Nice to hear another person express their views on LaHair…wait a minute…I see what you did there. :)

Derrek Lee, Xavier Nady, and Carlos Pena. LaHair only could have replaced Nady on the big league team for 1B contention. There has been cases where a prospect rots in AAA because there is no place to put in in the MLB.

I agree with you on LaHair — to a point. There’s no way that the guy will ever be a star in the bigs and I doubt he’ll even be someone who holds down a starting job.

That said, I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing if he has any Daryle Ward-style skills. If he plays well as a callup in September, I’d definitely be interested to see if he could make the club as a reserve next year.

he could arguably justify call BL up see if he could drum up some trade value. Since he isn’t, calling BL up is a reasonably harmless shell game. At his best, we’ll try to run him through waivers (see McGahee, Casey) and bring him back in 2012 as a Non-Roster Invitee. The problem is, few teams are clamoring for a hitter that can barely play first.

If I thought we could showcase him in September and get another Abner Abreu-type in trade, I would be less inclined to be upset about him stealing ABs from Tyler Colvin (who actually does need September ABs).

The only upside I see would be ‘wise usage’ (see Quade, Mike ?) of BL may keep Carlos Pena a Type B free agent. If picks can be netted from using the arbitration system to our advantage on Pena and Ramirez, something good may come from this season yet.

We have 8 guys (or so) that need to be added to the 40 Man roster to avoid inclusion in the Rule 5 draft. I don’t imagine our new GM will value BL over Ryan Flaherty, Matt Szczur, or Josh Vitters. Andrew Cashner will need to be re-added at some point as well. Yeah, we have quite a few disposable pieces to DFA/Release. Unless LaHair can show he can represent against lefties, he will add to the list.

Will LaHair’s 40 ABs make or break the Cubs? No. Could they be better invested? Probably. Would I prefer to see LaHair on the 40 Man Roster over Jeff Beliveau? Not a chance in ……

but don’t post here much so please understand that I mean no disrespect when I comment on this Lahair saga. I understand your stance on Lahair, although I disagree with it, and when I opened this post I fully expected you to sway me to your line of thinking. You said nothing new here and in fact more or less convinced me that view is flawed.

I don’t care how many times you say it we’re not gonna learn anything about Bryan Lahair by learning about Jack Cust, Ernie Young, Micah Hoffpauir or anyone else for that matter. I understand your point here but they aren’t him.

And giving him playing time in the 22 games the Cubs have remaining after Labor Day won’t really tell us much about his ability to hit major league pitching, either.

Excuse me, by using your logic here then there will be no late blooming minor league pitchers getting a chance in the last 22 games either. Well we all know this isn’t true and the pitching will be somewhat watered down.
So if he hits in the last 22 games what will that prove?
It will prove that he can hit somewhat watered down pitching in those games!

And until you show me that at this point in his career, that he can’t hit regular major league pitching in April, May or June or the rest of the season then I guess we’ll never know wiil we?

You made this quote down below your article.

It would just mean more if LaHair were putting these sorts of numbers up and he was 23, instead of almost 29.

Yes, but he isn’t and it still doesn’t take us away from the crux of the argument.
Look, I understand that we’re all looking for stars here but how can we find out if Lahair has the slightest chance of being a star if we aren’t willing to find out if he’s serviceable