TruffleShuffle

Don't celebrate too early... you'll jinx him. Plus he's a Cub, so he has plenty of time to go in the toilet.

Doesn't look promising today. 5-0 Cubs, with Hill shutting the Giants down. While I'm rooting for the Cubs to keep losing, I can't do that when Hill is pitching. I want him to keep showing that he belongs on the club next year. I feel like the Cubs don't have enough faith in him and it wouldn't take much for them to write him out of the equation for 2007.

When's the draft? I dont really want another league, but if you guys need one more and I can make the draft, then I'll do it. Tomorrow at 4 PM EST. Hence the urgency.

He's 44th in OPS right now. That might be the worst choice of league MVP I've ever seen.

Haha, good to see minor league voters are as stupid as major league voters - if not more so.

I'm hoping Iowa takes Montana behind the woodshed since I have 3 Hawkeye entities (Albert Young, Chandler and Iowa D) on my Big Ten fantasy team. Most likely, Young and Chandler won't play the whole game, but hopefully they'll light up Montana's D when they're on the field. By the way, nobody seems to know who Albert Young is. Are Iowa fans and myself the only people who know he ran for over 1300 yards last year?

I'm going to have to pass... I think 7 leagues (6 pro, 1 college) is enough :lol:

So, we're still short one person... we gonna fill that last spot by draft time?

Mussina will not be a Cub. He's an East Coast guy and basically will not sign with a team unless it's in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic.

How many fantasy football leagues are you participating in this year? This means things where you draft players for a team - don't include pick'em-type contests.

I agree with you. The Cubs honestly don't have to look drastically different. A healthy Lee, a possibly healthy Prior, further-developed Hill and a #2 starter could contend for the Central. Unless something happens in the offseason that is unexpected, the Central will be very winnable next year to the Cubs, Cards, Brewers, Reds, and possibly Astros (sorry Jake). I don't have much faith in Cardinals ownership to do anything worth a damn, and I think Hendry has something to prove. The Cardinals don't have to do all that much worth a damn. They're already competitive. But, they do have to replace the production that Edmonds gave them. Oh, and Jason Marquis sucks and should be gone after this year.

So the poll question is, what will we do if the Cubs re-hire Dusty?

Let me tell you, I have done some leagues where I felt like we were scraping the bottom of the barrel - and then a bunch of grad students and myself conducted a 14 team draft covering 15 rounds last evening. Talk about bottom of the barrel. I wasn't even thrilled with who to pick by, say, the 6th round. Here's what I came up with: Round 1: RB Edgerrin James Round 2: WR Marvin Harrison Round 3: WR Roy Williams Round 4: TE Jeremy Shockey Round 5: QB Jake Plummer Round 6: RB Ahman Green Round 7: Pittsburgh D Round 8: RB Kevan Barlow Round 9: WR Kevin Curtis Round 10: QB Michael Vick Round 11: RB Maurice Jones-Drew Round 12: K Josh Brown Round 13: RB Derrick Blaylock Round 14: TE Kellen Winslow Round 15: Arizona D Like I said - you had to get pretty creative with some picks. I took a lot of RBs for when (not if) Ahman Green gets hurt for the year. I know James is on Arizona, but I just can't believe that he'll go from great to mediocre by changing teams. Arizona should have a big-time offense. I took Barlow and Blaylock b/c I have no idea who will get most of the Jets' carries, and I took Jones-Drew because Greg Jones just blew out his knee and Fred Taylor will inevitably get hurt. Shockey was kind of a no-brainer after Gates was picked as the first TE. Winslow is a good pick for the late round - high risk, high reward. So we'll see how it turns out. That's my first of 5 fantasy drafts this year, haha.

There's an easy way to put an end to the aggressive, provocative actions by umpires - suspend them. Of course, MLB has no cohones so it won't happen, but this isn't a difficult problem to solve.

Boy, sometimes you can just see that one team wants it more. The Cubs went out and proved that the last two days... they're really playing inspired baseball right now.

Hey, at least we can root for the Cubs in one race this year.

Glad to see Eric drawing walks at a pretty good clip in Iowa.

Freddie Bynum. Works pretty well.

Uh, isn't the point of being a "stat geek" to find ballplayers who can play the game well?

I would say Cabrera is much more likely to get traded than Bay. Bay is signed on the cheap, Cabrera is not. He's at the stage in his career that Pujols was at when he signed his monster deal, and he's putting up comparable numbers. Miguel's list of similar batters at this age is littered with hall of famers (Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Mickey Mantle) and future hall of famers (Griffey and Pujols). He is putting up these numbers in a pitchers park. Jeter and Soriano got over $5m in their first forays into the arbitration process, and both were years ago, while neither was as good as Miggy. I say he could easily get $7+ million in arbitration, and might flirt with the $10m mark set by Soriano last year. A good agent should be able to get him a deal that comes close to what Pujols signed in 2004, 7/$100. I would think his agent would want to find a trade. And I would think Florida would still want to keep costs as low as possible. Give them solid young players/prospects still a couple years from arbitration, and throw in some cash and I bet they'd deal. And the Cubs are exactly the type of team that should do whatever it takes to make such a deal. I agree with this post completely. The Cubs are horrible, why not just throw the kitchen sink at the Marlins and hope they take it for Cabrera? They could do that or they can sit and watch their crap nucleus try to take a run at .500 once or twice in the next 5 years.

Some people are high, too.

I don't think that's enough to get Freel. I'd be thrilled if the Cubs could get him though, especially if they had the brains to stick him at a more "defensive" position like 2B or CF. I think Krivsky is a competent GM, although the Lopez/Kearns trade was pretty baffling. Maybe he'd have another brain fart and get ripped off for Freel too.

The time to get Bay was back when he was an undervalued prospect in the Padres' system. I liked him a lot back then - and believe it or not, I liked him based just on his stats... I never saw him play.

I'd just like to say that the first post in this thread is very, very good. Go Cubs!

I really don't like Texas much but when Major Applewhite was there, I liked them a lot. Then I hated them when they played Chris Simms, and liked them for the last game and a half when they put Applewhite into the Big XII title game and then started him in the Holiday Bowl.