goonys evil twin

I meant more from a national interest perspective. NBC wants everyone to be interested, not just Bronco fans. But you're right of course. If the Bears were playing the Raiders, I'd sure be tuning in. :) Raiders and football fans may still watch for a while hoping for an upset. Still gonna be a stinker for NBC.

There are no intangibles he brings to the table. The only thing that matters are tangible. Leading the league in hits is a worthless stat. All you have to do is play everyday at leadoff swing all the time and make some contact. Leadoff hitters get on base, and Pierre doesn't do that. It would be a terrible decision to resign him, but just another in a long list of poorly thought out, inefficient moves by this team.

Maybe in your world. Not in the baseball community... The baseball community is second only to politics in taking reputation over substance. Exactly. So even if you assume he has no value actually, he has perceived value, and therefore would be worth something in another trade. He was worth no more than a washed up pitcher this year, not sure how his perceived value has improved. You could get a player for him, but probably just another worthless player. Again, reputation over substance. Maddux was viewed as far more than a washed up pitcher. Yes, viewed, as opposed to reality. My point is I would hate to see them trade a player of value for a manager. I wouldn't really care if they traded a crap player like Izturis whose only value is to get other unvaluable players.

This team needs production more than it needs scrappers and grinders.

I could root for the Mets, because they are a team built on great offense and good pitching. They didn't put all their eggs in the pitching basket. If they win, Hendry might put some value in actually having a lineup that can score runs.

Maybe in your world. Not in the baseball community... The baseball community is second only to politics in taking reputation over substance. Exactly. So even if you assume he has no value actually, he has perceived value, and therefore would be worth something in another trade. He was worth no more than a washed up pitcher this year, not sure how his perceived value has improved. You could get a player for him, but probably just another worthless player.

Mike and Mad Dog on WFAN in NY quoted Lidle about not being prepared to face the Tigers. They attributed that to meaning Torre failed to prepare them. Lidle has called up (on a terrible phone line) to defend himself, saying Torre is the best manager for the job. They are ripping him, and he's not doing a good job handling it. They alluded to issues involving Philly and Arthur Rhodes, as well as Lidle ripping Bonds for roids, but ignoring Giambi, a high school teammate. These guys are annoying sons of guns, but they are one of the few that have tough questions for players and managers and get guys to answer those questions live on the air. Lidle's agent has to talk to him about getting a script before coming on shows like that.

I think I'm going to tailgate at the Jets game all day, none of these games is all that interesting to me.

A hallmark of the Andy MacPhail era, at least the past several years, has been to spread around the money as much as possible, getting a bunch of $1-5 million players who are mediocre, but might provide a little stability. Do the Cubs appear to be willing to continue this low risk low reward spread it around philosophy. Or are they willing to take some risks by acquiring actual impact players? Would they be willing to spend $10m on a stud and make up with spending $350,000 for a couple kids to fill roles on the bench, instead of $2-3m veterans who provide nothing more than a typical AAAA player? Similarly, are the Cubs aware of the fact that statistically, the peak years for players is in the 26-28 year old range? Usually a guy will have a return to that peak level once or twice in the 29-33 year range, but typically speaking position players decline starting at 30.

That's good news. Who would the Cubs have to give up if he were to come to Chicago? Of all the prospective candidates I like Bochy the best. If Hendry gives up any player of value in a deal for a manager he's a bigger idiot than I thought. This team needs the right players, the manager is a secondary thought. Managers don't win. What if we could give up Dempster? or Izturis? I'd rather trade them for players. It has to be a pretty bad player, IMO, to warrant trading a player for a coach. I'd say Izturis qualifies. Note, I said player of value. Izturis is of no value.

Waiting too long to pick up Frank Gore. Dumping Drew Brees instead of Kurt Warner when picking up Grossman. Screwing up the Berrian waiver pick-up. Underappreciating the value the Bears defense gave me last year, and picking up a 3rd RB before taking them.

On Orbitz it looks like you can get $200 fares from PHX to ORD, whether it's Fri-Mon, or Sat-Sun night. If you skimp on a hotel you might be able to find $50-100 rooms. Actually, there's a HOJO in Elk Grove Village (where the guy said he was from), for $54. Assuming he has the $60 seats, and limits his concessions purchases to $20 and takes public transport to the game, he could get away with a weekend of less than $350. Of course, he might have a ton of miles through work and uses them to cut the cost of the flight, which could make it a $150 weekend. All things considered, that's a cheap weekend for many. Of course, there's probably also a $1000 version of this weekend, and quite a bit more if you want to splurge.

That's good news. Who would the Cubs have to give up if he were to come to Chicago? Of all the prospective candidates I like Bochy the best. If Hendry gives up any player of value in a deal for a manager he's a bigger idiot than I thought. This team needs the right players, the manager is a secondary thought. Managers don't win.

Getting Jenkins to platoon with Murton would probably be on my list of plan C moves. I'd much rather give Murton full-time duty and platoon or replace Jones.

Jones and Hudson could also work in lieu of Cabrera and Willis, although that may get a bit dicey financially. My deal costs $101m, Jones and Hudson would blow that out of the water.

He's been inconsistent in recent years, after a career of nothing but high quality seasons. ERA+ of: 142 108 129 98 101 125 Plus, health has kept him from throwing 200 innings for three straight years now. He's basically a 6 ip/ 3 ER pitcher now. But he's going to get paid like an ace. He'd be better than most Cubs pitchers, but a very inefficient use of resources. You can't ignore the age. He'll be 38/39/40 if he signs a 3 year deal. He's been worse than Maddux was leading up to his age 38 season (first year with Cubs), and that contract did not turn out well. If the Cubs were a great team with a little financial flexibility, he'd be a pretty decent gamble. But as a bad team needing massive improvements, there's just far better options to spend the money on.

I'd say depends. With A-Rod: 2 (getting beat in playoffs after both years) Without A-Rod: 1.5 (sub-.500) Theres no way the Yankees will be under .500 even without ARod. I wouldn't say there's no way. The AL East gets tougher each year. If Tejada is successful in luring Soriano and Baltimore could land Jason Schmidt, they could be a pretty good team in '07. Toronto isn't a slouch. Boston is always a threat and Tampa just needs to find some arms to go with their continually improving offense. Meanwhile, NY continues to get older. Bernie Williams, Gary Sheffield, Mike Mussina, Randy Johnson could all be gone. Zito and Schmidt both seem to prefer the west coast. Not really sure what FA's the Yankees might pursue and land this offseason. It's all about pitching for them, and there isn't much out there. Abreu, Jeter, Matsui, Posada, Cano, Damon, Giambi is still a formidable lineup. Rivera is still a stud in relief, and all they need are a couple innings eating pitchers to keep them well over .500. All this failure talk about the Yankees fails to take into account the fact that they've won almost 600 games the last 6 years, including 4 postseason series. The playoffs are a crapshoot. Billy Beane didn't say my "stuff" doesn't work in the playoffs because he couldn't construct a good playoff team. He said it because you build the best team you can in hopes of winning 90+ over a 162 game season. There's no predicting what will happen in a 5 game series. This isn't a team on decline. They will have a lot of money to spend on replacing some of their aging vets. And I bet they find enough guys to keep them well over .500 for the foreseeable future.

I really can't see that happening. Is a Monday Night Game on ESPN against Arizona more "shell-shocking" than a Sunday Night Game on NBC against the reigning NFC Champion Seahawks? Rex also played very well coming off the bench against the Falcons on national tv last year, and played very well in the playoffs last year. I think he'll be fine. I just really have trouble with being pessimistic about this team. And I know you were just looking for things to be pessimistic about, I just can't see it. He might throw interceptions, but I don't know that we could chalk it up to Monday night shell-shock. More just being overly aggressive. I see no way AZ comes away with a 6-0 advantage in turnovers. The pessimistic view would be more like 3-2, at worst. And I don't see anyway Grossman gets shell shocked because of MNF. AZ is no better than Buffalo. MNF in AZ is no more of a national stage than previous Grossman games. The best the Cardinals could muster is hanging tight for the first half.

The best way to get the inside track on ARod is to tell the Yankees you will be willing to take on Pavano and part of his contract. Send them Eyre, Aardsma, Marmol and Jones for ARod, Pavano and $8m per for the next 2 years (remainder of Pavano deal) then $3m each of the next two years (remainder of ARod deal). I believe Pavano could have returned to action in NY, the problem was they felt betrayed by the car accident incident, and never liked how he transititioned to the Yankees. It was partially Yankee arrogance that devalued Pavano. If you take $4m off of ARod's and Pavano's deals, they are getting $12+ and $6 million, respectively, in 2007. The Yankees rid themselves of 2 headaches, cut some payroll to make room for other acquisitions, and fill some holes in the bullpen. Jones could be moved in a later move, or used in the OF/DH platoon that is the Yankees OF. After this, the Cubs give up of the farm for Cabrera and Willis, and you've got a rotation with tremendous upside, an unstoppable lineup (with Murton and Theriot/Cedeno accounting for the cheap parts), and a still solid bullpen with Ohman, Wood, Wuertz, Howry and Dempster taking on the bulk of the duty, and 2 spots reserved for cheap kids. Voila! Who cares who manages this team.

Baker is a moron. He did nothing good in 2003, they won just 89 games, and it was all on the arms of the great young pitchers. He ran those arms into the ground and he brought all this on himself. He wanted speedy players, he wanted aggressive players. When you want to play that way, and don't have a HOF player like Bonds getting on base 50% of the time, you are guaranteeing a low OBP, low Runs scored team. And when you run your young arms into the ground with the most abuse in the league, you are going to have troubles. Baker was the wrong manager for this team from day 1. Just because Hendry is also a bad GM doesn't excuse Dusty from his failures.

If I had my choice I'd always prefer my defense to be the juggernaut side of the ball, and the offense to be the formerly bad and presently improving side.

It always seems like we get killed by the backup catcher or the utility infielder, not the big bopper. My theory is that this is because the Cubs walk so many players. They simply give too many chances to weak hitters, who are bound to come through one time or another. Because the Cubs pitchers have such poor control, in relation to all other major league pitchers, they are forced to groove a lot of strikes. But they generally have good stuff. So, they challenge big boppers and can sometimes make them look silly. And when you walk a guy like that, you feel less bad than if you had give up a HR. Then you start walking guys, and end up having to groove pitches to backup catchers, and these guys are good enough to occasionally punish a grooved pitch.

I'm cool with that. I'm just glad you didn't lay all of the blame on me for Dusty. I endorsed him, not really knowing all that much about him. At the same time, I felt Dusty did do some good things in San Francisco. His teams drew walks at a very respectable clip. His Giant teams didn't seem all that "aggressive" at the plate. His top of the order guys were good to decent OBP guys. Why he didn't do that here is beyond me. I didn't totally buy into the pitcher abuse theory when Dusty was being considered for the Cubs managerial position, so I was definitely wrong there. As far as the youth coming into Chicago at that time, I didn't think Dusty had much choice but to play them. Hendry really seemed like a guy who would force the youngsters to play since he was promoted from the minor league system he built. I didn't lay the blame on you, or anybody else but Hendry, for the Baker thing because I was able to come to my own conclusion that he was the absolute worst choice for the job at the time. Nothing that happened since has challenged that assertion. I just don't have that strong of a feeling on Bochy as I did with Dusty.

I think it's already a lock to be a season to remember, either because of the team going all the way, or with a big disappointing collapse. You can't start 5-0 with this big of a point differential, and just fade away.

I don't have much of an opinion on Bochy, only that he's gotten decent results out of a team that hasn't spent much money and doesn't have a load of talent. I don't recall him being one of those managers who has to have his imprint on the game, which I like. I'm going to base my opinion on him off of what BBB wrote. Therefore, if it backfires, it's all BBB's fault.