Elbow loose bodies
Chips Ahoy
According to Sun-Times beat reporter, Gordon Wittenmeyer, with the signing of John Grabow to a 2/7.5 contract (backended as only Jim Hendry can do) and the trading of Aaron Heilman to the Snakes, the Cubs have supposedly made their final bullpen move of the offseason.
The deal appears to secure the final key piece to the Cubs' projected 2010 bullpen, coming one day after the team traded veteran Aaron Heilman to the Arizona Diamondbacks.
I'm pretty happy to see Heilman move out of town but replacing him with Grabow seems kind of blah. It's a Hendry thing to get a grizzled veteran for that 8th inning setup role and since Grabow is able to get lefty and righty hitters out (i.e. not a LOOGY), he's the heir apparent for the crusty veteran out of the bullpen for 2010.
List em. Since Jim Hendry was given the reins to the GM job in 2002, he's added through trade or free agency the following veteran bullpen lugnuts: Antonio Alfonseca, Mike Remlinger, Dave Veres, Mark Guthrie, Alan Benes, Phil Norton, Joe Borowoski, LaTroy Hawkins, Glendon Rusch, Cliff Bartosh, Scott Williamson, Chad Fox (twice), Bob Howry, Scott Eyre, Neal Cotts, Chad Gaudin, Jon Lieber, Luis Vizcaino, Aaron Heilman and lastly Grabow. I'd say for the most part, that's the ugly underbelly of MLB pitching although I know the Cubs are far from being alone in accumulating pitchers like these. Hence, I'm hoping the 2010 Cubs get more out of their young pitching so we don't see Chad Fox (round three?) ever again. Esmalin Caridad, Jeff Stevens and Justin Berg, I'm talking to you. It would be really nice to see productive seasons out of the recent 40 man roster additions including John Gaub, Blake Parker and even longshot/hotshot Raphael Dolis.
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videographer (view)
Here is an interesting thought: There seems to be an assumption that the Cubs had to trade 2 prospects to get Busch with Almonte thrown in to even out the trade. What if the initial trade was Ferris for Busch, but Hoyer wanted Almonte (a cheap RP) and Hope was the ask from the Dodgers. This scenario makes the trade more complicated to ponder the future ramifications.
Arizona Phil (view)
Zyhir Hope and Reggie Preciado were co-MVPs at Cubs AZ Instructs last fall, and every MLB organization had scouts at the AZ Instructs games so Hope was well-known to everybody (and was clearly a Cubs Top 30 prospect with a bullet).
https://www.thecubreporter.com/cubs-2023-arizona-instructional-league-s…
azbobbop (view)
I can’t speak to how many organizations had newfound interest in Zyhir Hope but I did talk to a Dodger scout who told that the Ddodgers always had their on him.
I hardly think of my self as a “scout” but I saw a beautiful smooth left hand swing, easy power, an aggressive base runner as in very limited action, a good defensive player. He certainly caught my attention, moreso than anyone else on the ACL team last year.
George Altman (view)
Ditto. The can DFA him when they activate Taillon.
crunch (view)
cade horton with his 2024 AA debut of 4ip 4h 0bb 4k, 1r/0er is followed up even better...
4ip 1h 1bb 5K, 0r/er
he's still on a pitch count restriction, btw. he probably could have gone 6+ innings in both outings if he was off a leash.
crunch (view)
okay, officially done with hendricks as a starter.
dunno if counsell is there, but i'm there.
Bill (view)
That pretty well sums up the situation. Epstein, the media and the fans became obsessed with the concept of a "window of opportunity" that had to be taken advantage of before it closed. Thus the trade for Quintana, and the trade of Soler for crap.
The way to deal with a "window of opportunity" is not to sacrifice everything to win, but to extend that window. Epstein knew that he was having his best players, Rizzo, Baez and Bryant in the same year, with Contreras the following year, at the same time that the pitching staff was growing elderly and on the verge of declining. A responsible administration would have moved one of the ""core" two years earlier, and a second one the next year, in order to prevent the otherwise necessity of "tanking" when they left at the same time. they had to know that there was no way they could have all been extended, and still leave room for growth.
Other than the Dodgers and the Yankees, no team can maintain a consistent level of production without a consistent flow of high ceiling, low cost controlled young players coming up from the farm. We have lived through the errors of the past, and hopefully have learned enough from them to prevent a reoccurance of it in a few years.
TarzanJoeWallis (view)
I think it was pretty clear that practically all of “the core” was going to be gone after the 2021 season and that utterly gutting the farm system to chase a championship with the same guys year after year until they all departed wasn’t going to end well. That was talked about as early as 2017.
I don’t think it’s hindsight to say they would have been better off from a sustainability standpoint trading some of those pieces for the best prospect packages available and introducing some of the kids. For example, I was hoping real time they would trade Schwarber during the 2016 offseason to an AL team as a DH when the DH was AL only. Fresh off being a WS hero he could have fetched quite a haul. But, alas, he was a member of the vaunted, untouchable “core”.
TarzanJoeWallis (view)
What would have surprised me is the Dodgers, who have traditionally been outstanding in evaluating and developing talent, giving away Busch for nothing. They obviously saw something in both of the guys. Perhaps one or both will be future superstars.
That said, the old cliche is that the level of competition increases ten fold for every level moved up. Ferris and Hope both have a long way to go. We’ll just have to wait and see.
For now, I’m watching Busch put the team on his shoulders while the presumed offensive star of the team flails and doesn’t seem to have a plan beyond “waiting for the numbers to even out”.
I thought it was a good and fair trade at the time - a talented but surplus guy for the Dodgers that filled an immediate need for the Cubs in exchange for potential pieces of the Dodgers future - and I’m awfully glad Busch is a Cub.
First.Pitch.120 (view)
Mostly agree, but I don’t think it was as much “unshakeable faith” as it was a series of unclear choices in the moment that have become obvious with hindsight.
The upside outcome for the coming year for any player was always much higher than the return on selling. It was like Texas Hold’em purgatory of having 4 to an A-K led flush… impossible to get away from.