FanNation - The Republic of Sport

I tried to blog about something besides baseball, but talking about the Bears just became too frustrating. I contemplated blogging about that other kind of football (soccer), because I've been following the current EPL with as much interest as I've had because my favorite team, Liverpool, is currently top of the table and starting to look like a real title contender -- although I'm still not convinced that they will hang on. So having failed at talking about any sport besides baseball, it is now time to jump back into the fray, and rather than starting with one of my two favorite teams, I'm going to start off with one of my "local" teams, the Cubs. Why? Because the moves the Cubs have made have been more fascinating to me than anything I've seen a team do in a single offseason since the Yankees over-haul after falling short in 2001. This is not to suggest that I'm warming to the Cubs at all. It is actually kind of the opposite -- I question the "brain trust" more than ever these days, and given that I'm married to one of the world's biggest Cubs fans, I'm not looking forward to what I predict will be a major step backwards in 2009. We all know how 2008 turned out. A fantastic regular season was basically ruined by a playoff flop. I wish I could say that the Cubs choked, but using that work implies that at some point during the NLDS they gave the impression of being able to win the series. I don't think they did that aside from maybe an inning or two during game 1. Flop is the most accurate word to use, and I don't say that to needle any Cubs fans that want to read this as a comment made by a bitter Cards fan. You knew there would be changes in the offseason. The Cubs have followed a very "Steinbrennarian" philosophy over the past few off-seasons. They've brought in big time free agents (Soriano), signed a Japanese import (Fukudome), overpaid for middle of the rotation starters (Lilly, Marquis) and signed veterans cast off from other teams (Edmonds). They've also tried to be active in the trading market, which brought them Rich Harden last season -- arguably the best pitcher that was on the market after CC Sabathia. The other facet for that type of philosophy, though, is that you have very little patience to see if something is going to work. I understand that we're at 100 years and counting, so patience may be a poor choice of words here. But throwing more money at a "problem" instead of choosing to spend the money a bit more wisely rarely works. For all the talk of the Yankees being able to afford mistakes, they haven't won a World Series since 2000, although they have lost two of them to expansion teams. They have also committed the biggest collapse in playoff history and failed to make the playoffs last year with the highest payroll in baseball. The ultimate lesson is that spending big bucks based on past performance doesn't always seem to translate into future success for your team. Which brings me to the Cubs offseason. It all started with the trade of Jose Ceda to the Marlins for Kevin Gregg. It is true that Gregg has saved roughly 60 games the last two years on a club that has, at times, struggled to find wins. It is also true that some of those losses might have been wins were it not for Gregg. You never want the GM of your team to overvalue that prospect that is supposed to be the next star at the expense of the guy that might be the missing link, but I will say this about Ceda. By and large, if I've seen a pitcher in the minors, I usually only remember him after the fact -- as in "Oh, hey I didn't realize we saw player X pitch for that single A team." But Ceda is a guy I remember seeing. I saw him pitch for the Peoria Chiefs in 2007, and remember the moment vividly. During his warmup, the ball was zipping into the catchers mitt, and the sound was unlike anything I'd heard while watching that level of baseball. He was consistently above 95 mph with his fastball, threw mostly strikes and topped out at 103 mph. He'll probably end up closing for the Marlins one day. Gregg wouldn't be so terrifying if he were helping to fortify the bullpen, or just brought on to replace Bob Howry. But the Cubs let Kerry Wood go, and didn't put much of a fight to keep him. If Wood's final quotes are to be believed, he would have taken less money to stay with the Cubs than he got to go to the Indians. You can't help but be happy for the guy after the few ups and many downs he's seen in his career. This isn't like losing Mariano Rivera, but it might be like the Astros giving up on Brad Lidge before his rebound last season. I worry that if Gregg is the man for the 9th inning, then they'll have to drop the extra 'g' because his name will be a 4 letter word. The next big move was trading away Mark DeRosa. His value on the trade market will probably never be higher than it was this offseason, and on top of that, you brought in a comparable player in Aaron Miles that may not be as versatile or have as much pop, but will offer better defense and is a switch hitter, so there is another left handed bat available. The big plus is that the Cubs weakened their biggest rival, St. Louis, and took a big piece of their puzzle away. The dominoes continue to fall -- it sounds as if the deal to send Marquis to the Rockies for Luis Vizcaino is close to being done and we learned yesteday that Milton Bradley would accept a 3 year/$30 million deal to play right field for the Cubs. These deals look great on paper. If Bradley even comes close to replicating his 2008 numbers, then any Cubs fan is going to be thrilled with this deal. But you flip over Bradley's baseball card, and you can't help but wonder why he's played for so many teams. There is usually a reason that a guy becomes well travelled, and it usually boils down to him either not being very good, or being such a jerk that you can't live with his talent. I worry that Bradley will be the latter. Vizcaino has had some success, but once again, has been with enough teams now to be that well travelled guy. At best, he's bullpen depth, but a realistic thought is that he might be that guy that you don't want to see enter a game. Now, if the Cubs can still find a way to get a deal for Jake Peavy done, then things change, and I think that rotation would make up for some of the question marks the team has. The NL Central looks to be getting weaker by the day, and so I still think the Cubs are the team to beat in the division. But, unlike last year, I would not be shocked to see this team underperform and end up being just good enough to come up a few games short of the playoffs.