First: “If you want to know the deeper reason why Sammy Sosa no longer will be with us, it’s because he loved himself to death.”
Sosa’s displays of selfishness, much more than his decline in performance, turned him into someone that was no longer fun to cheer for.
Second: “The success of the trade does not depend on how Sosa plays for the Orioles this season. . . . Moving Sosa is the right thing now and forever. He walked out on his teammates. End of story.”
I would only qualify that statement in this way: He walked out on his teammates, and never showed contrition. End of story.Here’s what I wrote back in October:
I want Sosa disciplined. And I have no idea what I want with regard to Sosa being in a Cubs uniform next year. I used to think I’d always want him back, overpaid or not (the Trib Co. can afford it). This latest episode, though, where he walked out on his team and then lied about it is quite despicable. Show some contrition, Sammy. I’ll cheer for you again. If not, thanks, and goodbye.
Third: “[T]hat it came to this is one of the strangest and saddest stories in Chicago sports history.”
Sosa—the guy who had all the fun next to the dreary Mark McGwire during The Great Home Run Race of ‘98—was the king of post-23 Chicago. And it’s come to this. Booed in his last season (and not because of performance issues), and then gifted to Baltimore with nary a cry from the Wrigley faithful.
Chicago has had a long string of mega-stars. Walter Payton. Michael Jordan. Sammy Sosa. It’s without one for the first time since 1975.
The Chicago Cubs were close to agreement on a trade to send unhappy slugger Sammy Sosa to the Baltimore Orioles, several high-ranking baseball officials told The Associated Press.
Medical tests and approval from commissioner Bud Selig and the players’ association remain unresolved, the officials said Friday night, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Cubs would pay a substantial part of Sosa’s $17 million salary this season, the executives said. Sosa would agree to void his salary in 2006, they also said.
In exchange, Chicago would receive second baseman Jerry Hairston Jr. and at least two prospects.
Those better be some pretty good prospects.
UPDATE (11:25pm): Questions that immediately pop to mind: If the Cubs do in fact trade Sosa, does that mean they’ve checked out Magglio Ordonez’s knee and are sufficiently satisfied to consider paying what he appears to be asking for? And if Hairston comes to the Cubs, how long before Dusty Baker starts reducing Todd Walker’s at-bats, given that Hairston has the speed advantage?
UPDATE II (11:45pm):Baseball Musings concurs about how good the prospects need to be for this to work for the Cubs.
UPDATE III (1/29/05 12:05pm):Northside Lounge has analysis of the trade, including a look at the rumored prospects involved—minor league pitcher David Crouthers and minor league second baseman Mike Fontenot. They aren’t much to get excited about.
UPDATE IV (1/29/05 12:15pm):Derek Smart at The Cub Reporterconsiders the possibility that the two prospects will immediately be traded elsewhere. He also likes the idea of Hairston hitting leadoff. I’m less open to the idea. While Hairston did post a .378 OBA last year, his career OBA is at .334, right around league average. And given his lack of power, I have a difficult time envisioning Hairston putting up better production in left than a Hollandsworth/Dubois platoon.
1. Brian Dopirak, 1b
2. Felix Pie, of
3. Ryan Harvey, of
4. Angel Guzman, rhp
5. Billy Petrick, rhp
6. Renyel Pinto, lhp
7. Sean Marshall, lhp
8. John Leicester, rhp
9. Grant Johnson, rhp
10. Jason Dubois, of/1b
Guzman was #1 last year. Shoulder problems have slowed him down.
Callis concludes: “Chicago’s farm system isn’t as strong as it was when it ranked among the game’s top three after the 2000-02 seasons, but it’s still one of baseball’s better collections of talent.”
The New York Yankees announced the signing of 32-year-old minor league veteran infielder Russ Johnson, who played for the Iowa Cubs last year, and who I have suggested would have more appropriately filled the Neifi Perez or Jose Macias role on the Cubs this year.
The Cubs have stated an interest in Magglio Ordonez. But they almost certainly won’t be able to sign him to a Nomar-like deal—1 year for a relatively modest amount of money so he can prove he’s fully healthy. The San Jose Mercury News picks up a Fort Worth Star-Telegram report (T.R. Sullivan, “Agent puts high price on Ordonez,” 1/25/2005) stating that the “power hitting outfielder is not willing to accept a one-year contract and a reduced salary well below the $14 million he made with the Chicago White Sox in 2004.”
Whichever team signs him—the article mentions the Rangers, Tigers, Orioles, Mets, and Blue Jays as all interested—is going to have to be awfully certain that Ordonez’s knee is healthy.
Despite a rotator cuff injury that slowed his career for most of 2003-04, Cubs minor-leaguer Angel Guzman remains the top prospect in the organization. ‘He’s finally back to where we want him to be,’ Cubs director of player development Oneri Fleita said of Guzman, who went 0-3 with a 5.60 earned-run average in 17 innings last season at double-A West Tennessee but is 28-19 lifetime in the minors with a 2.90 ERA.
One of the reasons the Cubs were willing to give Michael Barrett a three-year contract had to have been that there are no catchers in the Cubs’ minor league system even close to being a major league starter. Part of the problem is the slow developments of the 2003 draft pick catchers—Jake Fox (3rd round) and Tony Richie (4th).
Both catchers were called up to low-A Lansing in their first years of professional ball. Fox, 22, repeated at Lansing last year, hitting a solid but unspectacular .287/.331/.470. He should be the catcher at high-A Dayton or possibly AA West Tennessee next year, but he likely won’t be knocking on the door of a big league job until Barrett’s third year, if at all.
Richie, 22, went down to short season Boise last year and hit .314/.373/.389. He’s hit just 1 home run in 227 minor league at-bats after hitting 13 his final year at Florida State.
Yesterday, the Chicago Sun-Times (Mike Kiley, “Hendry choosing words carefully,” 1/18/2004) quoted Jim Hendry as saying, “We are going to give Ryan Dempster an opportunity to do [be the closer] in spring training, if nothing else changes. LaTroy Hawkins did a terrific job in the eighth last year and didn’t have quite as much luck in the ninth. In fairness to him, with Joe Borowski and Kyle Farnsworth being hurt, Hawk was put in a tough situation where he had to be overworked to a degree.”
In tomorrow’s Chicago Tribune (Dave Van Dyck, “Baker: Priority No. 1 is Sosa talk,” 1/20/2004), however, Dusty Baker is quoted as saying, “Everybody talks about Dempster, but we don’t know if he can do it; he never has done it. Joe Borowski might be healthy, we don’t know yet. And LaTroy Hawkins might be more experienced than last year. He certainly has the stuff. . . LaTroy will be better if he knows the league himself.”
“Everybody” is talking about Dempster as the closer because that’s what Baker’s boss is talking about. Baker and Hendry aren’t always on the same page, though, and this may be another example. On this issue, I think Baker will win out.
The Cubs have their catcher for the next three seasons. They avoided arbitration with Michael Barrrett by signing him to a 3-year, $12M contract, reports the AP. They also avoided arbitration with Corey Patterson and Kyle Farnsworth by signing them both to 1-year deals. Patterson’s contract is for $2.8M, a big raise from last year’s $480K, when he wasn’t eligible for arbitration. And demonstrating the strange nature of baseball contracts, Farnsworth received a half-a-million dollar raise to $1.975M, despite posting a 96 ERA+ last year (his 4th below average ERA in 6 major league seasons).
The Cubs also made a nice no-risk, potential big reward signing of Scott Williamson. Williamson, who had elbow surgery in October, received a minor league contract and an invitation to spring training.
UPDATE (9:40pm): Regarding Williamson, it’s unclear what the invitation to spring training is for. As Dan Szymborski writes at Baseball Think Factory, “still injured and it’s unlikely that he’ll step on a field this season. The Cubs are just throwing a little bit of money his way to get first in line to supervise his recovery and try to sign him for 2006. After all, Williamson was a really good pitcher.”
And the Boston Herald reportedDr. Tim Kremchek as saying after the surgery, “‘I couldn’t believe what I saw,'’ said Kremchek, who is the Cincinnati Reds team physician. ‘It looked like a grenade had gone off in there. The damage was far worse that the MRIs or any examination alluded to.’” This was also his second Tommy John surgery. He had one in 2001 as well. Still, Williamson was expected to “begin throwing off a mound in six months and be ready to return to action in 9-10 months.” 10 months would put him at ready to go in August.
The Chicago Tribune reports today (Fred Mitchell, “Cubs plan an unstitch in time”) that the Cubs have “decided to remove the names from the backs of the Cubs’ home jerseys in an effort to revisit early baseball tradition.” Names will remain on the road uniforms.
Cubs Chronicle responds to a article from Rick Morissey about the Cubs not pushing hard enough for Beltran. While Cubs Chronicle says he is glad the Cubs did not go as far as the Mets, the whole point Morissey tries to make is that the Cubs were delusional into thinking a top flight free agent would actually want to come to Chicago.
It seems to me that Morrissey didn’t have one point, but at least a couple: First, that the Cubs should have fought for Beltran like the Mets fought for him. It was this point that I discussed (and disagreed with) in my post.
Second, that the Cubs expect free agents to come to them, rather than the Cubs having to work to get them to want to come to Chicago’s north side.
Morrissey then fuses the two points into this: the Cubs didn’t fight for Beltran because they were arrogant and foolish enough to think he’d just come to them.
I didn’t address the second point or the fusion of the two points because they didn’t interest me. They read like column filler. Like a local columnist making a negative and provocative point for the sake of being negative and provocative, because he wants people to talk about what he says (which in turn helps him keep his job).
We spent all those weeks thinking about what Beltran would look like in a Cubs uniform, when being comatose would have been a much better use of our time. Beltran apparently is off to the Mets. Just like that. Without much of a fight from the Cubs.
If the Cubs didn’t believe Beltran was the franchise player other teams thought he was, that would be one thing. Then we’d be having a broader discussion on scouting. The Cubs’ decision would have been based solely on talent evaluation. You could respect that, even if you might not agree with it.
But the Cubs obviously think Beltran is a star. Otherwise they wouldn’t have made him a five-year, $75 million offer. The Mets and Beltran agreed in principle Sunday on a seven-year, $119 million deal.
The Cubs had to know their offer wasn’t going to be nearly enough, but they made it anyway. So this was all about money and wishful thinking, as it almost always is, and the Cubs came up short, as they historically have been known to do.
So, apparently, the Cubs were to just hand Beltran a contract and say, “Here, there’s a blank for ‘years’ and a blank for ‘dollars’. Kindly fill them in.”
ChicagoSports.com—the web site of the Chicago Tribune sports section—now has what it is calling a blog. It’s called “What’s Goin’ On.” But is it really a blog if it doesn’t link to other blogs and doesn’t even have permanent links to the posts?
