This is why you have to fire Jim Hendry. "No, don't bother," they say, "that only punishes him while you live with his past mistakes." BUT HE KEEPS MAKING MISTAKES THAT'S THE THING

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Bitch when they don't do something. Bitch when they do something. Never changes.

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

Not all of us are like that.

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Team Cutler.

I know.

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

How many years?

I think the real bitch is the 3 years. Come on....you telling me hendry couldn't say 2 for 10M? Take it or leave it. Hendry is a terrible-terrible-terrible money manager. He gives away far too much. How soon until we find out Byrd got a full no trade clause?

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Proud to be UNVERIFIED.

No word on the NTC but it is backloaded (surprise surprise). Here's what one site had to say:

Marlon Byrd's three-year contract with the Cubs is heavily-backloaded, reports Chris De Luca and Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun Times.

Like the Mets plan to do with Jason Bay, the Cubs are putting Byrd on their credit card. Byrd will earn $3 million next season, $5.5 million in 2011 and $6.5 million in 2012. Byrd has already lost a step defensively and if his production slips with the move from Texas, he'll be yet another immovable object in the Chicago outfield by the end.

Didn't Bill James present an analysis last year regarding the age at which a team can expect the biggest dropoff in production? Wasn't that age between the 32nd and 33rd years? I guess Hendry missed that one.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Weren't you just riding the Cubs for not making moves And everybody who didnt want the Cubs to spend money on mediocre talent was said to be not caring enough. Now when Hendry does spend too much money on a mediocre ballplayer you say he is an idiot. Its a no win.

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Marlon Byrd is 2010 speak for Reed Johnson. Super.

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Team Cutler.

I didn't write that.

I think signing Byrd is best move he could've made today (but the years are too long) because the other options are terrible. I said all along I think the best move he could've made this offseason was to trade for Granderson.

I like the idea of moving Theriot to 2nd and finding another SS, but is there anyone out there available that will be even decent?

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

The Cubs would of been better off not signing anyone than giving this clown 3 years. He will suck.

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Ironically, Fukudome now appears to be the only everyday left handed hitter.


Hendry in May '09

“Nobody likes to lose a guy like [DeRosa],” said Hendry. “But there wasn’t anywhere else to get left-handed, you know."

“I remember when we signed DeRosa [on Nov. 14, 2006] and there was more second-guessing about that than anything,” Hendry said. “Mark’s a terrific guy and he was a good player for us. But the thinking in the winter was that we already had five right-handed hitters penciled in that weren’t going anywhere. And we were concerned with how [Kosuke] Fukudome was going to come back [as a left-handed power hitter]. … If he hadn’t come back well and we kept Mark, we were probably looking at seven out of eight right-handed hitters every day in the lineup. Then we would have that issue again.”


Hendry Today
"We won 97 games two years ago with a lineup that was predominantly right-handed,"

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Team Cutler.

Actually, a guy like Vizquel would have been fine.

Tejada-- too much $$, horrible range
O Cabrera-- he might be ok if he'd take a 1 year deal for likr $6m
Felipe Lopez-- hasn't played SS in a while, not good defensively
A Gonzalez-- not the greatest moniker in Cub annals

there's a lot more retreads here...

Juan Castro
Alex Cora
Bobby Crosby
Adam Everett
Khalil Greene
John Mcdonald

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1926-1931-1934-1942-1944-1946-1964-1967-1982-2006-2011

Well, this solves all my fears of the Cubs missing the playoffs. Start planning for a ticker tape parade!!!

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Second City Saint

From Fan Graphs
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.ph ... rlon-byrd/




After a few months of shopping around, the Cubs finally settled on Marlon Byrd as their new center fielder, signing him to a 3 year deal worth a reported $15 million. What should Cubs fans expect from their new center fielder?

Essentially, the epitome of an average player. Byrd is across the board about as average as it gets. His career wOBA is .332, and that’s based on a skill set that is neither strong nor weak at any one thing. He walks some, strikes out some, and hits for some power, though he’s not a slugger.

Given that this is a big time buyer’s market, pretty much any deal is going to look good in comparison with other contracts signed in prior years, and this one is no different. In over 4,000 innings in center field, his career UZR/150 is 0.0.

Jack of all trades, master of none, thy name is Marlon Byrd. To be fair, he’s been a bit above average the last few years, but the Cubs are signing him for his age 32-34 seasons, so they should be building some regression into his past performances. Projecting him as a +2 win player going forward is fair.

$5 million a year, even on a three year deal, is a good contract for the Cubs. He fills a hole and should provide a solid performance at a cost of less than $3 million per win. Even in this kind of market, that’s a move worth making. Byrd is not a star, but he’s good enough at everything to be a useful role player, and the price was right for the Cubs.




Also, just throwing this out there – this deal should make Mets fans want to throw something. Realistically, Jason Bay is about +1 win better than Marlon Byrd, maybe +1.5 if you think UZR is just way off on his defense. Byrd signed for $5 million per year, while Bay gets $16.5 million per year.

Given the relative costs, the Mets would have been far better off with Byrd and $10 million to spend on a pitcher than with Bay


Interesting Read

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Team Cutler.

I wonder if they have any additional payroll to add another player or two after this move. Also, why a 3 year deal? Why $5 million a season? Was there another team in the bidding that forced the Cubs to offer the deal they did? I hope that this isn't Jim Hendry bidding against himself again after the Bradley fiasco.

Here's Keith Law from ESPN:

Byrd could be another OF mistake for Cubs

The Cubs' signing of Marlon Byrd, which seems to me like too much money and too many years, could be the latest in a Groundhog Day-like series of outfielder mistakes for general manager Jim Hendry.

Marlon Byrd is a nice fourth outfielder who could play every day on a non-contender, but he doesn't handle centerfield well enough to play it every day on a team with aspirations of playoff contention and doesn't hit well enough to play every day in an outfield corner. He boosted his overall stats the last few years playing in a good hitters' park in Texas, posting a .290/.339/.415 line in 516 road PA over that time, a line that won't cut it in left or right field, and he's no better than average defensively in center, perhaps less if he has to play it 150 times a season. He replaces Milton Bradley and Bradley's replacements, but even with the off year Bradley was more productive for the Cubs on a rate basis than Byrd was in Texas, and the Cubs have improved by less than a win between the pair of moves.

Paying Marlon Byrd $5 million per year (although the deal is backloaded, so his salary will be increasing as he ages and his value decreases) isn't going to sink the Cubs, nor is it an enormous loss of value, but giving a player who shouldn't be playing every day three guaranteed years into his mid-30s seems like a risky decision. And since it comes on the heels of a deal where they had to give away the last outfielder to whom they gave a three-year contract (a deal they only pulled off by taking back one of the worst pitchers currently on a 40-man roster), it makes even less sense. The odds are good that Jim Hendry (or his successor) will be trying to dump Byrd's contract on another club before 2012.

Now THAT'S an interesting read.

dave cameron knows a helluva lot more than anyone at ESPN

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

In what front office did Dave Cameron work?

oh man, i almost spit up my drink when i read this post. bigfan, you have been hammering the cubs section daily with new threads crying about signing people quickly, every piece of shit free agent out there, bitching that they arent acting fast enough, HURRY HURRY HURRY and now they do it and you complain that byrd got 1 extra year at $5 mil? these team has doom written all over it, they sign a guy you were banging a drum over, gave him an extra year at 5 mil and now you are outraged? over 1 more year at 5 mil? this team has holes all over it. whether they sign this guy for 1 year, 2 years or 3 years, what difference does it make? hes another right-handed guy for a right-handed loaded lineup with a whopping .329 OBP, who BY FAR had his best years in TEXAS, of all places! the outrage should be that they signed him AT ALL. they cycle continues, patchwork free agent bullshit. at least they didnt spend a lot of dough on him.

heres what will happen: they will sign enough middle-of-the-road cast-off shit free agents so they will be competitive at the deadline and have some crazy fucking notion that this team will make a run, not deal any of the losing shit superstar talent they have, and we can sit through the same cycle of bullshit for another year, and watch lee and ramirez and dempster and zambrano grow another year older and less valuable.

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Second City Saint

This is a bad signing. They have OVERPAID for a mediocre player AGAIN. The Cubs would have been better off putting Sam Fuld in CF for the season and then going after a GOOD CF option, next winter. I don't care if Byrd helps win a game here or there.... unless he's batting over .300 and in the league leaders in run producing catagories, I don't want to hear from people how this guy was a great signing. hell, Milton bradley helped win a few games last season, but he was an awful signing too. Hendry has to go... He hasn't made a good signing or trade for far too long and continues to waste money on players they should never have even considered signing. Granderson was the guy to go after. This is crap.

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Go Cubs!!!!

I agree with this to a point. It's the best move they could have made (within their price range) right NOW. But, I would have much rather them done nothing, see if they can contend with the current roster, and then make a big deal at the deadline with the money they saved by doing nothing. Instead, they will be a few games behind the Cards at the deadline and we will hear how the Cubs have no money to spend because the spent $5M on a guy.

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"Tubby? Oh yes, Tubby."

Fort Knox in 2010!

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