Bleacher Bums Forum

I like Valbuena as a bench guy going into the season.  Still, he had his chance to make a case for an every day job last season, and he didn't take advantage of it.  We don't need to go into next season with a guy coming off a .650 OPS season and with a .635 OPS over 1,000 AB for his career as our starting 3B, no matter where we are in the rebuilding process.

Even if we're not exactly looking like World Series contenders, we can do better than that.

Purple, br.  Purple

Bruce Levine has now said the Cubs are interested in Jason Grilli, confirming the rumor from the PSD insider the other day.  Interesting.

If the Cubs suck for 1 more year, I think you can stock the system pretty well for the long term.  It sucks to watch, but do you want to win the World Series or be the next Orioles/A's team that becomes 3rd loser.

It's probably a moot point anyway because the Cubs are probably going to suck enough next year to get another high draft pick in 2014.

Still, if the Cubs have to more or less intentionally be a 100 game loser for 3 years or so for us to get talent, then quite frankly Theo Epstein really isn't the brilliant baseball executive he's made out to be.  We ought to have smart enough people in place to be able to develop enough talent where we don't have to completely tank for 3-4 years to do it. 

I think Theo and company are doing it the right way so far.  Sign some 1-2 year stopgaps like DeJesus, Maholm, Baker, Feldman, etc. and at least try not to embarrass ourselves on the field while we're getting the system built up.  Maybe even hand out a 3 year contract if the farm isn't close to producing a quality player at that position.  If you're lucky, maybe you get an 85 win team and a wild card contender while bringing the farm system and the organization back to health.

But I don't see much point in pretty much accepting 100 loss seasons until we get the farm built back up, or even more or less intentionally tanking seasons to try to get premium draft picks.  Pretty much anyone with a Baseball America subscription could implement that strategy.  If Theo and Hoyer have to resort to that kind of strategy, then they're pretty overrated baseball executives.  There's no reason to be accepting that every year until Baez and company are ready, we should accept spending the second half of every season seeing guys like Justin Germano, Casey Coleman, and Jason Belken in the starting rotation and putting glorified Triple-A teams out on the field.

JR.  My purple comment was for br to read MY comments that way.  Moran.

The Jim Deshaies broadcast team finished 4th in the Fangraphs poll of best TV announce teams.  Hopefully it turns out to be a good hire. 

4. Houston Astros
Broadcasters: Bill Brown and Jim Deshaies
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 4.3, 4.1, 4.2

Three Reader Comments
• “FanGraphs and other analytical blogs have been mentioned on the broadcast before. While the team may suck the Houston fan base is lucky to have such a good broadcasting crew to get through the season.”
• “We, as Astros fans, are lucky to have these guys. They can be quite funny and informative at times. Maybe not the sharpest at play by play, but very entertaining.”
• “They are the only reason I will watch the Astros lose over 100 games again this coming season.”

Notes
There won’t have been any particularly compelling reasons for non-fans to have sought out Astro games of late, so the reader is excused if he hasn’t seen this broadcast team at work. Note, however, that the comments for Brown and (especially) Deshaies are almost uniformly gushing.