BigbadB

Hey Dusty, couldn't you just say Eyre was not available Tuesday due to a stomach flu? [-(

Speed has no factor on home runs, and home runs are a huge part of scoring. If Juan Pierre gets on via a base hit and then steals 2nd and 3rd base and Derrek Lee hits a home run, it really didn't matter that Juan Pierre stole those bases, because he would have scored if he was just standing on 1b. The more often a guy gets on base, the chance that he will score increases. I'm not dogging Pierre. I did that enough in the offseason. I think it's too early to make any assessment of Pierre. If he goes 4-4 today, Pierre will raise his AVG by almost 100 points. It's too early. Is Ramirez going to struggle all year like he as so far? I don't think so. I'm very concerned that Pierre had such an off year last year. If he has another off year, this team will struggle. He's put up respectable OBP's in the past, so all we can hope is that he'll get that OBP back where it won't hurt the team.

Yeah, it's not really fair to grade a player this early in the season. 1 hit or walk can make a huge impact on a batting average. One ground out knocks several points off of a batting average.

Koronka's going to be on Sportscenter now too. He just made a sweet no look, behind the back grab.

Koronka's going to get some W's with the offensive support Texas provides, no matter how bad he pitches.

You can say that this shouldn't happen, but realistically, the Florida Marlins team salary is in line with how much these players should really be making to play a game. Ticket prices shouldn't have skyrocketed to what they have, and it most certainly shouldn't cost $5 for a lousy hot dog. A $15m team salary is $600K per player. That's a lot of money. Endorsement deals can up their salary even more. Not only would these players be making more than half a million to play baseball 8 months out of the year, but they don't really accrue many expenses as a ballplayer. The team picks up the travel, daily food allowances, work out room, laundry, equipment, etc..... Once their careers are over, they still have plenty of time to work a real job or even just plain retire if they managed their money wisely. Do the players on the New York Yankees hustle more because they make more money than the guys on the Marlins? Sure, they are more talented players, but they don't work any harder at the game than anyone else. It is just plain ridiculous that the Yankees payroll averages nearly 10m a player. This is just my little rant that it costs a middle income family nearly the entire savings to take the whole family to a single baseball game, and do it the right way, buying hot dogs, peanuts, soda, beer, baseball caps and other souvenirs. I remember paying $8.00 a ticket to go see KISS in concert. I just heard the other day that Madonna is getting $400.00 a ticket to see her show (not that you actually pay me to go see her). I never understood why it became acceptable to raise ticket prices so much, and nearly every year. And if that isn't enough, when the baseball players aren't happy with their salary increases, they just cancel the season and go on strike. The fans take it in the hind either way. You have your choice of super expensive baseball or no baseball at all. But, once baseball resumes, you will pay more for super expensive baseball and you'll like it. I took a long break from baseball on that last strike. They almost lost me for good. I came back, and now I'm even more hooked than I've ever been. But, baseball parks seem more interested in catering to a corporate crowd who can write off season tickets as a business expense than they do the foundation that made this game as big as it is today. There's nothing better than family bonding at a baseball game. If the Marlins only want to pay 15m for their baseball team, I'm fine with that. I would hope that the ticket prices would reflect a decrease in cost considering you aren't getting as much bang for your buck. But, I have watched a couple of Florida games already this year, and they are kind of fun to watch. A bunch of young kids busting their butts trying to lock down a starting job for the next 10 years. I sure enjoy that a whole lot more than watching a multimillionaire not hustling out a ground ball. I'd love to go to more baseball games, but I don't like paying $40 a ticket. My eyes bulge each time I order hot dogs, peanuts, red vines and sodas for everyone when the girl behind the counter says "that'll be $60.00, sir". I can afford it just like I can continue paying the ridiculous price for cigarettes. If I quit smoking, I'd be able to afford a game even more. But, it's the principle. There comes a point where it's just not worth it anymore. I took the wife to 2 WBC games, and between the two games, we spent somewhere in the vicinity of $700.00 to watch two baseball games. JUST THE TWO OF US. Tickets, parking, souvenirs, food and beverage, BAM! The guy down the street would love to take his kids to the game, but he's struggling to make ends meet. There's no way he's taking his whole family to a baseball game without taking out a loan. And that's sad. It shouldn't be that way. Over the past few years, I've actually seen smaller contracts being handed out than what they were doing in 2000. I was hoping to see a market correction, but I don't think it will really correct to the extent that I would like to see it correct. I'd like to see ticket prices reduced and a tremendous reduction in how much these privileged players who are lucky enough to play in the bigs make playing a game. I love the game, but it's definitely got its issues.

You'll probably find that Neifi Perez would be one of the top paid players on the team if he was on the Florida Marlins. Neifi's salary this year is 1/6th of the Marlins salary of all 25 players combined. :wink: Wow, I'm just a bucket of useless information today. I think I'll go watch some baseball.

Going into this season, Neifi is just a hair under $16m for his career. Tack on the 5m he'll make between this year and next year, and he's pocketing 21m for being a marginal major league player. Not too shabby.

We hardly knew ye.

Skimming threads? That point was brought up in this thread already. :wink:

I saw a graphic earlier today in the Fish game. There are currently 12 major league players that are making more money this year than the entire 25 man Marlin roster. Fact! The graphic had the Marlins roster at 15m.

I won't disappear from anywhere. I never have. I've been one of the bigger Dusty detractors during the entire offseason. With the situation where Aramis is hurt, Jacque Jones is hurt, and who Dusty had to play, I was actually fine with his replacements, and I was thrilled with where they batted in the line up. I didn't really get to watch today's game because I was in a meeting that started at gametime and went until the end of the 8th inning. It was on, but that was about the extent of what I know about this game other than the line up. Neifi was at the bottom of the order where I want to see him and Dusty put better OBP guys than Neifi at the top of the order. I'm happy. If he continues running out sensible batting orders, I'll completely shut up about that concern. Sure, the Cubs won the other day with Neifi batting 2nd. But, the odds of them winning games regularly with him at the top of the order drop each new time he does it. Neifi has a respectable AVG. I won't take that away from him. But, he has an atrocious OBP. Because of that, he should be hitting towards the bottom of the order. Plain and simple. Anything else about this game I can't really comment on. I just didn't get to watch it, unfortunately. But, I'm pleased to see the Cubs win. :cheers:

How bad is a free agent signing that has the recently signed player involved in every trade discussion, and also includes sending cash along with him in the deal? Albatross contracts. The Cubs have had them. Todd Hundley and Sammy Sosa on the back end of his contract are of recent note. It's as if these GM's didn't get enough flak over bad contracts. Now, it's "thank you, may I have another?" FWIW I don't think the Cubs org shares most NSBB posters' opinion of Jones. And that's honestly quite a shame. Because if "most NSBB posters" knew it was a poor idea to give Jacque Jones a 3 year deal, you would hope that the Cubs org would know it even more.

How bad is a free agent signing that has the recently signed player involved in every trade discussion, and also includes sending cash along with him in the deal? Albatross contracts. The Cubs have had them. Todd Hundley and Sammy Sosa on the back end of his contract are of recent note. It's as if these GM's didn't get enough flak over bad contracts. Now, it's "thank you, may I have another?"

Haha. The Giants get PPD. Any word on whether they will make it up tomorrow or at least this week. So much for my 2 starts from Taylor Buchholz. Not that I was expecting a whole lot anyway. [-(

Honestly, if they got rid of Joe Morgan, I'd tolerate all the others. Morgan is that bad. And I really like Jon Miller. How he tolerates Morgan is beyond me.

I could have sworn Griffey was on first and he's the one who hit it. But, thanks for the info.

Stupid question. Why was Griffey not out because of the infield fly rule? There was a runner on base and the SS was basically camped under the ball. What am I missing here? I realize the ball actually landed in the outfield grass, but it wasn't by all that much and I've seen the infield fly rule called there before. Not that it means a whole at this point anymore... ](*,)

I watched the Brave's game last night - had to laugh when Cox brought Remmy out to start an inning where he would be facing Utley and Howard. He got Burrell out, then hit Utley and gave up a hit to Howard at which point Cox pulled him. No need for the left specialist any more with righties coming up! :lol: And as great of a manager as Bobby Cox is, I'd be yelling at him through the tv for making a poor decision that hurts the team. Even great managers make poor decisions. If Cox keeps using Remmy like that all year long, Cox is in for a long year.

Before people start new threads that question why people don't give credit where credit is due, they should first read all the threads to make sure people haven't given credit where credit is due. A lot of people (including myself) have given Dusty credit for how well he has managed the team so far this year. Some people will never reach a point where they feel inclined to give him any credit, and I can't blame them. If the Cubs win a game even though a poor decision was made that could have cost the team that game, it doesn't nullify the poor decision. Yes, every manager will make poor decisions. And it isn't necessarily the manager who makes the least amount of poor decisions that will win. It's the managers job to put a team in the best position to win. Period. If Dusty ran out a starting line up that looked like this: Rusch SS Aramis 2b Lee CF Neifi C Jones 3b Pierre 1b Cedeno RF Blanco LF Novoa SP All hell would break loose. But, what if the Cubs actually won that game? Would it justify running that same line up out there the next day? Would the poor decision to run this line up simply be forgiven? While Dusty's decisions aren't nearly close to the scale of the line up above, his typical day to day decisions don't put the team in the best position to win. And when a manager doesn't do his job as well as he could, he deserves criticism. But, this thread really wasn't needed anyway, because a lot of us Dusty detractors have given credit to Dusty for his nice start. Winning does solve a lot of it, as well. Many of us aren't really Dusty detractors because we want to be. He seems like a guy that I'd like to like. However, I watched too many games last year and the year prior to just simply write off all of those games because he has a mini winning streak going to start this season. I'd love for nothing more than to see him make many more "right" decisions than "wrong" ones. I always hope that he has learned from his mistakes. I hoped we would never see Neifi at the top of the order. Not in the line up in general, because that really isn't that big of a deal. I don't want to see him at the top of the order. Neifi belongs at the top of the order just as much as any of the pitchers on the staff belong at the top of the order. The top of the order is not where you hide poor OBP guys in your line up. I'm not going to sit there and analyze every single play to determine if it was the right move or the wrong move on the manager's part. I suppose I could applaud Dusty for leaving Todd Walker in the game to lead off the 8th inning on Sunday night, but that was obviously the right NON decision. I suppose Dusty could have taken Todd out of the game and let Neifi pinch hit for Walker. I don't think Neifi draws the walk in that instance, and now the inning is completely different. But, I don't think you could imagine how unglued this place would get if Neifi was ever brought in to pinch hit for Walker in a close game and the Cubs needed to get a guy on base. And I get just as unglued each time I see a poor hitting guy at the top of the line up. Macias, Perez, Patterson, ENRIQUE WILSON. Doesn't matter who it is. Dusty is getting my wrath anytime he puts a sub .300 OBP at the top of the line up. I'm sorry if anyone doesn't like it. I find it interesting that the St. Louis Cardinals are running Juan Encarnacion out there in the 2 spot everyday. Why, that's the same poor decision as running Neifi out there in the 2 hole. For that, LaRussa is not putting his team in the best position to win. And I'm actually quite fine with that. :D

I don't know who it was, but when they flashed to the Marshall family prior to the start of the game, a kid in the row in front of mom (who I assume was part of the family) looked an awful lot like a young Ryne Sandberg.

Well, I wasn't aware of the rule that SP can't be placed in the RP spots. But, without the status change, I can't use him at all. What I'd ultimately like to do is get Bucholz in for Moyer. I put my relievers back in and neither actually play today, so no points issues there. Bucholz doesn't pitch until tomorrow and Moyer is later in the week. It does say that players will be eligible at their primary position. This shouldn't be Juan's problem, but rather Sportsline's problem.

No. I stand corrected. My apologies.

Can I have someone change their status? I have potentially two starts from Bucholz and another one from Madson, even though it is in Coors Field.

IIRC, Dusty was making many boneheaded decisions in the first week of 2005. I want to say the "Dusty makes another boneheaded decision" thread in baseball discussions was well into page 10 of the thread after the first week. Therefore, I have to give credit where credit is due.