BigbadB

He might be digging the vibe in LA, but can LA afford him? Aren't they on the hook for Andruw Jones and Juan Pierre in 2009? I could have sworn I read somewhere that Jones signed a 2 year deal at 18m per.

Haha. I'll play. To whoever is considering trading for Ben Sheets, I will trade you Kelvim Escobar (elbow cancer, but zero cap points) for less than Don and Adam are asking for their SP's. :grin:

I'm trying to determine, with my little bit of brain activity, whether yelling at Soriano to "have some guts" would be more effective than Lou yelling at Dodger pitchers to "quit throwing balls in the dirt to Soriano".

I don't necessairly disagree..... I may end up only getting a prospect for him. We'll see. I'll be shocked if anyone trades a prospect for him. Good luck with that. Carlos Zambrano and John Lackey were available last year. Ben Sheets was a 2nd round pick last year and he didn't have the injury concerns he currently has.

i don't know if i'd want to read that blurb next to my guy's name when i log onto rk. Someone who is looking for a SP may be interested.. I've made the offer and am not sure as to if it'll even be accepted. Someone may be looking for a SP. But, there will be a ton of SP available because teams have to get under the cap. For that reason alone, Ben Sheets will not be all that high on the list of quality SP's available this offseason.

Actually, if you can trade Ben Sheets, I'll give you all the credit in the world. My apologies for the snide comments. But honestly, a person would be absolutely crazy to gamble on Sheets when there are tons of players who have less points, are not an injury risk, and will be available for less than a 3rd rounder if an owner can simply be patient and wait for everyone to sort out their keepers.

Few situations in the history of major league baseball were as irrelevant to the outcome of a game as that one. I don't know about you, but I'm still a bit shocked that Fukudome didn't hit an 8 run homer off that righty reliever.

It's not certain that he's going to require any surgery. The dude put up 560 points this year. Why should they be asked to leave? It'd only be like a 3rd round pick and a potentially a prospect. A 3rd round pick is a much better gamble than someone who may not pitch at all in 2009. Who can afford to have 560 points towards the cap (more than 1/4 of the cap) sitting on the DL all year? If he's such a great risk, why are you trading him?

Wait, not yet. I have this land in Arizona with an ocean view to sell.

What is the likelihood that a team that has now lost 8 straight playoff games will now win 3 straight playoff games?

Maybe one is actual tickets sold and the other one is based on butts in the seats? Just thinkin' out loud.

I'm about to hopefully trade him for another draft pick, so who cares! :) Someone is seriously offering you a draft pick for Sheets? I guess I should add Kelvim Escobar to my list of players available in trade.

I'm curious what the attendance figures looked like when Peavy pitched and when anyone not named Peavy pitched.

Sure, but coming off a down year, it's going to be bad again next year anyway. They need to rebuild anyway and smaller market teams have a tough time affording expensive starting pitching. The winning and losing matters a lot more than name players. Unfortunately, we'll probably never know how much losing a player of his caliber on a small market team affects attendance. You are correct that they will be down coming off a bad year. I'm sure their season ticket sales this season wasn't impacted all that much since they were coming off a good season the previous year and essentially had everyone from that team coming back again. Season ticket sales will plummet this coming season now that fans know it was a bad team this year and will likely be worse next year. These people love Peavy, however.

Also, they've come to the realization that they will never be a good home run hitting club in that park. So, they want to get speedy. I forgot that they brought up Will Venable, so Pie is kind of overkill. My guess is he doesn't get traded unless Peavy starts demanding it.

Padres attendance figures were down by 300,000 this year. Trade Peavy, and it gets real ugly, IMO.

Does it though? Do people actually pay much attention? They pay attention enough to NOT pay to go to baseball games when they have been cheated for the final time. San Diego had fire sales before. But, they were in Qualcomm where you could tailgate before games, pay a fairly cheap price for an MLB game whether the team was good or not, and Qualcomm was centrally located with easy access before and after games. Petco eliminated tailgating and cheap entertainment. It's difficult to get to and parking is atrocious. It's not centrally located and people will not pay the price to see a bad baseball team. How much did attendance fall this year from last year? I don't have those stats in front of me. Everyone here knows Moores is getting divorced, and they are making the fans suffer for it by trading off all the best players to fund his split.

All hell breaks loose in San Diego if they traded Peavy. But heck, I'd make them this offer: Felix Pie, Ryan Theriot, Jeff Samardzija and Sean Marshall. The Padres focus next year will be on cheap talent that is major league ready and speed. They seem to like Nick Hundley behind the plate. They really like Headley. RF - Gerut CF- Pie LF- Headley 3b- Kouzmanoff SS- Theriot 2b- Antonelli 1b- Gonzalez C- Hundley/Bard SP- Young SP- Marshall SP- Baek SP- Banks SP- Estes, a cheaply resigned Maddux or crappy free agent signing RP- Samardzija

I will say that I'm at least a little excited about the cool down scheduled for this weekend. It was very August Las Vegaslike here yesterday. 98 degrees at 10:15am. My A/C is working overtime. Oh, and I wasn't too far off on my rain prediction. It's actually a bad weekend to rain, but I'll manage if it actually happens. I have 11 24x36 tournament boards that I usually staple to the outside wall of the poolroom we are conducting a huge pool tournament at. There really isn't a good place inside to hang that many boards. And if it rains, the muddy area where the boards would normally hang would make a real mud hole, which would get tracked into the establishment. The threat of rain will probably make us pick a new place to hang them, but then we will probably not get a drop and we will have created a whole big issue out of nothing. And of course, I know as soon as we get them hung up outside, it will rain just enough to really piss me off. Maybe my pessimism after game 1 needs to be toned down a bit, eh?

Same here. I wish I didn't care... Two more games like last night and I could probably be converted.

Those numbers break down to 0.00" - 0.00" for San Diego. Dammit!

Fixed.

I was equally excited all day waiting for this series to start. I was anxiously waiting for the Cubs to show dominance against every other team in the playoffs. I suppose that's why I was SOOOOOO let down by yesterday's performance. I think there's a difference between fighting the good fight and being on the losing end and not fighting a good fight while fans of other teams point at the tv and laugh at your performance. I'm not giving up. Today is a new day. It's not completely out of my system, but I do feel better today. We all invest a lot of time on this team, and it's really hard to absorb bad baseball. The fans cannot turn things around, however. That's up to the guys in the starting line up.

Haha. Where have you been? Tailgaiting for Padres games went out the window when they moved to Petco Park. You can still tailgate at Charger games. I'm Always late to Petco cause they have been weekday games so I have no idea. Best place to Tailgate at Qualcomm is under the metrolink track. Tons of space and a lot fo friendly RV'ers The best places to tailgate at Qualcomm are anywhere they don't force you to move all of your stuff to within a single car parking space as the game gets closer to kickoff. I'm amazed by all the crafty new devices people are coming up with for tailgaiting. My favorite is the family sized gas grill that attaches to the hitch on a truck.

I think I could sing a different tune here today if we played a well fought battle, but came up on the losing end. Last night was an embarrassment, and I can't find a better way to put it. I almost always keep up hope and watch the game until the end. When Dempster walked the bases loaded, I had to leave the room because I knew something bad was about to happen. I saw how much fear everyone else in the room had towards my anger, so I thought it was best to be alone when the home run left the park. I didn't even react when the home run was hit. Everyone except my wife immediately left the house before I came back down, for fear of seeing me behave in an extremely embarrassing way. But, there was no reaction. Nothing. I sat in a state of disbelief until the top of the 9th inning, where I decided I'd seen enough and went somewhere where I could be alone and drink. I refused to talk about the game all night and after a few drinks, I was able to have a little fun talking about things that were not Cub related. I'm sitting here telling all of you that I didn't even bother watching the whole game. It's the freaking playoffs, and I basically turned off the game. That's how embarrassing last night's game was. I know that occasionally a hitter lets a good pitch go by, but Derrek and Geo both had balls that they could hit 600 feet just laid in there for them to crush, but they watched them go into the catcher's glove with a great count. Geo's came with a 2-0 count, and then he proceeded to strike out on the next two pitches. I won't even bring up the walk thing, or Fukudome spinning himself like a top at the plate. I'm finally at the point that I can talk about last night's game. I trust that they got the embarrassing stuff out of their system last night and can now focus on winning baseball games. A loss tonight would not be a good thing. And if the Cubs want the crowd to get into the game, I might suggest they do something that makes the fans want to get into the game. Walking the bases loaded just doesn't do it for me.