Yesterday marked the opening of business again for baseball. Technically, nothing really stops them (well, except for strikes and any time Bud takes a day off to have another boil lanced off his neck), but they don’t like to announce things or do any real business during the World Series. So yesterday there was a mad rush to be the first to file for free agency.
Sometime in the next couple of days the Dodgers will announce that perennial redass Terry Collins is their new manager. This will be a blow to any of us who were clinging (no matter how unlikely we knew it was) to the hope that Dusty Baker was going to head back to his old Dodger Stadium stomping grounds. It’d be a good move for Dusty, it would be weeks before the media and fans get tired of his Hank Aaron stories.
Of course, there’s always a chance that Dusty’s old agent, Jeff Moorad will hire a new general manager who thinks Bob Melvin is a dope, fire him and hire Dusty. Yes, what you are seeing is me, literally grasping for straws.
Dusty’s coming back folks. You’re just going to have to learn to live with it.
Good news, though. Dusty’s already begun to stuff the “I resent the inference” file for 2006. Get a load of a couple of the things Seabiscuit Jockey quoted him as saying in today’s Tribune.
“I’ve been under pressure all my life. Look at my track record. I’m usually very good under pressure.”
That’s right, I almost forgot how great you were during:
- Game six of the 2002 World Series
- Game six of the 2003 NLCS
- The final eight games of the 2004 season.
- The time you botched the double switch in 2004, turned a rare Ramon Martinez single into an out and nearly took off all your clothes during the argument on the field.
I’d go on, Dusty. But I’m boring myself.
Dusty also said he watched “almost all” of the World Series, except for game three:
“I fell asleep during that one.”
Much like he did during just about every Cubs’ game last year.
The Jockey’s article also has a few interesting nuggets in it. And if you’ve seen the Jockey’s nuggets, well, I can only imagine the trauma it must have caused you.
He says the Rangers are interested in Corey Patterson. They saw what a great job he’s done replacing Gary Matthews Jr. in Chicago and want him to give it a shot in Arlington. Chuck from Ivy Chat is also interested in taking Corey to Texas. He wants to rent a convertible and have somebody drive him by the school book depository in Dallas. I’m not sure why.
The Jockey says the Cubs’ won’t pick up Jeromy Burnitz’s option for 2006 (and why should they, the damn thing is for $7 million), and that Jeromy might just retire. More likely, of course, is that the Cubs will look around and try to find a right fielder and fail, then give Jeromy a call in January and buy him out of retirement at a huge savings. Probably one-year, $6.75 million.
The Cubs only have a few more days to decide to pick up Todd Walker’s option. Is there really any chance they won’t? It’s for $2.5 million. There’s no reason not to pick it up. You either get a .300 hitting second baseman for cheap, or you pick up the option so you can trade a .300 hitting second baseman for cheap. The fact he had the option is the reason they didn’t trade him to the Indians in July and then again in August, so they decided then they were picking up the option.
Glendon Rusch has his own option to decide whether or not to pick up. It’s for $2 million. Since Glendon signs papers with his left hand and went 4-0 in September, there’s no chance he’s settling for that. The Cubs would be smart though to try to sign him to a real contract.
The Cubs already got one big signing out of the way when they signed Ryan Dempster for the low-low price of $15 million for three years. I like to make fun of Ryan, and see no reason to stop now, and I’m still shocked that he signed that deal. I know he’s not even two years away from Tommy John surgery, and that he only had one season as a closer, but he was 33-35 in save chances and the Cubs went 35-0 in those games. He’s only 28. You know some team would have given him more than that.
Which makes Dusty’s ludicrous decision to put Glendon Rusch in the bullpen and Dempster in the starting rotation to start the season all the more absurd. How many games did the Cubs cough up because they were starting Dempster or John Koronka or some other turd, with Rusch flailing badly out of the bullpen and LaTroy Hawkins pouring gasoline on every game he entered?
Then, they move Dempster to closer and immediately the problem is solved. Thirty-five save chances the rest of the season, thirty-five wins.
Dusty finally puts Rusch back in the rotation at the end of the season, even though Mark Prior missed a month during the middle of the season and Kerry Wood missed…pretty much everything. Rusch goes 4-0 down the stretch and for the season his ERA as a starter was nearly a full run better when he started, and that includes some rough August starts when he was trying to build his arm back up so he could go six or seven innings.
Now the talk is how the Cubs need to get off to a fast start because the last two years the Cardinals have run away with the division in April and May.
Gee, you think maybe if Dusty had the brains to use his pitchers the right way the Cubs wouldn’t have played .500 ball in April and May?
Then again, given this sorry assed bunch, they’d have probably just found another, even more spectacular way to lose.
The big question of the offseason, at least the early part, for the Cubs will be what are they going to do, if anything, with Nomar.
All he proved after coming back from his exploded groin was that he can still hit. He tore up the Cactus League in the spring, then got off to a very slow start in April and was at .157 (in only 51 at bats, to be fair) when his groin went AWOL. He came back and hit .338 in August and .311 in September. And he hit for power. He put up nine homers in only 171 at bats.
He also proved right away that he wasn’t physically up to playing shortstop and when E-ramis had a season ending quad injury he moved over to third base and struggled. But those struggles weren’t unexpected, he’d never played there before.
What the voluntary move to third showed was that he’s willing to play somewhere other than shortstop, and at his age (32) and given his recent leg and back problems, his value is probably higher at any other position than shortstop.
If you were going to pick any other position for him, you’d pick second base. It’d be nice to get that kind of offense out of a second baseman. The Cubs had a guy who put up those kind of numbers, he’s bald now and didn’t learn to speak English until he was retired and remarried and just got inducted into the Hall of Fame.
BUT…you don’t want a second baseman with leg and back problems any more than you want a shortstop with them. If you move him to second, you’re just pencilling in another season-ending injury.
You’re pretty well set at first and at third…for a decade or so. In fact, if memory serves, the guys who play there played in the All-Star Game last year in Detroit and if memory serves they started it.
So that leaves the outfield or catcher. Nomar was a catcher in little league and probably would be better defensively tomorrow than Michael Barrett.
But it’s the outfield or bust.
Nomar is, when remotely healthy, pretty fast. He has an excellent arm, even though he does throw like he’s trying to skip a rock. If Moises Alou can play the outfield at 74 or however old he is, and stay mostly in one piece (Moises does have that interesting ability to strain a calf muscle while just standing there), Nomar can handle it.
Given the current free agent market for outfielders (it’s pretty much Brian Giles and…nothing), you could do worse than Nomar.
BUT…you figure the only spot he could play would be leftfield. You’ve got a redheaded kid who is more than ready to play that spot. A redheaded kid who, despite ludicrously inconsistent playing time, got on base 38.6 percent of the time, posted a .521 slugging percentage and hit .321.
If you look at the season as a whole, the Cubs had four guys who could actually hit.
Derrek Lee won the batting title. E-ramis had a lousy start, ended up hitting .302 and hit .365 in June and .330 in July. Nomar proved he can still hit, and Murton.
Thanks to the lovely timing of call-ups, injuries and Dusty’s lineup assemblage, the four of them were in the starting lineup together FIVE times in 162 games.
BUT…here’s the problem. If Nomar’s not a shortstop anymore, how do you get the four of them in the lineup together this year?
Dusty has it in his very thick and obtuse skull that Murton is slow and a bad outfielder. He’s neither. He does not have a great arm, and some teams (Cubs included) would exclude him from consideration in right field based on just that fact alone.
If Dusty will only play Nomar the outfielder in left, that’s the only place he’ll play Murton. So it’s one or the other.
If you factor in age, ability and cost, Murton easily wins on two of those and the Cubs would be far more likely to hand Dusty a situation where Nomar’s not a choice to be made.
Could Murton play center field? You’ve seen him run and I’ve seen him run. He’s certainly not slow. If you took last year’s team and had them race, only Corey Patterson, Jerry Hairston the Lesser and Derrek Lee would be safe bets to be faster than Murton. Jose Macias might be faster but he’s likely run the wrong way.
You know what’s too bad? It’s too bad there wasn’t a chance to see if Murton could play centerfield. You know, if at the end of last season, the Cubs were out of it and Corey Patterson was drowning and you had a couple of games where you could have played Matt out there to see how he might far.
Oh, yeah, there were about 40 games at the end of last season when you could have done just that.
You could have played Nomar in left in those games, too. You see, when you are paying a player you can ask him to do things so you can see if he can do them. But, the Cubs never bothered to find out.
Nope. They have a manager who sees everything in black and white. Not just who is black and who is white, but in this guy is a left fielder, this guy can’t throw, this guy is a lefthanded reliever so he HAS to pitch to a lefthanded batter. That kind of black and white.
So here the Cubs are trying to make important decisions without data that it’s their own damn fault (and nobody else’s) that they don’t have.
You want to know how you can go 97 years and not win anything? This is why.
You could give Nomar your rightfield job, and play an outfield of Murton in left, somebody other than Corey Patterson in center and Nomar in right. But once again, you’d just be guessing that Nomar could play out there. Can you really afford to invest in him again?
And if you move him from shortstop, who plays there?
Ronny Cedeno seems the logical choice. He hit .370 at AAA and hit well when he actually got to play for the Cubs.
BUT… (you see a theme yet?) Dusty refused to give him any kind of consistent run at shortstop before he got hit by a pitch and his season ended. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have seen if, given consistent playing time, he could keep up his offense? It would be. But the Cubs don’t know now.
Dusty piled on the crap all year long about how he couldn’t “play the kids” because he owed it to the league. At the time, and now, we said that the kids were likely better than the guys he was playing, meaning he could look to the future AND put a better team on the field simulatenously. But even if they sucked, Dusty works for the Cubs and he owes it to the Cubs to win something. When the pennant race was over, he owed it to the organization to start trying to win the 2006 pennant immediately.
Dusty’s favorite meaningless saying is “we’re in the ‘earn it’ business, not the ‘give it’ business.” What the hell did Jose Macias or Corey Patterson do to “earn” playing time? Ever? How much playing time did Neifi Perez “earn” so that he couldn’t sit his ass on the bench during September?
Or was Neifi’s .229 June and .233 July so instramental in the Cubs’ greatness that he had to play?
By the way, Neifi had two months in which he got less than 100 at bats. April and August. You know what he hit in those months?
.368 in April
.347 in August
You think maybe he produced better when he wasn’t playing every day? You think just maybe his intended role as a sub might be the role he’s best suited for? You think playing Cedeno at short and using Neifi to spot him and Todd Walker at second might have been the best useage of Neifi?
Kind of looks like it. But no, by all means, run his ass out there for 102 September at bats so he can get on base 27 percent of the time! Tremendous! Great job, sir.
You know what else is even more ridiculous? The Cubs cannot bring Neifi back next year to be a sub, because Dusty will play him every day.
So you’re Jim Hendry. Your arteries are clogging, your hair is falling out and you have the most important offseason of your professional life and you have very few answers to questions that could have been answered during September 2005.
The Cubs were done. There was nothing to play for, oh, except to find out which players would be useful for next year. Gee, that seems kind of important in retrospect.
This team you are talking about….where do they play? I thought there was only one team in Chicago, the one that plays in the beautiful Bridgeport neighborhood.
If speed was the #1 factor for centerfielders, then why was I such a horrible one?
“You could give Nomar your rightfield job, and play an outfield of Murton in left, somebody other than Corey Patterson in center and Nomar in right.”
I think Nomar could definitely play right if there were two of him out there.
Is that the collection of housing projects between the Loop and Gary, In?
You’re a good man, Dolan. And thorough.
Matt Morris in Cubs uniform.
Just kill me now and get it over with. I don’t need any more of this shit.
Replace Neifi with Nomar. Nomar could still get 450+ at bats (assuming groin does not fall off.) Play him at 3rd, Short, 2nd, Left, maybe Right, and DH AL games. Everybody gets a rest. They could even move Walker to first and Nomar to second, to give Lee a blow (infrequent I hope.) His little league experience makes him the emergency catcher. Hmm, the last reason for keeping the Gremlin evaporates (… and there was much rejoicing.)
Besides, this is the Cubs and someone will be injured. Pick up Walkers contract, play Cedeno at short (Nomar is also good insurance here), and please oh please get Giles. This way Baker could not really screw up the use of his utility player because Nomar is good.
I have no doubt that Nomar will be the Cubs’ starting LF in 2006.
With all the questions about what to do with the outfield and short stop, it still boils down to the rotation. I think all Cub fans collectively have been waiting for this pitching staff to be healthy for one complete season. I’m still scared at hell as to what will be assembled for a bullpen in 2006.
Would it be a bad idea to try and get Kenny Lofton back in CF?
With all the questions about what to do with the outfield and short stop, it still boils down to the rotation. I think all Cub fans collectively have been waiting for this pitching staff to be healthy for one complete season. I’m still scared at hell as to what will be assembled for a bullpen in 2006.
Would it be a bad idea to try and get Kenny Lofton back in CF or Jacque Jones?
Sorry about the double post.
I think everyone is missing the bigger picture here. I’ve noticed the refusal to even mention the Sox winning the world series, and thats fine I suppose this is a Cubs site, but if the Cubs continue to half ass their off season signings I dont think that Cubs fans will put up with this much longer now that the Sox beat them to the series and WON IT!!!!!! Maybe its just me, but them getting there and winning it first gave me a dose of reality that we talk about the same thing year in and year out and nothing ever changes. The Tribune Co. better do something fast or I think Wrigley will start looking like it did in the seventies (6,000 people at most games). Its the Tribune remember that started the whole lovable loser image and have marketed it to death. I dont remember hearing this prior to 1980. They market losing, Wrigley, the rooftops, have constantly added seats, make a mockery of the 7th inning stretch and lets not forget parading around the goat in the 80’s. Things have changed in Chicago, the Tribsters better wake up and put a good product on the field before we start to lose interest. I feel better!!
We sure showed a sense of urgency. It only took us 88 years to win it.
Didn’t I try to shed the Lovable Loser image with my “Building a New Tradition” slogan?
no mention of the white sox,
i love this site.
We also took the team to the postseason 4 times in 24 years, compared to once in the previous 53 years.
You do have a point, though. We don’t expect the Cubs fan to suppress their rage. That’s why–once the expansion seats are sold, and after Andy MacPhail gets publicly beaten and raped at the Cubs Convention, that we’ll have realzied that we’ve milked this baby as much as we can and sell them before Opening Day.
I think that the 2006 Cubs need a slogan:
Same bullshit, different package.
How about that one?
The Sox won the World Series? I did not realize they were playing it this year. Hmm, which Sox team won?
Uh, Tribco, a little perspective: for most of those previous 53 years, there were no NLCS or NLDS… more opportunities to get to the postseason…
A baseball team isn’t a used car, you don’t just put it on the market today and sell it tomorrow. Any sale is going to involve protracted negotiations (and likely a lot of wrangling over radio/TV rights) which means if the Cubs go up for sale, you can kiss 2006 goodbye, because there will be total paralysis in the front office until the new ownership takes over.
“If the world had ended the night Kerry shoved the bats up the Braves’ asses in the 2003 NLDS games one and five, we’d all have had a different memory of Kerry.”
Where exactly would we keep this memory?
Something just bit us on the ass. It may have been a winner. Quick, retreat to your foxholes and cower until it goes away.
Brave!
got salad?
if we traded for corey, the only one getting a bullet in the head would be me, from my own gun. is there any difference between him and our old corey? we used to call him ruben mateo. he was the best prospect in all of baseball and gammons said he would be a MVP within THREE years. how’d that work out for us? nice call pete. they even have the season ending injury after promising starts in common. anyway, i need to see ruben mateo part II like i need cancer. you self pitying cubs fans need to quit being so selfish. you aren’t the only ones that root for a miserable franchise. my rangers have won ONE playoff game EVER…think about that. at least you have prior and big Z. i hate my life. see you guys in march.
Are a nice addition to Desipio.
It’d also be nice if there was ONE White Sox fan that fit my description
Hey #25, what about me? Don Baylor compared Stinkbomb Patterson to me 3 years ago, and everyone laughed at the time.
By now, I think Cub fans would take Oddibe.
Since George Takei decided to come out today, I think I will too….
…it’s the right arm cradling papa’s neck, and the left arm holding his chest in.
I’ll see if I can get any more info about Dusty going bye-bye this weekend. I will be hanging with my “source” on Sunday. I’ll give her a good tongue-lashing if she was wrong.
Ooh, a tongue-lashing… I haven’t had one of those since I broke up with my last boyfriend.
Very interesting indeed…
The next time I’m right about a rumor will be the first time.
Someday we’ll give you guys a winner and your celebration of the TV ratings will be absolutely unprecedented. Dare to dream.
Why doesn’t anyone care about us? Why doesn’t everyone fixate on us the way we fixate on the Cubs?
Man we are popular, 2 days and already barely mentioned on the cover of ESPN.com
We didn’t even see ESPN.com. We were too busy getting the fuck out of Chicago.
We’re 3-7, does anybody still have hope for us?, no… didn’t think so.
I’m going to be hired by L.A. this week. Maybe I can trade for Corey who will insist I also pick up Dusty as his mentor/manager.
Desipio makes sense again, but alas who is listening to him. We stuck with Krusty again next year. Who the F…. gave him a four year contract?
thanks for the segue, #27. “Oddibe young again McDowell” was one of my finest nicknames….
oh the memories. I was good, backbackbackback before I became a parody of myself, wasn’t I?
play me or trade me.
Sox? The Red Sox won the World Series again?
Anybody want this Murton kid?
Bears fans be racist, ya’ll.
Can Andy ingest me soon today so he can write a witty dose?