Good Bye D-Lee

If you have followed my blog, particularly last year, you know that D-Lee was the subject of my ire much of last season; he was a distant #2 to Jim Hendry for putting this mess together in the first place. Well, today I got my wish even if it happened a year late...the Cubs officially traded D-Lee. Surprisingly, they actually received 3 minor leaguers from the Braves in return including their 16th ranked player. With only 40 games left in the season, his last one of his big 5-year contract, it certainly works better that they actually received compensation beyond the the dreaded "bag of balls".

I'm a little concerned with the "cash considerations" phrase I keep hearing and reading tonight as I just don't understand that concept...it's not like the Braves are doing this huge favor, is it? Same thing with the Dodgers and Ted Lilly (now 3-0 with 1.89 ERA for them)...WHY are the Cubs paying ANY of the money owed to these traded players? Apparently, it's part of "the game" I guess as it seems to happen every time one of these trades happen so I know I shouldn't be surprised.

Here's a quick little history of D-Lee with the Cubs:

• D-Lee made himself right at home here in the NLCS while on his way to winning the World Series with his former team - the Florida Marlins
• D-Lee was "stolen" from the Marlins in an off-season salary dump trade to the Cubs for Hee-Seop Choi and a minor leaguer before the 2004 season
• With the addition of D-Lee and Greg Maddux, the Cubs were the overall favorites to win the World Series - didn't even make the playoffs as the folded down the stretch
• 2003-04 was the first time the Cubs finished about .500 in consecutive seasons since 1972 which was the 6th straight season they finished above .500
• D-Lee's numbers in 2004 were nearly identical to his 2003 Marlins number, with the exception of post-season numbers obviously
• The Cubs finished with a better record than 2003, but finished 3rd in the NL Central and watched the Red Sox break the Curse of the Bambino while winning their first World Series in 86 years
• Cubs non-World Series streak reaches 96 years
• D-Lee had a HUGE year winning his only batting title to date, nearly winning the MVP (finished 3rd behind Pujols who won and Andruw Jones who finished 2nd), making his first All-Star Game, winning his second Gold Glove and earning his only Silver Slugger (tough to beat out Albert Pujols)
• The Cubs were not very good finishing 4 games under .500 leaving them in 4th place while watching their cross-town rivals break their streak by winning their first World Series in 88 years
• Cubs non-World Series streak reaches 97 years
• D-Lee broke his wrist on a freak play when Rafael Furcal (who the Cubs very nearly signed that off-season) crashed into Lee near 1st base
• Lee played a career low 50 games which "helped" push the Cubs to 96 losses and led to Dusty Baker being fired
• Lou Piniella was hired to replace Dusty Baker (should have hired Joe Girardi who was unceremoniously fired by the Florida Marlins even though he won the Manager of the Year)
• D-Lee came back from the freak wrist injury but was not quite the same player at least from a power standpoint dropping from 46 HRs and 107 RBIs in 2005 to 22 HRs and 82 RBIs in 2007
• Cubs turned it around in Lou's first season winning the NL Central just as they did for Dusty in 2003
• This time, no "magic" in the post-season for the Cubs getting swept by the Dodgers in the NLDS
• D-Lee hit .333 in the series but had zero RBIs
• Cubs non-World Series streak reaches 99 years
• D-Lee nearly duplicated 2007 regular season numbers in 2008
• Cubs won 97 games earning the #1 seed in the NL for the playoffs
• This was the first time since 1908 that the Cubs made the post-season two seasons in a row
• Cubs were again swept by the Dodgers in the NLDS
• D-Lee his .545 in the series but again had zero RBIs
• Of course, this was the dreaded 100-year anniversary of when the Cubs last won the World Series
• D-Lee was about the only bright spot from last year's 2009 Cubs team finishing with a career high 111 RBIs while hitting 35 HRs and batting .306
• The Cubs did finish above .500 for the third straight season, but finished 2nd in the NL Central and missed the playoffs
• 101 years and counting for the Cubs last World Series title
• D-Lee REALLY struggled during this 2010 season from start to "finish"; combining with Aramis Ramirez' career worst year completely doomed the Cubs
• D-Lee finished his nearly 7-year run with the Cubs hitting .251 which was his worst since 1999
• Before hitting 4 HRs against the Cards last weekend (very timely as far as this trade happening), he was sitting on 12 HRs for the year having hit only 2 in the previous 8 weeks
• Of course in "typical" D-Lee fashion, all 4 HRs this past weekend were solo shots
• Actually, 10 of his 16 HRs this year were solo leading to a pathetic RBI total of 56 through 120 games

During his exit press conference, he said his "experience was nothing but positive" referring to his nearly 7 years in Chicago and that he "grew as a player, grew as a person" but he "didn't achieve the ultimate goal". D-Lee was a very respected player and considered a clubhouse leader...in that sense, he will certainly be missed. His anti-clutchness will not be missed...at least not by me. I don't know a way to figure out how to come up with the following stat, but I'd like to see where he falls in regard to RBIs per HR...his career 162-game average is 90 RBIs and 28 HR. While 28 HRs is a very respectable total (no, he is definitely NOT Albert Pujols - there's only ONE of those guys!) but barely exceeding 3 RBIs per HR just doesn't seem like a lot to me. Out of his 309 career HRs, 191 of them have been solo shots (62%) so it isn't like this year's performance (62.5%) is an aberration. I looked up a few other guys and this is what I found:
     Aramis Ramirez - 281 total HRs, 143 solo (51%)
     Sammy Sosa - 609, 326 solo (53.5%)
     Paul Konerko - 356, 212 solo (59.5%)
     David Ortiz - 343, 204 solo (59.5%)
     Carlos Lee - 322, 173 solo (54%)
     Adam Dun - 347, 196 solo (56.5%)
     Adrian Gonzalez - 159, 89 solo (56%)
     Alfonso Soriano - 309, 197 solo (64%)

I swear this is every single player I thought of and didn't leave anyone off the list that didn't help make my point. Paul Konerko has been brought up quite a bit lately as being non-clutch so I threw him in there. I find it interesting that Soriano is the only one with a higher percentage and was the closest to D-Lee's percentage since he was a lead-off hitter for so long.

Similar to how Mike Fontenot (not that there is any other comparison with these two guys) who was traded to the Giants while the Cubs were in San Francisco; D-Lee is traded to the Braves as they come to town this weekend. The Braves are hosting the Washington Nats right now with a game on Thu afternoon (get-away day!), but I doubt they'll have D-Lee fly out there just to turn back around and head back to Chicago right after that game.

So will the Cubs miss D-Lee? Most definitely; particularly rookie Starlin Castro and Aramis Ramirez who take the most advantage of D-Lee's Gold Glove ability to save them several throwing errors. The rest of the team will miss his clubhouse presence (except Carlos Zambrano maybe) and his quiet leadership. To me, it seems like he along with Aramis and Lou have all thrown in the towel already so I'd rather see him move on before passing on those thoughts to the rest of his young teammates.

So who replaces D-Lee at 1B for the next 41 games? I'd LOVE to see Tyler Colvin get a shot as I just don't think the Cubs really have anyone in the minors ready to step in (and don't say "what about Micah Hoffpauir?" because he's had his chance - he hit .239 in 105 games last year and is 0-for-7 with 4 Ks this year). The outfield remains set without Colvin as far as big contracts for 2011 - Soriano ($72 million for 4 more years) in LF, newly signed Marlon Byrd ($12 million for 2 more years) in CF, and Fukudome ($13.5 million for 2011) in RF. Fukudome may eventually be traded next year as he'll be in the last year of his contract, but it will take some time and you'd hate to have that much money sitting on the bench. BUT I have ZERO confidence the Cubs management "brain trust" will think even slightly out of the box so we'll probably see Xavier Nady over there instead...or maybe a combo with Hoffpauir. Now that Lee is gone, will the Cubs pull off the biggest coup EVER and nab The Machine who is a potential free agent and seemingly nearly unsignable by the Cards? If not, what about grabbing Adrian Gonzalez from the cash-stricken Padres?

After Lou ripped the rookie pitchers following Mon's loss, he basically apologized following Tue's loss. If you watched today (Wed) and you were paying attention, you saw 10 rookies play today including 6 pitchers and 4 starters against the NL's best team. What?!? Holy cow! Speaking of Lou, what was the point of Lou wearing his 1977 Yankees World Series ring? His Cubs are now 21 games under .500 and in 5th place in the NL Central 19 1/2 games behind Dusty Baker's Cincinnati Reds. They've already raised the white flag with the Lilly/Theriot trade at the deadline and the rumors were swirling about a potential Lee trade on top of that. So was the 1977 ring a "nah, nah, na-nah, nah - you'll never have one of these" things or what? Just like everything else Lou since last summer, I just don't get it.

Anyway, Good Bye D-Lee...regardless of everything, I wish you well and I'll see you on Sunday as I'm heading back to the Friendly Confines for the 8th time this season (yuck!). I'll be pulling for your Braves in the NL during Bobby Cox' last season but hope the Rangers win it all (I guess not if they have to face the Rays in the playoffs - yikes!).

GO BULLS!!!

Cubs future? Bright as far as I can see...

Well, my son is FINALLY on the board with a Cubs W after 3 losses this year. My record moved to 4-3 which means I'm 3-0 without him, but he finally got to sing "the song" today. Boy, there were a LOT of Cardinal fans, but every time they tried to get a chant going "Let's go Cards!" they were quickly overrun by Cubs fans so that was good. I will say they don't know how/when to exit the ball park though...it took forever to make it out from my upper deck box seats as they were just standing around blocking the paths to get out of there.

This has obviously been a pretty disappointing season as even after back-to-back Ws against the hated, rival Cardinals still leaves them 8 games under .500 and 9 1/2 games out of first in a pretty weak division. The problem is that the most expensive guys that we've counted on over the years are ALL having brutal years at the same time - D-Lee, Aramis, and Big Z. Soriano has been OK, but Fukudome and Dempster are in that list of underachievers as well.

Now what has been a big surprise, especially with Lou remaining at the helm, is the play of the youngsters. Lou has a definite reputation of not playing too many rookies, but he's been forced to go against his rep this season not only because of the make-up of his team this year, but also because the kids have proven one thing - THEY CAN PLAY! It started with Tyler Colvin setting the world on fire in Spring Training forcing his way on to the Opening Day roster; not as a starter but it was promised he would be playing somewhere (he can play anywhere in the outfield) at least a few times per week. It took a little while, but Colvin has now forced his way into the lineup virtually every day. Rookie left-hander James Russell also made the Opening Day roster as well and he's been pretty solid if not great. Then they brought up Starlin Castro in early May as well to try and spark the under performing team. That didn't work, but Castro has started virtually every game since his call-up. Andrew Cashner was brought up at the end of May and he is a fixture in the bullpen.

After hitting his second lead-off HR in as many days, Tyler Colvin is now 2nd on the team in HRs with 15 which leads all rookies including the much-hyped Jason Heyward (11). He's only 8 RBIs behind D-Lee in 145 fewer ABs.

Castro has been simply amazing. After a rough start defensively and a rough month of June offensively (.227 BA), he has proven himself as a real MLB SS. He has come back strong offensively with a .389 BA in July following a 3-for-4 day today with his 3rd HR, 2 more runs scored and 2 more RBI. Andrew Cashner is proving to be an asset out there in the pen. He entered the game in the 7th inning today with runners at the corners and nobody out with Pujols and Holliday coming up; that's confidence in your rookie! He got Pujols to fly out for a sac fly, Jon Jay was caught stealing 2nd for the second out and then ended the inning when Holliday grounded out to Aramis. I thought Lou should have taken him out to start the 8th (why not stick with the plan - Marshall in the 8th and Marmol in the 9th?), but he left him in. It looked like a bad move to start with back-to-back singles, but he got Brendan Ryan to hit a double-play ball to Theriot who ended up booting it for a run-scoring error (rough day for The-Riot with this error, another one that should have been called on a hard hit grounder by Holliday and following his lone hit, he was picked off) leaving runners at 1st and 2nd and nobody out. But pinch-hitter Randy Winn flied out to Byrd in CF and then Tyler Greene hit into an inning-ending DP. Cashner then turned the ball over to Carlos Marmol who pitched a near perfect 9th for his 18th save.

So that's 4 rookies playing significant roles on this team; add that to Randy Wells who played a significant role on last year's team and that's a pretty nice young core. Unfortunately, we have to wait for all of Hendry's mistakes to play out their contracts unless he can erase some of the mistakes sooner (the sooner the better as far as I'm concerned) before we can really get this team going in my opinion. Ironically, the one guy most linked to trade talk is Ted Lilly; I say ironically because that was one of Hendry's best moves. He was able to dump his second biggest mistake Milton Bradley (biggest mistake is still Soriano - 4 more years!) on the Mariners for one of their biggest mistakes Carlos Silva...but the question is, can he work that same magic to dump Fukudome, Aramis, and/or D-Lee? I'd be OK with him sticking around next year if he could get rid of two of these guys and actually get something back in return (yes, a bag of balls would be something). Otherwise, he remains #1 on my "hit list" of people that MUST go from this organization - NOBODY has spent more money for less playoff wins in the last 7 years - total Cubs payroll from 2004-2010 was $769,201,597 for an average of nearly $110 million per season and ZERO playoff wins.

The Cubs even got a few more guys down in the minors that are looking pretty good too. Josh Vitters at 3B (ba-bye Aramis!), Brett Jackson in CF, and as good as Castro has been, I read that Hak-Ju Lee is even better and could force Starlin to 2B. If Hoffpauir could ever figure out how to hit at the MLB level consistently, he could play 1B. There a couple other pitchers down on the farm too from what I've heard - Jay Jackson and Casey Coleman. What a difference to actually have some talent in the minors as opposed to having to overpay for free agents every year.

The last question is how much credit does Jim Hendry deserve for all this talent in the Minors. I obviously can't answer that for sure, but it would seem to me that the GM of the big club wouldn't really have all that much to do with the college draft or signing free agents in Latin America. According to Ken Rosenthal's article last week, "Tim Wilken, the team’s scouting director since December 2005, delivered virtually all of the Cubs’ young talent" and "Oneri Fleita, the team’s vice president of player personnel and head of international operations" seems to be handling Latin America. That's enough for me - Jim Hendry had little to do with the organization's current young talent. The problem according to Rosenthal is that dismissing Hendry would mean losing Wilken and Fleita as they're close with Hendry. To me, why not promote Wilken to be GM?

Anyway, there's one week left until the trade deadline...we'll see what happens in the next 7 days...