rawaction

I can't and/or won't guarantee anything with Baker in charge. You can guarentee logic won't be used. I've been anti-Huff from the begining so I'm curious on how he is going to do this year. I still think he's a DH type and not worth 7 to play in the NL. For one year, not a big deal to me. Let him go this offseason and try something else. Like BbB said, he wasn't the first choice, but now he may be the best. Next offseason, the list of available OFs will probably be very similar with the same guys rumored to be traded this year either being a FA or being in their last year of their current deals. Guys like Dunn, Abreu, Sheff are more likely to be traded, and guys like Guillen, Carlos Lee, Floyd, and Bradley will be FAs.

List all the posters that stole your idea and hire JC to sue them. I'd rather give Weaver a 3/24-27 than Clement. I'd rather give that to Weaver than anyone who's gotten similar recently.

It doesn't matter if it was the exact package. All things point to it taking a very similar package to get Huff. It was probably gonna take a better prospect than Mitre, but not anyone the Cubs would be lost without (i.e. not Pie, Hill, Gallagher, Marmol, Eric Patterson). My guess is Pinto, Nolasco, and one of Harvey/Dopirak would have gotten it done, perhaps with a minor leaguer coming back to the Cubs. And yes, that's speculation, but I believe it's an educated guess.

Now everyone's stealing my idea. I am the originator of the Jeff Weaver 1-year make good deal. And everyone thought I was crazy, because Boras is his agent, or because lesser pitchers are getting 3/$27M. He's a guaranteed 220 IP, decent to good ERA, with the stuff still to be a major steal.

Jones and Huff had similar numbers, but history shows that Huff should easily outproduce Jones in 2006 and beyond. Jones is a career .782 OPS hitter, with only 1 year over .800, 3 years ago. He will be 31 the first month of the season, and has had 2 straight bad years. Huff is a career .827 OPS hitter (which admittedly is not that much better than Jones has been in his career), but he was coming off of 3 straight years of near or above .900 OPS performances. He will be 29 all season, meaning he's still in his prime years. Plus, I believe Huff has to be given the benefit of the doubt being that he has played his entire career for a lame duck franchise with constant trade rumors swirling around him. There are plenty of examples of players who have performed better with an actual team with a chance of winning around them. Our own Aramis Ramirez comes to mind.

Just about everyone in the majors clears waivers after the trading deadline in any given season.

no kidding. did you see that usher? he had his hands all over her and she seemed not to mind. i swear he was copping a feel. lucky old fart. From what I can tell, she's quite the looker. But she also seems to be just a few steps shy of Mrs. Warner and Mrs. Christie in the full of herself pyscho sports wife category. Maybe at closing time when all the ugly girls have gone home. To each his own. In her time man, wasn't she Miss Illinois 15 years ago or something. She wouldn't be my first choice or anything, but for a woman her age, with kids, she's pretty attractive (at least I think, didnt' get a great look). She still looks nice. But yeah, she was gorgeous when AD was with the Pacers.

No. Only two other teams besides Pittsburgh and Carolina have even won two road games in a row in the playoffs (95 Colts and 96 Jags). Guess what? TWO teams are winning three games in a row and going to the Super Bowl this year. Pittsburgh will beat Denver 17-14. Home teams will win. Book it! Nobody will ever make fun of Jake Plummer and Matt Hasselbeck again, until Plummer flops miserably in the Super Bowl.

which team are you?

Has any team ever won 3 road games to advance to the SuperBowl? Seattle wins this one, 24-17. Watch out for D Jackson.

Davis' wife is a gorgeous human being. Whatever she says should go.

I agree. Keep it and only let us play the following teams: D-Rays Tigers Blue Jays Orioles Royals Seattle but really, i dont mind it. I wouldnt mind not playing it either. I dont care. I just like baseball. The D-Rays would kick our butts. They have a pretty darn good offense, and a bunch of pitchers who the Cubs haven't seen before.

That would be an excellent bench. Ton of power. A bunch of K's, but those guys could all get on base, and most importantly, wouldn't give the team a huge dropoff in case players gets injured.

Devil's advocate. How much better is this team actually defensively? Burnitz was pretty good defensively last season. Jones is better, but not that much so. Pierre is not as good defensively as Patterson. Murton is not as good defensively as Hollandsworth (but probably better than Dubois, Lawton). Perez got most of the time at SS last year, Cedeno won't be as good as he was defensively. The only way to significantly be better defensively is to have Cedeno and Perez up the middle, which severely weakens the offense. I don't know that this team is "smarter" either. Again the only changes are Cedeno, Murton, Jones, and Pierre. Can't yet say that Murton and Cedeno are "smart" players (although Murton certainly looks to be that way). Jones is still a freeswinger, and Pierre still isn't a good basestealer. BTW, welcome to the board. I actually am gonna try to be optimistic to start this season. Jones has at least shown to be decent (.300 hitter) in the past, and was pretty good until the end of June in 05. Pierre has shown to be a lot better than he was in 04. Murton and Cedeno have hit everything in sight the last 10 months. Pitching has to be healthy again eventually, right?

I don't think so. You don't need starters to go 9 to justify going with 6 relievers instead of 7. There are enough off days early on to spread out the appearances. Dusty is a guy who will go with the hot hand everyday until he fails, and sit the last guy for 2 weeks at a time. It makes no sense to go with 12 pitchers, unless you have a great lineup and can afford minimal bench help. Over the weekend, Hendry made it sounds like its was more circumstances that the team carried 12 pitchers all of last year. Its inexcusable to do that again when one of the major focuses of this off season was to improve the bullpen. This bench is already shaping up to be extremely mediocore, they need as many bats as possible. Hey, first post here! :D The circumstances Hendry was referring to were the plethora of injuries to Wood, Prior, et al. Given all the outings from young arms untested at the MLB level, and from older arms that had failed to stay healthy at the MLB level, Hendry wanted an extra bullpen arm for all the short outings that he expected from the situation. As far as Hidalgo is concerned, what is his injury history? Is there reason to believe that injuries are the reason for his decline over the past 2 years? He's only 30, so it shouldn't be an age issue... I'd love for the Cubs to take a chance on him with a one-year deal. Welcome, Shawn. He hurt his wrist and missed the last 2 months this year, but other than that, he's been pretty healthy in recent history. He's definitely worth a look. He's had great seasons and he's had really poor seasons. Even if he has another poor one, he's still a good bench player with tons of power. If he has a good-to-great season, he's the 3rd best offensive player on the team. And at 30, there's a pretty good chance that he has a good season or 2 left in him somewhere.

Even if they lose those three road games, and if they do the nearly impossible and lose a home game this year they'll still finish 12-4 in the conference. Plus, there's no shame in losing at Iowa, OSU and MSU. Exactly, they're on the fast track to win the conference, part of that being because they don't go to either Assembly hall. Yep. Got a lucky break this year. Can't complain, IU had the easy schedule last year, but didn't have the team to do anything with it. Wisconsin has a shot to go deep. They have had less talented (albeit more experienced) teams go far in the tourney. Illinois has a shot with defense. MSU has a shot with talent. IU has a shot with shooting ability. The conference is strong this year. The B10 tourney should be fun this year.

I like Zemaitis. Good size. Decent speed. He may be a good choice end of round 2 if he's still there.

Schneider's worth it. I don't know about in that park, but I think he could be a solid hitter still. He is a catcher so maybe his bat will come around late. It looked like it was the 2nd half of 04.

Wait til AJ Ratliff for IU puts it all together. He's quick, 42" vertical, wingspan of a 7'er at only 6'2". Indiana Mr. Basketball, led IU in 3pt shooting last season. Just not fitting in this season.

Great game. I didn't think we would win. Killer was an absolute beast in the 2nd half. The best two players on the each team (Brown and Vaden) really struggled with their shot, but did everything else for their team. My keys to the game in the other thread prove prophetic. IU didn't let Brown and Augustine beat them alone, as they've done to the rest of the Big Ten. And they attacked the boards from the backcourt. Rod Wilmont has been huge in every recent IU win.

Actually, this team lost primarily because it pitched poorly, but its deficiency in getting on base was a huge problem. you're partially right. although i believe that we pitched well enough to give the team a chance to win if we could have just gotten on base more often. Our starting pitchers ERA has gone from 3.69 (2003), to 3.72 (2004), to 4.19 (2005), and in that same period our OBP's were .323 (2003, .328 (2004), and .324 (2005). So our ability to get on base hasn't changed much, while our starting pitching was horrible last year. It just so happens that last year we failed to compete at all. Don't get me wrong, we're in agreement that the plate discipline of this team is atrocious. I just feel that our pitching is the issue which caused us so much grief last year. The fact that Cubs management cannot grasp the concept of OBP, and how it relates to runs, or how to wisely spend money is a whole different issue. No it's very relevant. If you are gonna argue that the team needs better pitching, you have to point out that they walked too many hitters. 5th in the majors is BAA, but walked the 7th most hitters. For a team that again led the planet in K's from their pitchers, walking hitters is just a bad idea. If guys can't make contact, don't help them out by walking them.

Good hitters tend to take walks. Good hitters tend to be good with RISP. The Cubs need good hitters.

Hey RAW!! Long time, no see. Thanks man. That was unbelievable!! I think I've dropped about $500 on DVD's, shirts, sweatshirts, books, etc. If they made it for the series, I bought it! Big downer on Sunday though. If someone would have said that Rex was going to get us three touchdown drives, I would have said we win easily. Damn defense! I knew the Bears would give up more than 3 points. But 30 was not an option. Get past Carolina and they had a shot to win it all.

I posted in the Big Ten thread. Yes, Monroe will play. Good, i know my IU friends would use that as an excuse if Illinois won without Monroe playing. I read where Augustine will be guarding Vaden with a Pruitt/Arnold combination on Killingsworth. If IU keeps up its 47% 3-point shooting it'll be a long night, but if they don't UI will dominate the boards and pull out a win in the Bloomington Assembly Hall. Vaden better be taking him off the dribble then. I would imagine Pruitt/Arnold would be getting help then. With Brown and Randle, the Illini still may be able to cover the perimeter for the kickout.

MOOOOOOOOOOOOCH! What's up man? Congrats on the Series.