biittner77

Notice how any team that changes its nickname usually goes down not up? My HS team name was the Norsemen but then we merged with the rival southside version and became the Phoenix. Horrible. I hope once my alma mater, Illinois, is forced to give up Illini, they protest by making the new name Persons. Not Fighting Persons, mind you, just Persons so as to be the lamest nickname ever. Also, anything that ends in a Z, especially if it's a Z where an S should be like Starz.

A better example would be JD Drew who got a lot of attention here even though it seems Hendry never seriously considered signing him. Had the Cubs signed Beltran that would have pushed Patterson out of the starting lineup or precluding signing Burnitz. It's hard to know what Beltran might have done in a Cubs uniform but I'd expect him to have a better season this year and despite a bad season he still outperformed Burnitz and Patterson.

Since the verbage was 2 minor leaguers I'd guess that eliminates Novoa as he spent a significant amount of time on the 25 man roster. I could see it being Wellemeyer or Mitre or perhaps both. I wonder if this move isn't done to perhaps clear a space for Greenberg. Hendry seems to like him and he had a decent enough winter league campaign to remove fears of permanent damage from the injury. If it is Pinto that they want, I'm going to say that the other two guys are going to wind up being people that we haven't heard of or are fringe contributors at best.

I wouldn't know that because I'm not smart enough to spell it corretly either. :D But I'd bet you could at least spell your own name correctly. Dayn? Is he good friends with Jeromy Burnitz? Baker didn't have any special quality while he was with the Giants unless you consider riding the pitching staff to exhaustion and lettting Barry Bonds carry the offense special.

Isn't anybody going to fire Dusty Baker or is that a given?

Do the Pirates or Phillies have an A ball team near by? If not they might swap affiliations in the near future. That's what happened here, The Delmarva Shorebirds were an Expos farm team (With the likes of Vasquez and Barrett) but then switched to Orioles after 1-2 seasons. The Pirates have a team in the South Atlantic league and *might* want to switch locales so as to generate more fan interest and improve logistics for the farm director.

I used to have this dream of having picture in Picture queued to Joe Theisman's career ending injury so I could play it every time he annoyed me during Sunday Night football games.

Yeah, I wouldn't. Offense is so much more important than the bullpen. Why is there such blatant disregard for offense? I have a theory that it's a backlash for the increased importance that offense took on in the 90's and early 00's in many sports, and how all leagues worked to make offense more important. The decades long mantra that defense wins championships, and the insinuation that scoring and offense was far less macho than preventing scores started to take hits when teams like STL won the Super Bowl and even when the Red Sox won the WS. Much like the backlash against sabermetric ideas in baseball, and a more analytical approach to roster moves, the backlash against offense has been led by the it was so much better when crowd. Offense matters. The Cubs bad offense is the reason this team hasn't won 90 games despite being among the top payrolls the past 3 years. Bullpen improvements would be nice, but not nearly as effective at improving this team as the major upgrades needed on offense. More to the point, it has been widely held that pitching is harder to find than hitting. The strategy, then, was to establish a strong pitching staff and then add offense as needed. That concept has been reversed the last few years- at least as far as the Cubs are concerned. In football, it seems like there have always been teams that were good on one side of the ball and merely adequate or suspect on the other. There are countless examples like the Ravens team from a couple years ago. It seems like baseball is becoming the same way. Certain teams- Reds, Rangers, Milwaukee, etc. are always looking for pitching while other teams- Dodgers, Cubs and now the Astros- have lots of pitching but suspect offenses. Either can be a formula for success or disaster depending on how things shake out. Conventional wisdom says that, if forced to chose, it's better to have pitching and defense. Whether or not stats bear that out I couldn't say. The difficult part to accept as a fan is the necessity of the choice when what we really want is both.

He indeed has a plan. You (and most here) just don't like it. Pitching More Pitching Defense Lead-off Right Field For right or wrong, he has decided to model the club like the Astros and White Sox of 2005. Assuming the Howry signing is not fiction, I expect we'll see Hendry do the following in no special order: - sign or trade for another starting pitcher (I'll guess Paul Byrd or Esteban Loaiza) - sign either Rafael Furcal or Alex Gonzalez - trade Todd Walker for a prospect - package Jerome Williams along with a minor prospect for Juan Pierre - package Corey Patterson, Glendon Rusch and a pitching prospect for a mystery RF (the prospect is a nobody if Kevin Mench or Jay Gibbons is the target; the prospect is grade A if Bobby Abreu is the target) Hoops, I agree with everything except the bolded parts. Hendry is loading up on pitching but he also been saying that the solution to the OF dilemna is through trades. We'll have to see who those OF are before resigning ourselves to a pathetic White Sox style offense. I would also argue that the Cards BP has had more to do with their success than their killer lineup, especially in 2004.

It seems like there should be a way that Lowell winds up on the Dodgers and Bradley on the Cubs. Cubs get: Castillo Bradley Dodgers Get: Lowell Marlins get: Walker Rohlicek Hagerty Everyone walks away happy. Castillo Bradley/ Murton Lee Ramirez Giles Murton/ Bradley Barrett Cedeno/ Perez

And if after all this a clear winner still does not emerge, a three legged potato sack race will be held on consecutive Mondays to determine the champion. Not true. The kicker toss for distance comes before the 3 leg race.

I think you left out the part about being a gutless choking dog. After all, he did spend part of the season as a reliever.

They should keep playing Favre until they win enough games to not be able to draft Reggie Bush at which point they should definitely disrespect the best QB they'll ever have so he can go win a super bowl with whatever team he plays for next season. The only flaw in that plan as I see it is that it requires the Packers to win more than 2 games. I guess I can live with that. In all seriousness, what the Packers should do and what they can do are two different things. Looking to the future is tempting but hasn't Brett Favre earned the right to play until he doesn't want to anymore? Is it even fair to Rogers to ask him to be the guy that replaced Favre? They'd probably be better off starting next season with Rogers so they can solve their biggest problem- their offensive line- during the offseason.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=citadel-2_458676_260&prov=citadel&type=story They signed him, no one can pick him up.

He never made it to the major league club. He was taken in the Rule 5 draft after a .259/.373/.486/859 line in AA at age 22. I'm pretty sure they traded him to Oakland in exchange for the rights to a pitcher whom they had selected in the Rule 5 draft (Chaisson?). Oakland then passed him along to Toronto. At the time MacPhail & Hendry got blasted for giving up a ROTY at a position of need for yet another minor league relief pitcher. As it turned out, Hinske is an OK player but giving up on him was not the end of the world. Where this applies to Cedeno is that Hendry doesn't give up on young players until they show that they aren't likely to be productive. Therefore, I expect Cedeno to get worked in the same way Choi did, not getting all the PT but getting a fair amount. At which point it will be up to Cedeno to show what he can do.

How come no one mentions Eric Hinske anymore when it comes to the Cubs not giving young players a chance? Is it because of his pedestrian .262 average and his .733 OPS?

*sigh* true dat. Just like Ron Mahay

If the Cubs got Heilman, his nickname would have to be "Old Style".

I thought for sure you were going to say the Festivus pole.

Perhaps Hendry is saying this because Furcal has all but signed with the Cubs and he's just waiting on some last minute details to be worked out. Then there's the other end of the spectrum- the recruiting element. It shows the Cubs are serious about signing Furcal if they're willing to publicly burn bridges with one of the other options.

I also forgot the pole vault. You know, the place where they lock up poles.

I'm waiting for the update where Kinzer says that the Mets have offered his client a Pony. 5/50 million? I believe the response is You can go Pound Sand.

which is best and why

I wonder if, at the end of the season, how many managers take a more serious look at stats, matchups etc. It could very well be that Baker goes by instinct and his notebook during the season but approaches the next year differently. For instance, Perez came over and immediately hit at the end of 2004. Baker goes into the offseason thinking that Perez can hit. He stays with Perez because of his hot start and rides him the rest of the way out of loyalty. But once the dust settles perhaps he looks at Perez's stats and says wow, this guy was pretty bad the last 3 months of the season. I really believed that Baker batted Perez at the top because he felt that it was his best option. As someone that always tinkers with the lineup anyway, is it so far fetched to see him pencil Murton into the #2 spot? Depending on who they get to play RF I could see a lineup like this: Pierre CF (lets assume) Murton LF Lee Abreu Ramirez Walker Barrett Perez/Cedeno Under those circumstances I could live with Walker batting 6th

The AFL is a small sample but the results tend to support your instinct here. =D> It seems like Leicester is expendable. He could perhaps clear waivers. Wellemeyer and Mitre won't and I expect to see one or both traded in the next couple days. Not claiming any inside info but Hendry can't sit on these guys until the winter meetings. The only problem is that the GM meetings don't usually end with many significant trades. Do the Orioles still owe the Cubs compensation for what his names retirement from the Sosa trade? Perhaps Wellemeyer for Gibbons and they call it even.