RammyFanny

LOL at the poll in Rosenthal's article. "How will the Cubs disapoint their fans in 09?"

Van Dyck doesn't sound optimistic for whatever reason: http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/chi-081106-chicago-cubs,0,4246312.story

Someone dust off the Bruce signal.

I disagree. In a person neutral setting I'd take Demp over Wood. Contracts ignored. Carlos Zambrano and Rich Harden are liable to miss a combined 20 starts or so. I wish i was exaggerating, but I am not. Jason Marquis, while crap, is useful as a safety blanket if Zambrano or Harden go down. If we acquire Peavy and deal away Marshall, which is inevitable in such a trade, then we no longer have the safety blanket. If we acquire Peavy and sign Dempster and retain Marquis, we do have one, a pretty damn good one too. Agreed. Also, if Harden does good this season and stays healthy, he would probably fetch like 14 million a year next offseason. We can't just assume that the payroll will continue to rise every year. If we lose Harden (and don't resign Dempster), then we would have Peavy/Z/Lilly/?/? going into the next offseason. And if Harden is injured alot of next season, then we still have the same problem since we are uncertain how much he is able to pitch healthy for throughout the next season. It's alot easier to find bargain one inning relief pitchers than it is to find bargain starters who will probably give you 200+ innings with around a 3.40 ERA and 1.30 whip (my projected stats for Dempster next year). I'd rather have Peavy/Z/Lilly/Dempster locked up for sure with our main task being to find a decent bullpen guy, rather than having Peavy/Z/Lilly/?/? with Wood closing games. Edit: I'm not 100% sure on our payroll going into next offseason, so maybe i'm wrong and we can easily fit Harden extended. Still, he could easily have injury problems like always (hopefully not though). I'm not advocating 5-75 though.

I know i'm in the minority, but I like the idea of resigning Demp with Peavy and letting Wood walk, manlove aside. The potential for that rotation would just be too great. I know people are wary off giving Dempster 12 million or whatever, but with the overinflated price of closers, isn't Kerry likely to be around 10 million a year? It doesn't seem like that much of a difference to me, and i'd rather take a good starter over a good one inning guy (who is coming off his first healthy season in forever...not invluding the blister).

The sources who've said that resigning Demp and trading for Peavy would be our preference, with the new addition of us being willing to go 4 years.

This would almost be too good to be true. Come on Jim! Going "cheap" in RF could still be Hermida. Imagine that team.

Looks like Demp won't be signing anytime soon. http://blogs.trb.com/sports/baseball/blog/2008/11/gms_meetings_the_mets_continue.html

Jim sure has athletic prowess.

I'd rather just let Dempster and Wood go, trade for Peavy, and reload on prospects who are probably better than the ones we gave up to get Peavy anyway. This is assuming SD would actually take a deal involving some of our players though, which obviously might never happen.

http://www.sportsline.com/mlb/story/11081955/2 Sway him with those mad golf skills, Jim. We're probably the latter.

The pen will be fine? You're taking Marmol out of the most valuable role for the team and you're losing Wood. Who'd be the primary set up man? The highly inconsistent Samardzija? Bring back Bob Howry? I wish they were more worried when they were giving Soriano 8 year contracts. Gaudin?

Muskat was asked about it in her mailbag today. Of course she didn't give an answer, but she said that they would have to come to an internal conclusion on what they plan to do with Wood and Demp first.

http://www.suntimes.com/sports/deluca/1204233,CST-SPT-deluca06.article

Did my best to ignore everything Cubs realted today so I could work in peace. Let's do this. Please...

That email doesn't contain the password, though. If it was a winner, you'll get an email in the morning with the password. Thank you very much. I'm not 100%, but i'm optimistic.

CRAP. I just remembered I used my dad's email for one of them and was checking the wrong email. I go into the other room to see my dad deleted all of his mail. He didn't know, so he just thought it was all spam from them. I really think it could have been a winner based on the time everyone was recieving them. CRAP.

ughhh... congrats to those who won.

Article said that Peavy recently stated he wouldn't wave his NTC for any AL team.

You can't be serious about that offer as being an opener. Pie, Marshall, and those three might get their attention. He said as an opener. If Vitters, Castillo, pitcher, Pie, Marshall is merely the opener, we might be trading the most players in a single deal ever.

I say we all just post funny pictures to lighten the mood.

YES!

Need to get the leadoff guy on.