Category: chicago national league ball club

McKeon said left-hander Luke Hagerty is unlikely to pitch in a Grapefruit League game this week, meaning the Rule V pick will probably be offered back to the Chicago Cubs before opening day.

”He may pitch somewhere else, but not here, not in a game,” McKeon said of Hagerty, who pitched one inning this spring, walking one. “A lot of those guys won’t get in a game. We’ve got to get the [Guillermo] Motas, the [Jim] Mecirs and those guys pitching. We’ve only got a week to do it.”

(Miami Herald, 03/28)

Meanwhile, the Royals, with nothing better to do this year, sounds like they’re keeping Andy Sisco.

Scott’s jokes were so bad, I shall never respond to them at all. (Also, I couldn’t think of any funny of my own.)

More cuts: Guzman, Cendeno, Kopitzke and Van Buren. We’re still not to the point of actually making roster decisions, though the Tribune wonders about them. Let me go over the sent down guys, and get back to that article.

Kinda wondering how a Sergio/Angel battle for a spot would’ve turned out if Guzman wasn’t predestined for some more work in Iowa. Gotta figure Mitre’s got three months to prove himself – either here or with the I-Cubs – as a useful quantity to the club before he’s passed for good.

I never saw Casey Kopitzke being listed as an NRI, so it’s kind of a surprise to see him being sent down. Kinda was wondering why they were going with only two catchers so soon. Obviously, they weren’t. What’s really weird is I know I counted the right number of guys left up till now, so I shouldn’t have someone unaccounted for. Maybe he had Williamson’s spot, since he hasn’t been around? I dunno.

The papers picked up on Dusty making positive comments on Van Buren. I think he’s still got to prove himself to join the rotating Wuertz/Wellemeyer/Leicester last RHP slot, but he’s at least going to get the chance.

Up in that article, Dusty throws in Calvin Murray (along with Dubios, Kelton and Dave Hansen – who’ll probably be around once they get down to 11 pitchers for good) as a possiblity of the last man in the bench. Let’s look at how that bench would stack up:

2004 SLG
Blanco: .368
Macias: .379
Hairston: .397
Perez: .336
Murray (Iowa): .200 (okay, 5 AB, .333 lifetime)

Whoa. Watch out with the wind blowing out! It’s not like they’re that much better getting on base either, but you’d like someone who could scare the other team coming off the bench. Good thing Dusty was (mostly) kidding. Just for fun:

2004 EQSLG (BPro2005)
Kelton (Iowa): .521
Dubios (Iowa): .378

Guess Dave would fit in.

In the game notes, Paul Sullivan gamely walks thru the logic, figuring out Prior can be put on the DL and still make his first currently scheduled start. Didn’t know you could backdate DLs till before the season, which is what makes it workable. That’d allow them to only bring 11 pitchers if they wanted to, not having to keep Prior around for ten days where he won’t be doing things. Also fun: Dusty gets touchy about saying DL and Prior in the same sentence.

I’ve moved Randolph in and Ohman out. Santo was on Ohman for his inconsitency on the radio broadcast. Not that Santo should be making these decisions, but he and Dusty are tight enough that I’m sure he’s repeated what he heard in the manager’s office previously.

Earlier today, Bruce Levine noted the effects of Wood’s delay I’d whiffed on

– Sergio’s making the staff, in case they need an emergency starter and having Rusch be second lefty is too important to move him

(so unbelievable dumb.)

– They’ll carry 12 pitchers as a result

Prior
Wood
Zambrano
Maddux
Dempster

Rusch
Sergio
LaTroy
Dempster
Fox

pick’em RHP
pick’em LHP

Which leaves room for 13 hitters. Outside of the starters, you got the other half of Hairston, Backup C, Neifi and Macias (mentioned as the emergency closer, meaning hopes of him being cut are false) and one other spot.

– So either Dubios, coming off a good 2004 and a great spring gets sent to the cornfields, or Kelton gets cut from the Cubs without ever getting an extended oppurtinty to even sit on the bench for the major league team.

Either way, it’s completely unjust. The worse decision is to send down Dubios, but since he’s got options, it’s the easy one.

Let me be the thirteenth person to point to Wood backs out of start (ChiTrib).

What I was going to do today is walk thru the opening games and figure out if this “Prior can be the fifth starter – and we don’t need him for a while so it’s alllll good” think makes sense. It’s not too helpful now, but…

04/04 @t ARZ: Carlos
04/05 @t ARZ: Dempster
04/06 @t ARZ: Maddux
04/07 OFF
04/08 vs MIL: Wood/Rusch
04/09 vs MIL: Carlos
04/10 vs MIL: Dempster
04/11 vs SDP: Maddux
04/12 vs SDP: Prior/Sergio

All they’re doing is skipping one start. Of course, if only one of Prior/Wood is hurt, they could stretch out the stall time indefintely by putting Rusch in the rotation. It’s where he’s going to end up, surely.

Who benefits from Wood having a bad night of rest: Ohman and Randolph. Rusch has got to be back starting if Wood can’t, which means the second lefty slot he was (sorta wasted) in is now back in play.

Metaphorically, you could say the wheels have come off this season before the team has even made it out of Mesa.

In truth, the wheels have only come off…Will Ohman’s car.

“Apparently they announced there was a white Yukon on the concourse that needed to be moved before the game,” said Ohman, a left-handed reliever with the Cubs. “I didn’t hear any of that. I knew there was a film crew. As I was walking down, [Mike Remlinger] was walking down with me and I assumed [the crew was filming] him.

“As I got into the bullpen, I opened the door and up in the visitor’s bullpen, I looked up and said, ‘There’s a tire in here,'” Ohman said. “That’s my tire. It kind of registered that perhaps my tires were no longer on the car.”

—

“There was one in the dugout, there was one in the shower, there was one in the bullpen and there was one in the coaches’ locker room,” Ohman said.

(cubs.com)

Note to self: Do not get in a prank war with Ryan Dempster.

Joe Borowski is out up to two months with a broken hand. (ESPN 1000 – ESPN.com says “3 to 4” weeks and “Mid May”, so I guess it’s April already and I’ve blacked out on the last two weeks. WHEEE.)

Well. At least we actually have a time table? This is going to be one heck of a screwed up pen.

Idea #1: LaTroy closes
Problem: Widespread rioting and chaos.

Idea #2: Kyle Closes
Problem: Oh, right.

Idea #2: Chad Fox closes
Problem: We sure are putting a lot on a good spring from a guy without a history of being good.

Idea #3: Jermaine Van Buren closes!
Problem: “Get back in the box, dude.”

He’s not blowing anyone right now either:
9 IP: 6 ER, 11 BB+H, 6 K

Idea #4: Trade for Urbina.
Problem: The lack of trade speculation towards Urbina, including Gammons mentions of Hendry not being at all intersted in him, plus the Tigers replacing him as closer, makes me think there’s something wrong we’re not getting a full picture of.; i don’t think this would be any better than closing with LaTroy, though there wouldn’t be the damage to everyone’s psyche closing with LaTroy would bring.

Idea #5: Trade for Danny Baez
Problem: We sure are putting a lot on someone being someone else’s closer.

Idea #6: Dempster closes, Sergio spot starts in his place.
Problem: We’ve already stretched Dempster out to start and Sergio’s not looked good. Still, if they had no problems with Prior or Wood, I’m thinking this is what would happen.

Ides #7: Rusch closes.
Problem: He’s far from the protypical closer with over powering stuff, and the whole point of him being in the bullpen is to use him as a situationally lefty. (Which is really a worthless way to use Rusch, but hey.)

There really is no Good solution here. Very worrisome.

Best I can figure to start is

SP Carlos
SP Maddux
SP Rusch
SP Wood
SP Prior/Dempster

RHP Dempster/Wuertz
RHP Leicester
RHP Fox

LHP Remmy
LHP Randolph

CL LaTroy.

Take cover.

Randolph is a bit of a surprise, because I’ve been really down on him since the trade. He’s had a good spring. Even though it’s only 6.2 innings of a spring, you might as well roll the dice on someone who’s looked good; it’s a gamble regardless. And I rather have Rusch starting.

Edit: Snipped from the Trib

Does anyone proofread? Anyone?

Prior to miss spring start Tuesday

Inflamation in his right elbow. MRI showed nothing but…

I think they should go ahead and have Carlos get one. Save some time.

not talking about wood.

not talking about wood because who the heck knows at this point. pretending everything is fine and we won’t remember this when we’re dousing each other with champagne and such, or that we’ll only remember it in the ‘ha, remember when we were stupidly freaked out about it to the point we were afraid to use capital letters’ kinda way.

The thing I abhor about the ‘baseball to the hill to talk about steriods’ is most sports news ‘people’ come to a conculsion that there will actually be no real news or even definte conclusion about this, and yet they can discuss it for 40 hours straight.

Bubble talk is so much more fun, even when it distills down to “here’s 8 teams which did not do all they should’ve done to get in – pick 4 of ’em.”

I’m getting the impression they’ll be starting Joe as the closer when they go north (or less so, because the first games in Arizona and all.) Which would happily move LaTroy to the 8th and leave Dempster well up in the air but unofficially closer in waiting.

Camden Chat: Scott’s gone semi-professional. (I know!) I’ll add his link to the side because I need my daily Sammy Sosa updates. Also, it’s the only semi-professional site which would ever put somewhere here on top of it’s list.

Meanwhile, just about everyone not named Ruiz has appeared to leave All-Baseball in the last two weeks to go to either .

It’s so weird; surely there are things going on in the inside which they haven’t hinted about, but from one web location to another web location to the do same exact stuff with a slightly worse graphical format at the beginning. (I love white backgrounds, you know that.) Why make the change? What’s the advantage? It’s more work for me remembering where everything is (and eventually getting adding the links over there), and “we wanted to try out new software” seems to for me. Of course I’m the one who tries everything live and pays for it, so I guess there’s some semi-professionalism to that concept.

Though if you’re doing it ot mess with the software, could you please put a permalinks on top? Thanks.

It’s a pretty freaking smart idea to have some interesting new content to welcome in a new site

• CubTown.baseballtoaster.com has a inteview with debuting Cubs pbp man Len Kasper (part 1/part 2)
• Baseball Analysts, which is more general than Cubs, co-hosts a Top 40 Cubs Prospects list. I apperciate the idea of trying to do some cross promotion, but it’d be kinda nice to have one page for the discussions on all 40 rather than to have to flip back and forth between there and tCR for 31 to 40, 20 to 31, 11 to 20, 10-6, 5-1.
  
  
  
  Say, if I’m looking for all the guys in Peoria whom I might be able to catch @ Kane County, the list at the end isn’t totally convivent…so here’s one of my own.

                        POS  Team
  1. Brian Dopirak     1B   Daytona
  2. Felix Pie         CF   West Ten
  3. Angel Guzman      SP   Iowa
  4. Ryan Harvey       RF   Peoria
  5. Reynel Pinto      SP   Iowa
  6. Jason Dubois      LF   Chicago (hopefully)
  7. Sean Marshall     SP   West Ten
  8. Billy Petrick     SP   Daytona
  9. Jon Leicester     RP   Chicago (maybe)
  10. Matt Murton       RF   West Ten
  11. Bobby Brownlie    SP   Iowa
  12. Grant Johnson     SP   Daytona or Peoria
  13. Richard Lewis     2B   Iowa
  14. Mike Wuertz       RP   Iowa (probably)
  15. Roberto Novoa     RP   Iowa
  16. Matt Craig       1B/3B Iowa
  17. Mark Reed         CA   Peoria
  18. Will Ohman        RP   Iowa (perhaps)
  19. Jon Connolly      SP   West Ten
  20. Brandon Sing      1B   West Ten
  21. Geovany Soto      CA   Iowa
  22. Bear Bay          SP   Daytona
  23. Ronny Cedeno      SS   Iowa
  24. Carlos Marmol     SP   Daytona
  25. Eric Patterson    2B   Daytona (maybe)
  26. Jake Fox          CA   Daytona
  27. Rich Hill         SP   West Tenn
  28. Micah Hoffpauir  1B/OF Iowa
  29. Ricky Nolasco     SP   Iowa
  30. Chadd Blasko      SP   60 DL
  31. Jae-Kuk Ryu       SP   West Ten
  32. Russ Rohlicek     RP   Iowa
  33. Mike Fontenot     2B   West Ten
  34. Robert Ransom     SP   Daytona
  35. Scott Moore       3B   Daytona
  36. Darin Downs       SP   Peoria
  37. Carlos Vazquez    SP   West Ten
  38. Dave Crouthers    ?P   Iowa
  39. Adam Greenberg    LF   West Ten
  40. Jermaine Van BurenRP   Iowa

  
  
  Harvey, Reed, Downs and maybe Grant. Less than I’d hope, but I presume it’s harder to read guys who are at that level.

Outside of the normal seats (which are still available; and at this point, the difference between last year nad this year has got to be more than ‘they’re only allowing 8 tickets at a time’), the Cubs held back new on the field seating that was visible but not actually available last season.

Today, they announced they go on sale on Tax Day, though the sign up to get a random (virtual) braclet starts Wednesday.

Get a load of these ticket prices:

                    Game Type
Value Regular Prime
Dugout Box     $50   $125   $250
Bullpen Box    $40    $75   $125

The (really overpriced but probably going to be sold anyway) $250 price on those Prime tickets doesn’t really bug me as much as the huge increases between game types. There are only 6 Value Games; they should really be called “6 weekday games in April we used to have trouble giving away tickets for”, so it’s not like many people are going to have chances at ‘only’ $50 and $40 tickets. (The White Sox, Red Sox, and key weekend late games are in the Prime ticket category, of course.)

I think I can afford some of these tickets. They’re just sorta insane, negatively in price and postively in distance (did I say ON THE FIELD in caps? okay there we go.) Wonder if anyone has any cash left. We’ll see.

I can’t believe they’re batting Burnitz fifth! Way to telegraph the way every important inning will end.

(complaining about the lineup of the first day of the season = awesome)

It’s pretty funny how everyone’s been “veteran’s committee? how about MORON committee”

edit 1: oh oh oh they’re talking about all the weight Burnitz lost! Sadly not while pointing fingers. They’re also talking about how he’s had 30+ HR seasons outside of the Rockies 4 times. It’s early, time to dream.

edit 2: Santo: “I think he’s looking more sexier”. He’s talking about the traveling secretary. Meanwhile, it’s SERGIO! vs Moneyball! and they’re talking about lunch.

edit 3: sandwhiching Pat saying Sergio has a shot to get the 5th job, Sergio’s thrown a third strike wild pitch, and hit a guy. Say hello to Des Moines. Double play bails him out.

I can’t believe they’re actually listing them as LAA. It looks so very wrong.

WSH will take some adjusting time. I think WAS would look better. WDC? Nah.

oh god don’t hit Nomar’s wrist. let’s lose the season on Day 1.

A-RAM.

edit 4: yay. 1-0. Won the first game.

You know, last year they won the last game and the year before they made the playoffs, maybe they can combine those things this time.