erik316wttn

It's not that outlandish. Hendry did the same thing for Dusty. Why do you think Neifi, Ordonez, Macias, etc stayed around as long as they did? Hendry lets his manager have his "boys", often at the expense of the team.

If Meph wants in, all he has to do is PM me and say he wants in.

Yahoo fantasy baseball should be opening within the next week or so, much to the delight of all of us. The offseason really sucks, doesn't it? Anyway, as a 2-time champion last year, I'm looking to defend my titles against some actual competition. I will have a live draft, probably on a Monday or a Thursday sometime this month. I want at least 12 people (and some spots are spoken for already), but i'll cap it at 16 if there's enough interest. PM me if you're interested. I'm looking for active managers who wont quit if their draft doesnt go their way, or if they're in last place in June. When you IM me, tell me if you want standard 5x5 h2h or 6x6, with with extra offensive and pitching category of your choosing.

1945 was also the same year Fred retired, right?

ok then, take your pick- Hendry: -has really mismanaged his prospects and how to get the best value for them over the last few yrs -has put together an absolutely piss-poor farm system, which with the resources he's had at hand, is downright indefensible at least one of the two statements is correct 3) Had a lot of really good prospects and got unlucky that few panned out. Not my opinion of the situation, but a defensible possibility. Yeah, we've had a number of good prospects that never reached their potential: Pie C-Patt Choi Bobby Hill Prior Montanez Cedeno and the list goes on and on... Don't forget David Kelton Remember when Kelton, Montanez, Hill, and Choi was supposed to be our infield of the future?

You, sir, have won an entire bag of internets. A big budget has covered up a lot of Hendry's shortcomings. If he was in a mid-market he'd have been canned long ago. Yes, I know the whole Aram, Nomar, Lee, Harden thing was possible BECAUSE of a big payroll, but if we had someone competent in there, I bet we could have gotten those guys and a few other complimentary pieces that would be looking mighty good right now. Oh, and maybe our farm system wouldn't be the equivalent of a bunch of kindergarteners playing whiffle ball.

Maybe Vitters will be traded for a salami and cheese sandwich by the end of the week. Trading chips? Pfft, we don't need those!

And I'm interested in Angelina Jolie. And I have about the same chances of acquiring her as the Cubs do of acquiring Peavy.

Nothing is written in stone, but it seems to me it's fairly obvious they've down graded from what they had to what they have. Not just in the bullpen, either. We've downgraded with just about every transaction this year, with the exception of Bradley. It's like Hendry is tanking on purpose. It's not really tanking. The downgrades haven't been all that huge, the annoying thing is that there are just so many of them. But it adds up quickly. This team is noticeably worse than last year, and by a fair margin.

Nothing is written in stone, but it seems to me it's fairly obvious they've down graded from what they had to what they have. Not just in the bullpen, either. We've downgraded with just about every transaction this year, with the exception of Bradley. It's like Hendry is tanking on purpose.

With Wuertz gone, there's room for guzman now. Assuming Heilman is the 5th starter, the bullpen could be: Marshall, Cotts, Gaudin, Vizcaino, Guzman, Gregg, Marmol Man, that looks like a pretty shaky bullpen. It looks very similar to last years. Last year had the benefit of keeping Marmol as an anytime guy. Going in Howry and Eyre were a bit more dependable than guys like Vizaino and Cotts. And Wuertz is better than a couple of those guys as well. They've lost Wood and Wuertz and added Vizcaino and Gregg. I say that's a downgrade. Plus, last year's bullpen got the surprise addition of Samardzija, which they are very much unlikely to get this year. We saw how "Going in Howry and Eyre were a bit more dependable than guys like Vizaino and Cotts" worked out. We still don't know that Marmol wont be the anytime guy, Gregg is not very different than Wood as closer (Where is it written that Wood has no chance to put up worse numbers and Gregg has no chance to put up better ones?) and Samarzija is still there to be used if the need arises like last year. We can talk about possible downgrades all we like, but all things being equal (they never are, but still,...) the bullpen is very similar to last seasons. I just hope Marmol isn't shoehorned into the closer's role. He gave us far more benefit when he came into the game in a tough situation and got us out of it. Let Gregg or whoever close. Just about anyone can do that. It would be a tremendous waste of Marmol's abilities to make him the closer for this team. But I bet you that's what happens.

Like Wood and DeRosa? Hendry has done a terrible job this offseason. He's single handily destroying this roster. His negatives far outweigh his positives overall. Sure, without him we wouldn't have Aram, Lee, Harden, etc, but who knows what this team would look like even with someone semi-competent at GM. Hendry needs to go, and I hope the Ricketts understand that.

Almost all of them. People lie in court all the time. It's just not big enough to go after unless the govt. wants to send a message. You know a lot of people that have lied in front of a Grand Jury? Court and Grand Jury are not the same thing. So someone is going to lie to a grand jury but not in court or vice versa? I don't know anyone personally whose even testified before a grand jury, but it pretty much stands to reason that someone would lie to both. A grand jury is simply a fact finding body in which the prosecution must show that there is enough evidence to go forward to a trial, there is nothing special about it. People can go to jail for lying in court too. When a U.S. attorney is considering charging someone with a federal crime, he or she convenes a grand jury. There's a much greater chance that a U.S. attorney will file perjury charges against someone for lying under oath in a federal proceeding than the local D.A. will file a perjury charge in a local matter. Therefore, there is also a much greater chance that an individual will go to jail for lying to a Grand Jury than a local court. Lying to any court has risks. Lying to a Grand Jury is just plain stupid. And the feds have something like a 97% conviction rate, so Barry is most likely going to see the inside of a prison cell. For how long is anyone's guess, though. If they really wanted to make an example of him, could they get him for the steroid use, or is that not a "federal" crime?

Wasn't that early in the year in Atlanta? Are you thinking of this game? I was at that game, as well as the game the next night (the infamous Pratt-fall). That's gotta be the game. Although I remembered it as being a go-ahead homer, not the tying one. But yeah, unless he hit other early-season home runs in Atlanta, that's the one.

Wasn't that early in the year in Atlanta? I'll never forget that faceplant against the wall out in Anaheim.

I have family out in ND. Out by Kyle in Wililston, in fact. My Grandmother grew up there, and I have a great uncle who still lives out there. That being said, I've never been there and have no desire to go there.

They don't care about the baseball records. They care that he lied to in an attempt help Victor Conte get off the hook on the case they really cared about. Sets a bad precedent if they let people lie to a federal grand jury to save their friends in a high profile case like this and then don't punish them for it. If Barry Bonds was Marvin Benard, the feds wouldn't give a Veterans Committee. They're nailing him to the wall cause he dared to break the HR record. Wrong. They are "nailing him to the wall" because he is very high profile witness who a large part of the general public knows is snubbing his note at the Feds by blatantly lying ang being smug about it. If they had just let him do it they would look like a bunch of chumps and whoever they subpoena to testify down the road would know that they can lie and say whatever they want and not worry about the consequences. Exactly. If they let Barry get away with lying under oath, that sets an extremely bad precedent.

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/archives/160872.asp I'm also sure the Giants would love to part with Barry Zito in exchange for Rich Hill. if they eat about 3/4ths of that contract, sure. But that'll never happen, so I'm not worried.

They don't care about the baseball records. They care that he lied to in an attempt help Victor Conte get off the hook on the case they really cared about. Sets a bad precedent if they let people lie to a federal grand jury to save their friends in a high profile case like this and then don't punish them for it. This. Conte was the big fish here. Sure, Bonds is big, but he's only the most famous client of the BALCO labs. They wanted Bonds to get to Conte, and Bonds lied to save his own butt. The feds are going to nail him to the wall, and he has to know this. I see a plea bargain in the future.

Former teammates will be testifying against him at his federal trial in March, stating that he knowingly took steroids other than The Cream and The Clear. Both Giambi brothers will be testifying against him as well. Oh, and did I mention that the feds have urine samples he gave that test positive for steroids? Yeah, he's going away for perjury. Enjoy prison life, Barry, because the feds will nail your ass to the wall. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3869788 http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3867536

Usually by this time all of the big-name FA's have been signed, and what's left over are a few scraps. Certainly a weird offseason to say the least.

If true I think this slams the door on any Peavy trade.

I think we need cat pictures again.

None of these things have any bearing on the Cubs' probable win total, since Pie and Ceda likely weren't going to contribute anything significant to the Cubs in 2009. Or ever, arguably. You can say that, but they could have been traded for someone who would have made a difference.

Nothing like being a player or two away from the World Series and then regressing with nearly every transaction (Bradley excluded). And people wonder why it's been over a century since the Cubs last won the World Series. I can't figure it out! How have they regressed? By getting rid of some of the dead weight on the team like Pie/Cedeno before they had no value/had to be cut? DeRosa and Wood say "hi." Not to mention trading one of our most valuable prospects (Ceda) for Wood's lackluster replacement. And trading probably our 2nd biggest prospect in Pie (yeah, not saying much) for a guy we flipped for Aaron Heilman. This is not a 97-win team. I doubt it's even a 90-win team.