TB_11

Some team will be willing to pay him, because they want a popular player, because they think he has some gas left in the tank, or both. Interesting to hear people say that his ego is the reason he'll hang it up this season - I figure his ego is the reason he'll keep on playing. It's obvious home run milestones are important to him, and with 600 so close I can't see him turning down the opportunity that some team will give him.

Normally I'd say Clemens, but given that he didn't deserve his last two Cy Youngs and received them them based on his number of wins, he should be get a taste of his own medicine and the award should go to Carpenter. /spite

Beane's philosophy is to find what's undervalued and overvalued in the market and take advantage of those. He felt that during the offseason teams were overvaluing starting pitching, so he unloaded Mulder and Hudson. I have seen the same article (ESPN.com, I believe) where they mentioned the A's going after defense - a little surprising.

Yeah plus I'd be a lot more comfortable with The Rajah, Oswalt, and Pettite as far from the playoffs as possible. Call me paranoid, but that's not a three man rotation I'd relish facing in a 5 or 7 game series. Nah, those guys are scrubs. I for one am wondering why it is that we all praise Clemens for his great workout regiment and for getting better past 40, then turn around and say old Barry Bonds is cheating. I would love to see the Rocket get tested. You shouldn't be improving as you get well past 40. disclaimer: unless you are named Julio Franco. Two reasons I can see - 1) There hasn't been any explosion in pitching stats like there has been in home runs starting in 1998 and 2) Pitchers don't appear to have gotten noticiably more muscular fro 15 years ago. It will be interesting to see when everything is said and done how many pitchers were on the juice.

Leo Mazzone should be in the Hall of Fame. Who here thinks the Yankees will overpay/trade for Sosa and then watch his ERA skyrocket back to 5.00?

But how much time did Prior miss? He's still going to pitch 175 innings this year. Ramirez is having a terrrific year. What you fail to realize is that it is not the injuries that have kept the Cubs from leading the Wild Card. It is that even with a normal amount of injuries this is about a .500 team. Macias and Perez are your two best bench options; Hollandsworth logs 200 ABs as your starting LF; a confirmed mediocrity like Burnitz in right (batting 4th or 5th!); Weurtz making 80 appearances; Roberto Novoa is your 8th inning guy after Baker lost confidence in Wellemeyer. Those are games going out the back door that Lee, Ramirez, Prior and Zambrano won in the first place. That's a .500 team. On $100 million that is a poor return. Fair points all around. I completely agree with you on the bullpen situation. My original point was that it was injuries + Dusty that led us to not contending for the wild card. Playing Macias, Perez, and Holly, and overusing Wuertz and Novoa were all decisions by Dusty, not Hendry.

Make a sign calling all Cardinal fans 'morans.'

So Hendry is supposed to be able to forecast injuries? To some extent, yes. Injuries are part of the game. If you staff your bench with Perez and Macias, and if you staff the bullpen, which is basically a pitching bench, with the likes of Bartosh, Novoa and Remlinger, you deserve the results you get. How many games did the injuries really cost us? Perez for Nomar, maybe a couple of games. A healthy Wood for the collection of garbage, maybe another couple. It's still a .500 team. Burnitz, Hollandsworth, Maddux, etc. Like I said, I think it is fair to say that Hendry has done a bad job of allocating resources. Prior, Wood, Nomar, and Walker have all spent significant time on the DL, and Aramis has dealt with nagging injuries all season. Two of our three best starting pitchers, and three/fourths our starting infield. Wood aside, I don't think Hendry's at fault for not forecasting the following: a ball to ricochet off Prior's arm, Walker to get nailed by Carlos Lee, Aramis to have dealt with this and that all season, and Nomar to tear his groin. I'm not saying Hendry was perfect, but injuries played a big part in our demise this year. Maybe he shouldn't have predicted Wood to be injury free given his history, but if we had the other four at 100% for the entire season we would be in a better position to contend for the wild card.

I doubt the Yankees are huge players, they don't have any money coming off the books do they? They have Brown, Bernie, Gordon, Felix Rodriguez, and a couple others that make less. Between those 4, they free up over 35 million. I can see another offseason of overpriced starting pitching coming up.

So Hendry is supposed to be able to forecast injuries?

I'm going to offer a dissent on the prevailing "Hendry is bad news" line here for the following reasons: 1. The lynchpins of the 2003 team - Wood, Patterson, Borowski, and Sosa - have cratered or at least may never return to previous form. Sosa is now off the juice. JoBo has reverted to pre-2002 form. Wood has been stubborn on his mechanics. Patterson has turned into Jerome Walton. All of this is hardly Hendry's fault. 2. Hendry has been smart avoiding overpriced, excessively long contracts for everyday players. The free agent market last year was awful. Way overpriced. A good GM avoids that market. Wasn't it Phil Rogers complaining that the Cubs should have signed Thome? How would you like the Cubs to have that albatross of a contract on our hands? 3. Hendry has been excellent at tactical trading, which is appropriate when you think you're close to be a winner. This team is clearly not a winning ballclub anymore. Let's see what Hendry does this offseason now that he has the time, money, and prospects to make some strategic decisions. 4. Hendry has been learning from his mistakes. No big contracts to middle relievers. Getting minor leaguers who control the strike zone (Murton, Moore). I will wait until next spring to see how the Cubs will be transformed before I jump on the "Out with Hendry" bandwagon. Tru, but when it is all said and done its getting into the playoffs that counts, and its going to be 2 years of not in it. All of the blame for not getting into the playoffs shouldn't fall to Hendry. IMHO injuries+Dusty is the formula for why we aren't contending this year. I agree with TX's point that Hendry has been an excellent tactical trader. Aside from the Sisco fiasco, he has brought in Lee (for Choi), Ramirez (for scrubs), Nomar (without giving up Clement), Murton, and Burnitz (when outfielders were getting overpaid). He has faltered on strengthening up our bullpen, but overall he has brought in enough talent for this team to contend. Bad luck and a bad manager has prevented the Cubs from using that talent in the best way.

I KNEW Pujols is naturally a .260 hitter....... Renteria only became a better-than-average shortstop after spending a few years in St. Louis. In Florida he put up similar fielding numbers to what he's put up in 2005.

Shut him down now - we have little to no chance of making the playoffs now. Does anybody know of another pitcher who's had this 'clean-up' type of surgery before? I would imagine the recovery/rehab is relatively straight forward and would love to see a healthy Wood completely ready for 2006.

I caught the first three innings yesterday in the car, and I feel awful for Santo. The Mets series just destroyed him, and he said he's never seen worse baseball than these past three games.

I quote the Mariotti article off of the Sun Times. The buzz in New York always surrounds the possibility of the Yankees getting whoever they want. Also, this is Jay Mariotti we're quoting here.

You arbitrarily place a mark of 5 games, and we are 5.5. Then dismiss are chances based on that? :roll: :roll: :roll: Not saying there arent other reasons to dismiss, but being 5.5 back and not 5 back is far from one of them. Us being out 5.5 games isn't my primary reason for dismissing our chances this season - the others are numerous. Milwaukee is only a half game ahead of us, but I think they'd would be more likely to catch the hot streak over us.

My gut reaction says no, just because his contract is a little outrageous and he's turning 34 next year. If the Cubs wanted to make a strong push for 2006 though (which I hope they don't), it would be the one impact player available in what looks to be weak FA crop this offseason.

Right now it would go to Houston, who at its current pace is projected to reach 87-88 wins. IMHO, whoever takes it among the six teams currently within 5 games of Houston will be the team that catches a hot streak and rides it to 90+ wins. Sadly, we are not one of the teams currently within 5 games of Houston.

I'll agree with that. Besides, there's no way Dusty has a clue what any of this stuff is, so it's not like it could be used to defend his decision making. As far as Dusty knows, Matt's hitting .400 and doesn't deserve to start anyway. Matt's real problem is that he only bats right-handed. He won't help the Cubs much until Baker is gone, nor will any other RH hitter in the farm system. If Hendry is considering resigning Baker he needs to start trading all RH hitters in the minors whenever he can get good value for them. It's never a good sign when a GM needs to make his personnel decisions not based on who is most talented or who will help the team win the most, but instead on who the manager will play based on his illogical beliefs.

Beane has said that that it's amazing how quickly the team matured - this team was designed to compete starting in 2006, not this year.

Whatever many of us think about Sosa now, there is no doubt that he was one of the best 1998-2003. This scouting report could be on Corey Patterson 2005. Maybe he's done til september and maybe that's good. In 1992 Sosa only had 250 or so AB, and put up his first solid year in 1993. THere's still hope for Patterson, and he's still destined to be a #3 hitter. Not that he'll be another Sosa, but that he's still young, his strike zone judgement is poor, he's been misused, and there's still overwhelming hope. After his 1990 season, Sosa had played in a little over 200 games and had about 750 ABs of major league experience. As of right now, Corey has 500+ games and 2000 ABs of major league experience. In general I think people's patience with Corey is beginning to run a little low.

The fu-manchu is highly underrated...... it had promise when Shaq rocked it for a while but its rebirth was stunted. Remember when Giambi went from the A's to the Yankees, and went from a long-haired, goateed, California boy to a guy who looked like he got a frontal lobotomy?

Having Kerry in the bullpen won't be enough for the Cubs to make up 5 games and leap ahead of a handful of teams. And don't challenge this team to lose in new ways - with Dusty at the helm, anything is possible.

I think that puts it perfectly - there's just too many uncertainties right now, and we'd need everything to go perfect or near perfect to consider ourselves serious contenders. If you had to guess our odds of making the playoffs right now, what would you say? 10%? 20%? Then again, I was probably saying all these things in 1998 and 2003......

The way it used to be - just the guys living there, grilling up who knows what to go with their 1pm beers.