Final Thoughts on Chicago Sports

Cubs trade Hart and Ascanio to Pirates

The Cubs traded Kevin Hart and Jose Ascanio today to the Pirates for John Grabow and Tom Gorzelanny. I don't know about this trade. If you ask me, Hart has been awfully good for this team. Three wins in three starts since the break while Dempster/Lilly were on the shelf.  And Ascanio has pretty decent stuff and seemed overall pretty competant as well. Gorzelanny, who the Cubs obtained, is a little older and has been a solid starter for the Bucs. One of those league average types that looks OK but really he only looks good because he's been on the Pirates. If he's on the Cubs he's a six or seven, only starting if multiple guys are on the DL. Basically, an older version of Hart.  Grabow is a solid lefty reliever, maybe a tick better than Marshall. That''s useful, but is that a good enough haul for the potential of Hart and Ascanio? We'll see.

In the grand scheme of things, I guess you can say it's a push if not an outright win for the Cubs, because the team is slightly better right now and none of the arms given up will ever be the next Maddux or even the next Marmol.  But really, I can't say with absolute confidence that the Pirate duo will ever contribute more than Hart has in the last two weeks. He's been that good. 

Oh, and I didn't even mention that the Cubs also threw in a (marginal) prospect. If Ascanio, Hart or the prospect turns out to be even league average for two seasons, this trade will be regarded as a loss for the team. But even if its not, it's not like this trade is a home run and my biggest fear is that the cubs are likely done making moves. They simply don't have the prospects to land anyone other than a fringe reliever or two.  Mission accomplished?  We'll see in October.

All-Star Thoughts and some Cubs Grades

Well, the AL won again.  Ho-hum.  Unless you happened to be in St. Louis, these last two days of MLB events were pretty dull.  To witness:

• The HR Derby was a complete and utter bore.  Three hours is about two hours too many, and unless a) you've actually heard of the guy (I'm looking at you, Nelson Cruz), and b), he can get into double-digits (I'm looking at you, Pujols); its just completely void of excitement.  What happened to the good old days?  Where's the McGwires and Sosas and Giambis?  Oh yeah.  For the good of the game, they should let the players juice up for the contest.  I'm begging.
• Then there's the All-Star game.  I love watching the opening lineups, and honestly I don't mind that every team gets at least one representative.  Sure, you end up with a few guys that don't belong and a few guys get snubbed (though not all that many snubs now with a roster size of 33), but its pretty cool to see all the players lined up and see the different uniforms. 
• I also enjoy the first few innings.  Here you generally see the best players in the game, certainly the best pitchers.  But then the managers go a bit haywire and try to cram as many players into the game as they can.  Ultimately, the game is decided by Adam Jones hitting a sac fly off Heath Bell in the 8th inning.  Not exactly a dream matchup there.  I'd like to see a rule tweak so that one starting position player can re-enter the game per inning from the 8th inning on.  Then you might get to see Pujols or Hanley Ramirez batting in the 9th against Mariano Rivera instead of the likes of Jayson Werth and Christian Guzman.  Who would be against this?
• I'm not entirely against the winner of the game determining Home Field advantage in the World Series.  Back in the old days, home field was determined not by best record but by, wait for it, the year.  NL had home field in even years, AL had home field in odd years.  And that's the way it was for about 70 years.  How in the world is that fair?  At least now the game has a little bit of meaning, and I have a compelling reason to stay up and watch Heath Bell blow the game.  What I'd really like to see, however, is Rob Neyer's idea happen.  Home field should be decided by which team wins 2 of 3 categories:
• Better Record.  This one's easy.  Team with the better record wins.  So a team like the Dodgers would have at least one category in their favor.
• Better Overall Interleague Standings.  AL has dominated the last 5-7 years or so. 
• All-Star Game.  AL has won 13 in a row.  The combination of items 2 & 3 would cancel out the Dodgers record, and really, it probably should.  Winning 100 games is much harder in the AL than the NL, and the AL should be rewarded for that.  Just maybe not reward them for the outcome of one exhibition game. 
• The President stayed true to his team and wore his grubby Sox jacket to throw out the first pitch.  I'm no Sox fan, but I gotta admit that was pretty cool.
• Ted Lilly, the Cubs lone representative, didn't pitch.  Bummer for Cubs fans everywhere, including my 4-year-old who has not stopped talking about Lilly the Cubs All-Star for about a week.  Oh well.

Speaking of the Cubs, lets quickly hand out some grades for the first half to the key players:

A:  Randy Wells.  This guy is far exceeding expectations, and he should get serious ROY consideration if he keeps up his current pace.  Of course, I expected absolutely nothing and I've gotten a quality 3rd or 4th starter.  That should tell you a lot about this team.

B:  Derrek Lee, Ted Lilly, Angel Guzman, Micah Hoffpauir, Jake Fox - These are the only other guys who are really exceeding expectations at all, and the latter three weren't expected to be much more than a minor contributor at best. 

C:  Ryan Theriot, Kosuke Fukudome, Reed Johnson, Koyie Hill, Carlos Zambrano, Ryan Dempster, Kevin Gregg, Sean Marshall, Aaron Heilman.  These guys are pretty much all doing about as expected.  Theriot would get a B if it weren't for all the stupid baserunning plays, and Fukudome might rate higher if he showed anything after June 1st.  Demp and Z's expectations might have been a bit higher than what they've actually accomplished in terms of record, but they're not losing because they're pitching poorly.  They're losing because they've gotten virtually zero run support.  I didn't expect all that much from Gregg, or Heilman, sadly, and that's what I've gotten.  Marshall's been solid.

D:  Milton Bradley, Alfonso Soriano, Geovany Soto, Rich Harden, Mike Fontenot - Soriano would get an F- if it weren't for the blistering hot April.  Soto would get a C if it weren't for the ice-cold April (he's actually been pretty close to his old self since May 13, though now he's hurt.)  I still think Bradley might come around, but 21 RBIs is just plain pitiful for a guy who mostly hit cleanup and was brought in to add serious left-handed pop.  I expected a lot more out of Harden and Fontenot.

F:  Carlos Marmol.  He's been mostly awful.  A shell of his former self.  A walk per inning, with practically no signs that he could snap out of it.  This is not good.

Inc:  Aramis Ramirez

Lou:  C.  Eh, I still think he's the best Cubs manager of my lifetime, but that's not saying much.  He seems to be slipping this year.  Occasionally he has a brain fart, but in general he makes the right moves.  The players have just mostly sucked and done it at the worst possible times.  Lou didn't hit 1-for-27 with RISP on that 10-game road trip.  Could he motivate more?  Perhaps.  But really its the players.  Oh, and I have to say that I really dug the Marshall-to-left move the other day.  You can't say you see that every day.

Hendry:  D.  His moves this past offseason have pretty much all bombed.  Sorry, but them's the facts.

I don't advocate in any way firing Lou or Hendry.  Hendry's not perfect, but he's made some stellar deals through the years, and rare is he made to look like the fool.  Back to back division titles reflects well on his tenure.  And Lou mostly gets it right.  My main problem with firing either of these guys is, "who are you going to bring in?"  They've had so many managers and GMs through the years that I have no confidence in them hiring one better than what they've already got.  They might not be great, but they're far better than 95% of the guys that might replace them.  And I have no confidence in the guys doing the hiring.

And so goes the first half of the 2009 season.

Boozer to the Bulls?

ESPN is reporting that a Carlos Boozer to Chicago in a four-team deal is on the table.  They aren't giving specifics of yet, but they are basically reporting Boozer to Chicago, Hinrich to Portland and Tyrus Thomas to Utah.  I don't want to get too excited, because often these types of deals often fizzle out before anything happens.  (Remember Kobe to Chicago?)  It seems the trades that actually get done are never reported in advance and they just show up out of nowhere when made official.  But nevertheless, let's take a look at it.

Hinrich to Portland.  I like the Captain, but he's really just an average or maybe slightly above average player.  Good on defense, OK on offense. Occasional big game.  Lots of heart, though, and he never loafed.  Kind of surpring to see him on the move after watching Ben Gordon bolt for Detroit last week.  Paxson/Forman must have another Two in their sites.  (I did see that they brought back Jannero Pargo on a one-year deal.  Solid move, if incredibly cheap.  Pargo can occasionally come up with one of those 16-point quarters, though his ballhoggedness at times would even make Gordon wince.)

Thomas to Utah.  I still like his potential, but how many years do we have to wait on this guy?  He's been here three years and has maybe 25 or 30 total good games under his belt.  Sure, he can be awfully exciting at times, and occasionally he brings down the house with a monster dunk.  But will he ever average a 20-12 or even 16-10 like Boozer?  I seriously doubt it.  And I can live with his loss.

Boozer to the Bulls.  Great player, much better than both of the guys we're giving up.  20-10 type.  Borderline All-Star, and still young enough to be productive for 4-5 more years, unlike the Ben Wallace acquisition a few years back.  Would look great catching passes from Rose.  The only downside I see is that he is only under contract for the '09-10 season, and he might not be the most trustworthy guy in the world after he renegged on a verbal committment with a blind guy a few years back.  But if they sign him to an extension immediately then there's no worries there.  I guess this type of deal would pull them out of the running for Bosh or Stoudemire, in which case I say "well go after Wade then!" 

Really, this would be a great deal for the Bulls.  I see a lineup/rotation next year like this:

Miller/Noah
Boozer/Johnson
Deng
Salmons/Pargo
Rose

Still might be a little light in the 2-3 positions, but a healthy and productive Deng would ease those concerns quite a bit. 

If this deal falls through, I won't be that disappointed.  We'd just have to turn our attention back to Bosh/Stoudamire, and that's not a bad thing.  Let's see what happens.

Gordon Gone

Ben Gordon is signing a five-year deal worth $55 million dollars to play for the hated Detroit Pistons.  I'm a little saddened by this.  Gordon's not a superstar, or even an All-Star.  He can't play defense to save his life, and he's not much of a passer.  But what he's good at he's great at, and that's scoring.  He can take over games and score on anybody.  He can win two games in a playoff series practically by himself.  He might completely disappear in the other five games, but he really can win two by himself.  Tell me he's not a valuable guy to have around. 

No matter what other moves the Bulls make this offseason, they're destined to be worse next season.  Not necessarily worse than their seven seed, 41-41 record from last year.  But worse than they were for the last six weeks of the season and first round of the playoffs, where they looked to be on the cusp of contending.  Who's going to score for this team?  I think Salmons might be able to pick up some of the slack, but he can't go off like Gordon can.  Unless Rose takes a major step forward, they're moving back. 

Speaking of the draft (?!), the Bulls picked up a couple of guys I never heard of.  So that's why I didn't write about it.  After reading their bios, though, and watching some highlights; I'm somewhat impressed but truthfully I'm more curious about the future of Tyrus Thomas.  Talk about a guy showing flashes.  Every fourth or fifth game, he's a dynamo.  The rest of the time he's a complete non-factor.  Nevertheless, I think the Bulls need to give him one more year.  I'd hate to see him reach his potential in another uni, which really the boat we're in now with Ben. 

Abbreviated Cubs Rants

Lots going on with the Cubs these days. It seems every day inspires another rant.  I could probably go on for 10 pages on each of these topics, but in the interest of time I'll try to be brief.

• DeRosa Traded to St. Louis - Jim Hendry had a chance for a do-over but for whatever reason he couldn't get it done.  Instead, DeRosa lands in hated St. Louis and the Cubs are stuck with tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum for the foreseeable future.  (Who's tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum?  Pick a name out of a hat.)  This one cut deep, but it's not because DeRosa was all that great.  I mean, he was pretty good but the Cubs had nine All-Stars last year and he wasn't one of them.  He was just a solid, likable player who always gave 100% and could play anywhere without a hint of lip.  And now he's in St. Louis.  Yuck.
• Zambrano Blows Up - Big Z had a bit of a meltdown and Phil Rogers suggested that the Cubs should place him on waivers and trade him.  This was such an asinine comment that I don't even know where to begin.  Aside from two games, he's been their best pitcher this year.  And its not like he wilts in high profile situations anymore.  His last two playoff starts were losses but neither were his fault.  Then, a "scientific" web poll on the site suggested that 57% of fans agreed with him.  I call bullshit.  Of their 5,000 "yes" votes, I bet a good two or three thousand were Sox fans just startin shit.  Real Cubs fans don't want him gone.
• All-Stars - All-Star voting ends Thursday, and cubs.com is pushing for Cubs fans to vote in Soriano.  Laughable, to say the least.  One year after sending nine, the Cubs don't deserve any All-Stars this year.  I suppose Lee, Lilly, or maybe even Theriot will get the Cubs lone, default nod; but really nobody should be within 200 miles of St. Louis this year.
• Sam Fuld - Fuld did more tonight than Soriano has done in the last 6 weeks.  Seriously.  And what does that tell you, that some scrappy, fringe major leaguer, fifth outfielder type from AAA shows more spark/heart/hustle than our $136 million dollar supposed superstar.  Pathetic.  I seriously think the Cubs would be better off with a Fox/Johnson/Fuld/Hoffpauir mega-platoon than the Soriano/Bradley combo for the rest of this season. 
• Lou's Eruption - Lou had a rant of his own tonight after a questionable call and got tossed.  It just seemed so tired and rehearsed.  Time to make the donuts...time to yell at an umpire and fire up my team.  Yawn.

Big four game series versus the Brewers starts Thursday.  Sure, it was nice to win 2 of 3 against the Pirates, but it was just the Pirates.  Time to take 3 of 4 against real competition if you want us fans to even think about the postseason.