USSoccer

that wasn't his point. his point is that the cubs organization chose the "proven" whose best-case-scenario statistics are mediocre, over the younger player who could potentially give you great play at a fraction of the cost. proven mediocrity is still mediocrity. the cubs have a history of giving mediocre players a chance over someone who could be good. But, how many of those younger players that potentially could give great play actually did? Ever? If you are going to make the argument that their policy is so obviously wrong, there should at least be some example where the younger player actually did something, somewhere. And I think in the case of Grudz over Hill, the decision was most obviously the right one. If you would have bothered to read what I wrote carefully instead of skimming it for the general point, you would see that I wrote: I acknowledged the fact that some of these decisions were somewhat succesful, in that certain players never panned out, but in all of these cases the Cubs refused to give the immediate chance to the younger player with more potential. That's the point that's immediatel;y relevant. You state your disbelief that the Cubs could ever choose to demote Hill over a lousy veteran. I and others are pointing out that there's ample precedent.

Nope-McGriff was never useless for the Cubs, so that doesn't ring any bells for me. You've got to be kidding me. Not only was McGriff useless to the Cubs in general, but that particular September he actually hurt the team by taking away AB's from Choi. AB's that could have helped Choi in 2003. And it's not like that's the only example. Grudz over Hill. Estes over Cruz. Hollandsworth over Dubois. Everyone over Murton. Some worked out short term, others not so much. In several cases they went with the mediocre known over the potential unknown, despite the unknown outperforming the mediocre known. There's a trend there. To ignore it is to disrespect the conversation.

At the expense of having a player who's a negative factor on the offense? You're right I don't. It's not mutually exclusive; you can find a good defense SS who isn't incompetent when he hits. I don't buy that Cesar Izturis can suck at the plate but be an asset simply because he plays good defense at SS. This team is not good enough to have a complete cipher in the batting order.

If he plays gold glove caliber defense and hits about .280+ in the 8 hole, I think his health is definitely important. If Cesar Izturis hits over .280 I'll buy everyone here a Coke. Because the odds are signifigantly stacked against him. As was noted, his career OBP is .295. He's only OBP's over .300 twice, and one of those was a hearty .302. He's terrible, and he'd help the team more on the DL than he would in the batting order.

You're right, the Cubs have given me lots of reasons not to overreact over the last 99 years... Fine, blow that vein in your forehead if you want. I prefer to wait until I see Hill not in the rotation before I get all agitated about things. You act as if the Cubs have never stuck with an overpaid, bad veteran over a younger, cheaper option with a signifigantly greater upside. Yes, that article is written by someone with no bloody clue, but to act as if the Cubs would never be so stupid is in and of itself stupid and ignorant of the history that this GM has carved out for himself.

This was discussed ad nauseum in the other Z thread, but Mark Prior being healthy would be one of the key preconditions to trading Z, and I'm not entirely opposed to it, depending on the deal. Z would bring in quite the haul, and if you get a top P and SS prospect, I'd think very long and hard about it. $15-20m for more than 4 yrs to a P with the mileage that Z has is pretty risky. And the only way I'm taking Carl Pavano from the NYY's is if ARod is coming along.

Ugh. Just, ugh.

The success this team has is going to be helped by the fact that the NL is awful. I see between 80-85 as likely, with a ceiling of about 93 and a floor of 75

Piniella doesn't have time for hippies.

Yeah I agree. He could go out an perform well and shut some of these critics up. But right NOW, none of them will say it is in ANY WAY possible. Just like they did for Jones. They had him not batting above .250 with an OBP not at .300. Yeah, that bet that somebody made to give everybody something if Jones accomplished certain marks came a little closer than he wanted, although by the last week he was safe. :D That was me. I stand by that bet. It took a career season to make it close. And for the record, I fully expect Jason Marquis to be Shawn Estes level bad.

Or, how does one fall out of a hot tub and bruise their ribs? Or, how is someone dumb enough to fall out of a how tub? The Cubs can't afford mats to put around the thing?

Bruised ribs. Wow. There are no words.

What did he hurt?

All it takes to move the team is a pretext. I can think of several: -The increasing number of adverts going into the park forces the city to implement near draconian requirements on the franchise, making continues tenancy too difficult. -New, private ownership takes over and needs to slash payroll to save costs that they can't recoup due to the lack of revenue streams. -Some suburb (Arlington Heights or Waukegan, maybe?) offers massive public financing. Waukegan in particular could offer dirt cheap lakefront real estate near 2 expressways. -Wrigley falls down or something. EDIT: Actually, that last joke one I put in might be the most likely. Lets say a chunk of the grandstand falls and the net doesn't stop it from hitting and seriously injuring or killing someone. The city would probably shut Wrigley down, and that would make long term tenancy extremely difficult.

well, no, no it isn't. because, see, when you step into Wrigley, it's still actually 2007, not 1933. It's not a museum. The truth is, the Cubs have been extremely great about not simply tearing it down and building a luxury-suit riddled throwback park in Naperville, as that would actually keep them up with the other teams (as far as park revenue). let's not act like the cubs are doing us any big favors. these ads are embarrassing. our pristine ballpark is becoming a parody of its former self, and people like you are stepping up and telling others the cubs are being nice to us. as soon as the cubs figure out a way to swing it so that people won't get mad and they won't lose money, they'll start working on a new ballpark. I guess you haven't noticed how just about every other team in baseball has built a new ballpark, including the recently announced plans for a new yankee stadium. The Cubs are indeed doing us a favor by only putting Under Armor logos on the doors and not building Tribune Park out in Batavia As soon as they figure out how to move without losing the Lincoln Park beergarden crowd and pissing off half their fanbase , they will. These ads are just little steps towards that day. The other thing is that the prinstine-ness of Wrigley helps keep the park full when the team sucks, which helps prevent firesales of the talent during those off years.

Seriously, just tell us the real reason. I hate marketing people. Just tell us how much money they paid you and spare us the brand synergy crap about "winning culture". And BTW, just build a new park. Stop screwing up my cherished memories.

YES.

"GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR FIRST POST." 670 the score radio I know at noon every day Mike Murphy talkes about the cubs ALOT. He focuses on the cubs mostly because he is a cubs fan. People will tell you he is stupid and a moron. But I find that unfair. He is just a crazy cubs fan. Maybe not stupid and a moron, but he finds these little details and blows them up into a holy crusade. I've never seen a guy who can take something as minor as which foot a guy led off first base with, and turn it into an hour of ranting and raving about why the manager should be fired. It's patently ridiculous at times. That said, I still listen to him, so Murph wins. Mike Murphy is ignorant and awful. He knows nothing. He's a knee-jerk, conventional wisdom spouting idiot. His is far and away the worst radio show I've ever heard. His opinions and questions are consistently dumb. He's an embarrasment. I wish he weren't a Cubs fan. He makes us all seem stupid by association. Hey, chill out. Atleast he's nice to cubs fans. I don't know about you but I never disagree with whoever he is spouting on about (MacPhail, Hendry, ect. .) I don't care if he's nice to Cubs fans. I don't care for his shallow and pedantic rants about Andy MacPhail ("F-A-I-L"). I don't care for his bits. I'd rather listen to someone intelligently breaking down things and using logic and reason to analyze a situation, than listening to a visceral knee jerk rant that never scratches the surface of insightful.

Zambrano in a deal for ARod would be a no-brainer to me. Zambrano helps every 5th game. ARod helps every day. But overall I'd prefer to keep Big Z. That's what Banedon thinks. 3rd person, eh?

Way to take well thgouht out and nuanced opinions and reduce them to their lowest common denominator. its what i do. Seriously though it does seem strange how fast you guys are abandoning Zambrano. It doesn't seem like that to you? No it doesn't. It seems like people are looking at his situation and realizing that giving a pitcher $20m per over a long term when that pitcher has giant red injury flags everywhere might be a bad idea, so they are open to the idea that trading him could bring in a terrific haul of players. Replace "players" with "prospects" and you are right. How long can we delay being even, you know, decent? I haven't seen a single trade idea that's not contained either a uber-awesome pitching prospect or a good ML player. ANA-Weaver, Kendrick, Adenhart seems to be the preferred package NYY-Hughes, Sanchez and Tabata or ARod. Weaver is an excellent P prospect with ML experience. Hughes is the #1 P prospect in baseball. Kendrick is a top prospect. It's not like people are tossing out AA names.

Way to take well thgouht out and nuanced opinions and reduce them to their lowest common denominator. its what i do. Seriously though it does seem strange how fast you guys are abandoning Zambrano. It doesn't seem like that to you? No it doesn't. It seems like people are looking at his situation and realizing that giving a pitcher $20m per over a long term when that pitcher has giant red injury flags everywhere might be a bad idea, so they are open to the idea that trading him could bring in a terrific haul of players.

Way to take well thgouht out and nuanced opinions and reduce them to their lowest common denominator.

that's howard? I thought it was Randall Simon at first glance.

"GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR FIRST POST." 670 the score radio I know at noon every day Mike Murphy talkes about the cubs ALOT. He focuses on the cubs mostly because he is a cubs fan. People will tell you he is stupid and a moron. But I find that unfair. He is just a crazy cubs fan. Maybe not stupid and a moron, but he finds these little details and blows them up into a holy crusade. I've never seen a guy who can take something as minor as which foot a guy led off first base with, and turn it into an hour of ranting and raving about why the manager should be fired. It's patently ridiculous at times. That said, I still listen to him, so Murph wins. Mike Murphy is ignorant and awful. He knows nothing. He's a knee-jerk, conventional wisdom spouting idiot. His is far and away the worst radio show I've ever heard. His opinions and questions are consistently dumb. He's an embarrasment. I wish he weren't a Cubs fan. He makes us all seem stupid by association.

There's something wrong with that photo of Jeter. I don't see his halo.