Sammy Sofa

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.

OK, Hoff makes some sense, but why the [expletive] would you replace him with Barney, Fuld or Snyder? Snyder makes some sense. Former 1st round pick, had a good season in Iowa last year who is having a hot start this year. Barney contributes so little until Fontenot shows he cannot handle backup SS. Hoffpauir isn't really an option as he has started just like he played all of last year and Fuld is redundant and off to a bad start. Granted, I don't know a ton about Snyder, but isn't he an OFer? Has he played the corners at all in the minors? I know it's not rocket science, but that's one of the reasons Tracy is here. Agreed. WSR is just doing his usual bit of jumping all over someone way too early for being great or being terrible. Tracy's a long shot to have a great year, but we've seen way too little of him to know he'll stay this bad. It's not surprising that they're not using him tonight when he's having trouble getting going since it's supremely unlikely that he'll break out against a guy like Santana.

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.

Every manager is going to have "blemishes." It's not like Lou has some amazing history that blows them or all other candidates out of the water. I just want a manager that isn't going to over-manage and lose games, because that's what a manager has far more impact over than teams actually winning.

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? Yeah, there's significantly stupid and then there is unbelievably stupid. I'm sure moving Zambrano to the bullpen was only significantly stupid. Having him pitch his way through an injury would be unbelievably stupid. First off, make no mistake, I'm not advocating this. I'm just afraid that we have Lou/Hendry pegged for the wrong kind of dumb. You have a GM and Manager who are both in win-this-year-or-else mode. This pair also happily rode Rich Harden's "no risk to damaging it further, 5/6 inning" arm. You have an extremely hard headed starting pitcher who spent a significant amount of last few years skipping starts to rest a sore arm. While I agree that it is incredibly stupid, I wouldn't be totally surprised if the plan was to get him through the year and fix him after the playoffs (that we are throwing a hail mary at). That would just be insane.

Dusty Baker won the first playoff series in 95 years and he should've been tossed on his ass before the NLCS was over. Stellar history? What happened to Lou's stellar history when he went to Tampa?? Or the World Series in Cincinnati or his 116 wins in Seattle. How'd that 116-win team do in the playoffs? Ah, I guess that's not his fault. Managers only get credits for the wins!

OK, Hoff makes some sense, but why the [expletive] would you replace him with Barney, Fuld or Snyder?

Lou hasn't won. He's managed teams that have won. People want him gone not because he doesn't "fit" with what we want so much as he's continually making inexplicably bad decisions and it's getting worse as the years go on. If I could have any input as to who the Ricketts should hire as manager I'd be perfectly happy if they could get someone like Larry Dierker or Bobby Valentine.

*Sigh*

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?

Why not? Morgan's made it very clear he's not fond of Sandberg.

Gimme gimme gimme... Theriot Byrd Lee Soriano Soto Nady Tracy Baker ...please.

I counter by asking whether or not he could truly play 2B in the first place. Answer: no.

There's really nobody out there who is going to be anything resembling a sure thing in the 8th inning that won't require the Cubs to vastly overpay in a trade. The reality is that an 8th inning guy is going to almost certainly have to come from inside the organization.

I'd say both since the oldest guy between the two is only 28. I mean, it's insane that we're even having to bring up that hypothetical. It shouldn't be choice between Cashner and Zambrano ever over anything.

Easily Cashner in the bullpen. Without a second thought. It's not like calling up a position prospect and then having them sit on the bench. It's much easier to get a guy in the bullpen plenty of work.

The speed of the players isn't making or breaking a team on its own. The bullpen is indeed a problem 2 weeks into the season, but with a bullpen that young and with options as yet unused in the minors, NOBODY is going to have a firm grasp of what this bullpen is capable of right now, and probably won't for another month or so. An "objective" eye would recognize that. I'm not saying that the bullpen is necessarily better than what we've seen. It could be better, it could be this bad and, my God, it could be even worse. But we don't know right now, and Lou isn't going to make it very easy on us or him to figure it out.

One of things that frustrating me the most about this are hearing people on the radio talking about this move like it's the smart thing to do or that Zambrano effectively "deserves" it because he hasn't been the "20 game-winning true ace" that everyone wanted him to be. Yes, it would be one thing if he hadn't been that guy and ended up being someone struggling to stay in a starting rotation, but he's clearly well beyond that latter scenario. Just because he's not Halladay doesn't mean you give up on him. It's stupid.