Neifi Perez
A Celebration of the Awesome Awfulness of Our Man Neifi
If you're a connoisseur of the work of Neifi Perez as I am–and as I know many longtime readers of The Cub Reporter are–you'll delight in this piece written by King Kaufman and posted at Salon.com.
At Least Fukudome's Subconscious is Healthy
On the day of the rule 4 draft, I'll keep this short. It's based on a Sun-Times article by Gordon Wittenmyer about why Kosuke Fukudome is surprising the Cubs management with his solid performance so far in 2009. I guess the surprise is they had virtually written him off when they went out and got another multi-year contract, free-agent, left handed hitting right fielder (OK, Bradley is a switch hitter) for the second year in a row. The article implies that the reason Fukudome was bad the second half of 2008 was that he was having subconscious mechanical problems with his swing, related to his 2007 elbow arthroscopy for the removal of bone chips.
But perhaps the most important reason and least known publicly was the affect his surgically repaired right arm had on his swing.
Fukudome had elbow surgery late in the 2007 season, and the elbow started bothering him last season right about the time his decline began in May. By the end of the season, his hitting mechanics were a mess.
''I didn't feel the pain physically, but I must have been subconsciously feeling the pain of the elbow,'' said Fukudome, still reluctant to openly admit pain. But when asked if it was a factor last season, he said, ''Probably it was.''
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Recent comments
Dolorous Jon Lester (view)
Busch has been great so far, but the Dodgers are one of the orgs I’m always leery of trading with. They’re so savvy about their internal scouting.
videographer (view)
Here is an interesting thought: There seems to be an assumption that the Cubs had to trade 2 prospects to get Busch with Almonte thrown in to even out the trade. What if the initial trade was Ferris for Busch, but Hoyer wanted Almonte (a cheap RP) and Hope was the ask from the Dodgers. This scenario makes the trade more complicated to ponder the future ramifications.
Arizona Phil (view)
Zyhir Hope and Reggie Preciado were co-MVPs at Cubs AZ Instructs last fall, and every MLB organization had scouts at the AZ Instructs games so Hope was well-known to everybody (and was clearly a Cubs Top 30 prospect with a bullet).
https://www.thecubreporter.com/cubs-2023-arizona-instructional-league-s…
azbobbop (view)
I can’t speak to how many organizations had newfound interest in Zyhir Hope but I did talk to a Dodger scout who told that the Ddodgers always had their on him.
I hardly think of my self as a “scout” but I saw a beautiful smooth left hand swing, easy power, an aggressive base runner as in very limited action, a good defensive player. He certainly caught my attention, moreso than anyone else on the ACL team last year.
George Altman (view)
Ditto. The can DFA him when they activate Taillon.
crunch (view)
cade horton with his 2024 AA debut of 4ip 4h 0bb 4k, 1r/0er is followed up even better...
4ip 1h 1bb 5K, 0r/er
he's still on a pitch count restriction, btw. he probably could have gone 6+ innings in both outings if he was off a leash.
crunch (view)
okay, officially done with hendricks as a starter.
dunno if counsell is there, but i'm there.
Bill (view)
That pretty well sums up the situation. Epstein, the media and the fans became obsessed with the concept of a "window of opportunity" that had to be taken advantage of before it closed. Thus the trade for Quintana, and the trade of Soler for crap.
The way to deal with a "window of opportunity" is not to sacrifice everything to win, but to extend that window. Epstein knew that he was having his best players, Rizzo, Baez and Bryant in the same year, with Contreras the following year, at the same time that the pitching staff was growing elderly and on the verge of declining. A responsible administration would have moved one of the ""core" two years earlier, and a second one the next year, in order to prevent the otherwise necessity of "tanking" when they left at the same time. they had to know that there was no way they could have all been extended, and still leave room for growth.
Other than the Dodgers and the Yankees, no team can maintain a consistent level of production without a consistent flow of high ceiling, low cost controlled young players coming up from the farm. We have lived through the errors of the past, and hopefully have learned enough from them to prevent a reoccurance of it in a few years.
TarzanJoeWallis (view)
I think it was pretty clear that practically all of “the core” was going to be gone after the 2021 season and that utterly gutting the farm system to chase a championship with the same guys year after year until they all departed wasn’t going to end well. That was talked about as early as 2017.
I don’t think it’s hindsight to say they would have been better off from a sustainability standpoint trading some of those pieces for the best prospect packages available and introducing some of the kids. For example, I was hoping real time they would trade Schwarber during the 2016 offseason to an AL team as a DH when the DH was AL only. Fresh off being a WS hero he could have fetched quite a haul. But, alas, he was a member of the vaunted, untouchable “core”.
TarzanJoeWallis (view)
What would have surprised me is the Dodgers, who have traditionally been outstanding in evaluating and developing talent, giving away Busch for nothing. They obviously saw something in both of the guys. Perhaps one or both will be future superstars.
That said, the old cliche is that the level of competition increases ten fold for every level moved up. Ferris and Hope both have a long way to go. We’ll just have to wait and see.
For now, I’m watching Busch put the team on his shoulders while the presumed offensive star of the team flails and doesn’t seem to have a plan beyond “waiting for the numbers to even out”.
I thought it was a good and fair trade at the time - a talented but surplus guy for the Dodgers that filled an immediate need for the Cubs in exchange for potential pieces of the Dodgers future - and I’m awfully glad Busch is a Cub.