Anthony Rizzo hit his first HR since missing a few games with a knee injury. It was his 23rd of the year. Vitters went 2-3 and raised his batting average to .282. Chris Volstad struck out 6 in 6 while allowing 2 ER and Michael Bowden struck out 4 batters in 1.2 IP of relief work.
Trey McNutt continues to fall apart giving up 3 HR's and 5 ER last night. Bullpen test! Junior Lake picked up 3 hits to get his batting average over .300. Alberto Cabrera continues to have a good year out of the pen picking up a pair of strikeouts in 1 IP.
Daytona
ASB
Michael Jensen worked 6 IP and struck out 3 while walking nobody and allowing 2 ER. Paul Hoilman hit a HR and Javier Baez was 1-3 with an RBI.
Whats the best way to blow a shot at winning your first game of the year? Pitch Hayden Simpson. Simpson continued his quest to suck at every single level in the Cubs system and walked 3 and allowed 2 ER in 2 IP. The next inning some guy named Pete Levitt gave up 2 of his own for the loss. It ruined a good debut from 2011 5th round pick Tayler Scott. The South African native pitched 5 scoreless innings while striking out 4. On the hitting side Gioskar Amaya went 2-3 with a BB and has shown a really advanced plate approach already. I don't think he is long for short season. Dunston Jr was 2-4 along with Jeimer Candelario.
It’s not that he’s not an upgrade over what they have. It’s that he’s not worth giving up all that much to acquire. Especially for a team who is all but assured of reaching the playoffs. It would make no sense for them to even give up a bad prospect for Dempster unless they intended to turn around and trade him a week later to a team that might give up a C prospect for him.
@ mb21:
I think it will clearly be a team like LAD, BOS, or TOR who really needs pitching that gets Dempster. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see LAD get both Dempster and LaHair.
@ Nate:
I’m thinking Tigers, Cardinals, Braves, Nationals. Maybe the White Sox. I don’t know the rotations of any of those teams, but they’re borderline playoff contenders at this point. That’s who I think would be willing to give up the C+ prospect for Dempster. We could include the Rays and Red Sox also.
@ mb21:
Do you think there would be value in packaging two of our starters together? i.e. Garza/Demp or Demp/DeJesus, etc. Would it be better to get an A prospect or a couple lower prospects?
Ace Cubs beat reporter Nick Cafardo reporting the Red Sox are very interested in Ryan Dempster. Yay!
I’m starting to think we could flip Rizzo for Ricky Nolasco. Who’s with me?!?
Too bad the Cubs didn’t trade McNutt
@ josh:
And flip Nolasco for Joe Saunders
@ Berselius:
I wouldn’t trade righty Mcnutt unless it is for another righty. I don’t think we need another lefty.
Weird. If I refresh this post, it takes me to the Baseball America Database post.
EDIT: It worked the last couple of times. Must have been a browser cache problem or something like that.
@ WaLi:
I’d rather have the better prospect, but it doesn’t much matter.
@ Berselius:
Trey McNutt is an example why you shouldn’t hesitate trading a pitching prospect who isn’t highly valued in the draft and rises in the system very quickly following the draft. Most teams refuse to do it, but I can’t help but think they’d be much better off. Then again, I think teams would almost always be better off trading valued pitching prospects. I see no reason to stock a farm system with arms when they’re so unreliable. Draft and develop top position player talent and trade them for pitchers or sign free agent pitchers.
@ mb21:
Does the cost of producing a high quality position player versus a pitcher even out, or is one going to be more expensive than the other? Obviously someone has to produce the pitchers so whatever those teams are doing to produce pitchers should be reproduced. That way you can at least leech as much prime production out of that arm at low cost before you dump him off to another team and let them pay out the nose for a tired arm.
Didn’t the Giants win the series based on a crop of homegrown arms? Granted, they haven’t been able to reproduce those results….
Actually, you’d think at some point the Giants would relent and trade an arm or two for a bat.
@ josh:
I think they’ve got Cain, Bumgarner and Vogelsong locked up. Lincecum is scuffling. The extensions would probably hinder their trade efforts a bit though I know not how much.
@ Rice Cube:
Vogelsong actually has a really manageable contract so he would be the most likely guy traded. Barry Zito is an albatross that I’m sure they’d like to get rid of too.
@ josh:
Yeah, but they also were relatively lucky. Cain and Lincecum were like Wood and Prior years earlier. Wood and Prior never produced like we expected whereas the Giants have gotten excellent production from those two (except for Lincecum this year). The Cardinals won last year and only Garcia was homegrown. Wainwright was injured, but he was drafted by the Braves.
@ mb21:
That’s true. Even a solid young MLB pitcher is no guarantee of success, as Lincecum is proving.
@ Rice Cube:
The law of diminishing returns is starting to have it’s effect on this commercial series.
There really is no getting around the luck factor in winning the World Series. You can set yourself up to be a perennial contender, but even the best laid plans can get derailed by injuries. Then if you do get to the playoffs, just about anything goes and you could get fucked by playing the hot team at the wrong time.
What makes it harder is to be just as good a team in a short series as you are in the long season. The Johnson/Schilling duo might be dynamic enough to get you through a short series with a shaky 3-4-5, but if anything goes wrong with either one of them in the regular season (see Wood, Prior), you might not even make the post-season. If you spend a crapload to load up your pitching staff with Glavine, Maddux, Smoltz, Neagle, Avery you are going to be left with role players like Mark Lemke and Sid Bream in your offense so if they slip even a little, your offense might not be able to score in the post-season against other premium pitching.
I think you have to take talent where you find it and not give a damn whether it is pitching or position players.
Aisle424 wrote:
TWSS
Cubs: DeJesus CF, Castro SS, LaHair RF, Soriano DH, Clevenger 1B, Barney 2B, Valbuena 3B, Soto C, Campana LF
Is it just me, or is this the most rational lineup this season?
Also, glad to see Soto is back.
annnndd Dempster to the DL. (dying laughing)
@ dylanj:
Could it be some kind of trade maneuver? That’s what I’m going to believe.
honestly if the Cubs can’t get something better than a C prospect for Dempster then keep him offer him arb and take the comp pick when he leaves.
@ josh:
To keep him from further hurting himself by skipping a start? I doubt that was the intention but if they do it retroactively to Friday he will still be out for 12 more days and that might be enough to more accurate track the trade market.
@ dylanj:
(dying laughing), for fuck’s sake, Cubs
@ josh:
Well, except that both catchers are in.
I’m guessing a deal is close and they’ll make this retroactive
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
DL stints are always retroactive
Word out of Hobbiton is that it’s lat tightness for Demspter and the move is not retroactive.
I’m missing how DLing a guy is somehow a trade maneuver
@ berselius22:
I guess dudes think if a deal is in the works they want to keep him from getting injured, therefore, they pretend he is injured. Or something like that.
Other dudes might think he is slightly injured, and to make sure he’s fully healed well in advance of the trade deadline, they DL him now for gentle recuperation.
Clemens —> not guilty
Your tax dollars —> at work
@ Aisle424:
With position player accounting for 60-65% of production we really shouldn’t see any more than 3-4 pitchers drafted every 10 rounds. Yet every single year we read about certain teams loading up in pitching the draft. If I have 2 similarly talented players to choose from I’m taking the position player.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Yeah, okay, I was focusing on the top 4.
@ berselius22:
I was trying to be Polyanna about the whole thing.
@ josh:
And Campana at #9.
@ josh:
Extra leadoff guy!
Huh.
@ Aisle424:
See? Kaplan agrees with me
\totally vindicated
I have never seen a guy placed on dl right before trade.
@ mb21:
You can’t trade guys that are injured, right? So that doesn’t make sense from a transactional standpoint.
@ Rice Cube:
I think you can but it rarely happens.
josh wrote:
I’m confused by the outfield positioning. DeJesus should be able to handle CF just fine (and I hope he gets more time there) but there’s a better CF option already in the lineup in Campana. LaHair would probably have an easier time in LF too. The only thing that makes sense to me is that DeJesus and LaHair might stay in those positions once the Cubs return to the NL so they might as well give them some extra reps.
@ mb21:
They’re definitely going to try to trade him, but this makes as much sense as putting your car up on blocks in the front yard before trying to sell it (dying laughing)
What if the deal falls through like most do? Then you’re waiting 2 weeks to even begin talks and probably closer to 3 or 4 because teams will want to make sure he’s ok. The deal better be moments away from being announced or otherwise it’s just stupid. And if a deal is announced then the team trading for him is stupid.
@ berselius22:
The end of the interleague slate does coincide with the earliest date they would call Rizzo up…assuming they don’t give a shit about Super Two.
And this hurts his value. It’s three fewer starts.
@ mb21:
I agree, there’s no way that a DL stint now *isn’t* bad news.
@ berselius22:
Okay totally illogical defensive positioning, but I like Castro at #2 LaHair/Sori in 3/4. To me, that’s the only thing that makes sense given the players. I don’t know why this isn’t the default top 4 for this team.
@ mb21:
Maybe this lat problem was serious enough that he wouldn’t pass a medical with teams. It certainly didn’t bother him on Friday though.
@ berselius22:
The only reason I can see DeJesus in CF is that he did play it for a long time and has seniority, maybe? Maybe Sveum doesn’t like the way Campy plays center.
@ josh:
Because lefty-righty matchups and speed.
/Sveum’d
@ tinyjiney:
What Sully’s saying backs this up. Apparently Dempster has been pitching through the soreness for a few starts.
@ berselius22:
If it’s minor but could be aggravated I have no problem with them having to DL him, which is probably what they were thinking. If they try to play him through it or force a trade through and he either gets injured or the trade is rescinded, then I think that’s potentially even worse for everyone involved than giving him the two weeks to recuperate.
It didn’t sound like anyone was really that close to pulling the trigger anyway so I’m not sure this hurts the Cubs too much.
@ Rice Cube:
I know about the speed, thing, but I never liked that strategy. Campy is fast but can’t get on base enough for it to matter. I’m hoping Sveum gets over that speed idea. And didn’t he say at the beginning of the season that he wasn’t going to blindly platoon guys? That’s basically what he’s done with LaHair.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
As in get him 100% by the trade deadline, so a deal isn’t nixed by an injury? I think letting him heal is a better trade strategy than letting him hurt himself, for sure.
@ Rice Cube:
As someone else said, he may be more valuable kept till the end of the season and offered arbitration.
@ josh:
I think that’s a very good possibility at this point.
I think LaHair is hitting pretty badly against LHP although Sveum hasn’t exactly given him tons of opportunities. There might be some method to the madness of platooning him.
@ josh:
Yeah, as things start to trickle out, this certainly seems right, but I don’t see how this doesn’t hurt his trade value if it’s an actual injury.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/lahaibr01.shtml
LaHair has a career .129/.270/.210 line against lefties (possibly mostly against LOOGYs as he has a better line against LHP starters) but with less than 100 PA I don’t know how you can consider that statistically significant. However, being that bad probably makes it an easier decision for managers to sit him against LHP.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
It probably does. Maybe the offers were so worthless that they decided not to bother. Just hold him, offer arb in one of those handshake type deals and take the supplemental pick.
My guess is that this is just a typical injury situation. Any DL stint is going to give teams pause when it comes to trading for that player and now Dempster has been on it twice. This is bad news for the Cubs. We’re probably looking at a trade no sooner than one month from now. At that point he will have about 12 starts remaining.
If he had a few bad starts after the dl stint he might even be untradeable. We could then be looking at a waiver trade in August.
Not that the cubs were going to get much for him anyway though.
I can’t imagine teams are tripping over themselves to get Ryan Dempster.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
It does and I don’t believe Dempster would accept a trip to the dl unless he’s injured. He’s pitching for a new contract next year. He doesn’t give two shits what the cubs may get for him. This hurts not only his trade value but his free agent value too. That’s 3 or 4 trips to the dl in 2 years.
@ Rice Cube:
He was awful vs. LHP in the minors, too.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Achilles Heel!
@ mb21:
Well that sucks. I mean, not that I was expecting much. Can they still make a qualifying offer to him, or is that going to come back to bite them?
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
I never figured LaHair had much trade value, but that certainly can’t help things.
@ Rice Cube:
In 663 MiLB PA, he hit .225 vs. LHP. Can’t figure that will improve vs. MLB LHP.
@ josh:
He’s cheap, takes his walks, has power, and can play 3 of the 4 corners. He’s a marketable piece, but the return will be paltry.
I wouldn’t trade lahair.
@ Rice Cube:
With 100 PA you make it statistically significant by regressing heavily to the mean of LHB. Who generally suck vs LHP
To the right y’all
To the right y’all
Because I rock upon the mic all night y’all
Kyle Drabek———> Tommy John surgery. That’s #2 for him.
Preview up
http://www.obstructedview.net/previews/series-preview-chicago-cubs-22-44-at-chicago-white-sox-35-31.html
Garza looking great so far