Rob

I remember when Soriano's road beef was posted up here and everybody was all "I could do better than that" and I didn't believe half of them... If anybody wants to say it now, I'll believe them.

Buzz is an idiot. I'll never forget him launching into Will Leitch on some tangent about how his website was condoning all sorts of horrible acts... and to prove his point, he was reading the comments of the posters on deadspin. If Tim were judged by the posts on this board, he'd be in jail.

Aramis Ramirez, though I don't see him developing the patience Aramis has in the last few years.

Castro does a much better job of staying back on the ball than Theriot does. I have no reason to doubt he'll end up with better power.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/online/majors/espn-chat/2009/268994.html I guess on talent/ability, Vitters is more likely, but one of the shortstops will have to definitely switch a position if they develop. It does make me wonder on the potential for one of the shortstops to go to 3rd, although I still think it's more likely that one of them goes to either 2nd (Castro) or CF (Lee). I wouldn't move Lee to 2nd as I think he can be better utilized in CF. If Castro makes it to the bigs as a SS and it looks like he's gonna be able to stay there, I wouldn't be surprised for Lee to turn into trade bait.

I really wish people would stop suggesting Brad Hawpe. His defense is so bad that if there were a Hall of Fame for terrible defenders, he'd be an inner-circle first ballot king of the freaking Hall. I would legitimately rather run Fuld out there every single day.

Burke probably does have bad range if you're looking at him as a CF.

He had to rack up 682 PA to put up those numbers. And he ranked 10th in the league in outs.

Soriano was bad in Texas, especially considering the ballpark.

An AFL MVP would work wonders towards Castro going from one of the great unheralded prospects to simply a top prospect.

I posted this elsewhere, but I think it needs pointed out again here. Roy Halladay's contract pays $15,750,000 next season. Vernon Wells' salary is "only" $12,500,000... but his contract stipulates his signing bonus was split into 3 $8,500,000 chunks, one of which is due this March. Even if we can get the Jays to pick up all of Bradly's contract, we cant add $26,416,667 to next years payroll... we can barely afford to pay the arbitration eligible players.

The easiest way to quantify a GM would be team salary minus league minimum x 25 divided by marginal wins over replacement. You should probably include investments into the farm system into that too, but that'd get messy. It might not be fair to some GMs who know they're overpaying for reasons other than baseball (i.e. Jeter's contract), but all in all it would do a good job of showing who does the best job of squeezing wins out of their money.

You really didn't get the point of that, did you? I'm saying it's possible. You're saying it's true... and not only did it have an effect, but it was a significant one. And you make this proclamation without any sort of proof. That's the crux of the argument. This isn't Cubs.com. Your opinions here have to be backed up with proof, and you have none.

Nobody is saying it has no effect. We're withholding judgment on the matter until some evidence is presented. You are the one passing judgment. You are the one with the burden of proof. If it's as obvious as you act like it is, you should have no problem finding a scientific study by a sports psychologist or even a stats guy who wants to crunch the numbers of individual players with Bradley there and without.

Who is debating the chemistry was worse? I'm just askng for some proof that bad chemistry negatively impacts team performance. And it'd be swell if somebody could give an estimate of how much of a difference it makes. Nobody has offered anything of the sort to back up their opinion that his attitude hurt us.

What bothers me are the people that continue to believe this game is played on their Xbox 360 and the players are robots or machines that will not be affected by any outside influences other than the 3 hours of the players play a baseball game. Where have I ever said anything of the sort? I'm saying that people need some sort of proof to back up their claims... especially the over the top ones by people like back2banks who have suggested that his performance on the field was totally wiped out by his negative attitude. If there's one thing I really truly pride myself on, it's the fact that I'm willing to look over all the evidence and admit when I'm wrong. All I've gotten to this point is flawed anecdotal evidence comparing baseball players to a bunch of white collar guys working in an office, or simply saying that Bradley keeps getting moved. There hasn't been a single person here who has been able to even prove that pissing off all the players in the locker room wasn't helpful, let alone that it actively detracted from the performance of the team. Has anybody linked to anything from a sports psychologist suggesting happy players play better than pissed off ones? No. Has anybody compared offensive performance of players on the same team as Bradley in years where he was there and years where he wasn't? No. Has anybody done anything at all to back up their opinion with fact? No. People are simply making up crap as they go along. Until people offer some degree of proof that his attitude impacted the performance of the team, the only rational thing to do is assume it made no noticeable impact at all.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I wouldn't begrudge anybody here if they said, "I know Bradley makes this team better, but I dislike him so much that I'd rather see this team lose an extra couple games if it means being rid of him." What bothers me are the people who are trying to rationalize their hatred of him by creating a fantasy world where he somehow negatively impacts our chances to win. They just cant stand the thought they're rooting for us to do something against the best interests of the team, and make up ridiculous claims to defend themselves. It's extremely dishonest.

Obviously it wasn't all the losing that effected the chemistry. It was Bradley.

And 25th in UZR. No kidding? Ouch. I wonder what on earth could cause that large of a disconnect.

B....b....but we might find someone worse!!! Every time I see your posts I think, "Well, he's really topped himself this time. He can't possibly get more useless from here." And you continually surprise me with your next post. There isn't a person on this board saying Hendry deserves to keep his job. Those of us who stress caution are simply more concerned with who our GM is rather than who it isn't. Hell, we aren't even saying don't fire him. We're saying get a line on somebody better first... But that's too logical, I suppose. Oh, how much better our team would be if we all made arbitrary decisions based on emotion like you seem to prefer.

The Cubs defense ranked 4th in the majors this year in defensive efficiency, behind only the Giants, Dodgers, and Mariners.

No, he really couldn't.

It says Johnson is 77.673 and Harden is 76.730. I'm working off a long day and 3 hours sleep. Leave me alone.

There's something fishy about that... It says Rich Harden has a higher score than Josh Johnson. But Johnson is listed as an A and Harden a B. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out Harden is an A.

Okay then, just plug in his career BABIP of .306. .265/.301/.353