Let's round up the latest from the Windy City in one post. First up, Paul Sullivan of The Chicago Tribune with the latest on the Cubs…
- The Cubbies will not go overboard with their free agent spending because they vow to decrease payroll, so GM Jim Hendry needs to get creative to placate the fan base.
- First base is the team's first priority and they'd like to acquire a lefty bat, so Adam Dunn is a popular target. If they can't afford him, they could turn to Aubrey Huff or Victor Martinez.
- The Cubs might need to trade Kosuke Fukudome before signing any free agents, which won't be easy since he's owed $13.5MM in 2011. Hendry did find a taker for Milton Bradley last offseason though, so you never know.
- Starting pitching is also on the team's wishlist. Jon Garland could be one option after hinting at being interested in pitching for the Cubs last offseason.
- They would also like to add a veteran reliever to take some pressure off their young kids, but it's unclear if Kerry Wood will take a pay cut and assume a lesser role to return to the Cubs.
Now we'll head to the south side with Mark Gonzales of The Chicago Tribune…
- The White Sox already have $80.4MM committed to just 13 players for next season, and that doesn't include what is likely to be a sizable arbitration raise for John Danks. That puts them in a bit of bind when it comes to adding a left-handed bat.
- They don't match up with the Cardinals for Colby Rasmus, who they're said to be targeting, though a trade is probably the route they'll have to go to add a bat.
- GM Kenny Williams could try to fill several holes by trading one player, which he did when he sent Javier Vazquez to the Braves and Nick Swisher to the Yankees two years ago. He could use one of excess starters, perhaps Edwin Jackson or Gavin Floyd. That last part is just my speculation though.
- The ChiSox also need to determine whether Carlos Quentin can return to his 2008 level, or if injuries will continue to take a toll.
- They could look to make trades soon, then examine the pool of non-tenders for affordable relief help.
It seemed like Williams created more holes with those moves than filled them.
I doubt the Cubs will get Aubrey Huff. Well, I don’t want them to. But, he doesn’t look like he’ll want to sign there. He hates playing for teams that finish 4th or 5th place. I think he’ll resign with the Giants. He likes it in SF, the Giants like him in SF, I like him in SF…PLEASE COME BACK <3
sabean should just sign him so i dont have to read about him going to other teams. it felt wrong to hear.
KW is an awful GM. Sox have traded a starting OF – Chris Young, Ryan Sweeney, and Nick Swisher and have nothing to show for it. He has traded for Griffey – Nick Masset and Manny cost 4M.(Must of had their baseball cards as a kid) Didn’t want Thome.(Didn’t have his card) But that cost us Rowand. Had Uribe. Trade Hudson for a guy that cost 8M. Need I go on. Just fire him. Rick Hahn is right there.
PS -Traded for the great Jake Peavy when he was inJuried
I wouldn’t say Chris Young or Ryan Sweeney are better than what the Sox have in the outfield, nor is Nick Masset better than most of their bullpen arms (he certainly sucked when he played for the Sox). The Griffey move wasn’t great, and neither was the Swisher trade, but Manny was a smart move that didn’t work out and the Rowand-Thome deal was flat out great (so was the Freddy Garcia – Gavin Floyd/Gio Gonzalez trade). KW makes his share of mistakes, but he’s certainly not awful. Ask anyone who’s ever had to root for Allard Baird or Chuck LaMar.
Explain to me how Chris Young is worse than Quentin, Rios, and Pierre.
Rios is 10x the player Chris Young is and it’s not even close. Chris Young has never hit above .257 and Rios has been an above average player every year except for 09 and his sophomore slump.
Wrong.
Let’s compare the two with the first being Young and the bottom Rios.
WAR over last seasons
4.6
4.1
OBP
.341
.334
ISO
.201
.173
27/91
21/88
You were saying?
I was saying Rios is better and I still am.
Whatever. I’ll disagree but it is a good argument. Both are similiar
Rios has been above average for 5 years out of 7. Chris Young has been OK for 2 seasons and has been a liability on the defensive end of things where as Rios has been above average.
Anyway, both are unarguably better than Denard Span.
Oh no you didn’t!
Span is a nice player but a slap hitter nonetheless. If he really was that fast as they say he was, he would have been much more aggresive on the basepaths. I hope that 2009 OBP wasn’t a fluke.
A slap hitter? He is actually a really, really good hitter.
Better at getting overpaid.
Overpaid? Yes. Still a good player? Yes.
His production from last year is very deserving of his salary actually. He is paid very handsomely, but if he continues to perform at or near his 2010 production, he definitely is worth it.
but over paid is not kennys fault that the Blue jays fault….
Kenny also took on the entire contract as a waiver claim. It’s as much his fault as it is the Jays’.
Absolutely no way I agree with this. You’re comparing them over the course of one season when Rios has topped Young in WAR in 3/4 seasons since Young became a full time player. Chris Young’s UZR/150 has also been either been negative or right around the average mark in every year besides 2010 while Rios is consistently a plus defender. I take Rios right now and going forward as well.
and there is no such thing as a perfect gm…every single one has had bad signings and bad trades…notice how that guy didnt mention getting jose, el duke, rios, jenks(before this season) the AJ signing, the konerko and buehrle extensions, the omar signing, cliff floyd for 05, getting pods….all that great very very good moves..yes swisher was bad, yes not resigning thome was not very good(consider that ozzie wanted the rotating dh) but the javier deal considering what it is now was good…this guy left out all the good and only look at the bad….
his horrible show on the mlb network showed just how dysfunctional the Chicago White Sox are.
The Hudson/Jackson trade was indefensible to me. I know he was looking to flip Jackson to the Nat’s for Dunn but that should have been worked out in advance. Three way trade or trade Hudson to the Nat’s and let them flip him for Jackson if that’s what they wanted. Never make a trade for something you don’t really want or need when you’re giving up a promising young pitcher unless you have the details worked out in advance. Besides, even if they had acquired two months of Dunn they still wouldn’t have likely made the playoffs, so it would have been a waste of Hudson anyway. Sometimes you have to go for it, I get that, but get the details worked out in advance. Now they’re on the hook for an $8 million dollar, inconsistent starter. He has his moments but so did Hudson at league minimum.
I actually at the time didn’t see how Daniel Hudson was worse than the underperforming Edwin Jackson…It was a bad trade and funny because…
The whole off-season last year all of us said that the Max Scherzer/Daniel Schlereth trade was horrible for AZ because Jackson and Kennedy wouldn’t be good. Now it’s Hudson/Holmberg/Kennedy for Scherzer and Schlereth. Scherzer is my ’11 Cy Young pick, but I still say in the long run because of Hudson/Holmberg, the Diamondbacks won that trade. I like Ian Kennedy a lot as well.
Dont forget about Chris Carter…
I actually think KW is a really good GM, but I feel like sometimes he makes deals just to “do something.”
That is pretty much what he does.
Yeah, he does. I guess when you’re as aggressive as he is some things will backfire, to me though not having everything worked out in advance is the biggest problem. I can’t fault him for things like Peavy, a lot of teams would have taken him. But Hudson/Jackson was bungled imo. KW reminds me of some of the GM’s in the game 20-30 years ago, guys who did things by the seat of their pants without a lot of statistical backing or rationale. Hendry is kind of that way too, he tries to fix holes without actually having a good long term plan, he’s turned into a reactionary GM and it’s not good.
Although there are a lot of good moves that he has made. For example, trading the soft throwing John Ely and Jon Link for Juan. Pierre.
Hudson for Jackson made absolutely no sense to me at the time. Jackson at least softened the blow with the way he finished up the season but I really hope we at least are left with a supp pick or something in return for Jackson considering we dealt one of the only guys I really liked from our farm.
I’ve soured on KW over the past year with the DH fiasco/needless Teahen extension and before that with the Swisher salary dump but your only looking at the negatives.
He completely stole Gavin Floyd and John Danks both of who have been solid pitchers for the last 3 years and both 4+ WAR players last season. He did get a near MVP performance from Quentin in 2008 despite his injury/inconsistency issues since then. He turned live arms into solid back of the bullpen pieces such as Thornton/Santos recently.
He like every other GM has his faults but I wouldn’t call him terrible and definitely wouldn’t use one of the worst contracts (Rowand) in baseball to help prove my point. Especially when we lost that for 1.014-.973-.865-.865 OPS season from Thome.
the great jake peavy who at the time has a busted ankle from running the bases hardly a bad move…thome deal briliant considering what rowand has turned out to be now…freddy garcia for floyd was also great considering floyd is very very good now, young, sweeney were both prospects and its hard to say sweeney has turned out to be an all star…yes moving swisher again was bad but he was not a fit in the clubhouse and he didnt really feel fit in chicago…it was ok…griffey was to put asses in the seats which it did….manny was a very very good move thinking he would regain power in the cell its not kennys fault it didnt pan out…..
rowand only made the post season roster on the giants because guillen was being investigated for peds….uribe was good but not nearly as good as he was this season….the hudson deal was thinking we would get dunn which the nats backed out on…and to be honest no one knew he was going to be as good as he was for the bdacks…and jackson was very very good for the sox in his starts,…so stop the kenny hate when you dont know what you are talking about
man, you have a defense for everything. But there’s no excuse for the E-Jax-Hudson deal; it should have been worked out where he got Dunn in a three-way. And he should have resigned Thome period, for the money he spent on Omar Vizquel. and there’s no excuse for the Teahen extension period
What about the Sox keeping all of their starters and gambling on someone like Yonder Alonso? They have a lot of expectations (i.e. Gordon Beckham and Carlos Quentin)…I’d like to see them sign Rafael Soriano, Re-Sign A.J. Pierzynski (the Marlins should try and sign him), and trade for Yonder Alonso while also signing someone like Bill Hall who could relieve Mark Teahen and the other infielders if Neccessary. If they also re-sign Paul Konerko, he could DH/1B and Yonder could do the same.
I suppose a trade of Kyle Colligan and Sergio Santos could pry Yonder Alonso away from the Reds.
I like all those ideas, except that I don’t think that using Santos to pry away Alonso would be a good idea, as the bullpen is already very thin. I do hope they try to get him though, as that would be a very Kenny Williams-esque move. Also, Brent Morel could start at 3B with a strong spring, so Teahen could be an in-house option to fill the super-sub role.
They found a taker in Milton Bradley as a toxic contract swap, it seemed to be one sidded for the Cubs as Silva was a decent pitcher for them but in the end it was lemonade out of lemons.
Yea Swisher’s .220 average looked great here in Chicago. Wish we never traded for him in the first place
Image if some of the trades didn’t happen. Our rotation would be, Danks, Gavin, Gio, Richard, Hudson, Buehrle. We’d have Brandon Allen at first, Morell at third, Beckham at 2nd, Alexi at SS, then Sweeney, Alex, and Pierre in the outfield, with Q DHing. If only, if only.
Yeah that would be outstanding because then you wouldn’t have seen Paul Konerko have an all-star MVP caliber 2010 season. And you would have Chris Young as well so he would have to be in the OF.
I was talking this year. 2011.
fun, cheap team but hardly better than the Twins. You need a mix of youth and experience to win. Allen, BTW, has not been good:
-0.7 WAR in 54 Major League games so far.
You still shouldn’t really trade for relivers and IIRC Allen was dealt for Pena. Also I don’t think using WAR is fair for him. WAR is a cumulative stat. I’m not saying Allen has been good or bad, but I don’t think it’s fair to use WAR as a justification. I don’t think Williams is as good as Sox fans make him out to be. 2005 is nice, but I don’t know how long that can be used.
I don’t think any GM on either side of town is great, but I don’t think they are awful either. I;m a Cubs fan so I’m biased to an extent, but at least Hendry and the Cubs are starting to develop some younger talent. I’m not saying it’s all on Hendry, but this is happening on his watch so he should get some credit. If we are talking about future talent I think the Cubs have as much as anyone. That’s not just my opinion either.
I’m not saying Hendry is great, but I think that people just like to pick on him since he’s with the Cubs. I think he’s at least an average and at times an above average one. I’m not going to blame him that much for 09 since that team was projected to win 95 games going into the year. 2006 was probably the only year I thought we didnt’ have a chance of winning. Even though no team is going to win when your two aces and first baseman go down. Ruben Amaro has made worse moves, but no one really calls him out for them.
when did anyone mention the Cubs? anyway, the goal is winning playoff games (and WS trophies) and Kenny is way, way ahead there.
Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo glad Cashman traded for Swisher! Brought some life into this barren, business-like clubhouse!
Always get a kick out of these Williams is such a good GM posts. the only reason he looks good in Chicago print, is because the guy on the other side of town makes even worse moves than he does and insulates him in the press there.
Cubbies finally dump Hendry, find someone that is at least 1/2 way not inept and it will be Williams turn for his dirty laundry to fly next of terrible moves and yes.. Moving Swisher because a manager does not care for him that has his own personal/style issues as well was a poor move.
LOL. Basically.
What’s with all the Kenny Williams hate? He’s made his share of bad moves, but so has everyone. Some of the deals he’s made have been have been flat out fleecings, as well. I personally don’t think he’s even the best talent-evaluator and decision-maker in the organization (Rick Hahn is a great GM prospect), but saying he’s BAD is ridiculous.
what about a Rowand and prospects for Fukudome. i know it would take decent prospects. would Thomas Neal and a couple filler guys work? the money actually works better for Chicago. i think Rowand would be able to start and put up decent numbers in Chicago.
Where would he play? The Cubs would be more inclined to move money and open up a spot for Colvin to have regular playing time. Adding Roawand would be a terrible idea. I still think Fukudome winds up in DC.
Chris Young in 2010: Home (.283/.361/.549/.910) Away (.230/.321/.354/.675) – A .235 OPS difference between home and away. Take him out of AZ and …
Clayton Richard in 2010: Home (3.15 ERA/1.22 WHIP/.227 BAA) Away (4.41 ERA/ 1.61 WHIP/.308 BAA). Take him out of Petco and ….
Brandon Allen – This excerpt is from a November 4, 2010 MLB.com article detailing a Q&A between Arizona GM Kevin Towers and Arizona Fans:
Q: Who can we expect to see out in left field/first base come Opening Day?
Towers: Currently, our in-house candidates are Brandon Allen at first base and Cole Gillespie and Gerardo Parra in left field. But WE WILL BE LOOKING TO UPGRADE BOTH POSITIONS THIS OFFSEASON EITHER THROUGH TRADES OR FREE AGENCY.
Take Allen out of AZ and … he’s headed back to the minors for his 8th season.
Ryan Sweeney – An average ML hitter with no power with recent knee concerns
Gio Gonzalez – If he develops a 3rd pitch, he could be special.
Daniel Hudson – A good prospect with a great start in AZ but save the Hall of Fame votes for another season or two
Chris Carter – He can’t hit a breaking ball to save his life.
Nick Swisher – He had a lousy year with the Sox but hit better in NY with better hitters around him – good for him.
Aaron Rowand – In Philly, he had a great season then the league caught up to him (pay attention Daniel Hudson) and his $60 million contract. He remains gritty.
Williams has made good trades (Danks, Floyd, Thornton, Quentin) and acquisitions (A. Ramirez, Rios, Pierzynski, Dye which cost no players). As long as he continues to be aggressive (and no, he doesn’t make trades just to “do something” – hyperbole at its worst) he will make bad trades just like every other GM. I can live with that because overall he has acquired good players while giving up mostly “good” players.
?? Gio Gonzalez already is a special young pitcher. But yeah, he needs to develop his changeup more to complement his fastball and breaking ball.
“GM Jim Hendry needs to get creative to placate the fan base.”
It’s phrases like this that terrify me. The Cubs need to fully commit to a rebuild if they want to compete for a championship again in another year or two. It’ll never happen though, because the inmates are running the asylum.