Amazing_Grace

You've just described every team Jim Hendry has put together since 2003.

I agree. It's too early to tell. The weather has been awful and not just in Chicago, and it's hard to tell how much that affects a team that offensively will rely a lot on power and homeruns. If the offense doesn't come around by the end of May, then I'll be worried.

I first became a Cubs fan watching Grace continuosly be the only player worth a damn on terrible teams in the early to mid-90's on WGN. What I always liked and respected about Grace was the fact that he wasn't particularly big or strong or fast, and that he succeeded mostly on his technique and skill. He was nearly impossible to strike out, got on base at a near .400 clip, got a lot of extra base hits even without the homers, and up until 1998, there was no question in my mind that with the game on the line, I'd rather have Grace at the plate than any other Cubs hitter. I still respect Grace as a player for all those reasons. He was one of the top 5 hitters in terms of AVG and OBP in all of baseball during the 90's and didn't get very much credit because of the teams he played on. His career averages are comparable to such hitters as Tony Gwynn and Wade Boggs, but he doesn't have the totals because he didn't play for as long. I also believe Sosa very probably did use steroids (something I also believe of Bonds, McGwire, Clemens, and many others), and had he not done so, Grace would be remembered as the better player. That said, Gracie hasn't distinguished himself off the field, especially since leaving the Cubs. The locker room feuds with Sosa that spilled over into the media were juvenile and stupid. The team's management during the 90's certainly deserves much of the blame for continually throwing losing teams out there, but I still think it's in bad taste for a player to criticize his former team as bitterly as Grace has. He's not someone I'd probably like to know beyond just watching him play baseball. Either way, when I think about Cubs players, the first one that pops into my mind is Mark Grace. He was my favorite player from childhood and there's some sentimentality attached to that.

I remember taking a fair amount of criticism here earlier in the Spring when I said something to the effect of "every season we hear Prior is going to be healthy, yet every season he somehow isn't, I'll believe he'll pitch when he's pitching in the regular season". In all seriousness, anyone who is seriously surprised by this news hasn't been paying attention the past 4 years. I know I'll get crucified for saying this, but Prior is to the Cubs what Rick Ankiel was to the Cards. He's lost it completely, but a lot of fans seem to refuse to acknowledge that fact. He's out of chances as far as I'm concerned. The odds of Prior turning it around at this point are pretty low, and they get lower every week he spends on the DL. If he wants back on the major league team again, he has to show he can actually pitch and pitch effectively first. He needs to stay in the minors until and unless that happens.

QFT, except that you forgot world's funniest (insert noun here)

It already is the same old. Prior has come to ST exactly once (2003) ready to play. Other than that, it's always something with this guy. I want to like Prior but it's his job to be ready to play when pitchers & catchers report. If he can't do that, then there's only one person who is to blame, and that's Mark Prior. Well, it's not his fault that he's gotten injured, but it's still his responsibility to be able to do his job competently when he comes back. Ultimately, that's what it comes down to. Either Prior can pitch or he can't, and that's largely on his shoulders. The Cubs can't just pay the guy to sit on the DL forever.

This would be what I would expect to happen if the city somehow ends up buying the stadium.

i don't think cuban has enough money by himself. he'll have to head up an ownership group or something. i doubt that anyone will buy a franchise as expensive as the cubs by themselves. Perhaps a Bill Murray, Mark Cuban, coalition is in order.

There's no doubt whatsoever that the field, especially the Ivy, scoreboard, and the red sign out front contribute greatly to the Wrigley 'mystique'. I think separating the two from a business standpoint would be disastrous. The only scenario I can envision where the Cubs and Wrigley are not sold together is one where the city somehow gets control of the stadium (they could spin it as the public getting control of a great landmark) and gives the new Cubs owner a good deal to play there. It comes down to the question of what keeps the Cubs at Wrigley. There are a lot of good reasons why the Cubs should move, including more seating, more amenities, more luxury boxes, lower maintenance costs, etc. On the other hand, there's really only a couple of reasons they continue to stay. First is the Wrigley mystique and second is the fact that the stadium is bought and paid for while a new stadium would require a significant initial investment, and possibly giving up the complete ownership of the stadium. Obviously, if Zell tries to sell the team without the field, reason 2 is gone and the only thing left to keep the Cubs in Wrigley is just the tradition. In today's world, tradition and mystique alone don't count for much, and this would be no exception. I doubt that Zell or anyone could profit over the long term from keeping the stadium but not the team unless they really intended to tear it down and sell the land, but I doubt very much the city would ever allow that. For Zell to refuse to sell the field would be to shoot himself in the foot, as the team would leave and he'd likely be stuck with an old stadium that couldn't be torn down due to landmark issues. The team would survive without Wrigley, just as it would survive without WGN national telecasts, but I don't think it would be as valuable or as popular without Wrigley. It would represent a significant loss, and a prospective buyer would certainly recognize that. A buyer would not purchase a team without knowing that the people he just bought it from weren't going to turn right around and hold him up for an outrageous sum just to play in the stadium; the deal would have to be in place. Overall, the Cubs and Wrigley go together. Wrigley makes the Cubs more valuable and the Cubs make Wrigley more valuable. In the langage of business, that's called synergy, the combination of two business entities together is greater than the sum of their separate values. If they are severed, value is lost on both sides. This is why, ultimately, I doubt they will be separated. Neither a buyer nor a seller wants to get anything less than the maximum value from their assets.

That's not allowed anymore. Green Bay is grandfathered in. Oh, I didn't realize that. Is the rule the same for NFL and MLB?

The fans probably couldn't on their own without some sort of fairly wealthy advocate to lead the effort. This advocate could be a wealthy individual, a business coalition, or the city of Chicago itself. The City of Green Bay owns the Packers. That's basically the same as the 'fans' owning the team. The taxpayers of the city pay taxes that support, among other things, the Packers, and IIRC, they had to agree to pay a lot higher taxes to keep the team but nevertheless voted to do just that.

I see payroll contracting pretty much period unless someone who's more concerned with going down in history as the guy that brought a title to the Cubs than with losing millions. The contracts the Cubs handed out this offseason were a transparent ploy to ratchet up the team's value so they could sell it for cash. It didn't really matter who was getting the contracts. This has always been the plan. They don't care about future cash flow problems because they won't have to deal with that. The new owner will take most of the heat for the bad contracts when payroll is cut. This, unfortunately, seems to be the price of getting rid of the incompetent Tribune as an owner. They've probably guaranteed that, if the Cubs don't win this year, they probably won't win for many years down the road.

I think, to enlighten the debate, I shall post a partial listing of the WGN Superstation's regular weekday programming. Here's a link. http://www.tvguide.com/listings/default.aspx For Tuesday 1:00 Greg Behrendt Show 2:00 America's Funniest Home Videos 3:00 Moesha 3:30 Cosby Show 4:00 Even Stevens 4:30 Lizzie McGuire 5:00 Home Improvement 5:30 Home Improvement again 6:00 America's Funniest Home Videos again 7:00 Funniest Pets and People 7:30 Funniest Pets and People again 8:00 Funniest Pets and People again 8:30 Funniest Pets and People (they must really like this one) 9:00 WGN News 10:00 Sex and the City 10:30 Scrubs Now, I'm no expert, but if there's something in there that's going to do better than Cubs baseball, I don't see it. If reruns of Moesha are really getting better ratings than Cubs baseball, then, it would seem to be a good time to end the national telecasts. I strongly suspect that this isn't the case. Ultimately, I think the way the national telecasts would be most likely to end would be that THE TEAM tried to hold up WGN for a larger sum for their broadcast rights. Undervaluing the broadcast rights and buying Cubs baseball below market value is one way the Trib has hidden Cubs profits from MLB and the tax man for years.

This just makes the Lilly and Marquis signings look worse than they already did. How you sign one mediocre #3 starter and a pathetic 5 starter without resigning the only pitcher who has been consistently above average for the past several seasons is beyond me. This just proves, once again, that Jim Hendry is one of the worst GMs in all of baseball and should have been fired at the end of last season. After saddling the team's future with all the backloaded deals, NOW the Trib gets a conscience about what the new owner would want. I'm sorry but this is beyond inexcusable. The only way to atone for this fiasco would be for Jim to trade Zambrano before the season ends, so hopefully, we'll get something out of the situation. Jim won't do it unless the Cubs are well off the pace in July, though. Whoever the new owner is, and whatever they do with payroll, I hope the first thing they do is show Hendry the door and hire someone who does a better job of prioritizing where money needs to be spent and who doesn't have a baseball philosophy that's older than I am. Payroll isn't, and never has been, the Cubs problem. The problem is how they spend it.

This is pretty much what I expected to happen to this point. Upping the payroll was an obvious ploy to drive up the team's value for a new owner. My guess is that the Trib actively suggested a plan to sell the team and use the cash to rebuild the company as they were trying to sell the entire company. A baseball team is something you can easily sell for a lot of cash, something the new owner will need plenty of to fix the rest of the company. What happens with the Cubs and payroll will depend on the new owner. Whether WGN continues to carry Cubs games nationally will depend on whether Zell and Co. think there's some other way to make the cable station profitable. There's nothing we can do as fans but wait and see.

:shock: :shock: :shock: Are you familiar with the old robot saying "does not compute".

Ah, I thought I remembered WB being on there. Perhaps WB changed the rules on them somewhere along the way.

I agree with this. I just don't think WGN has much besides sports going on programming wise. Remember when WGN was trying "the WB". That idea went down in flames. The cable stations are all being forced out by specialty channels that cater to certain segments and show only certain stuff. WGN as a national cable station is probably largely being sustained by sports fans that complain to cable providers if it's dropped. I never see anything on there except endless reruns of shows that were popular sometime before I graduated elementary school. FYI, the WB turned into CW... only in the Chicago area. It was neither WB or CW on the Superstation Yes, we're really talking about two completely different animals. The WGN that we have on cable here in Kentucky is largely made up of the reruns we've mentioned. There's another station in our area that used to be UPN and I think is now CW. I believe the rule is that WGN can't show network programming on the national station because they would be infringing on the domain of other network affiliates. There are really two WGNs here, the one you're talking about, and the one that us out-of-towners are talking about.

Do you have any support for that assertion? If you're implying that Zell might look to ratings in 2006 and decide to cut back on Cubs programming, while increasing White Sox programming, don't you think a man that was able to make billions as an investor is more sophisticated than to base such a decision on ratings for only the last year? Also, doesn't it also assume that you're right about your initial point - that the cost of advertising on White Sox games will be more than the cost of advertising on Cubs' games? I would be quite surprised if that's true. On your first question, it's common knowledge that the Sox beat out the Cubs in radio and TV ratings (2006) for the first time in over 20 years. It really isn't a surprise considering the Cubs won 66 games and the Sox were basking in the glow of a WS. It was published in the Tribune so you may want to search the archives. On your second point, no, my view is that Zell doesn't care about the baseball part of the Tribune (he's admitted as much). My point about the Sox was specific to the poster I was replying to---who implied that WGN must be profiting because they are running Sox games--as if to say there is minimal profit in Sox telecasts. My reply is two fold: because of the recent success of the Sox, WGN can charge more per advertiser in 2007 than they can for Cubs games... Also, the Cubs, Sox, and Bulls will always be shown locally in Chicago because it is a local station (with a national following). The poster you were replying to is me, but I'm not saying that Sox games are unprofitable. I'm saying that they are profitable, but that Cubs games have been and likely will be more profitable over the long term. You seem to be saying that WGN will drop national telecasts because the new owners don't care about baseball and because TBS dropped the Braves, but the first is irrelevant, because we've all seen how much the Trib cares about baseball vs. profit, and the second is a different situation with a different network in a different city with different ownership. I'm simply saying that the decision will be based on profit, and the evidence suggests that WGN is making money on televising the games of both baseball teams. With all the problems the Trib is having financially, do you really and truly believe that they wouldn't drop Cubs games to bring in more money if they had the chance? I think if they could make more money dropping baseball, baseball would already have been dropped. Who the owner is is rather irrelevant from a what's profitable vs. what's unprofitable perspective. If there's something that will be more profitable than Cubs games that becomes easily accessible for WGN--like say, if the Trib was bought by Rupert Murdoch, who has a huge TV empire and a lot of programming that he could put on WGN--then maybe they'll stop the broadcasts, but who knows if and when that will be. Just because the team or WGN gets a new owner who knows or cares nothing about baseball does not mean national telecasts will end. That decision will be based on the new owner's call on what the best way to make money is, and it is as likely as not to be the same decision the Tribune made to make the most money.

I agree with this. I just don't think WGN has much besides sports going on programming wise. Remember when WGN was trying "the WB". That idea went down in flames. The cable stations are all being forced out by specialty channels that cater to certain segments and show only certain stuff. WGN as a national cable station is probably largely being sustained by sports fans that complain to cable providers if it's dropped. I never see anything on there except endless reruns of shows that were popular sometime before I graduated elementary school.

I can recall Wood, Prior, Jeremi Gonzalez, Kyle Farnsworth, Terry Adams, Carlos Zambrano, Rich Hill, Jon Garland, and Dontrelle Willis as all being Cubs products that have been pretty solid contributors at one time or another. Am I forgetting anyone? That's a pretty damn good list.

I don't dispute that not televising the games nationally would decimate the Cubs national following. I just don't think that it's as likely to happen as others. With the case of the Braves, you have a huge media conglomerate that has an overarching media strategy that didn't include Braves baseball. If the Trib is sold to either of the groups mentioned, it won't be the same as if they were sold to, say, Newscorp or Disney. These groups don't have huge television media empires. They're guys probably more interested in the Trib's newspapers, which have very little to do with the team or WGN. We still have to ask whether WGN is profiting or not from the games. The fact that they continue to show White Sox games tells me that, yes, they are making money on baseball and that there probably isn't much they could do programming wise to make more money. Now, the new WGN owner could come in and decide they want to try another way to make more money. I just don't think that breaking up the Cubs from WGN will automatically mean the end of national broadcasts.

WGN could expand its CW programming which, currently, takes a back seat to Cubs games during the season. They could find plenty of ways to make it profitable. In business, that statement begs the question "so why aren't they already doing it?" Most businesses don't like to just leave dollars on the table when there is something more profitable available. It could be argued that since the Cubs are another division of the same company, they are using WGN to boost the profitability of the Cubs, and that that benefit is larger than the profit that could be made by putting other programming on instead of the Cubs. That explanation wouldn't explain why WGN carries Sox games though. Does anyone want to argue that the Sox have more fans outside Chicago than the Cubs. I think that the situation is actually the other way around. The Trib has used the Cubs, a team that has one of the largest national fan bases in all of baseball (just look at the locations on this message board for evidence of that) to boost the profitability of WGN by selling broadcast rights at below market value to another Tribune division, thereby transferring profit from the Cubs to WGN. On a side note, what is the "CW". I have cable so I rarely watch the usual TV networks and never watch WGN except for Cub games. WGN isn't doing it now because they are currently under the Tribune umbrella and, at the moment, Cubs baseball (and Sox games) is the priority. If the companies are made separate, WGN can choose its own programming. Its not like this hasn't happened before. TBS is making the transition to end all national Braves baseball broadcasts by the end of this season. I can see WGN continuing to run the games locally (which is fine for those of us that are local) but I am concerned about the greater effect on a potential loss of the national viewers. As I said earlier, I'm playing devil's advocate by looking at the worst case but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened. BTW, the CW is a network with new and rerun programs. In some areas, the CW is a stand alone station but in Chicago it shares time with WGN's regular schedule. Actually, the WGN Superstation (which is seen only outside of the Chicago area) may show more of the CW than we get locally; I learned in the game thread the other day that the show I was watching on WGN, before the game, wasn't being shown nationwide. I think the important question is why WGN televises baseball games, Cubs and Sox nationally. Obviously the Trib made that call and there is some reason why. If the reason isn't "that's the way we make the most money", then there must be some other reason. It could be out of some loyalty to the city of Chicago, building up the city or something. It could be simple "that's what we've always done" business inertia. It could be that the Trib uses WGN to drive up the value of the Cubs for financial reasons and then televises the Sox games out of a sense of "fairness" or something like that. Either way, the new owners of WGN and the Cubs will either decide that continuing to televise Cubs games nationally in some form is profitable or not. It comes down to whether there is something that will get better ratings to replace the games. I don't think the Braves example is necessarily a very good one. What Turner did when he bought the team and put the games on his TBS network, was an attempt to create the same kind of national following the Cubs already had. What the Trib did was simply take advantage of the fact that the Cubs had a pretty solid regional and national fanbase, a great tradition, and Wrigley Field, and used that to make money by broadcasting games on their cable superstation. To compare the Braves national fanbase to the Cubs is a bit of a stretch to me. Most of the Braves fans were pretty much created by a combination of the TV telecasts and the team's success. Once Turner sold the company, the same focus wasn't put on the team (what does Time/Warner care about building the fanbase for a baseball team that represents a tiny fraction of its business). Once the team got weaker, no one watched and that spelled the end of the Braves games. I think the odds are good that Cubs games continue to be televised nationally under new Cubs/WGN ownership.

I was just thinking the same thing. I still can't believe they have a freakin' hill out there. I never understood that hill. What's the point of it? It looks stupid and has a huge potential to cause injuries. Is there a legitimate need for a hill there to support the stadium or for drainage or something, or is it some field designer's idea of "you know what would be really cool"?

Murton was a great hitter before he reached the big leagues, but he wasn't a great power hitter. His highest ISOP number in the minors was 2005, and that .156 He had a .200 in the majors due to kind of a fluke home run rate (he hit 7 home runs in 140 AB's in the majors compared to 8 in 313 AB's in double A of the same year, also his ground ball rate in 2005 was higher than it was in 2006). In 2006, he started off what his minor league numbers would indicate (.156 in April, .125 in May). By August and September, he had developed into a much better power hitter (.244, .228). I'll give you this-the staff should have worked harder with him in the offseason so that he didn't have to go through the slump he did, and the time off during the season probably prolonged the time it took him to learn this-but he did develop much more power over the course of last season, and I think a little more aggression helped him in that regard, so I credit Dusty and his staff for that. If there was one thing Dusty and his staff were all right at, it was developing power in hitters-unfortunately for the Cubs, the organization bringing up aggressive hitters (Patterson and Cedeno to name two) combined with Dusty's aggressive approach was a really bad combination, and so only hitters that had learned patience in other places (Lee, Ramirez, Barrett, Murton) really came into their own under that coaching staff. Dusty was a poor fit as manager of the Cubs right from the start. He was known as a veteran friendly manager who didn't preach patience and was coming into an organization that needed someone to develop talent from one of the league's top farm systems and teach Hendry's 'toolsy' guys how to wait for a hitter's pitch, work the count, run the bases correctly, hit to all fields, and just generally play smart baseball.