Sammy Sofa

Such a diva.

How dare you.

If we get Tanaka and keep Shark, I challenge you to explain how it could possibly be worse. We lose little from the offense and should get better without adding much from the outside. Starlin and Rizzo should rebound/improve, and we likely get 1/2 a season of Baez and other incremental gains. The bullpen is a lot stronger than it was to start last year. The rotation has taken a hit, for certain. But adding Tanaka would make up that gap pretty easily. If, and it is a big honking if, we add Tanaka, I believe we'll get to see interesting baseball in the late summer in a while. I'll be stunned if they get Tanaka. I don't think it's realistic to expect they land him; I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it. The offense was just rank last year, and they haven't don't much to improve it. It's basically hinged on praying that Castro and Rizzo rebound and that Baez both shows up and is good. Those are some pretty big if's; I really like Baez, but it's hardly unlikely that he shows up and struggles. The offense wasn't quite as bad as the runs scored would lead you to believe. The wOBA was still bad, but was within shouting distance of average. If we can: - manage to avoid giving Barney 555 PA's of .252 wOBA - have Castro improve on his 705 PA's of .280 wOBA That alone will help improve the performance dramatically. Also, it is often pointed out that we are not likely to get repeat performances from the Murphy's of the world, but we are also not likely to get Lillibridged in 2014, either. The 286 PA we got from Lillibridge, Clevenger, Watkins, Borbon, Sappelt and Alberto Gonzalez contributed greatly to the lousy performance. Simply having a deeper bench would avoid a lot of negative performances. We'll still get some bad results from some guys, but avoiding the incredibly negative results would make things a lot better. Without any additional changes, I strongly doubt the offense will be top 10 in MLB. However, it wouldn't surprise me that much if they were very close to average in most offensive metrics - especially in the NL. But at the same time it wouldn't take much for it to stink. Obviously we want it to do well, but they're yet again setting up a team where things have to break right just for them to be OK.

Me too, but it kinda sucks that he'll be unleashed onto a big pile of poo.

If we get Tanaka and keep Shark, I challenge you to explain how it could possibly be worse. We lose little from the offense and should get better without adding much from the outside. Starlin and Rizzo should rebound/improve, and we likely get 1/2 a season of Baez and other incremental gains. The bullpen is a lot stronger than it was to start last year. The rotation has taken a hit, for certain. But adding Tanaka would make up that gap pretty easily. If, and it is a big honking if, we add Tanaka, I believe we'll get to see interesting baseball in the late summer in a while. I'll be stunned if they get Tanaka. I don't think it's realistic to expect they land him; I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it. The offense was just rank last year, and they haven't don't much to improve it. It's basically hinged on praying that Castro and Rizzo rebound and that Baez both shows up and is good. Those are some pretty big if's; I really like Baez, but it's hardly unlikely that he shows up and struggles. on the whole, isn't it considerably more likely that baez is mediocre or worse in aaa and spends the whole season there than he comes up to the majors and is good enough to have a real impact on the team? Yes, that too.

If we get Tanaka and keep Shark, I challenge you to explain how it could possibly be worse. We lose little from the offense and should get better without adding much from the outside. Starlin and Rizzo should rebound/improve, and we likely get 1/2 a season of Baez and other incremental gains. The bullpen is a lot stronger than it was to start last year. The rotation has taken a hit, for certain. But adding Tanaka would make up that gap pretty easily. If, and it is a big honking if, we add Tanaka, I believe we'll get to see interesting baseball in the late summer in a while. I'll be stunned if they get Tanaka. I don't think it's realistic to expect they land him; I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it. The offense was just rank last year, and they haven't don't much to improve it. It's basically hinged on praying that Castro and Rizzo rebound and that Baez both shows up and is good. Those are some pretty big if's; I really like Baez, but it's hardly unlikely that he shows up and struggles.

Everyone is desperately trying to ignore how horrendous this upcoming season is shaping up to be. I didn't think there was a chance it would actually somehow be WORSE, but here we are.

Oh, wait, no; he was the worst. And he gets to retire with two WS rings. GROSSSSSS.

http://thenewsjournal.net/userfiles/image/Bowing%20heads%204x.jpg?imgmax=800

Literal lol. Big time.

I can't stop watching that.

Agreed. I just can't shake the feeling that the Cubs aren't going to get anything close to the new "market value" and I really don't want to wait until 2020 for significant added revenue. The increasing pile of things they've missed out on, are missing out on or just seem to be in limbo from is killing me. Tell me about it. I'm having a hard time waiting 3 weeks to see if they miss out on Tanaka. I really, really, really want to be a more positive person going forward, but [expletive], they're doing their best to make it tough. I'd kill for one singular, definitive bit of news a la the excitement of getting Theo. At this point just breaking ground on the Jumbotron would have me crying tears of joy.

Agreed. I just can't shake the feeling that the Cubs aren't going to get anything close to the new "market value" and I really don't want to wait until 2020 for significant added revenue. The increasing pile of things they've missed out on, are missing out on or just seem to be in limbo from is killing me.

The pic with his bio just about says it all... http://contributor.yahoo.com/user/189287/brian_davis.html OH COME ON. This has to be a bit.

Someone here wrote that, I know it. Confessssssssssssssssssssssssssss...

That piece is some kind of elaborate prank, right?

The dichotomy between the last two posts could not be more soul-crushingly depressing.

Y'know, when it was gross and a sin and against God's will or whatever. Way to judge people you come across.

So did he come out before or after those anti-gay blog posts?

But really, I just wanted to bash Andy because it disgusts me every time he comments on anything along these lines.

I'm referring to my typing as "book publishing."

Well, he's not George Takei or anything, but he went well beyond what most people, celebrity or not, would do. This is basically what I'm disagreeing with; he didn't really do anything above and beyond. That's not a slam on him; it's great what he's done, but it feels like anyone trying to paint this as something more is kinda looking for a roundabout way to rationalize it as a reason for him losing his job.

It just seems like REALLY overstating things to me. "Activism" is a pretty singular focus on a cause. This was a just a cool guy using his platform so just spout some common sense.

"Activism?" Being a decent [expletive] human being is "activism" in your book? Oh, right; it's Andry and these are the gays. Yes, what he was doing was activism. He was actively going out and promoting the idea of marriage equality as a fairly visible member of an NFL team. What you and I might do in being supportive of gay marriage laws being passed would be being a decent human being. He's just on the public stage by default; he was barely doing anything that could be called activism outside of writing some articles and answering questions in interviews.