Chocolate Milk

Can I get an update on Bowen's CERA?

Wow, wave to me. I live about a block from there.

Pretty funny to watch just about everyone eat their own hair in this thread.

Hill struggling big time here. Who is our long man? Hopefully not Eyre.

Way to bring your A game today, Rich.

Good god.

They will probably throw him in the rotation and have him get shelled for a few games then try to dump him for peanuts.

I guess I don't get the Knicks trade. They got good value but don't they have essentially the same player as Randolph as Curry? Can you play them both together? I guess I don't get it.

yea imagine not scoring a point with that lineup in the game, and Gordon is on his cold night, and Deng is being double teamed cause Noah cant score. Not much different than last year's lineup. Noah is subbed for the offense force that is Ben Wallace and TT is subbed for Brown.

In 43 June at-bats. Now his line looks like this in June-.277/.319/.400. So the Cubs might have actually traded him at higher value. If they had waited a few weeks like one poster suggested and he turned cold again (like he has right now for the Padres) that simply further depresses his trade value. This is hindsight. At the time of the trade, his offense was improving. The Cubs didn't have any reason to beleive that he would all of the sudden slump again. To think that they should be commended for trading him because they somehow saw a slump coming, is silly. Which is exactly what the article is doing by saying the Cubs traded these players too late-hindsight. There was no reason to believe that Sosa would fall as far as he did so fast and lose the city, or that Patterson would suddenly do worse at 25 than he did even at 22, or that Walker's offense would drop like it did. He blames the Cubs for waiting to sell until after their dropoff, which is quite a bit of hindsight. Huh? Read above if you want my take on the Barrett trade. The rest of the guys, I couldn't care less about.

Not me. It's wildcard or bust.

Don't know if he's overrated, I think most everybody agrees with you that Tillman is the better player. I don't know how valid these stats are, but it was taken from ESPN:

In 43 June at-bats. Now his line looks like this in June-.277/.319/.400. So the Cubs might have actually traded him at higher value. If they had waited a few weeks like one poster suggested and he turned cold again (like he has right now for the Padres) that simply further depresses his trade value. This is hindsight. At the time of the trade, his offense was improving. The Cubs didn't have any reason to beleive that he would all of the sudden slump again. To think that they should be commended for trading him because they somehow saw a slump coming, is silly.

I understand where you are coming from with the rest of your post, but this I don't understand. How is this just a "PR statement?" (by which I am assuming you don't think it is valid). Lou obviously wanted a defensive minded catcher, Barrett isn't a good defensive catcher, and Hendry proceeded to trade Barrett for a defensive minded catcher. It's not a PR statement, it's the truth. They traded Barrett because of his defense. I think it's clear that's the case considering that the Cubs are now trotting out two defensive minded catchers who can't hit. You might not agree with me here but I believe the two main reasons that Barrett were traded were his defense #1, and to a lesser extent his contract #2. I think that defense is largely subjective. I also think that the perception of Barrett's defense is largely tied to the way he was swinging the bat at the time. He had a few extra passed balls this year but I don't think that largely changed what he was defensively, which was bad. He was bad before the season and he was bad during the season. I don't think it should have been a surprise to anyone with the Cubs that he would struggle behind the plate. His contract wasn't going to be renewed. I'm speculating here, but I don't think they had any plans to resign him after this year. Considering how fast they soured on him, I don't think I'm wrong. I think they hoped to get another good season out of him and then offer him arbitration at the end of the year which he would have obviously turned down. His contract situation made it easy to justify trading him. I think his offensive struggles were an afterthought. He was still slugging well but his average was down. That dragged down his OBP. This was largely due to his BABIP which was about .030 lower than it had been the last 3 years. He was unlucky. The guy was batting cleanup up until he got traded so that says to me that they thought he would eventually come around. Not only that, the two catchers they are trotting out there now aren't good offensive players. If offense was the issue, Soto would probably be up right now. Offense wasn't the issue, defense was. In any event, I think Hendry botched the Barrett thing. In my opinion, the two major factors in the trade, his defense and contract status, didn't fundamentally change during the season. His offensive production did change and that's what drove his value down, but that wasn't a major factor in his departure. Lou always wanted a defensive minded catcher. Knowing this, in my opinion, Hendry should have moved Barrett before the season when his value was higher. I think he underestimated how Lou felt about defense from the catcher position, and that's Hendry's fault. He didn't know what was wanted before the season started so he ended up selling a catcher when his best attribute was the lowest it had been in years.

There is no room for him in the rotation anymore. I think this can be put to bed.

I'll clue you in on the tennis match, Federer is going to win. Might as well watch this huge series and skip Federer coasting to another Wimbeldon title.

It looks like he stole it off Orville Redenbacher's corpse.

only if the Bulls can trade up to #3 or #4, as there is virtually no way Boston passes on him at 5 Hey! We were both wrong! High five!

Really glad the Bulls didn't draft Hawes. Noah is fine. I like him better than the alternatives.

The assumption being made is that Barret, or any of the names in the article had better value than at the time of their departure from Chicago. Yes these folks were all sold low, some inescapably IMO. However, none of them had tremendous value to begin with, and even had they been sold high, it's unlikely the returns would have been much better than at the low point. Sorry, I have to disagree with you here at least in regards to Barrett. Barrett was essentially given away and the Cubs are paying a portion of what is a very reasonable contract. I don't see how you could possibly think his value wasn't much lower when he was traded than if he was traded coming off the following seasons. 276/345/479/824 (Silver Slugger) 307/368/517/885 Maybe he wouldn't have brought a king's ransom, but he certianly would have brought the Cubs something signifigantly better than what they ended up getting. The Barrett saga was actually a perfect example of what the author was saying. Hendry was wishy washy, he paniced, and dealt a player at his lowest possible value.

oh for crying out loud....did you even read the article. Yes, absolutely. He makes a point to note that the Cubs waited until Barret's value was at his lowest to trade him, which is completely a hindsight argument. In the offseason, when his value was high, there was no need or desire to trade him. Trading him at his highest value wasn't in anyone's thoughts. So its a nonsensical argument. Hendry said after he traded Barrett that he wanted to go to a more defensive minded catcher. He suddenly decided that a quarter of the way through the season? If he really wanted a defensive minded catcher he could have dealt Barrett in the offseason at his highest possible value. Everyone knew what Barrett was. Nothing changed this season other than a downtick in his offensive production. The guy was a below average defensive catcher his entire career. Nothing changed. Of course, we all know that Hendry didn't want a defensive minded catcher as much as he just wanted to dump Barrett. So, yes, this is a perfect example of Hendry being wishy washy and trading someone at their lowest possible value.

This is my concern.

For some reason I think the Bulls end up with Yi. Not really sure why I think this.

I feel like his name should be Jon Voshua.

That bomb he hit last night was ridiculous.