I want to know if the CSFMB thinks this was a bad free agent signing. I think we all agree it was for way too much money,but that seems to be the norm nowadays anyway. Looking back,this guy actually improved as he got older. He also was a main cog in the playoff years. A lot of his Cub time here,he was plagued by bad knees. I was one that wanted him gone,but now looking back on his total time here,not so sure.

Also, I think the main reason Theo dumped him was because he was a threat to help the Cubs win! "Theo don't play that game"

CAREER BATTING STATISTICS
GP AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS WAR
1999
NYY
9 8 2 1 0 0 1 1 0 3 0 1 .125 .125 .500 .625 -0.1
2000
NYY
22 50 5 9 3 0 2 3 1 15 2 0 .180 .196 .360 .556 -0.5
2001
NYY
158 574 77 154 34 3 18 73 29 125 43 14 .268 .304 .432 .736 -0.4
2002
NYY
156 696 128 209 51 2 39 102 23 157 41 13 .300 .332 .547 .879 4.7
2003
NYY
156 682 114 198 36 5 38 91 38 130 35 8 .290 .338 .525 .863 5.2
2004
TEX
145 608 77 170 32 4 28 91 33 121 18 5 .280 .324 .484 .808 1.8
2005
TEX
156 637 102 171 43 2 36 104 33 125 30 2 .268 .309 .512 .821 1.3
2006
WAS
159 647 119 179 41 2 46 95 67 160 41 17 .277 .351 .560 .911 5.9
2007
CHC
135 579 97 173 42 5 33 70 31 130 19 6 .299 .337 .560 .897 4.1
2008
CHC
109 453 76 127 27 0 29 75 43 103 19 3 .280 .344 .532 .876 1.9
2009
CHC
117 477 64 115 25 1 20 55 40 118 9 2 .241 .303 .423 .726 -1.8
2010
CHC
147 496 67 128 40 3 24 79 45 123 5 1 .258 .322 .496 .818 0.6
2011
CHC
137 475 50 116 27 1 26 88 27 113 2 1 .244 .289 .469 .758 -0.3
2012
CHC
151 561 68 147 33 2 32 108 44 153 6 2 .262 .322 .499 .821 1.8
2013
NYY
58 219 37 56 8 0 17 50 21 67 8 4 .256 .325 .525 .850 1.6
2013
CHC
93 362 47 92 24 1 17 51 15 89 10 5 .254 .287 .467 .754 0.8

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

It was always going to be dicey on the back end of that contract, but he can obviously still play. He became the subject of "Cub Fan Hatred" in much the same way that LaTroy Hawkins and Jacque Jones had before him, but without any real reason. As maligned as his fielding was, he was never close to the worst leftfielder in the game. No, he isn't Willie Mays. That's why he's in left. That hopping may have looked silly, but he fielded most of the balls.

I think for many Cub fans he just came to represent the 100+ years of losing. Soriano was the disease and Theo Epstein was the cure. That isn't true, nor is it fair. The irrational hatred of Soriano among Cub fans is like Keyser's hatred of DeAza writ large.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

I think you're certainly implying a reason, however real, but I don't think it ever got to that level with Soriano. Yeah, his contract could be frustrating, and he did become emblematic of what seemed like a broken way of doing business, but I never hated the guy. Hawkins, though, that was one bad guy.

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His fielding got better in the last 2 years, as he actually worked on it. So when he left, some said he wanst that bad, but he was terrible....Jump, hop, catch, or drop.

Not that it shouldnt be expected, but his base stealing left him.

He was a $10 Mill guy his last few years.

Dont think he was hated when he was here, he did become the symbol Jim hendry, so when they got really bad, everyone knew there was no hope of improving when he and Z were owed close to $40 M+ a year between the 2 of them,

Plus as the story will always go, Hendry had a 5 year deal on the table and McDonough stepped in, asked the agent what it will take to get him here...and the 2 more years were added on. Have that story from numerous sources.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

Oh Jimmy.

Theo: "we got to get Soriano the fuck out of here, we are getting way to close to winning games."

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

I hated the asshole. Yes, sure, he greatly helped propel the Cubs to back to back playoff appearances. But he disappeared in the playoffs. The whole team pretty much shat the bed but big time players need to show up.

Also he wasn't the team player everybody made him out to be. His insistence to bat lead off was such a bullshit diva move. Fuck him.

I never hated the guy (in fact I was one of the very few to defend him on this board) but like the team in back to back years, he choked big time in the playoffs.

To bad he hurt his leg early on in the contract as that robbed him of his speed, but the guy did play hard and did give a shit. Given this is the last year of his contract, I wonder if he will continue to play when his contract expires.

I always thought he handled the criticism from the fans /media the right way.Thats how you deal with it. Not like fuckbag Hawkins or Bradley. Thought Jones did a good job of it too.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

It is really hard to separate the performance from the contract. Soriano played at maybe a $5m/yr level. At least he wasn't a douche.

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Semi-related, but as I've spent less time with baseball and more time with the NHL, specifically capgeek.com, I yell "HOLY SHIT" on virtually every dollar figure associated with a baseball player. "So-and-so's a bargain at $11 million." The hell?

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I didn't mean to imply that race was an issue, although I don't doubt some drunken fratboys might yell out slurs from the bleachers. Todd Hundley was white as a sheet and he was another target of ultra-focused Cub fan hatred. It just seems that there always has to be a singular scapegoat for all the things that are wrong with the Cubs. I think the fact that many of them have been black is really just coincidental. You could hardly find more beloved people in Wrigleyville than Ernie Banks and Ronnie Woo-Woo. If Milton Bradley had hit like Sammy, he would have been beloved too.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

I suppose Farnsworth was another white target of hate.

But take Derrek Lee. No, he was never hated, certainly not on the LaTroy Hawkins level, but I don't think he was ever truly loved, either, nor will he go on to be loved, despite being a big part of why any of those mid-2000s Cubs teams (other than 2003) were any good. And I think a lot of it was that he just never saw fit to ingratiate himself with the fanbase, to smile and wave and call us the best. He didn't think North Side baseball fans were special. In fact, he didn't even seem to like them at all. He went on the record to agree with Obama's dopey-ass everyman posturing about how Cubs fans suck because it was more important to stand with the black guy than to stand with his team. He played the game really well (except for grounding into double plays every game), but didn't particularly care where he played it. I'm sure tons of pretty good white guys have come and gone with no particular affinity for the whole Cubs thing, but they don't stand out for it. Derrek Lee does, because every black guy has to be measured against Ernie, however subconsciously.

You mention Sosa. Let's flip him with Frank Thomas. Sosa's act would be a hit anywhere. Do you think Cubs fans would have taken to Hurt the same way?

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I don't know. Frank was aloof. He probably could have owned Chicago to an almost Ditka-like degree if his personality had been different. But it's hard to hate a guy who performed for your team the way he did.

And I agree with you about the collective subconscious comparing Lee to Ernie. Laurence isn't completely off-base when he says "it has a lot to do with race". And race and class are inextricably linked in this country. We have our history. There is a difference between thousands of privileged white kids yelling pejoratives at a guy who looks like them as opposed to yelling them at Milton Bradley.

I don't think a guy like Mike North even knows he's being racist when he calls a guy like Bradley "militant." And that gets back to what bothered me about bernstein's column on Rose. I believe the headline was something like, "Bernstein: Rose No Longer Humble, Hometown Kid". Why must Rose be humble? He's one of the best basketball players in the world and quite wealthy. Does bernstein also expect humility from rich Jewish guys?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

I mean, I think Thomas would have been a huge star with the Cubs, just that we wouldn't have had that happy-skippy-jerk-each-other-off flavor to the home run chase in '98, and not having that dynamic there would have really changed things.

And I'll admit that I'm fully guilty in having certain expectations for Lee's demeanor. I just don't want the players on my teams to shit on me for being a bad fan, that's all. It makes things less fun.

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Yeah, I'm sure you're right.

I don't think a player should ever say shit about the fans. The problem is they don't see the fans as customers. Maybe because they are treated as a product rather than as human beings. But they get paid an awful lot to be treated that way. I've never like Guillen because he always had something glib to say about the fans.

Back to my larger point, white America (including dan bernstein) wants and expects Derrick Rose to be cute li'l Pooh, to play hard and sell products. Step outside that box and there is a sense of betrayal as expressed by bernstein in his column.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

_________________
favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

The only way to justify these ridiculously long contracts is to win a World Series. Every one of them is a failure if the team doesn't reach that goal.

One of the things that absolutely sucks about MLB contracts is that it is actually illegal to offer incentives to players for achieving team goals such as playoff or WS wins. An owner cannot offer a bonus to players for winning a championship, and that is just flat-out wrong to me.

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The NHL is pretty anal about performance bonuses, too. You can't get them at all unless you're on your first contract or you're over 35.

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He was brought in to be a power hitting leadoff centerfielder, none of which he managed to do. He was a big baby about the wall in left. He did hit for some power when he got hot, and when he got hot he was hot, but had prolonged cold streaks that could kill sections of seasons. He was paid way too much for way too long. He was just too ouchy for someone with a 7 year contract.
So yeah, in hindsight not bad numbers. But not what he was paid to do.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

The Players Union would never allow that but it would be nice. These guys are taking up so much of the current and future resources they should be held more accountable for the teams overall performance.

Yes,good review! I seem to have selective memory and forget those long terrible dry spells. It goes to show that simply looking at basic stats never tells the whole story. If the Cubs signed this guy for 5 years and 7 million,nobody would have said boo. While his numbers were very good,he never matched the last season at Washington. He did do fantastic for the Yankees last season though. I seem to to remember him robbing some guy of a HR in left,too.

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

Yes, it's the players fault that owners are willing to offer guys 8-10 year deals. They should have to give back that money.

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I hated the signing, because I saw Soriano as an incomplete player, based on him being a poor defensive outfielder. Then, he stopped running (stealing bases) because of knee problems which further diminished his value. But he could hit and his fielding improved significantly. I hated that he batted leadoff for as long as he did, because he didn't steal bases anymore and his OBP was too low to bat leadoff, but there he stayed for far too long. But in the end, I feel the signing was a better one than I thought it would be. I thought his last 2-3 years would be fairly unproductive and that was not the case.

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Go Cubs!!!!

Of course he stopped running. They all do. That's just the way it goes. You have a guy with power and speed, eventually he just has power. It's the same in the NBA where the superstar big man moves further and further from the basket as his career goes on.

Soriano was a good player for the Cubs. He wasn't signed to play defense. They may have thought they could get away with him in center in a small ballpark. And the truth is, while he was never going to be an elite outfielder, he had enough speed and athleticism that he could often make up for his bad routes and his fear of that wall.

After all of the hatred during his last few seasons in Chicago, he came close to single-handedly batting the Yankees into the postseason last year. What did he have? Almost an RBI a game in New York?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

I wouldnt call it hatred. Annoyance and it was more about what he represented than him specifically.


Anyway, he absolutely DID live up to the power aspect of his deal.


The most damning thing you can say about his time on the Cubs was he was awful in 6 playoff games.

Right, and I think that's what it is with all those guys that have become the target of Cubs fan's ire over the past couple decades. It's as if the weight of 100+ years of losing is falling on a single guy.

If only they didn't have Neifi Perez they would have won seven World Series.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

I hated Neifi

Didn't Neifi hit a HR while on the Colorado Rockies to propel the Cubs in the playoffs one year?

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."