Bleacher Bums Forum

ABTY had a rumor that Cubs/Royals were discussing Barney twice yesterday.  I'll be shocked if Soriano/Barney start spring training with the Cubs and midly surprised if a healthy Garza finishes spring training with the Cubs.

As bad as the 3B market is, the best Stewart could do is a non-guaranteed deal?  That's kind of odd. 

No one knows better than Stewart how much his wrist bothered him the last two years, and no one knows better than Stewart how he feels at this point.

It may be that he is convinced that he will be good enough that he won't be cut.

Barney went more than 140 straight games without an error, and I only remember one gift during that time.  Positioning may increase the number of chances, but it doesn't increase the ability to catch and throw.

First off, tico is clearly a scumbag and the spawn of all evil for his obvious hatred of Darwin Barney.

Seriously, not to deify Barney, but I think he deserves all the credit he's been getting as the best defensive 2B in baseball right now.  First, Barney did tie a major league record for most consecutive errorless games . . . and he did that while fielding more plays per 9 innings than anybody in the league.  That's excellent defense, regardless of how much Sveum's positioning has to do with it.   You're not just going to find someone who can just do that and field all of those plays cleanly, just because we play some aggressive shifts in the field.

Also, I don't think positioning is all on a coaching staff, either.  Good defensive players have a good feel for where they should position themselves on the field.  I'm sure Sveum's aggressive shifting helps play a role in that, but I think if you ask any top fielding player (guys like Ripken or Sandberg or Ozzie talk about this a lot), they all say they have good instincts for where they should position themselves on the field. Ripken and Sandberg would say that's one of the reasons why you didn't have to see them diving for balls so much because they already knew where they should be positioned on the field for a play.  I wouldn't attribute all of his good positioning on Sveum.

ABTY had a rumor that Cubs/Royals were discussing Barney twice yesterday.  I'll be shocked if Soriano/Barney start spring training with the Cubs and midly surprised if a healthy Garza finishes spring training with the Cubs.

Garza will have more value at the end of June if he stays healthy and proves it than near the end of March when he is hoped to be healthy and simply looks it.

I agree with everything you've said, JR. So I guess you can add ignorant **** to the colorful list of names you've used.

Hahaha, the problem is tico, I'm the only one here who's allowed to be called an ignorant ****. : )

More anti-awful moves with Stewart.  Gonna be another terrible season, but at least it won't come as a surprise.  ...

I don't think Barney is going to be traded, namely because as one of the worst-hitting position players in the game he has nowhere near the value that some fans believe he does.  Why trade him when he's not going to bring anything substantial in return, and when he's not blocking someone better?  ....not much point in dealing him.

I agree on the anti-awful, that's for sure.  Feldman, Steward, Schierholz, they won't be as bad as Jackson and Vitters and Berken, but they're not going to be asset players or anything exciting, I don't think.   They are at an age where sometimes guys do improve and transition from liability guys to useful, perhaps even average starters.  So if you create an average player out of nothing but a couple of million, that's still some value creation. 

I agree that Barney isn't likely to have enough trade value to make it much worth thinking about.  As you say, he's blocking nobody and he's not likely to haul in any exciting building blocks, so why bother? 

But, if somebody does want to trade somebody interesting, I'd certainly be interested.

Just to further my point, Ben Revere was traded for Vance Worley and Trevor May (#69 on BA).  Revere in his career has put up wOBA of .278, .300.  Bill James projects him for wOBA of .294.  He is a slightly better version on Tony Campana.  He may be a defensive whiz, but about all he does better than Barney is steal bases.  Barney has put up wOBA of .294, .287.