ChiTrib

The organization has decided to remove the names from the backs of the Cubs’ home jerseys in an effort to revisit early baseball tradition.

It’s a classic look. It works for me.

Hey, and if they wait to the last minute to get a top notch corner outfielder for the home opener, or if 21 suddenly changes hand, it’ll save some time!

(standard disclaimer: Sammy is not getting traded.)

I had this Tilt rant (that somehow went into a Sports Guy parody) and it’s gone gone gone. Consider yourself blessed.

Spam Assassin was killing all my e-mail and returning it to sender previously; I’ve been told it’s fixed, and it’s on right now – so if you send me an e-mail and get a return, let me know that it’s not fixed. (My test e-mails got thru okay.)

Now: new add at the very earliest stage. Well, if I’m supposed to be a Cubs Blog, I guess I should try to look the part, but I think I might have hit the red line on the hokie meter. The mound is just off the screen, trust me; I’m no Brian Gleine, but I’ll give you effort.

My plan for this year: figure out a point for my Cubs rantings. Because most of the stuff I usually say end up on a Cub related board/site where my chances of being read/replied to go up about 20%, and I find even the odd insightful thought I have is on another site before I can get around to it.

I don’t want to do something someone else has done. And figuring out What Else Can Be Done (comped with What Else Am I Willing To Do) is always the tricky part. I want to add something – I just don’t know what.

1 year, 8 million, undisclosed options (yet)

Todd Walker should be signed within the hour.

More later.

Chicago Tribune, November 16, 2004, 11:57 PM CST

The Cubs and Troy Percival could be the perfect fit, which they will get a chance to find out in a face-to-face later this week.

ESPN.com, November 17th, ~3:00 PM CST

The Detroit Tigers have signed Troy Percival to a two-year, $12 million contract, ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark is reporting.

I think Percival’s about ready for a breakdown and wanted the Cubs to skip him, though a two year deal seems about right. What’s more intersting is the belief Ugueth Urbina will be traded as a result; that wouldn’t be a bad setup/closer situation if they kept them, so I wouldn’t be sure until the press confrence.

Assuming Urbina is available, he’s only due to be paid $4mil this year. Percival did have better numbers last year (15.7 VORP to Urbina’s 9.7 in about the same innings), but I don’t believe that’ll be staying the same this upcoming season. Plus, it’s probably more cost efficent to get Urbina than a multi-year deal with Armando Benetiz; throw the extra money into our Carlos Beltran fund.

FWIW, LaTroy had a 25.0 VORP (in a bunch more innings, but still comes out ahead) and Benetiz had 33.1 (in a little bit more innings.)

Probably recieved less hype than deserved, but this Chicago Tribune story came a few days after the first phrase of Baseball Off Season, and got lost in the weekend football stuff.

Previously, if the Cubs wanted to move Sosa, either the recieving club would have to take a lot of extra salary in his auto-optioned year, or the Cubs would end up paying more to trade Sammy than they would to keep him. Neither option was likely, no matter who’s boombox got broke.

Now, it sounds like the union will let Sammy choose to drop the option year from his deal, if it’ll help a trade. He’ll still get the buyout the Cubs are required to pay if they don’t pick up the option ($4.5mil), but that reduces the total worth of Sosa’s traded contract from $35mil (17 this year, 18 next) to $22mil – a far more workable number. The proposed Cliff Floyd deal would be $13mil going the other way. That still leaves $9 mil to be split up somehow, but that can be done if the Mets really want Sosa.

Sammy must believe that he’s not getting that option year to go along with this. But he’s also not going anywhere without getting a new contract to go with his new team, so this isn’t settled yet. Quite a bit lot more likely, though.

Everyone’s going to go over the Clemens vs Johnson debate one more time, now that Rocket’s won another Cy Young. Worthwhile arguement and all but the thing that stuck out to me was more near the bottom.

1st 2nd 3rd  W  L  ERA ERA+ VORP W(N) L(N)
0   0   1  12 14 2.70 154  66.8 14.9 9.8
0   1  10  18  7 3.20 139  60.1 15.2 10.1

Schmidt was only ahead in W/L, and was either close behind or far behind elsewhere. Support Neutral W/L record says they essentially put up the same numbers, but because the actual W/L numbers are vastly different, so are the votes.

Cubs sign SS Neifi Perez to a one year deal. (Cubs)

Couldn’t let him get to the open market, I see!!!!

Rotoworld says $1 mil + $1.5 mil in options. The great thing is there no way we’re not getting Carlos Beltran now because we obviously have too much money to throw around.

Scott thinks about the Cubs 2004 outfield, and I wrote about it and Windows ate it. I hate you, this computer.

Scott’s idea is to go with Beltran, Patterson and Jermaine Dye. I’m not too big a fan of Dye as a starting outfield for a contending team (A’s fans may agree) – he’s past his peak, he wasn’t able to play 140 games for the A’s in the three seasons he was there, he was actually better on the road than at home last season (.852/.739 to OPS), and the left handed pitching he beat up in the AL West (.866 to .760) doesn’t exist in the NL Central. He did exceed his top Pecota projection, but that’s mostly because he played so little and so bad in 2003.

Backing a sec, Scott’s guessing at Sosa/Reyes deal, which would I guess involve the Cubs taking a lot of the contract and Sosa renogiating his option year, which has about the same chance as a Ralph Nader winning Texas today. It’s not worth thinking about if you can’t trade Sosa, because then the outfield is pretty set with

– Hollandsworth-like could go either way player (if not Todd himself)
– Corey
– Sosa
– beer cups thrown at Sosa

and who wants to clean up that mess? So, let’s imagine the Mets do trade for Sosa, but it’s more of a salary dump thing, since the Mets might actually fall for that one.

Bad Mets Deals

– Mike Piazza ($15mil for 2005)
No. The Cubs management loves Michael Barrett as much as Steve Austin loves beer, or as much as Jim Ross loves Steve Austin.

– Mike Cameron ($14.5 mil over two years)
A Patterson/Cameron/Beltran outfield could bring back that “death to flying things” nickname. But I don’t think it’s the right way to use resources on this team; your four top starters are going to get 70% of their outs in the infield, either by ground balls or strikouts.

2004 outs made where
K%     G%     F%
Wood     34.20% 36.82% 28.98%
Maddux   23.67% 48.90% 27.43%
Zambrano 29.89% 41.65% 28.46%
Prior    39.04% 33.86% 27.09%

I don’t have league wide numbers, but I gotta figure that’s a pretty low percentage of flyball outs comparatively. I wouldn’t mind having that outfield, but I think you’re not gaining enough defense to make up for the offensive loss.

– Tom Glavine ($17 mil over 2 years) and Al Leiter ($10 mil for 1 year, for the moment)
I think they want to still keep both of these guys.

– Kazuo Matsui ($15 mil over 2 years)
They’re desperatly hoping he’ll be like the other Matsui and adjust to the league (while magically learning second base) in his second year. Good luck on that.

– Bobby Bonilla ($29.75 for 25 years, just not yet)
Actually, no, he’s too busy playing poker. It just kills me seeing on dugoutdollars that the Mets are currently on the hook to pay Bonilla $1.2 mil a year from 2011 to 2035. 2035!

– Mo Vaughn ($14.5 over 4 years)
What is wrong with this franchise?

– Cliff Floyd ($13 mil over 2 years)
Ah, there we go. He’s got a similar problems as Dye; injuries (hasn’t played 140 since 2002), hitting worse away from the road (861 vs 769), and he lost 130 points on his SLG and 50 on his AVG in the second half (though managed to improve his OBP!)

On the upside, he’s a left handed bat, which the Cubs could always use. His salary matches up well with Sosa; especially if we’re in that altered universe were Sosa drops the option year. And he’s a Chicago kid, which will make sportswriters happy.

Actually, it looks like a left handed but worse defensively (1.76 to 1.99 RF) and older Dye, but they’d be chewing up Sosa’s contract in the process. (If Sosa didn’t redo his deal, they could take Mo Vaughn’s contract to balance, but that’d cost a 40 man spot and probably create insurance problems so never mind.)

The resulting problem is out of Floyd/Beltran/Patterson, your best outfield arm is in CF. I think if there was an intriguing midrange option out there, I might think about dealing Corey; they need a OBP guy at some spot, and it’s not going to be Corey, and whatever we’ve done with the outfield to this point hasn’t taken care of that. But Corey’s cheap, and I can’t find anyone else I like.

Since we didn’t pick up Reyes, that leaves a whole at SS.

Free Agent starting SSs
Jose Valentin
Omar Vizquel
Cristian Guzman
Nomar Garciaparra
Barry Larkin
Royce Clayton
Jose Vizcaino
Craig Counsell
Edgar Renteria
Rick Aurilla
Alex Gonzalez
Orlando Cabrera

Valentin’s not allowed in Chicago any more, I think. Omar is as good as signed with the White Sox. Aurilla’s not really a starter anymore, if he’s even a SS anymore. Jose coming back would almost be as emotionally lifting as last year’s return of Gred Maddux, but I think he’s a backup too – or at least should be. Guzman is on the road to being the next Jose Macias. Honestly, Royce Clayton sucks.

Larkin’s actually put up decent numbers the last two years when he’s been healthy
2003 .282/345/382 (727)
2004 .289/352/419 (771)
but he’s 41! Let’s not.

I’ve been thinking about the idea of Craig Counsell, Cubs SS since before last season, when it sounded like he might be dealt after getting traded to the Brewers. After putting up 241/330/315, I’m not thinking that way anymore.

Orlando Cabrera nice, but I think he’d like a longer term deal and I believe Boston’s going to give it to him; after living with A-Gone, I think the Cubs are reluncant to give a long term deal to a non-star SS. Or maybe that’s just me. I think they need something significant offensively from the middle infield, and since it’s a lot better pickings at SS than 2B, you pass on Cabrera here.

Nomar and the Cubs are on good terms, and I think they’ve got as a good chance at a one year deal as the Cali teams do right now. If it’s something like 1year at $9.0mil with a mutual option at the same number for the next year, it might not be so bad. Nomar hit 297/364/455 after coming over, losing some average and power but the OBP being exactly what they needed.

People’ve been talking about Edgar Renteria since early this season, though Nomar coming over stifled that. The thought at the time of the Walker trade was his salary makes it impossible for the Cardinals to keep Edgar, btu then they’re supposedly going for Randy Johnson, so who knows how much they’ve really got at the moment.

The thing is, as great as the Cards were, Edgar had a bad season.

2002 305/364/439 (803)
2003 330/394/480 (874)
2004 287/327/401 (728)

At 394 OBP, he’s exactly the player the Cubs need. At 327, he’s exactly the player they have too much of. He also had a pretty unusually bad SB record this season (34 @ 87% in 2003, 17 @ 60% in 2004), which might mean some lingering injury? Or maybe just being unsuccessful loading up stats in a contract year.

I don’t know if I really want to get involved with Edgar long term; he was just an average guy before that 2002 season, and he’s going to be 30 (or maybe 29) going into next season, so who knows if he’ll pull it back together. But I think long term is what he’s going to be looking for (assuming anyone but Beltran is getting long term.)

Of all these options, I’d prefer trying to go short term with Nomar. Edgar’s money is going to be in the same area, and Nomar has the better track record and shorter contract length.

This is what we end up with

1 Corey RF
2 Nomar SS
3 Beltran CF
4 A-RAM 3B
5 D-Lee 1B
6 Floyd LF
7 Walker 2B
8 Barrett C
9 Pitcher

This is kinda expensive, but seeing as they broke all attendance records and annexed the neighborhood, they should be able afford it. It gets slow, and you’re walking into a bench with defensive/speed guys to balance, meaning some awful pinch hitting, but I think it’s better than the team we ended with.

NEXT THE PITCHING.

There is a grenade sitting in right field corner of Wrigley Field right now. It’s near the green double doors, someone probably threw it over the group section, and they’re not sure if it’s alive or dead. The area has been roped off, and the police are dealing with it. (ESPN Radio 1000)

(No word if the grenade

VOTE!

(unless you’re non-american – unless you’re voting anyway, we wouldn’t know)

After that, try and guess by how much Obama will end up beating Keyes. I’m going 48%, and that’s only because I buy the “Republicians hate the crazy guy, but will vote for Keyes knowing he’ll lose to prevent a really huge margin.”