Bleacher Bums Forum

Madrigal and Morel have options, and HOyer seems veteran-obsessed.

Your comment startled me, since the way I read his performance since he took office, to me he seems "farm system" obsessed.  Almost all of his trades have been veterans (Darvish, Bryant, Baez, Rizzo, and for that matter, all of the relievers in the past 3 years have been veterans for farm hands.

Certainly, most off his lesser acquisitions have been for veterans, but if very few cases did he have a farm hand ready to come up.  But when he did, he did not seem reluctant to use bring up and use Wisdom, Morel, Velasquez, along with Thompson, Hughes, Effross and Roberts.

It may be that, like me, you have doubts about whether he might give in to the temptation of trading Canario, Mervis, PCA, Alcantara, Cassie, etc., for vets that can perform sooner, or with more certainty, rather than take chances on prospects with a higher ceiling, but a less secure floor.  I keep hoping that my fears are from decades of Cub front office stupidity, rather than the track record of Hoyer.  His treatment of Mervis may give us more information.

But in the meantime, bringing in tons of free agent relievers, sorting out the ones that succeed and then flipping them, seems like a decent way to pass the time.