Sarcastic

Cubs are 1st in SLG, 2nd in BA, and 9th in OBP, and 5th in runs in the NL. The offense isn't bad, it is streaky. Compare that with the pitching, which in 9th in runs allowed.

Lowry left in the 5th. Scott Munter pitched the 6th Or maybe I just saw him in the bullpen.

Rich Harden's already done that this year. Don't ruin the moment. :(

Damn double posts.

Double post.

I just realized that Maddux is on pace for an 81 pitch complete game. Wow. :shock:

Almost. Damn.

Is Felipe Alou the kind of manager that pays attention to pitchcounts?

That was a lot of pitches for Suppan, definitely over 20. Anyone have a pitch count?

That's obvious and redundant, but does it qualify as stupid?

I think we all saw that one coming. Now for the obligatory three pages of pregame insulting of the lineup. Yay! :roll:

Not that it matters, but novia means girlfriend. Well, this post certainly contributed a lot.

I think as far as this specific rumor goes, its been dead just long enough to start to smell a bit funny. That said, it doesn't mean Dunn is out of the picture. I think we are going to have to wait until the last second to find out what Hendry ends up doing.

Do you know why the Orioles did that? If he is doing well it makes no sense for them. EDIT: Wow, he has had a pretty terrible career.

That might be a slight overstatement. OBP is much more valuable, but a hit is always better than a walk.

Dusty going to the Don Baylor school of "cooling the hot hand". Someone please tell me why Hendry bothered calling up Cedeno, knowing Dusty's man-love for Neifi? Murton won't be starting against any RH anytime soon. Why not? Give him his shot. Stupid Dusty. Grrrr If this cubs organization had Barry Bonds as a young player, they would of traded him for some utility player and a mid-level prospect probably. Heck, Bobby Crosby would of been benched since he had a few bad months at the start of his career and likely would be gone too. I think the Dusty situation is bad enough that you don't need to exaggerate. It's been pretty firmly established that he has made mistakes, why do people keep focusing on him? I could understand it if doing that would actually make a change, but unfortunately, it won't.

Dusty going to the Don Baylor school of "cooling the hot hand". Someone please tell me why Hendry bothered calling up Cedeno, knowing Dusty's man-love for Neifi? He did it specifically to annoy you.

yes, you can totally know this after a whopping 150 big league plate appearances :roll: Well people already know that Gerut is gonna be a worse ML player than Dubois by the end of their career so why can't I know the opposite? Because it's different than how you feel? it's okay, dude - being a hypocrite is all right with me! I don't think name calling is necessary. That said, I tend to agree with the wait and see policy on Dubios for Gerut. Maybe Gerut will turn it around, maybe not. Maybe Dubios will figure out ML pitching, maybe he won't. Let's all take a deep breath and remind oursleves that this trade will not single-handedly take down the franchise, no matter how it turns out. As for Hendry, I don't know. He has definitely made mistakes, but overall I trust most of the moves he makes. I think it is fair to say that when he makes a major trade, he often comes out of it on top. I don't know if he can take this team to the WS, but if they don't make the playoffs this year, I don't think it will be because Hendry did a bad job.

Was it your money they loss...no, and it may have given us a few more wins for the year. If we are there at the end of the year they won't hesitate to spend some cash to get more. I think his point was that the money could have been spent in a way that would have resulted in a better team. But that would only be true if we could have gotten someone to take on a lot more of Sosa's contract. I don't think that would have possible given his decline, but none of us really know what the best offer Hendry could have gotten was.

This is this guy's third post (out of three total) exactly like this in two different threads. I really don't like advertisers. Am I within my rights to request that this fool be banned?

That's something I've been working on. Will have something up in a day or two. Thanks. I was looking at BP, but all I could find is pitcher abuse. That could be an interesting thread, given our discussion of offensive patience and Dusty. Maybe instead of just doing offensive success in relation to pitches thrown by the other team, Fred also could do offensive success in relation to pitches/PA. Offensive success indirectly leads to higher pitch totals overall because it creates more PAs, so that measurement could be skewed. EDIT: Wow, I misread that completely. That said, that stat that was actually proposed could still be skewed in the way I mentioned.

Good thing our team has great chemistry, because they're already out of the division race, and quite a bit behind in the wildcard. I'm glad Sammy's gone, because if the Cubs had this record with him on the team this year, he'd shoulder 100% of the blame, which would be unfair. Just like last year. Being better in the clubhouse doesn't make a player bad and you can't reasonably disapprove of a trade that improves team chemistry just for that. In this case, "good chemistry" and tangible production came in the same package. 2004 was no more Sosa's fault than 2005 is Burnitz's fault, or the fault of the Sosa deal as a whole.

I have to disagree. I think If the managment shuts their traps, and deals with it in house, his trade value is higher. Yes he was in a decline. But He was still Slammin Sammy. Despite the fact he only hit in the low 200's, he still had quite a few HR's. I'm sure alot of teams would accept the lower average for the power. The club decided to make him into CLUBHOUSE CANCER SAMMY SOSA, however, and i beleive that hurt his value. G/ BA/ OBP/ SLG/HR 2002: 150/.288/.399/.594/49 2003: 137/.279/.358/.553/40 2004: 126/.253/.332/.517/35 Sosa's batting average wasn't the only thing to decrease. His OBP shrunk, and so did his slugging percentage. Not to mention that he was spending less and less time on the field. He still had some power, but I don't think that he qualified as a top power hitter anymore. Besides, with his low batting average and OBP the trade off was becoming less acceptable. There was definitely some room to hope that he would recover somewhat and have a good, injury free year, but considering his age, his contract, and his consistent and sharp decline, I don't think we would have gotten anyone to eat most of his contract, even if he wasn't labeled a clubhouse cancer. Tell me honestly, if these were the numbers put up by some random player, would you pay $17,000,000 or more and give up any kind of real talent to acquire him? That is pretty much all I have on this argument, except for one thing. I have five posts so far, and I don't even get a welcome to NSBB? :D

:roll: yes, a decline after the prime of ones career is surly due to juice. Yuck. I know posting this will spark a huge debate about roids. but statements like that are really annoying. I'm with RTDG. Any talk about Sosa using steriods is just speculation at this point, and it isn't really relevant to the topic. I suggest we stick to the topic and not speculate about who injected what.

Didn't we already have one of these threads? I think we can all agree that the Cubs are better off now than they would be if they hadn't done anything about the situation. The main point of contention seems to be the idea that he was worth more than what we got for him, that the team benefited from the trade, but not as much as it should have. How many people here have looked at Sosa's lines from 2002 to 2004? There is a pretty obvious and dramatic decline from year to year. Anyone looking at Sosa and not remembering fondly how great he was for the team and the city in years past would have recognized there was a big risk that he would decline further this year, and because of that, I don't think his trade value was high enough for anyone to be willing to take on much more of his contract than the Orioles did, with or without the ridiculous shenanigans at the end of the season.