Friday, September 22, 2006

WWID?

As this may be one of my last Cubs posts (probably thankfully for everyone) I thought I'd put in my two cents as to how I would fix the Cubs right now.

First, here are the players back next year: Derrek Lee, Michael Barrett, Ryan Theriot, Matt Murton, Ronny Cedeno, Cesar Izturis, Zambrano, Rich Hill, Eyre, Howry, Dempster. Most of the bullpen, if not all of them, are under contract. Which I'm fine with.

Here are some of the things I would do.

1. Make sure Aramis doesn't leave Chicago. I don't care how slow he started off the season, he tore shit up in spring training, and he's tearing shit up now. He's probably one of the top 5 third basemen in baseball, and you know at the end of the season he's going to be around .290 with 30 hr's and around 100 rbi's.

2. Let Juan Pierre go. He's fast, yes, and he has stolen a lot of bases, which the Cubs haven't had in a long time. But they're still not scoring any more runs. I know part of that is due to Dusty Baker having no concept of how to play the game of baseball, but Juan doesn't get on base all that often. And when he does, it's pretty much only with a hit. It's nice to see his average approaching .300, but that just means he'll want even more of a raise. Let him go.

Bring in Gary Matthews, Jr. I was disappointed we had to let him go in his first tour with the Cubs, but we had Corey Patterson waiting in the wings and Sarge Jr. was only hitting about .215. Damn could he field though. Well, now he's hitting above .300. While I don't expect him to replicate this next year (although it would be great if he did), he's still a better fielding outfielder than Pierre, and after a quick check, his OBP is nearly 50 points higher. .377. I'd much rather have that than Pierre. Matthews is all-around better this year, and it sounds like he'd be welcome to returning to the Cubs, and I'd love to have him, regardless of his performance next year because he seems to get it now.

3. Get rid of Jacque Jones. Some people think that his hitting has made up for his poor fielding and baserunning. But I disagree. I think if you need an excuse to make it ok for a player to miss the cut off man every single time he throws the ball and to make the final out of an inning while on the bases, the player should be gone. Sosa couldn't hit the cut off man, but luckily he hit 60 home runs and had 130+ rbi's. I don't see Jacque being as productive. Also, he's a terrible hitter early in the count, he doesn't look at pitches, and he doesn't hit lefties. So we're paying $4.5 million to a dude who is basically in a platoon in right field.

Get Carlos Lee or Alfonso Soriano. Hell, get both, package Jones and Cedeno somewhere for a 3rd pitcher. We've got Z, we've got Rich Hill, we've probably got someone like Sean May or Juan Mateo or Angel Guzman should he ever find the strike zone as 4's and 5's, so let's get a solid third pitcher. Give Soriano the option to play second or outfield, move Murton to right. Murton seems to have the desire to get better, and I can see him trying to improve his fielding/throwing. So let him play out there. Remember Brant Brown? He was notorious for having a lead glove, and then one season he improved enough to play center. And he was great until he separated his shoulder and was never the same.

4. This is obvious, fire the coaching staff. I don't care who we bring in, as long as they have a reputation for coaching players (especially younger players) while not upsetting the veterans. There can be nothing worse than this group of coaches. But make sure they can improve talent so we can bring up Felix Pie (if we only get one outfielder and it's not Matthews) to play center and understand taking pitches. Also, make sure the pitching coach emphasizes throwing strikes.

5. Bring in Barry Zito. I don't really need to explain it, but if we can have 2, maybe 3 lefties in the rotation, and a 1,2 of the big Z's (like how I already nicknamed them?) then I would almost say that we'd have a team that could (gasp) contend.

I don't expect most of this stuff to happen. In fact, the only thing that seems fairly certain now is that Baker is gone after this season. I'm just happy that he's stayed around long enough to make a mockery out of this team for 2 straight seasons, while Hendry does little to improve the team. Oh, also, keep Henry Blanco. The man is a machine, and he's by far the best backup catcher in the league. And he knows how to control Carlos, which is amazing.

Here's to next year.

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