…According to Fox Sports Ken Rosenthal, Chicago Cubs pitcher Ryan Dempster wont resign with the Cubs by the November 13th deadline and instead will test the free agent market. It wasn’t all that long ago that people thought it was pretty much a lock for Dempster to resign with the club. But with the market being what it is for starting pitchers, it’s not a big surprise and smart move by Dempster and his agent to test the waters. [FOX]

…Sports Illustrated’s Jon Heyman tries his best Carnac the Magician imitation and tries to predict where this year’s crop of Free Agents land. Some of the good nuggets are K-Rod to Texas and Derek Lowe to the Mets. [SI.com]

…The Milwaukee Brewers have picked up outfielder Mike Cameron’s $10 million dollar option, bringing him back for a second season with the Brew Crew. [MLB]

…According to T.R. Sullivan of MLB.com, the Rangers are planning to announce that former Milwaukee Brewers pitching coach Mike Maddux will assume the same position with the Texas Rangers. Maddux is leaving the Brewers after putting in five years as their pitching coach. [MLB]

A bit of a slow news day so far, GM meetings should heat some things up soon.

When the Royals traded for Mike Jacobs last week, I wondered why a team would give up something to acquire a guy like him. I flashed on the Adam LaRoche for Mike Gonzalez and Brent Lillibridge deal from January 2007, which more or less struck me as movement for its own sake.

It’s not that Jacobs is a bad player — he hit 32 homers last year and he’s in his prime — but overall, he’s a slightly above-average offensive player at a position that demands more. His career line is .262/.318/.498, which isn’t horrible… but is “isn’t horrible” necessarily the standard you want to set?

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Even if that isn’t the standard you want to set, it’s a heckuva lot better than Ross Gload was in ‘08. I get that “mediocre” represents a monumental upgrade and that for a team with zero offense to bring on a slightly above-average player makes sense in a certain context, but I hope nobody envisions Jacobs as a savior of any sort.

For one thing, his biggest area of weakness as a hitter — pitiful OBP — makes him a questionable fit on a team that already struggles to get runners on base. Jacobs’ career OBP of .318 is actually lower than that of hacker extraordinaire Jose Guillen (.323). Impressive though that may be, it’s not really something you covet in a player.

Getting back to LaRoche, he shows up on Jacobs’ list of most comparable players through age 27. So do guys like Rico Brogna, Josh Phelps, Tino “Don’t Let ‘97 Fool You” Martinez, Kevin Mench, Carlos Pena, and Craig Wilson. These are decent enough players, but with the possible exception of Martinez, they or their equivalents generally can be found floating around on the open market. Seriously, ask Pena about that.

On the bright side, the Royals didn’t give up a whole lot to get Jacobs. Yeah, Leo Nunez had a nice year out of the ‘pen and he’s young, but how critical is a middle reliever to a team coming off an 87-loss season?

So my problem isn’t with what the Royals gave up to acquire Jacobs. It’s more that they found themselves in a position of having to give up anything to acquire a hitter of that caliber. He is a support-type player, not a cornerstone. Right now the Royals have too many of the former and precious few of the latter.

Not that they could have gotten a cornerstone player for Nunez, or pretty much anyone else on the roster, but… well, I think you see the problem. Maybe Jacobs will pull a Pena and suddenly turn into an offensive monster. But the odds are against it, and this strikes me more as a shuffling of bodies to give the appearance of improvement than actual improvement itself.

Then again, I could be wrong…

Please join me in welcoming three new members to the Baseball Digest Daily team!
 
Jim Sandoval | Writer: Jim Sandoval is a history teacher by day and a baseball historian at night. He serves as the co-chairman for the Scouts committee of the Society for American Baseball Research. Jim has contributed 9 biographies to SABR’s Bio Project. During the baseball season he has written a baseball column for a local newspaper and can generally be seen sitting near scouts at Joe Davis stadium in Huntsville, Alabama. His research interests include baseball scouts and the 1919 Cincinnati Reds.

Eric Ferguson | Writer: Born and raised in Columbia, Missouri, Eric Ferguson met his sainted wife while attending Drury University and currently resides on the outskirts of St. Louis. He is a frequent contributor to SportingNews.com’s fantasy baseball coverage and has interviewed such luminaries as Kevin Goldstein and John Sickels for BertFlex.com. In his free time, he plays 1860s-rules “base ball” with the St. Louis Unions, bangs the drums in a rock n’ roll band, and still somehow finds time to watch a whole bunch of WWE, Simpsons episodes, and Will Ferrell movies. Eric’s life-size cardboard cutout of Albert Pujols reminds him to always put a good swing on the ball.

Mathew Sisson | Writer: Mathew Sisson, a SABR member from Massachusetts, is a life long Red Sox Fan. He currently lives in Watertown, Massachusetts and works in strategy and finance for a consulting firm in downtown Boston. Matt is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire and is currently in the second year of his MBA at Clark University. In addition to his work at Baseball Digest Daily, Matt contributes to the site Seamheads.com and has a strong interest in current major league players, baseball statistics, fantasy baseball, and baseball history. Matt is currently working on chapters for books being published in 2009 on the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Red Sox.
 
Welcome guys!