Sammy Sofa

Seems a lot of it has come down to timing, too. The offense hasn't been on the same page so far. You had Lee tearing it up when basically everyone was sucking except for Fukudome and Byrd. Now Lee is mired in an awful slump coupled with Aramis still being horrible and it's created a huge hole in the lineup. Regardless of who is hitting you've had too many holes in the lineup where you need to have some kind of production. The 2-3 and 5 hitters are hitting, but nobody else is. The 5-7 hitters or 5,6 and 8 hitters are hitting but nobody else is. In short, this team is toast if either their 3 or 4 hitters are terrible, and for too much of the season now both have been.

sulley, you do think LeBron will win at least one championship before his career is done, right?

You've got 8 guys on the NBA's all-time top 50 list that never won a ring. You've got 16 who only won 1. Championships are not the end-all-be-all of determining whether a player is great or not since even the greatest of all time couldn't win one by himself.

Sure you can. We can't even consider guys like Stockton, Barkley, Malone, Miller, Iverson, etc. in those discussions?

And it's not like the Bulls' bench hasn't been talking [expletive] to him.

Why wait? That's like saying Jordan wasn't living up to the hype for the first 5 years of his career. Just because a player can't literally do everything all the time for their team doesn't mean they're not living up to the hype. yeah, 6 titles didn't do anything for jordan's career. What? I have no idea what your response is supposed to mean. I was pointing out how it's dumb to act like a player can't be great until they win a title. I never said anything about the titles helping or not helping Jordan's career. What a weird, random thing to say. at some point a player has to win a big game or big series. if he doesn't, he's missing something. i don't see lebron doing it with this team and i don't see this team getting any better. So is he missing something or is his team missing something?

Why wait? That's like saying Jordan wasn't living up to the hype for the first 5 years of his career. Just because a player can't literally do everything all the time for their team doesn't mean they're not living up to the hype. yeah, 6 titles didn't do anything for jordan's career. What? I have no idea what your response is supposed to mean. I was pointing out how it's dumb to act like a player can't be great until they win a title. I never said anything about the titles helping or not helping Jordan's career. What a weird, random thing to say.

i will get on his nuts when he wins a title. i don't think that's happening without a guy who can take the last shot and no i don't mean anthony parker. cleveland ain't winning unless they get a good team to lose interest in an important playoff series. Titles? Really? Titles are on the level with wins/RBI/batting average when judging a player's worth. Bill wennington has more rings than Karl Malone....so what? Eli Manning is a better QB than Dan Marino. FACT.

Why wait? That's like saying Jordan wasn't living up to the hype for the first 5 years of his career. Just because a player can't literally do everything all the time for their team doesn't mean they're not living up to the hype.

I submit that you need to get on his nuts.

Yet.

YER NOTHIN' BUT A BUM! THIS'LL LEARN YA GOOD!

They need good relievers, regardless of which arm they throw with.

Gorz to the bullpen instead of Z makes so much more sense it's....I don't know, I don't even have the words.

Quit being bitter. If more players were like LeBron we probably would have cured cancer by now.

Lord only knows. Probably something about dancing.

Aramis makes me want to barf with sadness. Lee's been hideous over the last week, too (.130 .286 .304 .590). Not gonna accomplish much offensively if your 3-4 guys are that bad.

b and b are the wrong people to talk to when you want to laud the behavior of jordan. Anyone with a semi-functioning brain is the wrong person to talk to to laud the behavior of Jordan.

The call had nothing to do with comparing them as players; it was hilarious because it was a guy ranting like LeBron is this horrible scumbag and Jordan was the ideal behavior-wise and personality-wise. And his favorite player is Kirk Hinrich.

It's not. There are dumb decisions, and then there are completely irrational ones. Lou is a bad manager, but he's not a lunatic.

B&B had an amusing call today where the caller was railing against LeBron for being a "immature, disrespectful punk" and that Jordan "never had attitude like that." And Kirk Hinirch is his favorite player.

I'll give you a long, lucky one.

Huzzah.

Kirk can't shoot them most of the time.

What would be the point of that as opposed to shutting him down and putting him on the DL or having him have surgery if that's necessary? Again, we're talking about a 28-year-old pitcher here in the middle of a huge, largely untrade-able contract. How does it benefit the Cubs to "hide" an injury or let him pitch through it? It doesn't help at all, long term. It would be devastating. Short term, however, maybe you steal an extra 5 or 6 wins and sneak into the playoffs - thus saving your job until next year where you have to deal with Z recovering from surgery. Again, this isn't an option for competent, forward thinking GMs. Neither are 8 year deals with NTC to 31 year olds. But we're talking the long term now since it's only 2 weeks into the season. If Z has an injury that is keeping him from starting then he's not going to last the whole year, or if it does it won't be as an effective reliever or as one that you can call in enough to "steal those extra wins." It's simply not a realistic scenario at all. Isn't that exactly what they did with Harden after we acquired him in 2008? Even through most of last year, skipped starts, limited innings, etc. http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/fantasy/wsfb/news/index.jsp?action=locate&pid=425848 This isn't the same thing at all. Z would still more valuable as a starter if he had all of those things done for him. You don't move a pitcher that requires that kind of care to the bullpen where they have to pitch much more often and arguably put more strain on their mechanics.