Sammy Sofa

I'm going to have to disagree. The guy sucked cold butt for a full year. There was plenty of reason to doubt whether he could return to his top form. Not a full year, but your point still stands. He finished the year showing basically no signs of improving.

Unless this is measuring self-loathing or lack of interest as "hatred," this makes no sense.

It's just because the Cubs like to trade valuable relievers to other teams for players who have very little value. True.

I just love that someone has a hilarious image of everyone in "the ghetto" wearing tons of colored camo clothes.

Why is it a joke? It was obvious at the time that his year in DC was a career year. And complaining that he can't steal when he "goes cold" is redundant since when he goes cold he's lucky to even just get on base in the first place, so acting like his ability was some kind of added weapon he could use when he goes in a hitting slump makes no sense at all. The stealing ability would be nice to have, but it's hardly essential for him to be an incredibly valuable player to this team. Now he's a middle of the order guy with power who can (ideally) knock in a ton of runs.

It never ceases to amaze me how some people on this board think the Cubs can somehow trade for a good reliever and not give up much of value.

Speaking of Cajun Cubs, Theriot's page sponsor on BR is hysterical: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/t/theriry01.shtml

He has at least one hit in each of the last ten games.

Again, it's pretty backwards to blame the guy for taking a ton of money dropped on his lap and for the wrongheaded expectations of the organization that gave him the money. It would be one thing if the signed him in his 20's, but if they seriously expected that he'd keep stealing bases for a while after signing him on the wrong side of 30, well, that's just dumb. I mean, this is the organization that thought bringing Milton Bradley here as some kind of clobbering RBI machine was the right thing to do based on one year of mashing the hell out of the ball. Slamming Soriano for not "igniting the offense" with steals is [expletive] because he can singlehandedly carry the team when he's hot, which is far more apparent than the ridiculous intangibles of a guy "inspiring the team" or "causing havoc" because of his speed. You know what does a much better job of igniting the offense and causing havoc? Beating the [expletive] out of the ball. You know what has a good chance of getting Soriano hurt and keeping him from beating the [expletive] out of the ball? Unnecessarily stealing bases.

They're still overrated in general in terms of how valuable they are to a team. One can easily have a very good team that rarely steals bases. Besides that, what Soriano can do with the bat is far more valuable than the bases he can steal. It seems that his leg injury last year impacted his performance at the plate, so why tempt that fate again by having him do something that ultimately doesn't do much to help a team win ball games? I'd happily see Soriano never steal a base again so long as it meant we'd get more of him hitting 30+ home runs a season, especially since he's showing he doesn't have to be in the leadoff spot to hit this well. Him driving in a ton of runs with his hot streaks is so much more valuable than being able to steal bases.

Probably because everyone looks at Abreu and assumes he's a big fat load.

Martha Wellington!

Zambrano gets booed a lot. Soriano doesn't show emotion? The guy acts like an ecstatic kid when he gets a hit.

I dont know if its any more or less likely than the chances that Theriot continues to produce at his current pace (very unlikely). I tend to think he'd be at least as good offensively and he would be an upgrade defensively. I think you're overstating the odds of a player that young and that inexperienced being able to come up and produce right away in the bigs. It would obviously be fantastic if he did come out and out produce guys like Theriot, but odds are he probably wouldn't even match typical Theriot production for most of the season, if at all this year. Actually he has to outproduce the Font/Baker combo since Theriot would just move over. Applies to them, too. I'd be stunned if Castro outproduced them if he was called up soon.

Said it before, but man, if Lee and Aramis can get going this season could end up being a lot more fun than most of us were expecting. Now if we could just get Soto moved up in the lineup...

Billy Beane has been successful as a GM, but he is not regarded as the best GM in baseball. So being successful and being the best GM are not mutally exclusive. For instance, when Cashman eventual steps down as Yankees GM, will you consider the next Yankees GM the best GM if the Yankees continue to win? Being the best GM and being the most successful do not alway go hand in hand. But it often can. Krause wasn't in Cashman's position of having an unlimited budget to work with, yet he look at the results. There's no Chicago GM that even comes close. He was given a substantial payroll to work with. As for his abilities as a GM, they sucked. He pulled out a couple of moves out of his ass (based on part from his scouts, especially on Kukoc) and all of the sudden he is consider the best? Correct me if I am wrong, but who drafted Jason Caffey right in front of Michael Finley? Who drafted Fizer we the Bulls already had Brand? His later years as GM showed him for the fraud he was. Payroll is irrelevant if you're bringing up someone like Cashner. No other GM in professional American sports has the resources he has to work with. And you're faulting him for listening to his scouts? Isn't that what a GM is supposed to do? AND you're bringing up draft failures while propping up Angelo, who is the king of highly touted draft busts and first round failures? Nobody is saying that Krause was without his obvious faults and mistakes, but [expletive], he made better moves than Angelo in the long run and had much more success. Again, it's ridiculous to compare the two.

I'm sorry, how could anyone seriously suggest Angelo and Krause are even comparable?

Billy Beane has been successful as a GM, but he is not regarded as the best GM in baseball. So being successful and being the best GM are not mutally exclusive. For instance, when Cashman eventual steps down as Yankees GM, will you consider the next Yankees GM the best GM if the Yankees continue to win? Being the best GM and being the most successful do not alway go hand in hand. But it often can. Krause wasn't in Cashman's position of having an unlimited budget to work with, yet he look at the results. There's no Chicago GM that even comes close.

Why would you even get anyone else warming up? Grabow sucks, but he's not going to give up 5 more runs. Just leave him in there.

Man, if Lee and Aramis can just get back into it this lineup is stacked.

it's so hard to tell with him because when he's on he hits the ball really well, and when he's cold he can't hit a beach ball. he was lousy early on but for the last 2-3 weeks he's been really hot. at some point he'll go ice cold; last year there was just a lot more of the cold than the hot. hopefully this year it's more like 2007-08. I still believe that last year wasn't so much "more cold than hot" as much as it was "more injured than not". Yeah, I think playing on that bad leg really effected him. I mean, it's not even like he was bad the whole year. I was especially letdown last season because he got off to such an insane start for the first month+ before just toppling off of a cliff. And there he goes again!

So the most successful GM isn't the best? Good luck arguing that, especially since the competition doesn't really offer up anyone close.

Mmmmmm, snowcone.

4 k's in a row for Gorzelanny. Nice.

Awwwww, Soriano hugging Rudy in the dugout after his HR.