Baseball is bullshit
I am depressed. The Cubs are beyond awful, and the interwebs have pretty much completely given up on them. I’m seeing articles like this one all over the place that carry the same basic message: blow up the whole team and start over. That makes me sad, because, really, I don’t think the Cubs are that far out of contention, but I also don’t think there’s any other reasonable move. This is an old team by and large, and the players, they ain’t getting any better. Here, because everybody cares what I think, is what I think the Cubs should do.
• Don’t get rid of Aramis Ramirez. Ramirez is at his absolute low-value point right now. He’s not a free agent until after next season (because, come on, he’s going to pick up that $14M option), and he will not be worse last season than he’s been this season. In fact, it’s looking like he’s starting to pull back up — his OPS over the last 28 days is .790, which is a lot better than it’s been. Whatever it is, he’s getting over it. Somewhat.
• Don’t trade Derrek Lee unless somebody offers way too much. Derrek is also at a low-value point right now. What are you expecting to get for a .713 OPS 1B? You won’t get a goddamn thing is what. I’d hope he pulls up to class-A FA status (which is a random event based on fairy dust and rainbows and has nothing to do with anything), offer him arbitration, and see if I can’t turn him into draft picks. And if I can’t? Well, then I get one more slightly-cheaper season out of Derrek Lee as opposed to, what, Micah Hoffpauir? That’s still a win, really. And since he, like Ramirez, probably won’t be this bad next year also, he’s liable to bring more return.
• Trade pretty much anybody else you can, except for Randy Wells and Ryan Theriot. This is really the key here, I think. Randy looks bad this year, but his BABIP is astronomical, which probably indicates rotten luck on batted balls; his sophomore slump involves an ERA about a run and a half higher than his xFIP. Theriot always sucks, but he sucks more this year than he’s ever sucked in the past, and as before: quit selling low, schmucks.
Everybody else can bring you good value. If you’re really dead-set on blowing up and rebuilding — and after today, when the Cubs lost to the Pirates without actually allowing any earned runs, I can kind of understand why you would be — shift them all now before they slide down. Maybe you can package them all up and trade them to the Giants for their entire farm system and every draft pick they’ll get from now until 2016. Would anybody be surprised if Brian Sabean accepted that?
