Posts tagged MarkDerosa at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

Alternate title: Jim Hendry Hates Matt Murton

In what's not terribly surprising news, the Cubs just announced that they're putting Alfonso Soriano on the DL after he strained his calf in last night's game. General scuttlebutt has been that Mark DeRosa and Reed Johnson will get at-bats in left field with Felix Pie and Mark Fontenot will fill in for DeRosa and Johnson in their regular positions. The Cubbies are insisting that Soriano's not hurt that badly, but apparently they'd rather be cautious this early in the year. Accordingly, Soriano's going on the DL and Eric Patterson is coming up.

Wait, what? Not Matt Murton? Eric Patterson? They'd rather split time in left field between a middle infielder and a guy that got released three weeks ago instead of Murton, who's got some decent pop and the definite ability to get on base? And they'd rather have Patterson on the bench? Really? Either Jim Hendry wants Murton to stay in AAA and play every day to showcase him or he just really, really, really hates his guts.

As for the main issue here, I think the Cubs are probably making the right move with Soriano, even if he'll be ready to play again in a week. He wasn't all that durable last year, playing in only 135 games, and having him healthy at the end of the year is much more important than having him healthy now. Taking two weeks off in April and early May won't kill the team, and it may make Soriano that much stronger down the stretch.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a rumored trade take on a life of its own the way this "Brian Roberts to the Cubs" rumor has. Cubs' fans seem to be banking on Roberts as if he's the final piece that will magically transform the Cubs into the '27 Yankees. Even Lou Piniella's incessant lineup talk has had the "unless we make a trade" caveat. Well, if you believe Andy MacPhail, the Cubs won't be making a trade. From the Chicago Tribune's baseball blog:

"We worked at it this long and we don't have deal," MacPhail said. "There's other sides characterizing it as an impasse. You make the judgment."

The Cubs have privately been saying Wednesday what MacPhail just laid out for the media. They feel they've done everything possible to acquire Roberts, but after nearly four months of stalemated talks, there's no reason to believe a deal could happen by Opening Day.

It's a pretty open ended statement by MacPhail, but when you break things down, Mark DeRosa and Roberts are really incredibly similar players. Last year Roberts hit .290/.377/.432 and DeRosa hit .293/.371/.420. Roberts is a little better and a little younger, but is the difference big enough to warrant trading for him? Honestly, I don't think so.

Jim Hendry has a bugaboo that he just can't shake: He wants Brian Roberts. Wants him bad. The problem is that acquiring Roberts would surely bump current second baseman/utility man Mark DeRosa to a full-time utility role, and De Rosa is rightfully pissed:

"It's funny for me," DeRosa said Friday at Hi Corbett Field. "I feel like I've done enough ... where I shouldn't be put in this position. Hopefully Jim and [manager Lou Piniella] realize I'm one of the best hitters they have and my bat should be in the lineup."

Agreed! DeRosa's numbers last year were very solid for second base. The only conceivable excuse for the Cubs not recognizing what they have is Lou Piniella is calling for a "legitimate" leadoff guy, as if he doesn't realize that Kosukue Fukudome is right there, waiting to be plugged into the top spot. Getting Roberts would patch that hole in Hendry and Piniella's lives, but it would also cost the Cubs presumably valuable talent in return. DeRosa is good enough to be the Cubs' full-time second baseman. It's a shame the Cubs don't realize it.

Since the Cubs' are the NL Central favorites and not much changed about their team this offseason, there's been a lot of talk revolving around their lineup and where Alfonso Soriano would bat. Today I saw the headline, "Fukudome to hit 2nd, Soriano 3rd" and thought to myself, "Wow, Lou Piniella must get it. That makes a lot of sense." I mean, Soriano's got plenty of power for the three slot and Kosuke Fukudome's power may not translate to America, but his on-base skills and batting average probably will.

Of course the headline doesn't mention who's hitting lead off. Surely Mark DeRosa and his .371 OBP would be there, right? Wrong.

Piniella's new order now goes: Ryan Theriot, Kosuke Fukudome, Alfonso Soriano, Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez, Mark DeRosa, Geovany Soto, Felix Pie and the pitcher.

Ryan Theriot. .266/.326/.346 last year. I guess he stole a lot of bases last year (28 in 32 attempts), but he only swiped bases at a 70% clip in the minors, which means that the value was pretty negligible. Apparently, Sweet Lou doesn't want his bases clogged. Cubs fans should probably just cover their eyes and pretend the lineup is Fukudome, Soriano, Lee, Ramirez, DeRosa, Soto, Pie, the pitcher, and Theriot. Actually, that lineup would make a ton of sense. Maybe Lou's just messing with us, after all.

It's been a few weeks since there's been any talk coming out of Baltimore involving Brian Roberts being traded, but that doesn't mean that the Orioles had decided to keep Roberts around for this season. Now that the team they spent most of their time talking to about Roberts, the Chicago Cubs, starting second baseman Mark DeRosa has been having heart problems this spring, the talks are back on.

The Cubs and Orioles have resumed trade talks involving second baseman Brian Roberts, and one person familiar with the talks indicated discussions were starting to get serious.

In one of the trade proposals being discussed, outfielder Jay Payton would accompany Roberts to Chicago.

The Orioles are seeking a package that would possibly include Sean Gallagher, Sean Marshall, Matt Murton, and Ronny Cedeno.

This is one of those trades that makes sense for both sides, yet neither side has been able to get it done. Well, actually, they did get it done. It's just that Peter Angelos wasn't ready to give up on the Brian Roberts Shrine he keeps in his office at the time. Apparently he's finally found the inner strength and courage to say goodbye, but with Angelos, you never know the lengths he'll go to to screw the Orioles.

The Orioles are clearly rebuilding, so moving Roberts for a package of young players makes the most sense for the organization. As for the Cubs, adding Roberts to their lineup would finally enable the team to move Alfonso Soriano to the middle of the order, and make one of the NL's best lineups even better.

The Cubs have had players miss time already this spring thanks to some very odd reasons. Mark DeRosa had to be hospitalized with an irregular heartbeat, and needed surgery to fix it. Meanwhile, pitcher Jose Ascanio, got jacked up in an attempted robbery. On top of that, Alfonso Soriano just broke his finger. Still, none of these guys are going through anything like Felix Pie is right now.

Get ready to cringe, fellas. From the Cubs official site,

...outfielder Felix Pie missed a couple of days early because of a twisted testicle.

Ouch.

I've no idea how it happened, and I'm not sure I want to know. Maybe he sneezed a la Sammy Sosa. Maybe Carlos Zambrano got angry at him, and thought he needed to learn a painful lesson. Who knows?

The only thing I do know, is that there aren't many other things I can think of that are more painful than a twisted testicle. Mine start to hurt just typing it. Kudos to Felix for only missing a few days. If that happened to me, I'd probably need a week or two off.

After his scary episode of an irregular heartbeart last week that caused him to be hospitalized, Mark DeRosa had two choices: keep trying to control the heartbeat and play through it like he always has, or have surgery to fix it. Since the surgery option is a relatively quick, easy, and safe procedure, DeRosa has opted that way. The Chicago Sun Times has the details of the procedure:

DeRosa, 33, is to undergo a procedure called radio frequency catheter ablation in which an electrode catheter is used to burn off a small area of tissue that causes the irregular heartbeat.

The outpatient surgery, which has a success rate of 98 percent, is expected to last between 1-2 hours and is scheduled to be performed at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

As everyone's said from the outset, anything that involves the heart shouldn't be taken likely. Still, if everything goes well for DeRosa, he should be back in practice by Monday and maybe even seeing some game time within a week from then. And if DeRosa does take the field within a week of heart surgery ... wow. That's not a guy that I'd ever mess with.

The last thing anyone wants to see during the mundane routine of early spring training is something bad happen to a player. The Cubs got quite a scare today when Mark DeRosa suffered an irregular heartbeat during fielding practice and had to be taken off the field in an ambulance. The good news is that it seems his ambulance ride was mostly precautionary and his EKG is normal. That doesn't mean everyone wasn't a little spooked, though. From the Chicago Sun-Times:

``It's scary. Anything that has to do with the heart, you worry about,'' manager Lou Piniella said. ``But everyone was pretty well convinced he's going to be just fine.

``He's completely stable. Better safe than sorry.''

It's good to hear he's doing fine now, as seeing a player taken off the field in an ambulance is pretty much the last thing anyone wants to see at any time, during fielding practice or otherwise. DeRosa apparently has a history of irregular heartbeat, so the trip to hospital to make sure the status quo hasn't changed makes sense. It sounds like he'll be out of the hospital and back in camp pretty soon, although nothing's official yet and the team hasn't really said much on the situation, though again, all indications are that he's going to be quite fine.

All winter, a Brian Roberts to the Cubs trade has kind of seemed like an inevitability. The Cubs and Orioles have been talking about this deal since before the Mitchell Report and it seemed like only a matter of time before these two crazy kids got together and figured things out. Now that doesn't appear terribly likely as Lou Piniella has this to say in today's Chicago Sun-Times:

''I don't think we're going to do anything, to be honest with you,'' he said when asked about trading for an infielder. ''If we do, it'll be in the outfield. ... It would be a right-handed bat to help out in center field. I would think that's probably a possibility, as opposed to the other things you all have been hearing about.''

That bat is rumored to be Marlon Byrd, who wouldn't help the Cubbies nearly as much as Brian Roberts would. It's worth noting that the Roberts deal reportedly fell apart on a huge 9 player trade that also involved Eric Bedard and that that story was, as near as I can tell, broken on Hire Jim Essian! earlier this week. Perhaps now Mark DeRosa can sleep easily and the Orioles and M's will complete their much rumored Bedard trade.

Brian Roberts' name is never far from Cubs fans' mouths right now, and with good reason. His potential addition could cap an effective, ambitious offseason for the Cubs, one that saw them sign the top Japanese player in the market and a solid fifth starter to replace Jason Marquis. (Thank God.) Roberts seems like the final piece, steroids boo-boos be damned.

But a side effect of that addition is what happens to Cubs second baseman/utilityman Mark DeRosa. DeRosa was extremely useful last year, but if the Cubs get better at every position, will they need Marky Mark anymore? That's what he wants to know:

"I'm on the fence with it," DeRosa said Monday. "My personal opinion is that I find it hard to believe a utility man is as important as an everyday player. He's not. Period."

..."At the same time," DeRosa said, "I find it hard to believe I'm going to get playing time if you acquire a player of that caliber [as Roberts]. You've got Fukudome in right, you've got Aramis at third, you've got Roberts at second, you've got [Alfonso Soriano] in left. Where am I going to play? That was my question [to Hendry], and that was my approach. It's not like you're acquiring another super utility player [like a Ryan Freel], and we can all bounce around and all give each other days off and all find a happy medium."

Despite what those doubts might lead one to believe, DeRosa has -- at least as a Cub -- always seemed to be a very understanding, solid team guy. We can forgive him his insecurity; who doesn't want to get playing time? All right, besides Jason Marquis. That's what I thought.

All of this "resurgence of Kaz Matsui" talk tends to make me sick to my stomach. In 2007, he put up an adjusted OPS of 87, which isn't even the best number of his career. Away from Coors Field, he hit .248/.304/.333. That's downright bad. And despite that, everyone is looking at his NLDS numbers (he wasn't even that good in the NLCS or the World Series) and thinking that he's suddenly talking like turned into the player the Mets expected him to be in 2004.

Currently, Cubs' GM Jim Hendry appears to be going after Matsui for somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 million a year. The article doesn't explicitly say where Kaz would play in Chicago, but if he takes Mark DeRosa's job at second base then Hendry should probably be committed.

If the Cubs are serious about repeating as NL Central champs, starting Ryan Theriot and Matsui up the middle would not be the best way to go about it. They're both fairly abysmal hitters and while Matsui is a good but not great fielder, Theriot is average at best. DeRosa is at least a decent hitter and he's not an awful fielder either. With him already in Chicago for the next two years, Matsui would just be a waste of money for the Cubs unless they're moving Kaz back to short.

Things are going so well in Chicago right now that some North Siders are starting to toss the "p" word around pretty casually. Playoffs (get your mind out of the gutter). But with a 15-4 record since June 22nd, can you blame them? The Cubs are beating up on everything that comes their way and have closed to within 3.5 of the Brewers with a lot of baseball left to play. Mark DeRosa is noticing how excited the fans seem to be getting.

''I'm really getting a kick out of some of the signs I'm seeing in the crowd,'' said Mark DeRosa, whose magical transformation from second baseman to Willie Mays-style outfielder was part of Sunday's 7-6 comeback victory, which completed a sweep of the Houston Astros at Wrigley Field. The Cubs remained 3½ games behind Central Division- leading Milwaukee, a 4-3 winner over Colorado.'

'One says, 'It's Going To Happen.' I know a lot of guys here believe something special is going on, and we're trying to ride it out.''

[...]

''Things are going our way, no question about it,'' DeRosa said. ''Try not to talk about it and just roll with it.''

Of course, now DeRosa is talking about it. If you're superstitious, you probably can pencil the Cubs in for about 20 straight losses now. Superstition aside, things certainly look peachy for the Cubs right now. Ben Sheets may miss a couple starts for the Brewers and if that happens, 3.5 games doesn't look like much at all. It's early, but things are certainly looking brighter by the day for the Cubs.

It may have only been a rumor in the past, but the most recent step by Mark Cuban -- submitting an application to own the Chicago Cubs -- has to be taken seriously. The interest seems to be there from one party. Yet Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Tribune still wonders about the other parties involved:

But I'll say what I hear from people who are close to Selig: Baseball doesn't like Cuban. It doesn't like the fact he has had to pay about $1.5 million in fines for criticizing the NBA and its referees, among other sins. It can't imagine what he would do around umpires, a notoriously grumpy group. Baseball doesn't like the perception that Cuban wants to be the star of the show. It doesn't like the thought of Cuban as ringmaster of the Wrigley circus.

That's something Matt Watson touched on a few months ago. But baseball HAS to like the type of cash Cuban can pony up. The Cubs are one of the most heralded and successful franchises in all of sports; they won't be a cheap acquisition. Not to mention the fact that the current Cubs' management has several millions of dollars (see Alfonso Soriano, Ted Lilly, Mark DeRosa, Jason Marquis, Aramis Ramirez) tied up in salary commitments over the next several seasons.

Whoever purchases the team will not only need to meet the asking price, but they will also need sufficient funds to run the team. There aren't many people out there who can assume such a burden. Mark Cuban is one of them. There is no doubt in my mind that baseball will listen intently now that Cuban has called their name. And I have no doubt that Cuban would be an excellent owner, doing everything in his power to turn the lovable losers into winners.

Previously at FanHouse:
Someone Is Interested in Buying the Cubs and It's Not Mark Cuban
Cubs Players Campaign for Mark Cuban to Buy Team
Would Mark Cuban Be Blackballed From Buying the Cubs
Mark Cuban Playing Coy When it Comes to the Cubs
The Cubs Are for Sale

A look at the first round selections in today's MLB draft by the four teams of the AL West division. For a full recap of the first round, you can always read the live-blog we kept of it.

Seattle Mariners (11) Phillipe Aaumont RHP Ecole Du Versant, Gatineau, Quebec: The Mariners roster is currently filled with players from all over the globe, but there is one nation missing. If things go as planned, Seattle fans will have a Canadian on the club to root for as well. Aumont (he's the guy holding the Mariners jersey next to Satan over there) was considered the top Canadian prospect in the draft, and rated 9th amongst all high school pitchers. He's 6'6 and still a little rough around the edges, but his velocity and sinking action on his fastball make him intriguing. Some scouts had him going in the Top 5, so this is a very good value pick for the Mariners.

Texas Rangers (17) Blake Beaven, RHP, Irving (Texas) HS: The Rangers using their first pick on a pitcher from Texas? I never thought I'd see the day. Beaven just finished playing baseball at Irving High School, a scant 15-minute drive away from the Ballpark in Arlington. He has a mid-90's fastball with a lot of sink, which is attractive for a team in a homer friendly ballpark. Some scouts are down on his delivery, but the Rangers don't seem to mind. Their first choice would have been Rick Porcello, but signability was a concern, so they passed on him.

Texas Rangers (24) Michael Main, RHP, Deland (Fla.) HS: The good thing about losing Carlos Lee, Mark DeRosa, and Gary Matthews Jr to free agency is that the Rangers got a whole bunch of draft picks. With their second pick of the first round, they took another right-handed power pitcher. This time they left the state of Texas, and went all the way to Florida to find one. Main is a lot like Beaven pitcher wise, but he's also a pretty good centerfielder with speed. With more at bats, he could develop into a dependable hitter as well.

Oakland Athletics (26) James Simmons, RHP, UC Riverside: It's no secret that Billy Beane prefers college players. After all, they're the only players smart enough to understand sabremetrics. Simmons is the 13th college player the Athletics have taken in the first round in the fourteen drafts Beane has presided over. Simmons was the ace at Riverside for three seasons, posting a 2.40 ERA in his college career. Seems to be a one-pitch pitcher though, which means that to be a starter he'll need to develop at least one more pitch. Looks like more of a late-inning, set-up type.

The Los Angeles Angels did not have a pick in the first round as a result of signing Gary Matthew Jr. in the offseason. They would have had the 24th pick Texas used on Michael Main.

Previously at The Fanhouse:
Meet The NL Central First Round Picks
Meet Your National League East First Round Picks
Meet The AL Central First Round Picks

The Cubs are hot. They're very hot right now. But how does Lou Piniella know they're going to stay hot? Not sabermetrics. Nope. His baseball cards tell him so. From the Chicago Sun Times:

Some managers rely on computer-generated statistics about matchups to guide them. Others go by their instincts.

Cubs manager Lou Piniella has another tool: bubble-gum cards.

''Bubble-gum cards don't lie,'' Piniella said of assessing the career numbers on the backs of the collectibles. ''I have confidence in our hitting. These guys have impressive numbers, and when you look at the back of those cards, there's some history there. These players are going to hit.''

But therein lies the problem: baseball cards do lie. Let's check some instances.

• This old USA Today article notes one card in which the mirror image of Hank Aaron was printed instead of The Hammer himself. It also mentions one year in which Al Lieter was mistaken for Steve George.
• According to this Baseball Fever thread, in 1974 Topps mistook the Padres for a non-existent Washington National League club. Maybe the cards weren't lying, maybe they were clarevoyant. There's many more mistakes in the thread.
  
• Last year Topps printed a card for Alex Gordon. The problem is that MLB rules state that only players on the 25-man roster or players that played in a game the year before can be on cards. Gordon qualified in neither manner.

I guess the point is that, yeah, Lou, baseball cards do lie. So if you're looking at the one that says "Mark DeRosa- .841 OPS" or the one that says "Jason Marquis- 1.03 WHIP," it's probably not being totally honest, Lou.