Nervous

As the Cub fans around the world sit nervously and await news of any kind that indicates the 2005 team will be headed in the right direction, I figured I would point you to a few snips of some newspaper articles. There really is no point in restating what other people already have. I do find it funny that there have been little to no free agent signings to this point, yet the rumor mills are hopping. Sammy Sosa, Carlos Beltran, Randy Johnson, Barry Zito, Todd Helton. The list goes on and on. I wish all the rumors would stop and some action would start.

Sox May Pursue Nomar

The White Sox were interested in Nomar Garciaparra a year ago. Some believe they are making another push, but they have gone underground since failing to sign Omar Vizquel. Their interest in Vizquel would not have been so great if they were drafting 16th in the 2005 draft rather than 15th. You can’t lose one of the top 15 picks, so the Sox would have had to sacrifice a second-round pick, not a first, to sign Vizquel. San Francisco is losing its first-rounder to sign Vizquel, as it forfeited a first-rounder to sign Michael Tucker a year ago. You get the idea GM Brian Sabean doesn’t think first-round picks are worth the money and aggravation.

Chicago Tribune

Rangers are going for my guys.

The Rangers’ pursuit of offense is picking up momentum. Club officials met with infielder Todd Walker over the Thanksgiving weekend and are planning to meet with outfielder Jermaine Dye later this week. The two are at the top of the Rangers’ list of free-agent hitters. Both are likely to get two-year deals at a price that would fall within the Rangers’ budget and allow them to continue their pursuit of pitcher Jon Lieber.

Star Telegram

Sosa to Marlins

the Cubs are exploring the possibility of trading Sammy to the Marlins. In return, the Cubs would get Luis Castillo and Juan Encarnacion.

Al Yellon

That’s all I have for now. Enjoy the lack of news. My advice would be to take a break for a week or so. Have someone wake you when something real happens, and focus on NCAA Basketball for now. Feel free to cheer for my two favorite teams. Illinois and Maryland

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Good offseason signs

From AP posted on ESPN.COM 11/9:

FUKUOKA, Japan — Moises Alou drove in a pair of runs with a bases-loaded single in the first inning to lead his major league teammates to a 7-2 win Tuesday over the Japanese All-Stars in Game 4 of an eight-game exhibition series.
The major league stars improved to 4-0, and have now won eight straight games against their Japanese counterparts dating back to the 2002 series.
Alou led the Chicago Cubs this season with a career-high 39 homers and 106 RBI, but the team declined an $11.5 million mutual option on the 38-year-old outfielder and will pay him a $2.5 million buyout.
Alou said he’s still got a couple of productive seasons left.
“I still love to play. I feel like I can play every day and hit over 30 homers and 100 RBI, so I’d like to sign a two or three-year deal with someone,” said Alou, whose father, Felipe, is manager of the San Francisco Giants. “I wanted to return to Chicago, but there’s a bunch of other places I’d like to go. I want to finish my career on a high.”
The good sign: Not even Moises thinks he’ll be a Cub next year.

From SignOnSanDiego.com 11/14:
Sammy Sosa has petitioned the Major League Baseball Players Association to void the guaranteed 2006 season in his contract with the Chicago Cubs if he is traded, according to reports in the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News.
The good sign: Sammy’s doing his part.

From the Shreveport Times 11/6:
Todd Walker was quoted as saying…
“We had a great time (in Chicago),” Walker said. “We just had one bad week and it happened to cost us a chance to get in the playoffs.
“(Not retaining Grudzielanek) was a positive for me, but it really doesn’t matter if we can’t get our deal done. There is interest on both sides.”
The good sign: Walker is at least still considering the Cubs and Grud’s non-renewal means Walker’s taking it seriously.

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I love this game

With it being the offseason and Cubs news is slim to none, I thought I would take the time to talk about my other favorite team. The Illinois Fighting Illini Men’s Basketball team. This years team is one of the school’s deepest ever and has legit national championship hopes. Entering the season ranked 5 in the AP poll, the Illini scheduled some weak games for the first 3. It came as no surprise then when all three games were registered in the win column. However, this weekend, the test was a team that at one time last year was ranked # 2 in the nation, a team that was 27-2, the Gonzaga Bulldogs.

I have to admit, I had my aprehensions about this game. I was afraid that Illinois would come out flat because of the less than challenging beginning to the season. I also worried that they would be looking ahead to the next game against the # 1 team in the nation. Instead, my boys did nothing but come out and shot the lights out on Gonzaga. At one point, they led by as many as 38 points. The looked better than Gonzaga in every aspect of the game. Dee Brown and Deron Williams, who could be the best backcourt in the nation combined for 37 points. I can’t wait till Wednesday when we take on the # 1 Wake Forest team at home. Maybe then it will be our chance to show the nation.

Last Game: Illinois 89 – Gonzaga 72
Next Game: Wednesday vs. Wake Forest
Season Record: 4-0

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Bookstore

Awile back I went to the baseball section of the bookstore. I of couse went nuts and wrote down the names of like 20 books I wanted to read. I was wondering if anyone could reccomend some good baseball books for me to add to my list. If so, leave the title and author in the comment section.

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Happy Thanksgiving

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Shameless Plug

I’d like to take this time to plug another good site. It’s called the Yarbage Movie Review. The name Yarbage may remind you of the Yarbage Cub Review. It’s one of my favorite sites, despite the writer selling out. Anyways, Chris gave me permission to post his latest review here. I highly reccomend you check out the site, but if I were you, I would subscribe to it via Bloglines or you will drive yourself insane by checking everyday to find no new review. Anyways, here is a sample of what you’ll find.

61*

Directed by Billy Crystal

Starring:
Barry Pepper: Roger Marris
Thomas Jane: Mickey Mantle
Micheal Anythony Ford: Whitey Ford

I was not alive for the original home run case between Mantle and Marris, so I was not aware of all the history between the two players. It must have been great pressure between the two as they raced for the Babe. Mith Sammy and Mark it seemed everyone wanted them to break the record and I was apart of it, so I saw what what happened. 61* gives many people a chance that did not know about the first chase a chance to learn about a little history.

Ford Frick was the commish of baseball caused a lot of the problems with his ruling making two different records for home runs, because of the different number of games. The movie was made for HBO; so many people did not see it right away when it was released. This is a chance for people to pick up a rare gem of a sports movie.

61* deals with more than just baseball, but the two distinct personalities of Mantle and Marris. Mantle is the movie star and Marris is the average everyday American. The best thing about 61* is the in depth relationship between the two sluggers.
There were many things I never knew about the two mainly for two reasons. First off I hate the Yankees, and second I was not around during this period of baseball. When you hear about how great Mantle could have been, it makes you wonder about his numbers if he had been healthy.

Crystal does a great job of weaving of the baseball and the outside relationships. There is great scene after Mantle moves in Marris when they are watching the Andy Griffith Show. Just the horror on Marris’s face is just priceless. The main sub-plot in the movie is the pressure of Media to break the the record. The difference between today and then was the Media was against the two players. There are many scenes that focus on Roger’s struggles as the people of New York turn against him and with his family. Everyone knows how Mantle was a loved a Yankee, but the fact that many Yankee fans would not root for Marris is just beside me.

Jane and Pepper do a great job of becoming these two players. You can really see the effect that the race does to Marris and Pepper really embodies the role. You can just imagine Jane as Mantle.

If you really like sports movies and baseball, then run out and buy this one tomorrow. This a rare sports movie that really takes a deep look into players lives and struggles they face. I imagine that if McGwire did not have Sosa, he would have been a lot more like Marris in the long run. The fact that Mantle got hurt, probably really hurt Marris with the media.

61* Score: 91

Go Check it out.

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The Wimpy Awards for 2004

The Wimpy awards go out to the player with the worst Wimpy Factor with enough at-bats to qualify him for the batting title at each of the eight starting positions (not including the pitcher, for obvious reasons).

There have been many innovative new statistics over the last twenty years that manage to quantify what could not be previously quantified, and others which allow us to better analyze individual elements of a player’s game. It’s time, I think, to go back to the early days of expanding statistics: stats that were potentially interesting and perhaps humorous, but told us absolutely nothing. How did Jack Morris do in night games in domes? That kind of stuff. Enter the Wimpy Factor.

The Wimpy Factor attempts, using the least involved math possible, to pit a guy’s power production against his body weight, a simple measure of his size, to find out who’s the worst power hitter, pound-for-pound.

The formula is: (Slugging Percentage*1000)/weight. There are many more sophisticated measures of a player’s power and probably more sophisticated ways of looking at the size of a person, but the simplicity allows for a) non-sabermetrically oriented readers to quickly grasp what’s being compared and b) me to be able to quickly figure it out.

Thus, a “little” guy like Marcus Giles at 180 pounds, but with a .443 slugging percentage, would end up with a Wimpy Factor of 2.46, but a monster like Tony Clark at 245 lbs. and with a .458 SLG would have a measly 1.87. So the higher your WF, the better your ratio of slugging percentage-to-weight. Simple. No park effects, no isolated power, none of the really cool stuff that makes baseball statistical study worthy of a Society.

Our Own Gabor Paul Bako II was the inspiration for the award: a career .331 SLG against 215 lbs. renders a paltry 1.54! I looked at him when he first became a Cub and said, “you know, it seems like a guy that big ought to be able to put a charge into a ball.” Then I learned the First Bako Principle: just because you are a position player doesn’t mean you can’t hit like a pitcher.

Today I’ll post the catcher and the infield. I’ll put up the outfielders on Thursday.

Drumroll, please:

CATCHER

First off, let me say that only 11 catchers qualified for the batting title, and only Kendall had an SLG of less than .400 (.390). So it was select company. So, were we to lower the # of plate appearances there’d be some ugly Wimpy Factors on display. One of the "qualifiers" was Mike Piazza, who caught 50 games last year.

That said, this was a landslide. The 245 pound Pierzynski outweighed the next-heaviest catcher, Jason Varitek, by 15 pounds, and had a .410 slugging percentage, which topped only 195 pound Jason Kendall.

Props to comparitively small Victor Martinez, who ended up with a 2.59 WF. He’s no Wimpy. That’s a Popeye performance.

FIRST BASE

No surprise at all. Erstad had a miserable season. Surprises included a 5th place finish for Derrek Lee, whose 245 lbs. put him as the heaviest first baseman (thankfully, Mo Vaughn didn’t have enough plate appearances). All of the qualifying first basemen topped 200 pounds, and the two lightest first basemen, Helton (204) and Brad Wilkerson (206) fared quite well even if you don’t factor in their weights.

Helton, in fact, posted a 3.04 WF!!!! That’s Popeye AND Bluto, all rolled up into one. The first base chart shows that the WF, at its extremes, is pretty obvious. The guys with the 600+ SLGs all finished at the bottom of the WF pile and the guys with the sub-.420s all at the bottom.

SECOND BASE

Slap-happy Luis Castillo’s 1.83 gives him the Wimpy for second basemen. His slugging percentage was so low that he could have lost about 20 pounds and kept the award. Look at those weights — all between 175 and 210, and there are 11 of 17 between 180 and 200. I guess the requirements for a starting second baseman in MLB are pretty tightly refined.

Todd Walker didn’t qualify, but he’d have had about the same as Ray Durham and Grudz would have been near Polanco.

175 pound Juan Uribe of the White Sox put up a Pujolsian 2.89 WF this year, and lightweights Sorianto and Infante were lifted past Kent, whose .531 slugging led all second basemen, but he was too heavy to to place better than 5th in the Wimpy Factor.

SHORTSTOP

Feeble Craig Counsell’s unbelievable .315 slugging percentage won him a Wimpy, and having 20 pounds on Eckstein didn’t hurt. There were some tiny guys playing shortstop, and Jimmy Rollins got the most out of his weight. Furcal looked good pound-for-power, and Guzman, Renteria, and Greene’s power output didn’t look too impressive when compared to their size. The general WF rule remains, however; slugging percentage has greater variance than weight, so SLG is the stronger determining variable in WF.

There are some tiny shortstops who hit for good power and some bigger shortstops who didn’t hit for power, so among the positions so far, SS has the jumpiest line if you graph weight and slugging.

THIRD BASE

Chunky Monkey Erik Hinske’s got some ‘splainin’ to do. His body looks like about 42 percent of his weight is distributed to his rump, but all them pounds didn’t translate to success this year. At least he has a Wimpy on his mantle now.

Rolen’s big body knocked him down to a 2.49, but the coolest thing on this chart is that Vinny Castilla and Chone Figgins are within 1/1000th of each other. Castilla’s Coors-pumped power made him look good, but he was dusted by li’l Chone!!! Melvin Mora pulled off a surprising second-to-last only to Beltre’s monstrous year. This chart seems to indicate that having the biggest third baseman doesn’t mean having the most powerful one.

I’ll do the outfield on Thursday, but now you know whom to take on the infield if your fantasy league has no salary cap, but a strict Weight Cap.

Congratulations, Wimpy Award winners. I’d suggest either slimmin’ down or powerin’ up unless you want another one!

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The Sunday News

SInce most of you can’t afford to have the news delivered straight to your doorstep when you wake up on a Sunday morning, I will do you the favor of bringing it to you, free of charge. So, without further adieu, here are the headlines today.

Cubs Considering Arbitration For Clement

The Cubs are likely to offer salary arbitration to free-agent starter Matt Clement by the Dec. 7 deadline, according to a source close to the situation.

Chicago Tribune 11/21/04

To me, this makes no sense, we’re not the first national bank of Wrigley and if we’re going to sign Rusch for 2 million, he better be our 5th starter. As much as a love Matt Clement, he is not going to make anything under 6 or 7 million through arbitration, and that is something we can’t afford for our # 5 guy. We have other holes on this team that need to be addressed, so why not spend the money there. Unless the Tribune company has been thinking about going George Steinbrenner this year, this is a bad idea.

Alou goes to bat for Sosa

“He made a mistake,” Alou said. “He was wrong. But a lot of people make mistakes. He knows he made a mistake, and he asked for forgiveness. I forgive him. He’s a great player, and he admitted he was wrong.”…Alou also downplayed the notion of a major fissure between Sosa and manager Dusty Baker…”They get along great,” Alou insisted. “When you’re together for six months, you’re going to have your arguments, but I don’t think there are any bad feelings or bad blood, whatever was said. Dusty’s a great guy, Sammy’s a great guy. Everything will be OK.”

Boston Globe 11/21/04

Not really sure why the Boston Globe is following this story, but apparently when you win a world series in Boston, your writers run out of Red Sox related material to complain and whine about. I have to wonder if Alou makes these comments because Sosa is his buddy or because he really believes this is the case. I don’t believe it for one minute. Look at the evidence.

• Players smash Sosa’s boombox in disgust

• Cubs fine Sosa for leaving early
• Sosa rips Cubs for fining him
• Wood and Prior both bash Sosa
• Sosa rips Dusty Baker in a Dominican Newspaper about batting order issues
• Alou comes to Sosa’s defense

That seems like a lot of evidence toward the team not wanting Sosa back compared to on statement by Alou. If I was a jury, I think I would side with the former.

Prior Sticks Opens Mouth and Inserts Foot

“Several Cubs participated in the inaugural Kerry Wood Strike Zone Celebrity Bowling Tournament on Saturday at 10-Pin Bowling Lounge in Chicago. Asked about whether a Sosa trade would benefit both sides, Prior said, “Sure. … you know, I mean, yes … no … I don’t know.”

Daily Southtown – 11/21/04

Mark, PLEASE SHUT UP!!!! Don’t make yourself look bad to the media anymore. Do we really need to remind you of the media fit that Jay Mariotti gave you last year about an autograph session?

Cubs Have Huge Bat…In the Front Office

Entering his third full season as a general manager, Hendry is building a reputation as an influential force in the industry, largely because of his ability to build a consensus among executives with other clubs. It was Hendry, and not Boston’s Theo Epstein, Minnesota’s Terry Ryan or Montreal’s Omar Minaya, who shoved some square pegs into round holes to complete the Nomar Garciaparra deal only seconds before the trade deadline in July. While a Sosa trade is complicated by Sosa’s contract-which guarantees a 2006 option if he is traded-and no-trade rights, not to mention his unexcused absence on the last day of the season, it is no more problematic than was the Garciaparra deal that Hendry made happen.

Chicago Tribune – 11/21/04

A lot of people are worried about this offseason. Not me, because we have our big bopper in the front office taking care of things. With Hendry, I have no worries.

Kasper the Friendly Broadcaster Hired

“I am thrilled to have the opportunity to call Cubs baseball with Bob Brenly on WGN and Comcast,” said Kasper, who signed a multi-year deal that begins with the 2005 season. “This is the best play-by-play job in sports and I look forward to being a daily part of the lives of the best fans in baseball.”

Cubs Homepage

It doesn’t matter to me who the Cubs got, because I will have the MLB Extra Innings package next year, which means I can always watch the visitor’s broadcast if the home team’s play by play is brutal.

Well, that’s it. Enjoy your Sunday and GO BEARS!!!!

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Painted into a corner

I’d like to expand upon what Anthony wrote yesterday. I’m scared. Very, very scared. I’m skeptical about getting Beltran. Looking at his VORP, Win Shares, and last 3 years’ performance he’ll stay around a .915 OPS, 60 VORP, and 28-30 Win Shares. That’s MVP caliber and I’d pay big money for that. That said, I don’t believe we’ll get him. With that premise in mind, I’m very concerned about the Cubs for the year 2005. We’re looking for the following positions to fill via free agency:
Closer
5th Starter
2nd Base
Shortstop
Left Field
(Possibly RF)

Half the starting lineup and 2 of the essential pitchers.
What’s scariest is that, apart from a little bit of a risk at 5th starter, they have NOTHING in the system to fill these positions.
The default closer would be, I assume, LaTroy Hawkins. The 5th starter would be…Mitre? I guess Richard Lewis and Neifi Perez would be 2b and SS respectively, and Jason Dubois would play LF.

I like Hendry, but it appears that he has painted himself into a corner this year. He’s GOT to fill these needs through free agency; he has no other choice. He has left himself with very little leverage, and I would expect some questionable signings.

I’d prefer that the Cubs do the following, in order of importance:
1) Get Renteria. Use the money you’re not spending on Alou. Offer him 4 years. If that fails, offer Nomah a 1 or 2 year deal.
2) Re-sign Walker for 2B at about 5 mil a year for 2 years.
3) Sign Lieber for 5th starter. He’ll just need to eat innings as #5.
4) Try for Cliff Floyd or Jermaine Dye late in the game. If that fails, give Dubois the chance to blow it. If he does, there’s always a Karim Garcia floating around.
5) Let Dempster/Hawkins close.
6) Trade Sosa. It’s only low on the list ‘cuz it’d be SO hard to do.
7) STOP SIGNING TOM GOODWIN AND JOSE MACIAS AND NEIFI PEREZ for more than the league minimum when they’re providing below replacement-level offense!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Geez, Dusty! Come on, Jim, this ought to be obvious!

This offseason ought to be a wake up call for Hendry to improve the bench and upper minors with above replacement-level talent so he doesn’t have to get pushed into something he — and we — will regret.

Comments or other players we should pursue, given that we’ve got some arbitration-eligible Zambrano/Patterson types who’re going to push up the payroll? I’d love to hear something that’ll put my mind at ease.

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