Apologies for the delay, I got smacked by a nice case of food poisoning the other night and it's only now just letting up. I tried to write something the other day, but staring at a computer screen made me dizzy, or at least more so than usual. Anyway, we now return to regularly scheduled programming.

Thanks to Jay Mariotti

Exhibit B on why nobody should listen to any Chicago area baseball/beat writers is this little gem tucked away in a piece by Jay Mariotti of the SunTimes. Read the column here.

"There is no reason to think Choi, in his first full season, will hit better than .240, hit more than 15 home runs and strike out fewer than 150 times."

Hey Jay - if you or anybody else over at the Suntimes is out there, I'll take that bet every day of the week and twice on Sundays. I'll even wager tickets to the Cubs/Sox series or some other similarly valued item. I'll stand on my head and yell "Jay was right!" through a megaphone if I'm wrong. I'll even personally sign up my 20 closest friends for home delivery service of the Suntimes just so they can more routinely read your wisdom.

I'll bet all of this, Jay, and you can count on it -- my word is as solid as it gets. Just be sure to let me know what I'll get when you're wrong.

Who the heck is Hee Seop Choi?

Famous words uttered by Michael Wilbon, co-host of ESPN's PTI show, while discussing Jim Thome's visit to Chicago the other day. And pretty typical, I guess - Jay Mariotti probably sides with Wilbon and the "Choi is only a prospect! Thome is the real deal" school of thinking. But it does amaze me how people fail to understand the whole "fix what's broken" theory of being a GM - I mean, does anyone really think Thome's visit would be labeled a courtesy visit if Hee Seop Choi played third base or was a relief pitcher? I cut Wilbon some slack since he's paid to be a moutpiece on his show, but geez the guys that write for the Chicago papers should know better. Noticing a trend here? I'm starting to get way too much material for my column on beat writers... we'll see.

Anyway, a pretty good source tells me that Thome and his agent had lunch with Jim Hendry right down Clark Street at Heaven on Seven (mmm cajun) but that they drove to the restaurant so as to avoid the "scene" of being seen together. Pretty amusing if you ask me - the restaurant is like a block away from Wrigley. Evidently, Thome offered his willingness to play either 3rd base OR left field for the Cubs. Hendry is believed to have told them that it is unlikely that he could even afford Thome, even if they had room for him, but that if they moved some contracts, he might be able to fit (Ie Hundley, Alou, the relief pitcher known as ALF). Then, rumor has it that Thome offered some sort of home-town discount. Hendry asked that they get back to him with an offer, and it is believed that one will be presented to him today or tomorrow, especially in the wake of the news that Thome would like to get things done by early next week.

What to make of all of this? #1 - it's still unlikely we'll ever see Thome in a Cub uniform. The Cubs went into this offseason with about 20 million to spend on 3rd base, the bullpen and catcher, and Thome would single handedly blow that budget on a position they weren't prepared to spent on - 1st base. #2 - I wouldn't put it past Hendry to be very quietly exploring the market for some of his guys right now, in an attempt to see if somehow he can get this done. Mostly, I mean this to include Alou - someone I think will have a much better year next year, but who would free up alot of dough if he were traded. #3 - I really don't know how much stock to put in Thome's offer to play third or LF. The last time he played third was in '96, and while he was average then, six years is an eternity in baseball. Just ask Frank Thomas or Albert Belle.

Don't get me wrong - I would LOVE to see Thome batting 4th behind Sammy for the Cubs next year (especially if Choi was batting 6th), but I'm just not sure it all adds up. Hendry might be bold and try to trade Choi in a deal for a 3rd base prospect, but he's still hamstrung by the budget that he had planned on using to shore up the bullpen, and a contract for Choi eliminates whatever they could have given Mike Remlinger or Mike Stanton or even Chad Fox.

So unless there's a huge trade in the making, I suspect Thome will re-sign with Cleveland. He's agreed to give them the "last shot" at signing him, and I have too much respect for Mark Shapiro to think that he'll just let him walk. If Thome's willing to give all of these concessions to the Cubs, you'd have to think he'd do the same for Cleveland - the town where he built his fame. We'll know soon.

Apologies to the Braves

In the interest of being fair and admitting when I'm wrong (as if I'm setting an example for other baseball writers?), more details have surfaced concerning the Hampton trade that, in my opinion, make the deal much more sensible for the Braves.

For one thing, the Braves will actually pay very little of Hampton's salary over the next few years: $2 million in 2003, $2 million in 2004 and $1.5 million in '05. Because of this, I actually believe John Schuerholz when he says that acquiring Hampton will not have any effect on their efforts to re-sign Tom Glavine. In other words, Hampton doesn't change their budget over the next three years at all, and since they are working to get Glavine for a two or three year deal, theoretically they have the same amount of cash they had before they acquired Hampton.

So in the end, they get three free years to try and fix Hampton (it's no secret that this deal happened only after they re-signed Leo Mazzone) and are only on the hook for his salary for years when it's unlikely Glavine, or Maddux for that matter, would be on the payroll such that if they are still stuck paying the 13-15 million a year to Hampton in the fourth, fifth and sixth years of this deal, they theoretically could just shift whatever they were paying Glavine over to Hampton. Basically they gave up Spooneybarger to get this three year trial with him. I'm still not sure it's a great deal, but it is much more defensible than I originally thought. Apologies to Schuerholz and other Braves fans for jumping the gun on my analysis.

Unfortunately for the Marlins, hindsight says that this is still a bad deal for them.

Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood

Exhibit A for why nobody should listen to Chicago area beat/baseball writers (other than Jeff Vorva of the Daily Southtown) is yesterday's Inside Baseball column in the Trib by Phil Rogers. I mean, here I was, minding my own business, sipping on some coffee while sitting with my girlfriend at Panera. All we wanted to do was relax and read the Sunday paper. Instead, after I finished reading Rogers' column, I went on a 10 minute diatribe about the quality of the Chicago area baseball writers. My girlfriend played along and acted interested, but it probably wasn't what she had planned on discussing first thing Sunday morning. Here's why:

Harboring an insane resentment for not making as much money as Alex Rodriguez, Rogers resorts to the type of character assault one usually finds in an election season commercial. Rogers tries to argue people shouldn't weep over Tejada getting the MVP over ARod becase, among other things:

- ARod got married this fall (what a jerk)
- He only invited one teammate to his wedding (what a real jerk)
- He got an extra $700,000 in incentives for his performance this past season (what a money grubbing complete jerk)
- Albert Pujols is a much more viable "cause celeb" (so he must still be a jerk)

All of this despite the fact that "Nobody should begrudge Rodriguez the unprecedented jackpot agent Scott Boras got him." Nobody other than Rogers, evidently.

If Rogers wanted to write a column on why Pujols should get more credit, he should have. Maybe he could have come up with a better argument than that Pujols has "yet to get even one first-place vote" for the MVP. Um, well, you see Phil, there's this guy named Barry and he played for a team out in San Francisco. Rogers goes even further and says that Pujols should have won the MVP last season. Hey, Pujols is a stud and all, but to say he had better numbers than Bonds, or even Sosa or L. Gonzalez is a joke that I won't re-tell here.

Instead, Rogers hopes people will just think of ARod as a bad guy who is somehow guilty of being really, really good and making oodles and oodles of money. Emotion before reason - always a good tact for a writer, especially when there just aren't any good reasons for what you want to say.

Or maybe he just woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day - his whole column is just one big grumpy complaint.

One of the things I might have to add to the list of columns is some sort of weekly Rogers antibiotic, modeled after the weekly Gammons antibiotic that lived a few years ago at Baseball Prospectus.

Hampton to Florida, then Atlanta

It's now official that Mike Hampton, part of the six player deal completed over the weekend between the Rockies and Marlins, has in turn been shipped to the friendly waters in Atlanta in exchange for reliever Tim Spooneybarger and a prospect to be named, likely a 24 year old A ball RHP.

Some are lauding this move for the Marlins, like Aaron Gleeman over at Aaron's Baseball Blog. Aaron's a smart baseball guy and a good writer to boot, but I have to disagree on this one. This was a horrible move by Florida, and for Atlanta for that matter.

First of all, the Marlins will end up paying $38 million dollars to someone who will never pitch for them. So, while the $47.6 million saved by trading Johnson and Wilson sounds nice, it's not nearly as nice as it seems. They were able to pilfer Spooneybarger from the Braves, and that's nice and all, but they come out of this trade with Juan Pierre (how exactly can a guy hit such an empty .280 in Coors Field?) and Spooneybarger and they lose two overpriced, but at least serviceable players in Johnson and Wilson and they only end up saving about $10 million.

The one plus for the Marlins is that this allows Ramon Castro to be the everyday catcher, after way too much time idling on the bench and in AAA. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see him put up an .800-.850 OPS this year if he plays every day.

And what's up with the Braves? Let's see - you can have Tom Glavine at 3 years for 30 million or so AND keep Tim Spooneybarger, or you can let Glavine walk, and trade Spooneybarger for the Coors Field ghost of Mike Hampton for three years at 35.5 million - and if he pitches well, you get three free years from Hampton. What a bargain!

Even if Leo Mazzone can somehow salvage Hampton's career, the Braves could have had a sure thing with Glavine and kept Spooneybarger. A no-brainer.

As for the Rockies, I wouldn't be surprised if Preston Wilson puts up the kind of inflated numbers that Jeffrey Hammonds put up in Coors a few years back (leading to his ridiculous three year deal in Milwaukee). Johnson might even start to return to form now that he's out of Florida. They don't really get much better through this trade, but they free up some payroll and rid themselves of one of the two "hey let's throw lots of money at the two soft tossing lefties on the market this year" contracts they gave to Neagle and Hampton a few years back.