Fro

The CW has the same schedule as the WB, so I imagine there'd be little difference in the Cubs' WGN schedule.

Good signing. If things go well, we'll have some pitching to dump to pick up a bat at the deadline.

Give me a break, if Dusty and Hendry make it to the World Series, they're going to get 5 year contract extensions at least, if they win it, they have a job until retirement.

The Twins play Baseball on Astroplay now, which is fake grass.

Freel's a very good player... great defense at all OF spots and 2B/3B and has a .375 OBP and over 35 steals the past two years.

New Dustified Lineup 1) CF Pierre 2) 2B Nefury 3) 1B Lee 4) RF Jockstrap Jones 5) 3B A-Ram 6) LF Grissom 7) SS Ojeda (got a great glove, I'm sure the offense will come around) 8) C Barrett

It's too bad we've signed too many guys already to take on the money to make it happen, because Z or Prior + Hill + K-Pat for Tejada + Bedard and then sending Tejada for Manny + Clement + $$ sounds pretty good to me.

If Baltimore gets Prior and Zito for Tejada and Bedard they would have done quite nicely for themselves. I don't see how this benefits the Cubs in this case. That'd be a ridiclous trade for the Cubs to do, IMHO, considering they'd get no pitching back to replace Prior and would have to give some people to the As with Bedard to get Zito.

Then why do you keep harping on the team's lack of success and the assumption that this fact somehow justifies a Prior deal. He's 24 years old. If you judge a 24 year old pitcher on what he has not yet accomplished as a baseball player, you're not doing a good job of analyzing the game. He's 25 years old as of September.

The problem with touting his upside is that he is the oldest pitcher in this entire discussion. If Bedard has upside from where he is right now, what about Prior. Rich Hill's older than Prior and people on this board still think he'll be the next Barry Zito even though he'll be 26 by the time the season starts. :roll:

His average ERA+ the last 3 years is higher than Tejada's OPS+ the last 3 years. If he's not a superstar, Tejada isn't either. Just to continue playing devil's advocate... Tejada plays every day while Prior has pitched over 170 Innings in a year once in his career. And remember, Prior is going to get a big pay hike due to being arbitration-eligible, so he's not going to be "as cheap" in 2007/2008 as he is now.

Prior hasn't pitched like an "ace" except for 2003. Gotta put some blame on the guy too for the Game 6 choke against the Marlins.

That's what's frustrating... if Hendry would have signed Tejada in 2004 we wouldn't have had random rotating bums at SS all year and we would have probably easily made the playoffs. We could have used the spare parts we sent for Nomar to upgrade the bullpen. I question highly any deal that sends Prior away, but he hasn't exactly been an innings-eater, even with Dusty's overpitching of him. And he wasn't a *dominant* pitcher in 2005. We do have to remember that he's going to get a big pay hike after this year. Bedards numbers were very good in the first half of this year... he'll be better than Rich "One-Pitch" Hill. Tejada is a stud who'd make the offense very good. I'm not pushing for this deal, just trying to see what Hendry is thinking.

I think what's frustating is we should be better than we were last year, but we're worse on paper than we were going into 2003 or 2004 and worse than we should be considering our payroll.

Bradley's wasted in RF, imho. His value to a team over the average player is in CF, not in RF. He's hurt often, has issues, not a good fit for the Cubs at all in RF. Wilkerson had one good year in 2004. Huff's decline last year is a bit disturbing but he's got the right resume. We need a big hoss with a good eye who can knock people in, not a statue defensively, a guy who can hit 25 HRs, and take base-clogging walks, since Pierre/Cedeno/Murton aren't going to be big power guys.

You shouldn't be comparing Tejada's OPS to Abreu's OPS, but the difference in OPS between the Cedeno/Nefury two-headed monster versus Tejada and Mid-Tier corner OF versus Abreu.

We're assuming what Dusty will do, not what the ideal lineup will be. Dusty likes putting a LH bat between Lee and A-Ram.

The reason people are ripping on Hendry is simple... Cards, White Sox, and the Astros have all been in the World Series in the last two years while the Cubs have imploded.

Yep, to hear some of the people here talk, Cedeno is a shoe-in to be better than A-Rod. :lol:

I'll wait and see what we can pull off, but if we don't make a couple of big moves this offseason will be a huge failure. The window on our pitching is closing pretty rapidly, and it would be putting a lot of faith in the Cubs minor league organization to expect them to produce more than a couple average MLB position players, let alone a superstar over the next 4 years. We can't count on all our pitchers and most of our batters staying healthy all year, or for Prior/Z/Wood to all have career years in order to beat the Cards in the division.

When was the last time you where in Pittsburg? I was there last year for a few Cub games over the couse of a weekend. The city is alive and well. The downtown is thriving and they have new shopping and tourism attractions. IMO, the problem is that they haven't been good in a long time. If the Steelers can sell out Heinz field, the Pirates can sell out PNC. Why would I want to go to Pittsburgh? Yikes! So what, they threw a bunch of government money to bring alive downtown. So did Cincy. It still doesn't change the fact that they're both old economy cities. Both places should be one sport towns. Send the baseball franchises to the East or West Coast or to Chicago. Man, are you parochial, or what? The Reds and Pirates are original NL teams, they're just as proud as our Cubs. And they're not the "poor sisters" many make them out to be, it's lousy baseball teams that are the problem, not fan support or lack of underlying passion. There are nearly 7 million people in the effective Reds dominance area, including Louisville, Dayton, Columbus and Indianapolis. Pittsburgh is in a little tougher spot, but they are in better shape than KC, Milwaukee, Tampa and frankly, San Diego in terms of total fan base size. Honus Wagner. Ernie Lombardi. Ted Kluszewski. Ralph Kiner. Roberto Clemente. Pops Stargell. The Big Red Machine. The only problem is, due to crappy regional TV networks like Fox Sports Ohio, the Reds aren't on TV in Indiana and Kentucky and the Cubs are. I lived 60 miles away from Cincy and couldn't watch Reds games on TV. The Cubs dominate Indianapolis and most of Indiana except for the part in the Cincy metro region (helps that the mighty Tribune owns a couple TV stations in Indianapolis). Pittsburgh and Cincy have to put a good product on the field to get huge fan support. The Cubs don't have to thanks to brilliant marketing by the Tribune in the 80s (and some good teams in certain years too). I do agree that they have a loyal fanbase due to their tradition and therefore they're better off than a lot of teams.

Well, there was a witch on ESPN2's Cold Pizza who cast a spell to break the "Curse of the Billy Goat" this morning for the Halloween Episode. She said the Cubs would win it all in 2007 (99 years since 1908, 9+9= 18 = number of new beginning) and that you'd see some big moves start to happen in the Cubs' favor this offseason. :lol:

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Oh wait a minute, nobody in the country cares. :lol:

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Oh wait a minute, nobody in the country cares. :lol:

I rememebr this summer when Cuban said he'd like to own the Cubs....I about fell out of my chair. Big time payroll does NOT equal a good team ala this year's Cubs. I wouldnt mind Cuban being the owner, but you need quality playes, not just big time money players. Big time payroll + smart spending usually does equal a good team. Cuban's a stat geek. He'd be a tremendous owner. He's basically modelled a lot of what he's done with the Mavs off Moneyball. Only problem is there's not equivalent stats for basketball that they've found yet.