The future starts last week

Theo Epstein and his lieutenants were busy last week.

On Thursday, the long-expected departure of Carlos Zambrano finally occurred, as he was dealt to the formerly-Florida-but-now-Miami Marlins for what appears at first to be a pittance. The Cubs received pitcher Chris Volstad. Yep, that’s it.

Furthermore, the Cubs will be paying $15.5 million of Zambrano’s $18 salary for the coming season. Needless to say, Volstad will not be seeing that kind of salary any time soon, or probably any time later.

The Cubs, then, traded a 30-year old with 125 career wins and an ERA+ of 122 for a 24-year old with 32 wins and an ERA+ of 90. Even accounting for the age difference, it doesn’t seem like a particularly good deal.

However, there’s more here. Zambrano, of course, is well-known for having, shall we say, psychological issues. These issues, along with some minor injuries, have caused him to average about 150 innings in each of the past three seasons. More worrying, his WHIP has risen during this time, and his strikeout rate last season was his worst since his rookie year.

All this is a long-winded way of saying that Epstein needed to dump Zambrano, and did just that. Zambrano may well bounce back this season, as he’ll be pitching for Ozzie Guillen, and theoretically will have something to prove, but it’s also likely he’ll have a meltdown and miss half the season.

Thursday’s trade was followed on Friday by another trade that is pure Moneyball. The Cubs sent pitcher Andrew Cashner to the Padres for Anthony Rizzo, a large young first baseman, who pummeled Triple-A to the tune of 331/404/652 in 2011, but in a two-month major league stint, not-pummeled the NL at a 141/281/242 clip. Rizzo is clearly the first baseman of the future, and furthermore, is a former Red Sox prospect, who was traded last winter for Adrian Gonzalez. If any evidence is needed that the Epstein regime will follow the established formula used in Boston, this is it.

deep thought

The Cubs now have Wellington Castillo, Darwin Barney, Blake DeWitt, and Thomas Diamond on their roster.

Jane Austen must have done their drafting the last few years.

The more things change, blah blah blah

Here's an exercise.

Take this article (from the wonderful SABR Baseball Biography Project), and substitute "Milton Bradley" for "Alex Johnson."

The results may be illuminating.

Despite the growing understanding of mental illness in professional sports, the most obvious examples still seem to be ignored.

Hey baby, it's the Fourth of July

Fuck yeah, this is the best country ever.

LARIAT-OOOOO!

A while back, I saw this story about one Shaver Hansen, a junior shortstop at Baylor, whose father is this guy.

Turns out that after hitting .330 with 17 home runs this past spring, Hansen the younger was drafted in the sixth round by the Seattle Mariners earlier this week.

All of this is really just an excuse to link to the best six minutes on YouTube.

Lefty blogging

In this case, Lefty Grove. I posted the following as a response to this post by America's best sportswriter, Joe Posnanski.

---
I wouldn’t take very seriously any online poll, and this one is no exception.

Grove is probably the greatest left-hander ever.

But…there’s also a fair amount of evidence, mostly dug up by the late Dick Thompson, that Connie Mack did not pitch Grove against the Yankees as often as his other starters during the 1929-31 period. For instance, according to the indispensable Retrosheet, Grove started eight games against last-place Boston in 1929, more than any other team.

Rob Neyer has mentioned this as well:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=neyer_rob&id=1704222

On the other hand, as Bill James pointed out, Grove spent several years in the minors when he was clearly better than most major-league pitchers of the time.

It doesn’t mean that Grove isn’t the best lefty of all time, just that the margin may not be so large between him and the rest.

Now batting, Judge Sotomayor

Further evidence that the universe may revolve around baseball.

This was pointed out on, all places, WFMT. It will no doubt become a talking point during her confirmation (and she will be confirmed):

"On March 30, 1995, she issued the preliminary injunction against Major League Baseball, preventing MLB from unilaterally implementing a new Collective Bargaining Agreement and using replacement players, thus ending the 1994 baseball strike."

Won't someone listen to me?

Jose Canseco holds a news conference, and (almost) nobody shows up.

"Only one reporter from The Associated Press, Canseco’s lawyer, a photographer and four camera crews attended the news conference. All but two of the 100 seats were empty."

And there are pictures:

Manny being Manny

Regarding his 50 games off - perhaps he was using Pud Galvin's monkey juice.

[UPDATE] I was closer than I knew...

Shocking news of the day

Here's a surprise:

Prior reports shoulder soreness to Padres

Now, I'm being a little snarky here, but given that Prior hasn't pitched in a major league game since 2006, said snark is understandable.

For a much better discussion of the reasons Prior has gone from"can't miss prospect with perfect mechanics" to "he'll be lucky to be able to brush his teeth when he's 40":

Mark Prior's Pitching Mechanics - A Different Perspective