GDT 8/29/14-Cubs (Hendricks) @ Cardinals (Miller) 7:15 CDT

[Cheddar Tom]

AFAIK, Baez was a Hendry pick, Soler was an international signing (silly for Cards not to get involved) and Alcantara was also international signing.

[Cheddar Tom]

I am jealous of how much the Cubs org. values hitters who have power. Be nice if the Cardinals went searching for that.

[mul21]

Welcome to the board. I can't judge the next 5 years based on what happened in 3 innings tonight. I do not think Moz & Co. is going to sit back and let the Cubs beat them 7-2 every game. I think most people expected some amount of regression from #1 in the NL in runs for the Cards, but I don't think anyone, not even their most pessimistic critics, expected their offense to be this lousy this year. Moz has some work to do.

There was bound to be some significant regression after the ridiculous avg. w/RISP they had last year. And no, you certainly can't take the SSS of tonight for anything more than it was, but the track records of these guys in the minors is pretty amazing.

My biggest question with the Cards is will they continue to be able to produce cheap talent with Luhnow gone? They certainly have an outstanding development system in place, but you still have to pick the right guys to take advantage of that and I suspect he was better at it than most. I guess we'll find out if Houston ends up with good players in spite of blowing their last 2 #1 picks.

[Cheddar Tom]

@JoeStrauss: Cubs' 4 HR's tonight equals Cards output in last 441 AB's. Home ninth approaching.

[go birds]

I think we can all agree that matheny and co. need to go

[slide_into_first]

We really could have used Shane Robinson's bat tonight.

[Magneto2.0]

It's ok to admit the cubs are gonna be awesome soon.

Or, you know, we could wait for the games to be played.

Yeah I have no idea why people are so ready to concede that the Cubs will be good because they have good prospects. We've seen teams loaded with more prospects than the Cubs currently have and never do anything. It seems like people are doing it as a defense mechanism to prepare themselves just in case it happens.

[Magneto2.0]

I know it's been mentioned before but the Cubs and Mets would be perfect trade partners. Cubs have a ton of young hitters and no pitching, the Mets have a ton of young pitching and no offense.

cubs can get decent pitching on the free agent market....why should they trade their prospects

They can get high upside, cost controlled young arms

With money they can get free agents and keep all the bats. Which means they can continue to beat the Cards 7-2 on a regular basis. Also, young pitchers break all the time and are for the birds.

Scared money don't make money. Pitchers in general break all the time, young or old, but give me the cost controlled with high upside over the 30+ that I have to pay 20 Million a year to any day. I don't see why they couldn't give up a hitter for say a Zack Wheeler or a Syndergaard

[Transmogrified Tiger]

The big reason they probably won't make a trade like that is when you boil it down to real value, the caliber of hitter they'd be giving up is worth closer to Wheeler AND Syndergaard, and no GM is going to be bold enough to admit their pitchers are far closer to lottery tickets than people would like to admit.

Personally, I'm fascinated to see what they'll do this offseason. They have the best collection of hitting prospects ever from a single MLB team, with 3 already promoted and 2 more that rate as good or better to follow next year(joining Rizzo and Castro who are only now turning 25). They have a bunch of potential options to fill out the back end of the rotation, between guys that are pitching well(Hendricks/Wada), guys with past success who could bounce back(Wood/Jackson), and guys with good stuff/pedigree and a little MLB success(Turner/Straily/Doubront). Without raising the payroll from their admitted threshold of the last few seasons, they'll have roughly 40-45 million to spend. The interesting part is that they'll be forced with decisions that are not hyper-efficient in a vacuum in order to take advantage of all they have. Counting on a half dozen hitting prospects is probably not the best bet even if you have the best player development ever. Signing a Lester or Scherzer is signing up for a lot of dead money come 2018 or so. Trading hitting prospects for a young pitcher is a similar exercise in forfeiting expected future value. Trading prospects for Stanton may seem unnecessary if Soler continues to look even half as good as he has since getting healthy this summer. The only constant is that they'll have to do *something*.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

It's ok to admit the cubs are gonna be awesome soon.

Or, you know, we could wait for the games to be played.

Yeah I have no idea why people are so ready to concede that the Cubs will be good because they have good prospects. We've seen teams loaded with more prospects than the Cubs currently have and never do anything. It seems like people are doing it as a defense mechanism to prepare themselves just in case it happens.

No one is conceding that the cubs have done anything other than assemble a scary good collection of prospects to go along with Rizzo/Castro. If the scouting reports/projections are right, the cubs will have the best lineup in the NL, probably MLB, in a few years. All you can really do is hope the projections are wrong. It's not a defense mechanism as much as it is an acknowledgement that of what they are doing/reality.

I defy you to find a team loaded with more hitting prospects than the cubs currently have that never did anything.