BigbadB

Makes up for the fact that they were quite lucky last season. This is no different than last year. Hudson pretty much missed the end of last season and the playoffs, too.

Keep a close eye on this situation. John Moores is currently in an ugly divorce battle and he'll likely be looking to unload big contracts anyway, so Brian Giles may not have a choice but to leave San Diego. Personally, I don't think San Diego can afford to dump big contracts since they moved downtown. Season ticket sales and yearly attendance is currently taking a pretty big hit and those numbers have fallen every year for the past 3 years. I predicted this is exactly what would happen. The newness of the stadium is wearing off and the Padres can't just fill seats with just anyone stepping onto the field. If the Padres cut Giles loose and don't make a big splash (have the Padres ever made a big splash?) this offseason, Moores will take a much bigger hit to the wallet on ticket sales than Giles' option year. People are just not going to hassle with driving downtown to see a crappy Padres team. They are in the same boat as the Cubs. The team is expected to field a competitive team now. Their days of averaging 30,000 fans a game for a mediocre to bad team are over.

Meanwhile, Fuzzy is about to get Vernon Wells and Milton Bradley back. :stickman: Now if I can just get Javier Vasquez to get the stick out of his ass. Well, I had a dominating win over Quakers this week so at least I'm looking better for the playoffs. Hopefully by then, Lee is back (I've heard reports he's done for the season too). :| My team has been dominant over these past 3 weeks without 2/3 of my outfield. I will have a tough decision to make when Wells comes off the DL. I'm afraid one of the kids will have to be cut. I really like Carlos Gonzalez and Alexei Ramirez, and Ellsbury is finally turning the corner on a horrendous slump. Mr. "I like to give up at least 2 home runs a game" Cueto is also being considered for DFA. But, looking at my keeper list for '09, I can't keep all of those guys and Ian Stewart anyway. Just would have been nice to keep them all and trade one of them at season's end for something of value. How exactly does this waiver thingy work?

Meanwhile, Fuzzy is about to get Vernon Wells and Milton Bradley back. :stickman: Now if I can just get Javier Vasquez to get the stick out of his ass.

I'm not even going to bother to check. I'm quite certain the Angels will be on here. But, I won't be home anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Personally, I don't see this trade working out. Giles has Boston on his list of teams he can't be traded to, IIRC. And while Boston is willing to pick up the remainder of his contract, San Diego will still want some talented prospects for Giles, and I'm not sure Boston will be willing to pick up the entire contract AND give up talented prospects as well. The reason I don't see it working out is because Boston already has a pretty dense outfield, which cuts into Giles' playing time. Bay in left, Drew in right and Ellsbury and Crisp in CF. I'm not sure how keen Giles would be to DH, either, and Boston already has Ortiz at DH. It is interesting that Giles hasn't made it public that he's blocking the trade at this point, so maybe he would like a chance at a World Series ring. But, you still have to get Padres management to sign off on lesser talent for basically their second best player.

Yeah, I don't think this works until everyone is using NSBB and I still don't think it will work correctly after that. I'd prefer we stick to the trade deadline rule.

I don't miss the WGN games. WGN still isn't an HD program with my cable company. More and more games are broadcasting in HD on my MLB EI package. Looking forward to the day all the games are broadcast in HD.

The Rangers are really getting hosed from that aspect.

It's a head to head league. Head to head match up for a tie breaker makes perfect sense.

The good news is this should open up another 40 man roster spot.

I don't agree with that. If two teams tie at the end of the year, the team that won both meetings should be the tie breaker. If they are still tied after that tiebreaker, then total points should break that tie.

Dishman's Dishmans (5-13) at Northside Baseball (12-6) Alamo Stealth (10-8) at Quakers (10-8) Lynx (6-12) at Fuzzy Logistics (11-7) Severe Tooterstorms (8-10) at The Eyes of Texas (9-9) Draconian Empire (10-8) at Harrys Budcrew (10-8) Fire Sale (Buddiga) (5-13) at Raw Dawgs (13-5) Galesburg Hand Sanitizers (11-7) at The Fighting Manginos (5-13) Tootielicious (12-6) at NC Cubs (7-11) It's 10-8 week for the games of the week. All 4 teams currently sitting at 10-8 are playing each other and playoffs are at stake. If I was a betting man (and I am :D ), I'd drop some cash this week on Draconian Empire and Quakers winning their respective high profile matchups. They have the better pitching match ups this week, IMO.

16 teams in each division makes sense. You have to figure two more cities are deserving of a franchise. The goal of MLB should be to continue to expand and increase the amount of markets generating revenue. I'm not opposed to breaking down the divisions into 4 divisions, either. In fact, it would make a lot of sense to do so. In fact, that falls right into the lap of my previous post where they beef up the western divisions, since it makes little sense now that the NL Central has 6 teams and the AL West has 4 teams. Carolina is certainly a possibility for a franchise, as is a 3rd New York team, a New Orleans team, Indianapolis, Portland and Las Vegas. I like Portland and Las Vegas now as a quick fix, with the potential of adding more teams later on and breaking the divisions into 4. I also see the market for player value correcting itself moving forward. There are still some pretty bad contracts being written, but it's happening less and less these days. The more recent expansion teams are proving that you can field a competitive team with a relatively miniscule payroll in relation to the big market teams. There are only so many big market teams to hand out the big contracts, which in turn will decrease the value of the tier of players that fall just below the elite players.

With the recent successes of the Tampa Rays, Florida Marlins, Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies, is it time to add two new teams? I'd love to see a new team out of Las Vegas and Portland. Move one of the current NL West teams (Colorado or Arizona) to the AL and then put Portland in the AL West and Las Vegas in the NL West. Assuming they moved Colorado to the AL West, MLB would be saving a few baseball teams on travel expenses and creating some fun new rivalries. This would create an equal number of teams in each league and balance out interleague play. NL West: Arizona San Diego Las Vegas Los Angeles San Francisco AL West: Seattle Portland Oakland Los Angeles Texas Colorado The biggest argument over the years opposed to adding teams is the talent pool. Between the influx of Pacific Rim players and further development of the Latin America players, I think the talent pool is at an all time high.

The Hall of Fame is a joke, and likely always will be.

Pretty simple....attendance. Contrary to popular belief, those day games in April and May (especially April) are a tough sell compared to the weekends or a night game. That's the part I don't understand. Every year they complain about the dog days of summer, yet they used up most of their night game package in April and May, where several of those games the fans and the players are freezing their butts off. It doesn't make any sense.

Is that short hand for bloop single?

It won't matter. The chances the Cubs offer Edmonds arbitration are next to none.

They rarely do. Theres 0 realism in thinking that we can pound the tar out of a team that we already pounded the tar out of when they had a solid heart of the lineup now that they dont. what was I thinking. Were screwed. Ryan Doumits going to eat us alive. And zgod help us if we get to the bottom of the 9th down a few runs, as is a save machine. Theres all the basis in reality in the world. While that was a smart trade for the Pirates future, as of now, their lineup isnt much better than the Iowa Cubs, and no, thats not exaduration. While it's nice to take an optimistic approach on the series coming up, one should consider being somewhat guarded that the most hopeful outcome doesn't always happen. Plain and simple. There isn't one pitcher that's ever pitched a significant amount of games at the major league level that's beaten every single below .500 team every time they've pitched. Just as easily as the Cubs could sweep the Pirates, the Pirates could catch a little lightning in a bottle and sweep the Cubs. They've been swept by teams as bad or worse than the currently constructed Pirates. You're setting yourself up for a letdown if you go into the series expecting the Cubs to blow out the Pirates all three games. Guarded optimism where you hope and cheer for a 3 game slap down is much better than expecting it.

They rarely do. Are you just so above everyone else on this board that you couldn't take a moment to lighten up just once? The Cubs just swept four from the Brewers on the road, and all you've got are insults to hurl?

I'd expect to see all three of those guys along with Hoffpauir, possibly Kroeger and a 3rd catcher. Oh, and Rich Hill! :thumbsup:

The Cubs have no days off in August? :shock:

He's right. That you don't cover as much ground in CF? No, that it's the easiest place to stay healthy in the OF. Well to be fair, every OF position is the easiest place to stay healthy if you let every ball fall for a hit like Griffey. Ironically enough, Griffey has been his healthiest lately when NOT playing CF.

So the Dodgers have Angel Berroa playing shortstop and Pablo Ozuna playing second, and they trade for Manny? Is Joe Torre really going to sit Juan Pierre or Andruw Jones with the money they make? The victims in this deal will likely be Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp, though I'm not sure which of the previous three mentioned the Dodgers would actually stick in RF. I really would have loved it if the Cubs found a way to snag Ethier.