The Cubs are tendering contracts to Carlos Marmol, Ryan Theriot, Jeff Baker, Angel Guzman, Sean Marshall, Koyie Hill, Tom Gorzelanny, and Mike Fontenot.  Neal Cotts is non-tendered, but will be offered a minor league contract.  It's unknown if he'll accept.

So far, among the interesting non-tenders for the Cubs are Kelly Johnson, Chien-Ming Wang, and Scott Olsen.  Ryan Church was removed earlier when Rafael Soriano accepted arbitration.

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I wanted to find some baserunning statistics and was coming up empty (maybe I just don't know where to look) until I discovered that Baseball Prospectus has a section of their statistics site up for baserunning.  It should come as no surprise to people who've been to BP before that they use all sorts of odd sounding abbreviations like GA_OPPS, EqSBR, and EqOAR, but once you figure out what they all mean (through BP's stats glossary), it starts to take a clear shape.  (At least I think it does.  Hopefully some of the more statistically inclined here on BCB can come and confirm or correct what I'm trying to understand and explain here. Paging Shawn Goldman!)

The first thing to understand is the expected runs matrix BP works with.  For example, in 2004, a team with no outs and a man on second averaged 1.1596 runs.  A team with no outs and a man on third averaged 1.4535 runs, and a team with one out and the bases empty averaged .2866 runs.  So if Kosuke Fukudome leads off with a double, but then decides to try and steal third, he's taking a big risk.  If he succeeds, he could add a scant average of about .3 runs, but if he fails, he could take away a brutal average of about 1.2 runs.

So, if we added up all the extra expected runs a player's baserunning added and took away, we would have a way to value how many expected runs a player was worth on the bases.  To do this, BP tracks opportunities for advancement, split into various categories.  How many times did a player take the opportunity to advance from first to third on a hit?  How many times did a player take the opportunity to tag up on a fly ball?  Then, these tallied opportunities are compared to what the average ML runner did.  Then adjustments are made for park effects, etc.  What results is Equivelant Baserunning Runs or EqBRR.  

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There has been some speculation that the Cubs would be fine with Jeff Baker at 2B.  However, in the most recent Paul Sullivan piece, he writes:

One of the more popular free agents on the market, the Cardinals' DeRosa is drawing no interest from his former team, despite inquiries made to the Indians last May after Aramis Ramirez's shoulder injury. The Cubs still prefer a left-handed hitting second baseman, which is why they're interested in the switch-hitting Castillo.

Now, there's a statement to raise the ire of many different Cub partisans - those who love DeRo, those who don't want Castillo, those who want to see Jeff Baker get the job, and those who thought we were past the LH obsession. 

Now it is possible that Sullivan is mis-reading things, that the Cubs are planning to split 2B evenly between Fontenot and Baker and that there's "interest" in Castillo only as a Bradley exit strategy.  But I figure it's worth reconsidering what the 2B options are, with Bill James projections a guess at defensive value based on the past three years of UZR.

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Without access to health records, Rich Harden looks like a great candidate to offer arbitration - at the very least, if not offer an incentive-based contract.  Yes, he kills bullpens, but not if you pair him with Sean Marshall who also lacks endurance to be a starter.  Yes, he can be maddening, breaking down, but when healthy, he is the best pitcher in baseball.  I can understand thinking Harden isn't worth a long-term contract, but that Jim Hendry wouldn't even offer arbitration mystifies me. 

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The Cubs want to move Fukudome back to RF and get a CF.  There is a good CF available in Mike Cameron.  He wouldn't be a bad acquisition, but he's RH and strikes out a lot and is old enough that sudden decline could be a big problem.  Plus, with a tight budget, he could easily be cost prohibitive.  The Cubs would obviously prefer a LH CF, a younger CF, and a CF with better speed.  Curtis Granderson and Carlos Beltran would both be great, except their teams would have to be foolish to trade them for anything but an overwhelming offer.  Indeed, both players have had trade rumors debunked.

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