between criticizing the Cubs for "trading Josh Hamilton" and "trading the 1st pick of the Rule 5 draft with which they could have taken Josh Hamilton."

Why not? No one put a gun to Hendry's head and forced him to trade the pick. IIRC, the Cubs had the first pick and Hamilton was a potential pick. They chose to trade the pick when the could have chosen to draft Hamilton. That Hamilton "was never gonna be a Cub" was solely a decision made my the Cubs. The order of the draft and trade is completely irrelevant. Again, I don't "blame" Hendry for not taking Hamilton.

We DID miss on Josh Hamilton. No one stuck a gun to Jim Hendry's head and forced him to trade the pick to the Reds. Whether Hendry should be criticized for that is a different issue.

The semantic argument is there, however, because if you word it that Josh Hamilton was drafted by the Cubs, then people get all up in arms that we didn't keep him. The fact is, we never had the opportunity to keep Hamilton because we didn't draft him, the Reds did in a previously agreed upon deal. However you want to word the semantics it doesn't change that the Cubs didn't possess Hamilton and there was no real reason to draft him in the first place. Whether we drafted him or not is irrelevant. If the Cavs had traded the rights to the #1 pick to the Bulls before the draft, and Kyrie Irving turned out to be a superstar, would it be a defense to criticism that "THE CAVS NEVER DRAFTED HIM!" Of course not. If you want to argue that no one other than the Reds thought taking Hamilton was a good idea, and that it certainly wasn't a mistake for Hendry not to do so, that's fine. But the order in which the trade/pick occurred is completely irrelevant. And it's utterly hilarious that such OUTRAGE over a meaningless semantical distrinction has pervaded this board for so long.

I'm pretty sure that the Cubs did draft Hamilton in the R5 draft, then immediately sent him to the Reds for basically nothing. Jacque Jones has to be higher on the list IMO. I also disagree about "drafting like crap" - Castro, Hak Ju Lee, Cashner is a pretty good haul and his picks contributed to Derek Lee and Garza among others. I completely agree that Hendry has been crap though and should be gone along with the rest of this garbage team. Hamilton was never a Cub. Hamilton was never slated to be a Cub. The Cubs never had interest in Josh Hamilton. There was a deal in place from the get go that we drafted him for the sole purpose of sending him to the Reds. We can debate what would be if the Cubs did draft Josh Hamilton for the purpose of playing for the Cubs until were blue in the face, but it was never to be. This has always been the silliest semantic argument, and people get hilariously OUTRAGED by it. Phrase it as follows -- "Agreeing to trade the rights to their R5 pick to the Reds when they could have chosen Josh Hamilton" -- and the statement is 100% accurate and isn't substantively different in any way. Whether "missing" on Hamilton is a reasonable criticism (I don't think so) is a different question, but the semantic nonsense that people get outraged about is a ridiculous red herring.

Yes, they do routinely avoid interfering with their team's efforts to catch balls. I've seen it happen on numerous occasions. In any event, resolving that point is unnecessary. You're the one who took the position that "any" fan would have done exactly what Bartman did. Now, you are conceding (as you must, of course), that lots of fans duck for cover and try to avoid it. Indeed, that's clearly what's happening with the female fan directly to Bartman's left in the pictures on page 1. At bottom, regardless whether it's characterized as "avoiding the ball" or "letting the home team try to make the catch," your position that "any" fan would have done the same thing Bartman did is asinine. Your taking things so literally is also asinine. Back on topic: earlier I said, if Bartman had been in the bathroom pissing in a trough at that moment, that ball still isn't getting to Alou's glove. Agree or disagree? Based on the pictures, disagree. But there's no way to know for sure, because that didn't happen. In any event, that he *did* prevent the ball from reaching Alou's glove makes him partially at fault for the loss (among a dozen or more persons who also bear some blame)

This thread is maddening. He's probably the most valuable player on the Cubs over the last 4 seasons, and is still both young and cost-controlled.