Rick
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nice article!
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Interesting story, but I am not sure that Ted Lilly is a completely analogous situation. They are both veterans about the same age at the time they will be traded, and in their last year of the deal. They both were owed about 10 million for the final year. That is where the comparision ends though.
Ted Lilly was at best the third best SP available on the market (depends if you want to count Roy Oswalt as available since he a NTC and could steer to whatever team he wanted). Ted Lilly was a respectable 3-8 3.69 with the Cubs last year, but there were a lot of negatives on him. His velocity was down for most of the season, and his July ERA of 5.34 certainly didn't add to his value.
We don't know exactly what is going to be on the market, but I am not sure if there is going to be a better slugger available. Carlos Pena after not hitting a homerun in the month of April is fifth in the NL in homeruns. He has batting average up to .226 for the baseball dinosaurs, and has been one of the hottest hitters in baseball as you pointed out.
Now Pena could fall off the cliff again since he is known to be a streaky hitter. And I don't know what the market is going to be like, but I see multiple teams that have a need at 1B/DH that will be in the race. Diamondbacks and Angels are teams that a lot of people throw out. I think the Giants would make a lot of sense as well as anemic as their offense is. A scenario that is interesting to me is a deal between the Cubs and Pirates that involves swapping Pena for Overbay and nets the Cubs a top prospect or two. In that deal, the Cubs would get a guy to fill out 1B for the rest of the year if they felt that was an issue, and a guy that is a pretty good glove at 1B since I think they are concerned about Castro's confidence on defense. If the Cubs picked up the deferred money, then it would be an even money swap and an addition of about .150 OPS to a position.
Ted Lilly was at best the third best SP available on the market (depends if you want to count Roy Oswalt as available since he a NTC and could steer to whatever team he wanted). Ted Lilly was a respectable 3-8 3.69 with the Cubs last year, but there were a lot of negatives on him. His velocity was down for most of the season, and his July ERA of 5.34 certainly didn't add to his value.
We don't know exactly what is going to be on the market, but I am not sure if there is going to be a better slugger available. Carlos Pena after not hitting a homerun in the month of April is fifth in the NL in homeruns. He has batting average up to .226 for the baseball dinosaurs, and has been one of the hottest hitters in baseball as you pointed out.
Now Pena could fall off the cliff again since he is known to be a streaky hitter. And I don't know what the market is going to be like, but I see multiple teams that have a need at 1B/DH that will be in the race. Diamondbacks and Angels are teams that a lot of people throw out. I think the Giants would make a lot of sense as well as anemic as their offense is. A scenario that is interesting to me is a deal between the Cubs and Pirates that involves swapping Pena for Overbay and nets the Cubs a top prospect or two. In that deal, the Cubs would get a guy to fill out 1B for the rest of the year if they felt that was an issue, and a guy that is a pretty good glove at 1B since I think they are concerned about Castro's confidence on defense. If the Cubs picked up the deferred money, then it would be an even money swap and an addition of about .150 OPS to a position.
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I think the biggest issue with trading Pena is he needs to be platooned, and he has a lot batting average, and that does really hurt him. If Pena could even hit 250 he would be tons more valuable. Its really hard for a player that hits 220 to be all that valuable.
I think he makes sense, but I really don't see him as all that valuable in terms of netting us great prospects. I think the best we could hope for would be a DeRosa type return.
I think he makes sense, but I really don't see him as all that valuable in terms of netting us great prospects. I think the best we could hope for would be a DeRosa type return.
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A top 100 prospect would be fine with me for Pena.
There are negatives to Pena no doubt, and I don't doubt that low BA hurts his trade value a ton. His career line against lefties isn't as bad as this year at .211/.311/.424. His rate stats would certainly look better if he was strictly platooned. The thing is that the value of a player at the deadline is often just as much about the player himself as the other players that are out there. I am not sure there is going to be another guy that is top 10 homeruns out there. I don't think we are going to get absolute bluechip prospects, but I don't think it is unreasonable to think we could get one of team's 10 prospect for him.
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AceCubbie
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A top 100 prospect would be about the great trade ever. If the Cubs can get a prospect in the 5 to 10 range in a good organization (i.e., 5th to 10th best prospect in a particular org), that's a very good return.
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The top 100 prospect line was a response to poodski mentioning the DeRosa trade in which we got Jeff Stevens, Jon Gaub, and Chris Archer. Archer wasn't close to a top 100 prospect when we got him, but played his way into that in our system. So I was being a bit facetious when I said a top 100 prospect.
I agree with your general point, and if you read the edit that I put into my last post (I'm bad about hitting post and then thinking of something that I really wanted to include in it) I think you can see that our thinking is about the same.
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I was going to say I hope you don't think that Archer was one when we traded for him. This is honestly Hendry's greatest asset. He tends to get pretty good value in trades, and is a good judge of talent.
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You are right on when you say this. This is where the whole scout background of Hendry is his strength. He is pretty good at finding talent, and has made a number of low key moves that turned into homeruns both at the minor league level (Chris Archer) and major league level (Bellhorn, Clement, Ramirez).
I am hoping that the Cubs can get guys that are closer to the major league level, but that will probably be difficult. It will probably be better if the Cubs get more guys at the lower levels that have a higher chance of developing into impact guys (like the DeRosa deal).
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Nice to see more Cubs content on the frontpage. I meant to say that but I started debating the whole Lilly comparision. Anyways just wanted to say it was good to see since there had been a long period were the only baseball stuff was Sox stuff.
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rising=higher trade value...
he's like a stock...sell sell sell if you can...its not like he's going to be on the team long term anyway
he's like a stock...sell sell sell if you can...its not like he's going to be on the team long term anyway
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he should be traded. Cubs HAVE TO GET Prince
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I don't see what the cubs add by not getting rid of Pena. If he is back next year, then the cubs won't be contending, so we might as well get a spec.