Archive - Nov 2005

With a PTBNL sent to the Cubs in return. The brief announcement can be found here. Leicester, 26, has not yet figured out how to get out left-handed hitters, as his career line of .391/.513/.641/1.153 indicates. But I think the real ground for his relocation is that in 2005 he couldn't get out right-handed hitters, either. 2004: .200/.221/.314/.536 2005: .238/.393/.429/.821

As expected, Lee got jobbed out of the MVP and ended up third behind Albert Pujols and Andruw Jones. I can live with losing to Pujols, it was a tossup between the two and team records were going to give Pujols the push. But worst of all, Lee only received one first place vote and only one second place vote. Absurdity, in my opinion. Actually the whole vote was an absurdity.

Buried in a Sun-Sentinel article, this gem:

"The Braves and Cubs are among the teams that have contacted Marlins free agent shortstop Alex Gonzalez."

Yes, by all means let's have the Cubs' fallback position be one of the few shortstops Neifi looks good against. Gonzalez, career: 896 G, 245/291/391 Neifi, career: 1,262 G, 270/301/380

No surprise, but Jim Hendry has let Nomar's agent know that he should try to "find a better fit" for Nomar elsewhere. There's the usual "door is still open" stuff, but this is a pretty clear indication that Garciaparra won't be back with the Cubs. It closes the door on a chapter in Nomar's career, and the Cubs' history, that could have been so, so much better. Final stats for Garciaparra in a Cubs uniform:

Well at least I haven't woken up to the headlines of "Jose Macias signed to lifetime contract by Cubs" yet. Give it time. Don't forget to check out the Free Agent Frenzy contest we're piggy-backing off of MLB.com. It's the post right below this one. A fun little game to see where you think some of this year's free-agent class will land.

MLB.com is sponsoring another year of Free Agent Frenzy. They give you a list of the top 15 free agents in their opinion and you rank them by team and by confidence level. Winner gets free opening day tickets. Try to use the comments to ONLY post your own picks. (So don't go looking at the comments and then posting your picks, please do that first) Once all the players on the list sign, I'll try and calculate a winner. I'll figure out a prize later. Signing period begins tomorrow so get your picks in quick!!! You can view mine after the jump:

Not much going on, but we're over 100 comments on the last post, so I thought I'd give you all a fresh canvas. So that today's post isn't totally content-free here's what Pro Sports Daily has to say about the Cubs: * Hideki Matsui might be interested in signing with the Cubs. An interesting possibility if he can handle right field and doesn't want a $10M contract. * The Cubs might be one of 20+ teams in the mix for A.J. Burnett. I'm not interested for the money he'll command.