Rob

Of course he thinks it's a good idea to have the Red Sox be the ones who move out of the AL East. Their travel for intra-division games would be a killer with the unbalanced schedule.

1)Babe Ruth from Boston to the Yankees for $125,000 & $300,000 mortgage in 1920 2)Nolan Ryan from Mets to Angels for 3B Jim Fergosi in 1972 3)Frank Robinson to Baltimore from Cinncinatti for P Milt Pappas in 1966 4)Prospects Derek Lowe & Jason Varitek to Boston from Seattle for Reliever Heathcliff Slocumb in 1997 5)Lou Brock to St. Louis from Cubs for P Ernie Broglio in early 1964 6)Prospects Curt Schilling,Steve Finley & Pete Harnisch to Houston from Baltimore for 1B Glenn Davis in 1991 7)Larry Bowa & prospect Ryne Sandberg to Cubs from Phillies for SS Ivonne DeJesus in 1982 8)David Cone to Mets from Kansas City for catcher Ed Hearn in 1987 9)Jeff Bagwell from Boston to Houston for reliever Larry Anderson in 1990 I didnt see the show so I dont know what the measuring stick was, it appears that this list may be more about perception than fact though. Example, Milt Pappas was not awful for the Reds. Or does it take into account that Lou Brock had nowhere to play for the Cubs since he couldnt handle CF. Or that it basically boiled down to Steve Finley for Glenn Davis because the Astros turned around and made equally bad trade with Schilling. For actual production being swapped the Bobby Abreu/Kevin Stocker trade may be worse then most of those. The Bagwell trade certainly should be higher Edit: and where is Pedro for Delino DeShields? Bagwell for Larry Anderson obviously hurt the Sox long term, so I wont debate that. But they also got a reliever who gave up 3 runs over 22 innings the rest of the season... and they won the division by 2 games. I don't feel like scouring game logs, but it seems like a pretty safe bet that the Sox were very pleased with the short term results when all they gave up was a bad defensive 3B with doubles power. Of course, we all have the benefit of knowing that his doubles would start going over the fence and he'd become a fantastic 1B, but I think it's being a bit dishonest to judge the trade by anything other than the information they had at the time.

People need to concentrate on the fact that we're planning to skip the 5th starter when we can in April (which should be relatively often). You'll feel better when you realize most trips through the rotation will only feature one start by a guy not named Zambrano, Dempster, or Wells. Again, we find ourselves hoping that Lilly comes back quickly... but there are worse times to be coming back from injury than April.

He had damn well better. He's our best 2B.

He doesn't believe in variability on defense... which is just astounding to me.

I love it. It's a really good sign he's dropping and driving, as opposed to that stupid tall and fall.

Whelp, the streak is over. There was no last minute deal before the hearing. Figure expected to come tomorrow.

As somebody who has had his knee sliced open three times for sports injuries, I can safely say that a sore knee doesn't mean much on its own. Popping, catching, slipping, etc... those are the signs that something is structurally wrong. I've torn cartiledge, partially torn my acl, and broken bone shards off of my patella which ground themselves into the nerves around them... and by far the most pain my knee was ever in turned out to be a sprain that was fully healed after about two weeks.

I've been stuck with the same 3 open windows for about half an hour. I get errors about every 5 seconds.. what kind of bumpkin runs this server?

Thanks Vance.

Does anybody have the link for the virtual waiting room?

If Ray Chapman wasn't #1, the list is bunk.

Is very bad to steal Jobu's rum. Is very bad.

He wont make the majors. I'd imagine our LF depth chart looks something like this. Soriano Nady Fuld Hoff Tracy -- start looking at guys who might've been forced into semi-retirement or are on teams that may be out of contention Colvin Snyder Millar Adduci -- start looking at other AAA teams DuBois

And what percentage of the BBWAA do you think will pause long enough to remember that before they start writing indignant articles?

He wouldn't go 1st ballot even if he was on a crappy ballot like this year's. The DH argument and the fact he was a slugger in the steroid era will probably hold him back a couple years, which is an absolute travesty.

I don't have access to Dewan's +/- right now, but UZR has Theriot as about a +5 fielder, and PMR characterizes him about exactly average(100 on their scale). I left my bill james handbook at my parents house, but if memory serves he was listed among neither the leaders nor the trailers. The DT translations suck, but they have Theriot floating around average. (+5 last year, -4 the year before) Hell, even the basic ESPN stats have him floating around average. He's 12th of 22 qualified SS in fielding percentage and 14th in Range Factor. 8th in Zone Rating. Edit: Not that any of those numbers mean a damn thing. Just pointing it out.

If we're counting Fukudome as a CF, all 6 are pretty bad defensively but at least Soriano can throw the ball (I can't see Jones' range as valuable when he's spiking the ball 20 feet in front of him on throws back to the infield). Unless you're going to cite that ridiculous formula that rated Murton and Barry Bonds as two of the best defensive left fielders that one year. Look at it position by position and you'll have a harder time fooling yourself. Not sure what the point of the exercise is, as the UZR's from those two years are influenced by outlier defensive years that account for nearly 3 wins. Didn't say anything about UZR. Was just trying to get KingCubsFan to compare players to each other where it matters... Soriano's arm compared to Jones' didn't seem like it meant anything. No point to the exercise as it doesn't have any real value... just good old fashioned debate. Somebody pointed out that they felt our 2006 outfield was awful... I was merely trying to illustrate that last year's was worse. Soriano, Fukudome, and Bradley are all much better players than Murton, Pierre, and Jones obviously... but due mostly to a combination of Soriano's knee injury and Bradley's power outage, that 2006 outfield was actually better. It's just not a thought that occurs to most people simply because of the names and payroll involved.

If we're counting Fukudome as a CF, all 6 are pretty bad defensively but at least Soriano can throw the ball (I can't see Jones' range as valuable when he's spiking the ball 20 feet in front of him on throws back to the infield). Unless you're going to cite that ridiculous formula that rated Murton and Barry Bonds as two of the best defensive left fielders that one year. Look at it position by position and you'll have a harder time fooling yourself.

.291/.347/.425 .253/.341/.409 Guess which one was Murton/Pierre/Jones and which one was Soriano/Fukudome/Bradley. And then think about the defensive difference.

For first year arb-eligible players, just the left sideburn and mustache. Second year arb-eligible get to include the other sideburn and any hair on the chin. It's not till the final year that you get to include the full beard.

Are you guys going to be "scouts" or "stats people" with Theriot's defense? :D Any smart person would split the difference and say he's average, give or take a couple runs. But that's not the way the arbitration process works and, by golly, it isn't the way the internet works either.

Semi-realistic upside for this year, probably something like .270/.310/.340 with slightly above average defense. But as a 20 year old making his ML debut after skipping most of the high minors, I wouldn't be surprised to see him hit .230/.270/.280 either. I'm still of the mind that we need to keep him down til the all star break at least. Four years out, I could see him as high as .310/.370/.450 with above average defense.

NSBB would be such a better place if only this were true... Nobody should take it as the gospel or anything. There's wiggle room to it same as any other metric. But the amount of hate UZR gets for being "inconsistent" is absurd... and I'll take a few seasons worth of UZR data over the opinions of 99% of the people on this board. There simply aren't many people here watching nearly enough games to have any real idea of what average defense is at a given position anymore. That's to say nothing of fans tendency to overvalue guys who make spectacular diving plays when a better defender would have gotten to the ball easily... or the fact that guys who look awkward in the field are immediately thought of as below average, even if they have more than enough range or arm to cover it. Bottom line, UZR is the best we got.

There's nothing to suggest that the Cubs do want to dump Theriot over this... just that they aren't happy about it. And while we can all agree that Grabow's contract is a mistake, the situations aren't really comparable. Grabow gets paid at market value. First year arbitration eligible players like Theriot are supposed to get paid about 40% of market value.