We’ve been waiting on the Cubs to make official the signings of Carlos Villanueva and Scott Hairston. The catch to both was that there were no open spots on the 40-man roster, so two players would have to be chopped. The Cubs finally got around to chopping one of them Saturday to make the Villanueva signing official. In case you’d forgotten about Lendy Castillo, here’s some background:
Castillo began his career as a shortstop in the Phillies organization, but converted to a pitcher in 2010 and showed enough promise for the Cubs to select him in the 2011 Rule 5 draft.
The 23-year-old appeared in 13 games for the big-league club last season, suffering through a 7.88 ERA and 2.25 WHIP in 16 innings.
Castillo went on the disabled list May 11 with a groin strain and missed several months before being recalled in mid August. He had never pitched above the Single-A level before 2012.
Will Lendy stick with the organization or go the way of his Rule 5 predecessor David Patton? I doubt there are any teams dying to sign him, but you wouldn’t have expected any team to pick him in the Rule 5, either. As for Villanueva, in case you’d forgotten about him…
By placing him on waivers, the Cubs risk losing Castillo to another team, but it has cleared room for Villanueva, whose flexibility will come in handy on this year’s team. The former Blue Jay and Brewer has made 56 starts in his MLB career and 245 relief appearances, with a 4.26 ERA and 1.30 WHIP.
Welcome aboard, Carlos. At least you’re not Lendy!
Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe floated out an interesting possibility regarding the roster spot needed for Scott Hairston. It seems he’s speaking only in the most speculative of tones, but one can dream, can’t one?
Alfonso Soriano, LF, Cubs — Always on the trading block, Soriano could still be moved before spring training, as teams like the Orioles and Rangers look to make last-minute moves to improve. Soriano belted 32 homers and knocked in 108 runs for the 101-loss Cubs, who continue to be willing to assume the bulk of the contract for a fair return.
I’d actually be said to see Alfonso go. I’m sure I’m in the minority, but I don’t mind him sticking around for two more years.
I don’t think Soriano will ever be moved. He’s going to be like Ronnie Woo Woo. We’ll never get rid of him.
I think they’ll bump Campana.
I think Soriano will be moved, but it won’t have anything to do with the Scott Hairston signing.
Campana is a goner…
Once he’s put on waivers, there will be at least a half a dozen little league teams that will be overjoyed to claim him.
The Cubs are going to wind up paying 80% of Soriano’s contract, and they really don’t have anyone to put in LF anyway, so they might as well keep him.
Dollars matter not.
If they can get one medium rated pitching prospect for him, giving a team $20 to $25 million isn’t that big of a deal.
Besides, as of right now, they aren’t paying any players to play on other teams…so they are well overdue to do something like that.
Besides, the Theo and Jed were going to keep him, they wouldn’t be spending 3/4 of the off season signing his praises to the press.
By the end of July, Soriano will be gone.
Or maybe Sappelt, which would give him more time to establish the He-Man Woman Haters Club like he has always dreamed of.
Hooray for me getting ripped on all over the Cubs blogosphere today. yaaaaay.
Or as many of us call it…Monday.
I keep waiting for them to DFA Rusin or Raley in one of these transactions.
When you start looking at it in terms of “who provides the LEAST value to the team” there really is a surprising amount of competition.
I read that Tiger’s weren’t in on any closer’s because of the kid they have ready. Well Leyland did an interview which is said its something he’s concerned about and the article went on to talk about the Rondon kid. I didn’t realize the kid hasn’t even thrown 1 itch in the MLB.
Not much left on the market and guys like Brian Wilson are said to not even be ready. Wander if Marmol comes to camp on top of his game and we can do something like Marmol, Cash and a low level Prospect for a Porcello.
I don’t think so.
First, I don’t think the Cubs are going to give up any prospects to send along in a trade with Marmol. Second, my gut tells me that the Tigers are going to keep Porcello in case they have any injuries on their pitching staff. Third, I think the Tigers are a little gun shy on closers who have had bouts of shittiness (due to the struggles of Jose Valverde last year).
Jed and Theo have tried to talk up Marmol this offseason, similar to Soriano, but Marmol’s history is a little more concerning.
Good thing about it, he’s a goner by season’s end one way or another.
5 more days until I leave for my vacation.
When I get back, pitcher and catchers will be reporting!
Took my son to the cages yesterday and man it felt good to hold a baseball and watch bats swinging etc. I’ve had all the basketball I can stand….even if it’s shitty baseball….its still BASEBALL!
Ballpark Hotdog w/ chilli and cheese, pretzel w/ cheese, nachos, candy……….mmmmmmm baseball is almost back!
Marmol’s going to the Yankees when Mo breaks down. Between working with Rothschild and learning Mo’s cut fastball, I don’t really understand who else would be willing to take on the project, other than the rest of the AL East looking to avoid facing that beast of a relief pitcher in division.
Oh…you’d be surprised what some desperate teams will do when the trade deadline comes around.
The Rangers took Ryan Dempster last year…remember?
I like, though, in one sentence you both said Marmol was a “project” and also a “beast of a relief pitcher”. So he’s a pitcher that nobody wants, but nobody want’t to face him?
Feels like Spring outside today. Smells like baseball.
I skated through my run this morning. We probably had about a half an inch of ice still on the ground and the temperature was in the upper 30′s. Hopefully it will be all melted by the time I drive home from work.
It’s wet and warm here. Everything melted. We’re supposed to hit 60 tomorrow.
I believe this what they call a good ole fashioned January thaw.
Suooposed to be 72 here today
I didn’t think you guys had anything to melt.
Been near 60 here for almost a week and a half.-
The Cubs avoided signing Yuniesky Betancourt.
Thank God for small favors.
Question….
Cubs and the rooftop owners have 11 more years of the current agreement. Where is all of this gonna end up? What’s the most realistic solution besides going through a bunch of court battles etc?
This brings up a question I asked the other day: Why can’t we just have plexiglass signs? Everyone wins.
I’ve read all the articles on the renovation and have read lots of opinions. I would like to hear you alls opinion. If you had a guess…….what comes of the renovation plans battle between the Cubs, City of Chicago and the rooftop owners?
Reason I ask is because in my mind I don’t see a way around a long, expensive, messy court battle.
Rahm will not let that happen.
Rahm got what he wanted which was for the Cubs to pay for the entire renovation. Now he’ll make sure everyone falls into line…and will probably do so by opening day.
I might be optimistic about this, but this is all going to be done quickly. The rooftop owners were just as angry when that Toyota sign went up and it didn’t make any difference.
While it could very well end up in the courts, from my understanding, the language in the 20 year agreement with the rooftop owner was written in such a way that the Cubs actually have some loopholes that they can use to pretty much do whatever they want…specifically, (and I don’t know this for a fact but I heard this somewhere) the agreement stated that the “Tribune Company” could not move to obstruct the views from those building and said nothing about the Cubs organization meaning the deal was voided when control of the team was transferred to the Ricketts family. At the time that the agreement was made, the rooftop owners were not as unified and organized as the are now and it would make sense if they entered into an agreement like that with a number of loopholes in it.
The truth of the matter is that in reality, the Cubs have always gotten their way with the rooftop owners. They got the bleacher expansion. They got more night games. They got to put up the Toyota sign. They got some of the revenues from the rooftop owners.
The rooftop owners make a lot of noise, but they often come up short on anything that they protest against…usually only resulting in getting the Cubs to make minor concessions that really don’t matter.
I expect the same with this situation. The Cubs are going to get approval for more night games, more concerts, more street festivals and more bleacher advertising. My guess is that they will sacrifice the 17% revenue sharing deal they have with the rooftop owners and probably agree to continue to help promote the rooftop seats. An agreement might also be made with one of the rooftop owners as far as putting up a video board, though my renderings suggest that a video board across the street (particularly the United building in left field) won’t really work as well as many people think it would.
Nice post. I tried looking online for the agreement between the Cubs and Rooftop Owners but couldn’t find much of anything. I guess there’s really no way for us to know what the details of that contractual agreement is.
I don’t believe anything is available publicly. This is all information I’ve heard 2nd hand from people supposedly in the know back when I had season tickets. A number of people that sat around me lived in the neighborhood. And one guy that sat two rows down on the other side of the aisle from me was actually friends with Tom Ricketts (Ricketts would walk right down the aisle next to my seats, and go and sit with the guy and chat with him quite often). Anyway, these people said that when the Rickettses took over, there were a lot of questions being asked as to how it would affect the rooftop owners agreement. Most were excited because they thought the Ricketts family would be much easier to work with than the Tribune Company was. That now doesn’t appear to be the case, though.
My guess is that the “loophole” is the ability to buy the rooftop owners out of the contract. And I would imagine it wouldn’t be cheap to do that, or they would have done it a long time ago.
Can’t we have signs that are like teleprompters? They look clear except when you look directly at them from the right side?
I think the city should just let the rooftop owners build their seats like 100 feet higher than they currently are so they can look over the top of the new signs.
I think the city should let us work as mediators to this problem since we have so many good solutions.
The Marlins situation is getting worse by the day. Loria needs to sell the team or be forced to sell the team.
Did I miss something? What happened now?
Are you referring to this?
http://miamiherald.typepad.com/sports-buzz/2013/01/more-loria-behavior-criticized-dolphins-heat-canes-chatter.html
Yeah, nothing we didn’t know but that whole thing is a volcano. He really really needs to just do the right thing and sale the team and walk away. Oh and trade us Stanton for peanuts.
I don’t think he’ll volunteer to sell the team anytime soon. But, that being said, he’s not one of Bud Selig’s best pals anymore. In fact, the fact that the Marlins didn’t get the 2015 All-Star game speaks volumes. Unless Loria turns things around as far as payroll and attendance, Selig may try to force him out before he retires (which might be another 30 years from now). It’s also possible that Loria could have a complaint filed against him by both the other owners and the players association because of his practices…which could result in him being suspended from doing any operations related work with the franchise (similar to what baseball did with George Steinbrenner).
That’s all quite a stretch, but overall, I don’t think anything is going to be done with this jerk. I’m just glad he doesn’t own the Cubs.
Volcano just might erupt this season. Owners hate you, MLB hates you, PA hates you, your fan base hates you, your players hate you, the City hates you, political people hate you……I don’t ever remember an owner being this hated.
You obviously never heard of Bill Wurtz.
Holy crap:
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/2013/01/boston-sportswriters-awful/#.UQa7QS4QQ1c.twitter
I still say Nick Carfardo is the best Cubs beat writer we have.
Wow. I’m glad that guy doesn’t work in Chicago. Our beat writers would make his head explode.
And, yes, Nick Carfardo is our best beat writer.
Ronny Cedeño is supposedly close to signing with the Cardinals.
If that happens, the Cards will be immediately mathmatically eliminated.
Best news ever.
It’s true! It’s true!!
I need to find all those old E6 photos. I think they’re on my other computer.
You kept photos of Ronny Cedeño on your computer?