You’d think it is, ccd.  The Braves seem to think they can contend next year and need enough that they can’t sit around and wait.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Braves offer something ridiculous to Dempster in a couple of days if he hasn’t signed with the Cubs yet.  If they do that, they may look elsewhere for another pitcher and take their offer off the table leaving only the cubs as a possibility for Peavy and then Hendry has as much control as Peavy does with the negotiations. 

That’s why the Padres most likely would want to get this deal done within the next 48 hours.

If Dempster (or any other Type A FA) goes to a team in the bottom-15, which ATL is, doesn’t one of their picks go from 1st round to supplemental/sandwich round? If so shouldn’t we be hoping Dempster goes to one of the just over .500 teams (dodgers, Florida, StL, Houston, etc.) so that the Cubs still get a Top-20 pick?

Obviously, the team has no control over that; I’m just trying to know what to expect if/when he signs w/ another team.

If a team drafting in the bottom half of round 1 signs Dempster, the Cubs would then get a 2nd round pick rather than a 1st round pick.  Since Dempster (and Wood and Howry) are Type A free agents, they get 2 compensatory picks.  One is a supplemental pick and the other is either a 1st round or 2nd round pick which is determined by the spot in which they draft. 

So yeah, if Dempster signs elsewhere we’d like it to be to a team that drafts 16th through 30th.

From Buster Olney:

The Cubs and Padres have talked about a deal built around Josh Vitters, the Cubs’ top pick from 2007. But unlike the Braves, Chicago is not steeped in pitching, and so the Padres and Cubs are in the process of drawing in a third team into their talks, and that third team would be the side that would flip the pitching necessary to San Diego, in order to make the deal work for the Padres.

The bottom line is that I don’t think the Cubs are getting Jake Peavy, and that’s fine with me. Peavy’s numbers outside of Petco don’t scream “ace” to me, and his contract, four years’ worth, would hamstring the team in an era when some here are screaming for Hendry to dump some of the backloaded deals he’s handed out like Halloween candy over the last couple of years. The Cubs ought to also look hard at whoever is available in the Rule 5 draft and also at the non-tender list when it comes out in the middle of December.

This officially makes Peavy the best pitcher ever.

back-loaded contracts:
Zambrano
Ramirez
Soriano
Lilly
Fukudome
Marquis

I know of only two players on that list I’d want to get rid of… and it has very little to do w/ their contracts being back-loaded.

Kevin Goldstein has a lot of good things to say about josh Vitters who he ranked number 1 in the cubs top 11 prospects.  If any of you have a subscription check it out.

http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=8296

Vitters was listed a 5-star (Excellent) prospect and Samardzija and Ceda as 4-star prospects.

Ryno’s props

My computer won’t allow me to visit the site.

You must have a statfag computer.

« Thank GodAn Ode To My Dear Friend Ryno (Jame Gumb)
For starters, here you go, buddy. Just for you.

For those unaware(s), (with an ’s’ as the British would have it), Ryno wrote up a faux interview with me over at ACB. I must say, I enjoyed it and found it very humorous. It can only be flattering when someone can recite so many of your creations line by line.

He touched on so many subjects:

- Maddog being a typical drug addict personality, in other words, a compulsive liar.

- My disdain for disrespectful statfags. You’ve got the smug moron faggots like Shawn D. Goldman and Faggous Maximus. You’ve got the malevolent, belligerent, juvenile faggots like Dylan and Tyger. And then you’ve simply got the conformed faggots at large like those at the Baseball Fag Factory. All these guys out there who think they’ve got baseball sorted out from stats. They don’t. They repudiated defense for years. But now that it’s become better quantified… meaning, now that there are good stats for it… the faggots have found value for it. Some of us didn’t need stats for that.

So many of these statties… a bunch of goddamn cotton-pickin’ faggots. A bunch of vegetarian feminists.

- Ryno quoted my finest moment at this blog, a moment of inspiration and poetic genius:

These dumbfucks may as well be playing Dungeons and Fucking Dragons with their fucking stats.

That line is the zenith for all of baseball blogging history. Who knows, maybe even Ryno might agree.

- He gave me a hard time over leadoff man and tried to paint me as a waffler on where the obp should be set. He actually missed the point in that post which was that teams with better leadoff men tend to succeed in the playoffs. And then, when I said the Red Sox were somewhat an exception this year because they have so many potent bats following the leadoff man, he had to be a pain in the ass and split hairs. He gets my point and probably agrees with it regardless of what he’ll admit around the statties.

- He made fun of me for saying the Cubs were going to lose the game after the Z/Barrett fight last year no matter what. Once again, while being funny, he missed the larger point. I knew we’d take off once we got dumbfuck Barrett off the fucking field and I was right. And then when we traded for Kendall for no good reason, I was right again when I said our success streak was over. Once again, if pressed to it, he’d admit I was right. C’mon Ryno, just fucking admit it.

- Some guys can pitch the ninth and some can’t. You’re goddamn right. He’s making fun of me on this one, successfully, despite the fact that he agrees with me. LaTroy should have been pulled from the role once it was apparent that he wasn’t up for it. Had we pulled the plug on that in 2004, we might have found ourselves in the playoffs.

- Most of the statties who talk shit at this blog are some of my most devoted readers. I don’t allow a lot of their comments anymore, but make no mistake about it, these cotton-pickin’ dildos read every word of this blog. Best Cubs blog on the internet. The only other one where you might learn about the team is JBrokaw’s site. But, he’s not exclusively a Cubs blog.

Ryno, c’mon, you forgot to make fun of me for JB. I’m disappointed. You’ve done it in the past.

- One of the worst, most idiotic faggots ever to taint the internet is this complete imbecile named Dan Fagborski of the Baseball Fag Factory. Imbecile doesn’t begin to do justice with this twat. He makes Maddog look honest. He makes Tyger look mannered. He makes Shawn D. Goldman look interesting. Fuck, he makes Faggous Maximus look masculine. The guy is never right about anything, but acts like he’s a fucking Nobel Laureate on baseball.

He had this picture of himself in his profile that made Elton John look attractive. He was dressed up in some gay ass papal looking number with the geekiest fucking smile you’ve ever seen. It was hideous.

Ryno, I think you could have done better with this one. You’re a clever bastard and it’s a fun subject. God knows I won’t be sporting any Catholic gear.

- Jeopardy. An unsophisticated dumb fucking hick like Tyger isn’t going to know many answers to Jeopardy questions. Most of these little college stathead fucks won’t either. While it’s not the SAT’s of sophistication and erudition, if you’ve got a person who knows a lot of the answers, it’s at least saying something.

I do applaud Ryno for making fun of me on this one. It’s funny.

- Ah yes. I love telling these hicks that they’re a bunch of slipknot-listening to, beer from the can, quasi-scientific feminists. Ryno loves it too. He honors me with his recitation.

Someone’s gotta call a spade a spade… or a know-it-all dumb fucking rube a dumb hick talking shit.

- ‘The most important things for a pitcher are innings and wins.’ I wouldn’t make that blanket a statement, but let’s take a look at our innings and wins leaders:

IP:

CC Sabathia
Roy Halladay
Johan Santana
Cole Hamels
Tim Lincecum
Brandon Webb
Cliff Lee
AJ Burnett
etc.

Wins:

Cliff Lee
Brandon Webb
Mike Mussina
Roy Halladay
Tim Lincecum
Daisuke Matsuzaka
AJ Burnett
Gavin Floyd

Looks pretty good to me. The three Cy Young guys, Webb, Lincecum, and Lee, find themselves on both lists.

* * *

Alas, Ryno, you lost me on the last one, the Marquis/Harden thing. And I think Zima fits the joke far better than Boon’s, don’t you?

Buddy, indeed, I was ‘dying laughing’ when I read the ‘interview’. Thank you. You spend more time at that site reciting me than anything else. I hate to disappoint you, but I won’t be providing much new material in the future. I’m pretty much over the blogging thing. I don’t have as much time lately, and when I do… I hate wasting it on fucking baseball.

I’m surprised I even took the time to do this one. But, you deserved a response. Your post was great.

Fairly soon, it’ll be ‘Goodbye Horses’ for me. Or, in other words, goodbye dumb hick faggot statheads who are good for nothing but talking shit.

So that was basically his going away post and he wrote about this site in some way or another.  Priceless.

Desipio (dolan) says he knows a guy who says Peavy to the Cubs is basically a done deal and, wait for it, Ryan Theriot is going to San Diego.

There’s not way. It’s impossible.

There’s not way. It’s impossible.

Yea, that’s like 20 cents on the dollar for Peavy.

Yea, that’s like 20 cents on the dollar for Peavy.

That’s about all Peavy will get, J.  He’s not worth a whole lot to a team that can only trade him to a couple of teams when that team MUST trade him.  the Padres are fucked and there’s nothing they can do about it.  Whatever deal they get will be a shitty one.

I was mentioned. Fun.

  Whatever deal they get will be a shitty one.

Ryan Theriot for Jake Peavy, that’s crazy shit.

Solomon Torres retired so the brewers bullpen just got worse again.

Well i suppose Cedeno could be the SS.  But seriously….

I would assume if Theriot is gone then the cubs will go after Furcal.  That almost certainly means no Dempster and no Wood and it may even mean DeRosa in RF with Fontenot at 2nd base.

Why would you expect Al to be logical or to, you know, have a clue about this game?  What’s wrong with you?  This is a new low point for you.

I’m sorry.

I would assume if Theriot is gone then the cubs will go after Furcal.  That almost certainly means no Dempster and no Wood and it may even mean DeRosa in RF with Fontenot at 2nd base.

Marquis can always be traded to help free up some payroll. I read somewhere that DeRosa could potentially be put on the market for a RF.

I mentioned last night that the Cubs could trade DeRosa, but I’d be surprised to see it happen.  Between Marquis and DeRosa they do have some payroll flexibility though.  If they could find some insane team to take fukudome they’d have a lot more.

Gammons just said he still thinks Peavy ends up with the Braves.

It doesn’t really matter.

In a surreal moment, Rich Hill just got Matt Murton to ground into a double play.  Murton just joined Caracas, apparently.

If Peavy goes to Atlanta, or what Gammons thinks?

Ryno’s one of those Cubs fans who thinks the Cubs could have the AL All-star team and they’d still fail to win it all.  So “it doesn’t matter” is that it won’t help the Cubs win because nothing can.

eight straight balls to put two on with two out, but after a stern talking to by the manager or pitching coach (not sure which), he got the next batter on a generous third strike.

He threw two nice curveballs, one a first pitch strike, but you could see he was missing spots with the fastball, only threw one cutter, and suddenly, dropped his arm a little (or so it looked) once, and then it seemed his tempo was too fast.  Fragile.

Yeah, fragile is a nice way to describe it.  I hate getting into the psychology aspect of baseball, but if there was ever a head case, it’s Rich Hill. 

how many innings so far, HP?

Certainly better than his last start, but still not good at all.

I remember reading some SI article back in like 2005 where some anonymously cited scout was talking about how Rich Hill’s mechanics—particularly how high his front shoulder is delivering the ball—would keep him from ever having good control on a long-term basis, that his delivery was too awkward to be repeatable, and that he would always walk too many batters to be successful. Seeing what’s happened to him this year, that explanation makes a lot of sense to me. Not that I know anything about pitching mechanics.