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If this is true, do you think Jacque Jones constitutes a veteran leader? B/c I'd love to have Matt Kemp, the 23-year-old with the .873 OPS. Ah yes, veteran-ny goodness. That's fantastic news. It's always good when other NL teams make stupid decisions. Unless he trades Kemp to the Cards for Edmonds.

If this is true, do you think Jacque Jones constitutes a veteran leader? B/c I'd love to have Matt Kemp, the 23-year-old with the .873 OPS. Ned Colletti is un-smart Frank McCourt is un-smarter. it's too bad Jim Hendry is the mostest un-smarterest Are the two of them dumb enough to do a deal involving Lee & Jones for Loney & Kemp? I'd love something along those lines.

If this is true, do you think Jacque Jones constitutes a veteran leader? B/c I'd love to have Matt Kemp, the 23-year-old with the .873 OPS. Ned Colletti is un-smart Frank McCourt is un-smarter.

Murton and DeRosa > Theriot and DeRosa Yes, bumping Murton to keep Theriot in the lineup at 2B is a very bad idea.

If this is true, do you think Jacque Jones constitutes a veteran leader? B/c I'd love to have Matt Kemp, the 23-year-old with the .873 OPS.

I have to side with Hendry on this one. I'm sick of that stupid $300 million spending spree line. THE CHICAGO CUBS DIDN'T SPEND $300 MILLION THIS PAST OFFSEASON. Although I do agree that it's not really a farm system outperforming expectations. Right, just given a chance to play. It's not really that either. I think Callis is right on. Fontenot and Theriot each had 1 hot month that did help us, but neither was particularly helpful the other 4-5 months of the season. Soto and Marmol have been really good, but Callis was right on regarding those two as well. If you're referring to Hill, Marshall, and Marmol getting a chance to play, I agree. But it's certainly not a case of the "farm system" guys getting a chance to play that led us to playoff contention. It's Hill, Lilly, Z (at times), Soriano, ARam, DLee.

I don't know about you, but I blame everything on Jim Hendry, solely. BTW, I'd love to have A-rod on the Cubs if he could play SS again. If he hits 50+ HRs and has an OPS of 1.000, I don't care if he can only field balls hit within 3' of where he's standing, I'd still put him at SS. Theriot's fine and all if he can be on base around a .350 clip, but he's been pretty bad offensively for long stretches. He may not be a defensive disaster, but he's not Ozzie Smith out there either. Point is, why qualify it? Even if ARod's defense at SS would be subpar, who really cares?

We cheer for the Cubs. Why would we be concerned that our team would collapse? When has that ever happened?

That's exactly my point. Saying a discussion is pointless (insinuating that the idea of the original post is dumb) or flatly saying that someone's idea is stupid isn't really different than calling them stupid. Saying "you're wrong, here's why" would be better than "that idea is stupid." Meph does the former, but he also does a lot of the latter. I don't think it's right to condone that behavior because Meph makes other beneficial posts, but that's just me and my opinion on the matter doesn't mean much.

Battle between one of my alma maters and one of my wife's. GO BULLDOGS!

Great idea. Let's eliminate that whole "attack the post not the poster" part of the guidelines. Surely none of us gets upset when someone is...abrasive (is that what we're calling it?). So obviously, since the sole point of the rule is to make sure people don't get their feelings hurt, there's no point in having the rule. I can't wait for the attacks to start flying.

You know damn well that Murton's not starting because the Cubs signed Soriano and then Lou put him in LF (blocking Murton) and then all but benched Murton for the year for reasons beyond understanding. If the Rays had added ARod as a SS in the off-season, blocking Harris, he never would have had his hot start and this thread would be no more. Harris has had the opportunity to play, doesn't mean he's the better player.

Maybe you can type them up and then one of the Mods can go through and take out all the mean. :P

.335 isn't exactly good. It's average (both for NL and ML as a whole). Their SLG is bad, but it's not like they've fallen from one of the top SLG teams. The .407 SLG for the year is pathetic.

Don't buy into that at all. Lou has remained fluid through out the entire season, and may be one of the reasons the Cubs are even in the race in the first place. Just to name a few, the decision to start Theriot over Izturis, riding out Fontenot's hot bat, replacing Wade Miller in the rotation before June, benching Eyre, benching Ohman, giving Jones a rest until he heated up, riding out some of the young relievers arms when they were effective i.e. Petrick. I know your not suggesting that you just stick with the same thing ala Dusty until the team is out of contention, but Lou has seemed to have a good idea of the teams strengths and weakness and tried to take advantage of them. If Dusty were still managing my guess is that Izturis would still be starting, Jones, and Floyd would be mainstays in the lineup even vs. lefties and Miller would have been in the rotation alot longer. That's crazy talk. Lou replaced Izturis with Theriot and for that I give him credit, although Izturis was terrible and it's possible that Lou (unlike JH) knew that coming in. But you're giving him credit for "riding out Fontenot's hot bat"? He rode it to the tune of 71 ABs in July (.481 OPS) and 53 ABs in August (.653 OPS). That's called chasing the hot hand (b/c Fontenot's first 80 ABs this year he was hot) and getting burned b/c you ended up getting 120 crappy ABs after that. Wade Miller got yanked b/c he was terrible. He was throwing BP-speed. I don't think Lou's touting that as his toughest managerial decision on the season. And what the hell does "giving Jones a rest until he heated up" mean? He got 215 ABs before the ASB and had a .629 OPS for his efforts. He wasn't starting every day, but that's a lot of wasted ABs. Yes, he had 100 great ABs in August, but do you think he walked up to Lou after a few days off and said "thanks for the rest, Coach, but I'm ready to OPS .900 for a month now." BTW - Floyd is a mainstay in the lineup. He's played in just over half the team's games and basically had 45 or so ABs every month, even when he cooled off to a sub-.700 OPS in July and August. Lou's been chasing the hot hand all year long. Sometime you get lucky (Jones in August), sometimes you get burned badly (Fontenot in July/August).

Really? Seems like I hear frequently from ESPN talking heads that RJ is one of the best lefties of all time. Not saying he's necessarily overrated, but I would say he gets plenty of respect from the media/fans.

I agree. I also enjoy seeing Michigan completely falling out of the top 25. if Michigan really kill Oregon, I can see the stupid voters bringing them right back to the low teens again Dixon is going to be even harder to handle than that dude from A State. Michigan is going down again. I am pretty sure that I seen that Michigan was favored by 8 this weekend. I may be wrong though. How much were they favored by last week?

Must run in the family Does his dad have a bad attitude or something? You sound like you some of Eric's relatives personally.

And just b/c I want to...take out his 1/9 PHs since the ASB: .322/.385/.576 I'm just saying.

You mean, like of the NL? I thought you meant a team MVP in a vote on nsbb or something. No, a middle reliever will never win the MVP, no matter how good he's been. I'd be shocked if he got so much as 1 vote, actually.

I disagree. He can't put people on base, he can only do what he can do, and it was a big hit in my book. Thanks for clearing that up. Before you posted, I wasn't sure whether to cheer or boo for that HR. Maybe you could just post your thoughts on each of Murton's ABs for the rest of his career in this thread. Doesn't have to be big, just "big hit" or "terrible AB" or something. I just need to know what the official stance on each of his ABs is.

Naturally, I can't find the quote anywhere, but I definitely recall reading that Soriano prefers leading off because he sees more fastballs there. I'm working now, so don't have time to search for it, but I recall Soriano saying he'd play any position and hit anywhere in the order to help the team. That is true. As others have mentioned, he also expressed a preference for hitting leadoff. Unfortunately for us when a guy who just signed a $136M contract expresses a "preference" it carries the same weight as an average player expressing a firm demand. It'll be next year at the earliest before Lou or Hendry will feel comfortable deviating from Soriano's preferences. I don't think that's necessarily true. Lou put him in different spots in the order and in CF and I don't recall seeing anything anywhere that even hinted that Soriano was the slightest bit upset (and I was looking - after his initial stunt in Washington of throwing a fit when asked to move to the OF, I expected him to get really pissed). I think Lou honestly thinks that Soriano will not produce as well unless he's hitting 1st and playing LF. And I think Lou is completely wrong about that.

Soriano was really bad before the injury. He was. I'm beginning to think he's going to be prone to long slumps forever because he doesn't seem like to care much for coaching. It's always Lou needing to tip-toe around Sori's wishes. I hate that, I don't care the kind of money you make. We're going to be tip-toeing around this guy for 7 more years. It's really starting to get under my skin. It's been under my skin. The guy is hobbled with a bad quad but he has good HR power, yet the manager is too afraid to take him out of the leadoff spot. Who is running the team, Lou or Soriano? I don't think it's Soriano that's demanding to hit leadoff and play LF. I think it's Lou and/or Hendry that's looking at his numbers in the past (and the few ABs he's had when playing CF or hitting elsewhere in the lineup this year) and concluding that he has to hit first and play LF. I don't remember seeing Soriano make any demands about it, so I don't blame him. I blame our manager/GM.

I'd like a higher than .342 OBP out of my leadoff hitter. I'd like more than an .836 OPS coming out of a guy we gave $136 million to Well, in fairness, he's actually not really overpaid this season. It's going to really start to suck when he's pulling in $13m at age 38 or whatever. And frankly, if he could play CF and hit lower in the order so we could take advantage of that .525 SLG, I wouldn't be upset with his production at all.

Honestly, you can't really compare them. Most of the time when someone else batted leadoff Soriano was not in the lineup and you lose his production. Personal rule of thumb, which every team shoudl use. Never give out contracts for more than 5 years. It can only end bad. Usually. But I would've given Pujols an 8-9 year deal coming out of his rookie contract without hesitation. Same goes for ARod. His contract didn't turn bad because of the length, but more because the Rangers spent too much money on him to be able to afford to put a team around him. That's on them for allocating more payroll than they could afford to one player. And I'd do the same for Miguel Cabrera when he hits free agency, assuming he doesn't keep getting fatter and fatter. Yeah there is a difference between that and a player who has a career .830 OPS coming into this season, coming off a career year in his 7th season. and who is 31. Agreed.