Sammy Sofa

It is interesting that you mention "angry". When I watched him last Thursday, I noticed he just looked totally pi**ed when he started the second innng. And that is when he started getting results. It seemed to me that he was just fed up with what has happened to him and finally let it all go. If that works for him, great. I will eagerly monitor Game Threads this afternoon. On the flipside, I've seen plenty of bad games with him, especially last year, where he was visibly angry and frustrated.

That's wishful thinking (especially with respect to today's outing). A few days ago we thought Prior had a small chance to win a spot in the rotation but that isn't reality right now. Marquis can't be traded before June 15, as such, he isn't going anywhere. In fact, an argument can be made that he won't be moved period (regardless of performance). If Marquis pitches poorly, no team will want to be saddled with his three year contract. If he pitches well, Hendry won't consider trading him--because he's "only" making $7M a year. If Prior is able to regain a spot in the rotation, in the future, it will most likely be at the expense of Wade Miller. If, IF, Miller pitches along the lines of his last outing and Prior improves, I don't give a flying crap how much Marquis cost. If Marquis sucks, and he likely will, and Miller and Prior are MUCH better, Marquis better become the expensive swing man. Yeah, it's bad he costs so much, but I'd prefer to go with talent as opposed to being led around by the pocketbook. Swing man is a possibility. I was responding to the idea that Marquis would be shipped out. I agree with that part of it. The only way the Cubs move him is if they pick up a chunk of the tab.

17 million a year is not little.... If it's on the $75 million dollar end of the deal it is. Getting Z for $15 million a year when he probably could get $18 million per is alright by me.

That's wishful thinking (especially with respect to today's outing). A few days ago we thought Prior had a small chance to win a spot in the rotation but that isn't reality right now. Marquis can't be traded before June 15, as such, he isn't going anywhere. In fact, an argument can be made that he won't be moved period (regardless of performance). If Marquis pitches poorly, no team will want to be saddled with his three year contract. If he pitches well, Hendry won't consider trading him--because he's "only" making $7M a year. If Prior is able to regain a spot in the rotation, in the future, it will most likely be at the expense of Wade Miller. If, IF, Miller pitches along the lines of his last outing and Prior improves, I don't give a flying crap how much Marquis cost. If Marquis sucks, and he likely will, and Miller and Prior are MUCH better, Marquis better become the expensive swing man. Yeah, it's bad he costs so much, but I'd prefer to go with talent as opposed to being led around by the pocketbook.

If Hendry manages to get him for that little, the man is a freakin' genius.

By window of opportunity I mean their opportunity to succeed in the big leagues. If after this season they both amount to the same low amount of games as last year, why continue to waste time and money on two pitchers that have proven to be lost causes? Lou is not a fool, however he isn't stupid either. How many seasons must a team wait for two once-aces to come back around? It's frustrating as a fan to watch them go through injury after injury, but there's a time when a team just has to throw in the flag. Realistically thinking, I truly think that will happen after this season if nothing happens with them two. However I truly am still hoping for the best of them both. With Wood, that might be the case if he shows that he simply can't stay off the DL throughout the year, mainly because of his age and the nature of his health problems being so hinged on his lifelong mechanics. Prior, on the other hand, is much younger, and so far hasn't shown to have the same problematic mechanics as Wood. His DL history has, outside of last year, been linked primarily to two fluke onfield accidents. He has a much better chance of being able to fight back and find success again due to his youth, his mechanics and the nature of his health issues. In short, you can't just lump them together because they've been on the DL too much in the last few seasons.

There is no window to move them now. Their value is as low as it can get. They're both incredibly cheap through this season, so there's zero reason for the Cubs to trade them, buy them out, or whatever other brilliant idea people have. Lou is proving himself to not be a fool, therefore the odds of him "getting rid" of Prior and Wood seem slim to none. This thread was the most essential thread of all time.

I'm praying for a decent Prior start. It's all up from here!

Adam Dunn is Batman and he lives on Mars.

Holy crap...Wuertz and Hill got hammered by the ROYALS?!? Ech. Get that kind of junk out of your system now, boys.

This really makes you wonder on whether Kerry will be healthy enough to even contribute to the team this year. He's only pitched in a handful of innings so far this spring and is still having trouble with that shoulder. Well, the possibly counter to that is that despite offseason routines, this is the start of the year and he might be rusty getting back into the swing of things. Ideally he'll get stronger and more durable as the season goes along...relatively speaking.

Wow, was it really said like that? I know Wood's recent setback puts real gloom over his role this year, but why sound so hopeless about Prior already?

Despite them being in the same division, I would happily root for the Brewers, Reds or Pirates as the NL team the next time they make it to the big show. I think the Bucs have a decent core of players they can start building up from. A team with a stadium that beautiful deserves to have a decent team again, dammit! Oh, right, the fans, too.

90+? I kind of have the feeling that we're going to see a season similar to 2004. Lots of SLG%, not enough OBP to sustain a 95 win pace guven the questions that the starting pitching has. Agreed. Anything above 85 wins is going to be over achieving.

I've highlighted the nonsense in your post. It doesn't matter what the Cubs say or don't say about a player's injury. You don't know if this will keep happening or if it won't, and even if your aboive scenario takes place, it means the Cubs got some decent outings from him before he gets hurt again, whicxh was the whole point of signing him for next to nothing to provide some bullpen depth. Seriously, if this were Wade Miller being hurt (at the same salary, BTW), no one would be making stupid declarative statements like "he's a tease" and "release him". How long have you been following the Cubs and Kerry Wood? What makes you think this scenario won't play out? If I remember correctly, isn't one's past performance the best predictor of his future performance? And by decent outings I meant one or two. I should have made that clearer. But, even if he is somewhat healthy, he will not be able to throw on back-to-back days. What's the value of a middle reliever who cannot do that? The only reason Kerry Wood is taking up eight pages of this board, and plenty of time of my spring break, is that we still remember the 20 Ks and parts of the 2003 playoffs. But that Kerry Wood is gone and will never come close to returning. The one that is left is an injury-proned and overrated pitcher. BTW, the definition of a tease is to arouse hope, desire, or curiosity without satisfying them. Kerry Wood is the definition of a tease. What, again, is so stupid about that? http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tease If you took a pol of the people here at NSBB as far as if they expected big things of Kerry Wood this year, you'd get about 10% yes. It's kinda hard to be a tease if no one really expects anything of you. Yes, past performance is indicative of future performance, but then again, we didn't sign him to 3/$21. We signed him for what amounts to a rehabbing pitcher's contract, which is exactly what he is. IHe elected to rehab rather that surgically repair his shoulder. If he misses the enitre year, big deal, we wasted a million bucks, but if he misses a couple months and gives us 15-30 appearances out of the pen, I'd consider that a successful investment. And since we don't know if he'll be out for weeks or months yet, it's hard to label this a faied investemtn. Spring training is a time when you see if rehabbing pitchers have anything left. I don't think he does have anything left. Time to move on. That's ridiculous. Spring training isn't the magic end-all-be-all as to whether or not Wood won't be able to contribute to any of the 162 games remaining in the season. If teams ran their rosters with that mentality, baseball would be a joke. He's not slotted in as if they NEED him. They have more than enough arms to fill the bullpen roles. IF Wood can contribute, it's a bonus. If not, the team is covered. It's win-win. He's only signed for 1 year and $1.5 million. The standards really aren't all that high with that kind of investment.

Is they were still paying him and counting on him like he was a starter, yes. They're approaching him as if he's a "maybe reliever" and paying him as such. On the DL he's not taking up any roster space and again, they're barely paying him, at least on the huge MLB scale. Again, your whole reasoning for getting rid of him seems to boil down to an emotional one, and that's like the worst way to run a baseball team. Wood isn't hurting anyone by being on the team now in the role he is in and what he's getting paid. Dropping him just to drop solves nothing.

His spring was shockingly decent. Though I still don't want him on the team.

Aramis looked seriously annoyed with Cedeno after that close call. Then Cedeno flinched HUGE when Aramis tossed the ball away, like Rammy was going to smash him.

Yeah that's a head scratcher for me as well. I remember reading some really outlandish rumors there that never materialized in other outlets, so it didn't impress me that much. Don't worry, that's pretty much everything posted there.

Sir, BCB is the bloggiest blog that ever blogged. It's main page and all the "sub-blogs"/comment sections fullfill all the drama and histronics and slapping fights you expect at a high school drama class' lunch table. That both BCB and MLBTradeRumors ended up on this list says a LOT about the research put into this puff piece.

Walker released by the Padres....let's get a Wolfboy tandem going!

Nice 1-2-3 by Eyre! CUBS WIN!!!

Some of those guys just can't let it go.

Man, Todd back in Wrigley would be awesome.

Heh...Murton just cannot beat that hill! Nice k, Cherry.