I was just guessing at who DeRo’s platoon partner would be.

if you trade Lilly, you get back what you think is quality, but maybe it ends up being injury-prone, or it flops in spring training, or it likes to drive fast and drink a little.

if you don’t trade Lilly, and he continues to be a solid streak-stopping #3 starter, then you start to realize there’s a reason they call him Bulldog.

wow – this is fun…

that’s all I’m saying. I don’t think you can let this kind of thinking drive your performance strategy. Perhaps once in a while you can take a calculated risk that this is the way to go, but not as a general rule. It just sounds like a recipe on how to consistently be pretty good, but never really have all the pieces you need for that surge to a championship.

I happen to agree with you. Trouble is Jim Hendry isn’t the sharpest GM in the world and seems more inclined to be “talent accumulator” with relative less weight put on how the pieces fit together and foreign concept like “chemistry.” Sometimes he surprises me (e.g., Mark DeRosa, Reed Johnson, Ted Lilly) but most other times it’s the theory of offering fat check and not doing enough homework (e.g., Alfonso Soriano).

Hendry could never be a GM of a team with payroll under $70 million. He’d lock up and be non-functioning.

I said that you should not trade a player just because you think it is “a year too soon” and you don’t want to be caught waiting until “a year too late”.

I said that your decision to keep or trade a player (assuming that your team is in contention, not rebuilding) should be based on whether he is more valuable to you for his own contribution or as trade bait to bring you something that you need more.

IOW, Ted Lilly is valuable for his 200 IP and 15 Ws. However, if (in a fantasy world) the O’s would trade Nick Markakis for Ted Lilly, I would make that trade because I desperately need a LHB with power, and Jason Marquis can give me all of the innings and most of the wins that Lilly can.

Lilly is one of the smartest players on this club and knows how to pitch. I’ll take my chances on him being productive for at least the next 2 years on his contract.

This about says it all. There seem to be a disproportionate number of players on the Cubs, for whom, Lou can’t do anything at all despite their success under previous managers and in the case of Scott Eyre, their success under other managers in the same year.

Either this is Hendry’s fault for collecting all these losers, or Lou’s management style doesn’t work with everyone. Anyone else wish we had been privy to that 2007 team meeting where the players talked about their frustrations with Lou?

Like that’s some simple task not affected by a multitude of outside factors. I’m not trying to make excuses for Dome – clearly he should have done better. But your desperate need to defend Lou Piniella at all costs is, as always, highly amusing.

…that I thought of including the Dusty/Corey combo in my post. Although it seemed like Dusty tried to work around Corey at times but didn’t have many other better options. And that picture may be a tad unfair, as it seems to me the only thing Corey is./was good at was outfield defense. I really wonder whether any major league team will pick him up next year.