goonys evil twin

Um, MacPhail was still in Minnesota in 89. Um, in 2003 the Cubs won the Division by a small margin with 89 wins. My point was that 89 wins usually doesn't win a division and the Cubs were lucky because the Cards had injury issues. For the record, the Cubs won the division with 88 wins in 2003. 2004 was the 89 win season, when they weren't even close to the division. Despite people remembering 2003 fondly and thinking of 2004 as a disaster, the 2004 team was better. The problem is it was only marginally better, and the 2003 team wasn't that good to begin with. What they need, and should be getting is consistent 90+ win seasons.

I think alot of the criticism is perfectly justified, but I know that most of the criticism is supported by unrealistic expectations based on incomplete information, disingenuous arguments, skewering of the facts and flat out lies (or at a minimum a reckless disregard for the truth). I completely disagree.

It's not impossible to dominate the line of scrimmage as a great running team vs the Bears, weather or no weather. Teams routinely push the smaller guys around, but their quickness allows them to pounce on mistakes, which Pittsburgh did not commit. (A matchup against Denver would be interesting because they should be able to run on the Bears, but you'd always be waiting for Plummer to screw up.) And the injuries and poor tackling combined to make the problem worse. They still had a few of those typical 5 Bears making a tackle in the backfield plays, but they got beat early on screen plays and the Pittsburgh passing. They were stuffed on several first quarter runs. The two biggest plays on the opening TD drive were a long screen and a pass to Ward. They also averaged a start around their own 30, and never inside their own 20 early on, something that was bound to hurt the Bears. The pushing them around thing didn't really start until they were up 14-3 and Bettis ran all over them.

I think the Downey article may have been more of a plea for a domed stadium to house the olympics than a rationale for calling the Bears a domed team.

Cedeno is nowhere near a guarantee to give you that. Lugo is much better than bad. He can be pretty good, not great, or close to great. He's above average. But he probably doesn't have a lot of time left at above average, because it doesn't take long for average-to-above-average middle infielders to lose their value.

No I'm not actually, if you took the time to read what I wrote I said he could find a happy medium between 2003 and 2004. you're right, you did say that. I did take the time to read it so no need to be snide. the happy medium to me is more likely between 2003 and 2005. I don't think you can dismiss 2005 altogether. I don't dismiss it. I think it was horrible, and inevitable if you tried to turn Corey into what the Cubs tried to turn him into. I think he should have gone from low A, to high A, and then AA, and should have hit in the 6 or 7 hole his first few years in the big leagues. I think it's incredibly stupid to focus your entire draft theory on tools, but once you get such a toolsy player like Corey, you have to make the best of the situation, and try to screw it up as little as possible. The Cubs screwed it up as much as any team could screw up. But I think if you focused your efforts on the right offseason acquisitions, and built a solid lineup in front of him, then you could have thrown Corey into the 7 hole this year and had a reasonable chance at .275/.320/.475 (perfectly acceptable for a $3m CF who still has some upside. I think you had a chance of salvaging a .280/330/500 career out of the guy if you didn't give him the Farnsy/Sosa/Walker treatment and try and place blame on him for the team's ills. I think 2005 was entirely avoidable if the Cubs treated the Corey situation differently. I'm not saying they could have done it differently and turned him into a superstar. I don't think Corey could ever become a superstar. But I think you could have maximized his abilities by using him properly, and the Cubs failed to maximize his ability because they took a talented but flawed and limited player, ignored the core flaw, and took him out of his game by placing unrealistic expectations on his development.

No I'm not actually, if you took the time to read what I wrote I said he could find a happy medium between 2003 and 2004. Dusty was the manager then, and he wasn't trying to turn him into slappy McGee then. Corey in 2003 hit 3rd or 6th the vast majority of the time. Dusty tried inserting him into leadoff in 2004 with mixed results, he couldn't hit for average or get on base, but he still hit for some power there. He had greater success in the 7 hole. The Cubs want their leadoff man to hit .300 with 190 singles and 10 triples, plus 30-40 SB, with limited Ks. They don't care if he walks 15 times, 55 times or 105 times. Corey was never going to be a .300 hitting singles hitter. But when they tried to turn him into a leadoff hitter, that's exactly what they tried to make him, giving him extra batting instruction midseason to completely change what he was (impossible) and forcing offseason work on him to do something he was never going to be capable of doing.

Then call me foolish. They lost because they are a bad matchup with Pittsburgh, especially in a must-win game for Pittsburgh when the Bears aren't in a must-win situation and have multiple defensive starters sitting and/or nursing injuries. The weather did not lose that game. Domes do not favor the Bears, and the D can play very well in bad conditions.

The fact was the game was over before the weather got real bad. Bettis was running over them early, they didn't make mistakes, which is what the Bears need the opposition to do in order to win, or at least what they needed to happen when Orton was QB.

what's the relevance of that? Its quite clear management has no clue what a valuable baseball player is. It's quite relevent. They didn't have to trade him. He didn't have to be moved at all costs. They could have gotten more out of him on the field than through trade if they used him properly. And they wouldn't have had a hard time justifying it given the type of player they already have. If you can justify Jones and his contract, how can you not justify one more year of giving Corey a chance, even as a 4th OF?

I disagree with people saying it's all Dusty and the Cubs' fault. But I think you're just as wrong for saying Dusty shares no blame. The leadoff thing played a huge role. It was an example of the Cubs obviously not noticing his weaknesses, and putting him in a spot that would shine a light on his faults and ignore his favorables. Obviously you are wrong when you say his average will always be low and his SLG will always be low. His OBP will always be low, but in 2003 his .298 AVG and .511 SLG showed they didn't always have to be low. Corey could be a guy who hits .280/.320/.500 without changing a whole lot. He could still rack up the Ks. You're allowing his 2005 to completely erase his others years, when in fact, a happy medium between 2003 and 2004 is both very possible and acceptable. But the Cubs wanted him to hit .300 at the expense of power, which makes no sense because a lot of his ability to hit for some average despite the K's is his ability to hit homeruns. They completely went back on their original plan not to ask him to be a slap hitter. They screwed him up. Maybe he would have screwed himself up eventually. And I definitely never liked his approach in the first place. But when the team already stresses such an approach, it's tough to fault a guy for failing to fix his problems.

He can't stay healthy for even a half year. He makes Wood look like an iron man. (Not knocking Wood, he's one of my favorite players.) He needs to do something pretty soon to justify his spot on the 40 man roster. well, not much was lost this year. I guess that evaluation can be made next fall. They should have traded Guzman a couple years ago. I am wondering if drafting and developing pitchers is really a good way to go. I'm not doubting that its' a good plan, I just doubt whether the Cubs now how to do it well, and if taking that plan to the extreme is smart.

Pitt didn't shove it down their throats anymore than Green Bay did. GB moved the ball at will, they were just forced into mistakes, and in the 2nd game, the Bears had an offense. The Bears were also probably at their worst physically for the Pittsburgh game, as the injuries all mounted and both starting safeties sat and I believe one of the lineman sat. I just think there's a fine line between a game the Bears look like crap in, and a game they win. You can say it was a different team, but the loss to Cleveland was similar, in that the offense was incapable of doing anything, and the defense couldn't hold out any longer. The Bears ask the D to do so much, that they are always living on the edge. And when they play against a team that has a guy like Bettis, they can fall off that edge. They didn't lose to Pittsburgh because of getting pushed around in the weather. I was practically conceding that loss weeks in advance. It's not a matter of these guys not being able to play in bad weather, as you insinuate, rather, it's a case of the D not being able to do it all on their own for 19 games, and being susceptible to a team that doesn't make mistakes. If your QB eats the ball everytime he's in trouble, you don't turn it over, and you run a lot, even if you've been frustrated early, you can beat the Bears. The Bears team that won 10 of 14 games won those games because the opposing offense made mistakes. That was their only chance. The wild card now, however, is whether Grossman can do enough to force the opposing offense to try to do too much. If he can lead the offense at all, then the opposition might feel the need to press and open things up, thus opening the window for the Bears defense to pounce and take over the game. What we don't want to see is Carolina being happy running on 3rd and 6 all day, and patiently playing the field position game. We want to see them try and take chances, or we better hope that Grossman and the O can make things happen.

You said they were warm weather, and possibly dome, when that's not even close to true. That game was the coldest of the year, people were sliding, Vick could not get comfortable, weather was clearly in their favor in that contest. Dome teams are not killer defense with minimal offense. Great dome teams don't rely on pounding it down your throats with the running game for 4 quarters in order to have any semblence of an attack. When I read Downey talk about this being a dome team I could not believe it, and so when you insinuated that was the case, I had to disagree.

I didn't see them getting pushed around, at least not until late when the game was sealed. I saw pretty much the same defense, only they missed a lot of tackles. This team is very susceptible to really good run teams and patient passing attacks that protect the QB. The cover 2 is a bend but don't break offense that allows yards in small chunks, and relies on big plays in the d's favor to stop the O. Pester the other team into making mistakes. This team doesn't intercept passes that would otherwise be big gains for the O, they intercept passes that are forced up by desperate QBs trying to make something out of nothing (Vick, Delhomme, Favre). It also relies on an O that can do something with the ball, and in the Pitt game, they did nothing until 2 circus catches in the end. Big Ben and the Steelers were never frustrated enough to make a desperate play.

I agree about the good field conditions, but you don't think playing with a wind chill in the upper 20s would be an advantage over the Panthers? The Bears have shown they can dominate in very cold conditions. Assuming it was cold in Buffalo in late November, that would be Carolina's only win in cold weather. The wind chill was in the low 40s in New Jersey Sunday and they just don't have much experience playing in the cold. i guess that i think as long as the field conditions are good, i like the bears chances against pretty much any team they play, including pittsburgh, NE, or indy. The Atlanta game pretty much proved you wrong here. The weather was a big advantage for Chicago. The Bears would get killed against Indy in Detroit. Even if they slowed Indy's attack, they'd give up 21 easily, and I don't think the offense can score 21 against a good team. They'd stand a chance against anybody else though. And very cold weather does help them against certain teams. Terrible conditions (the 49ers game, extreme snow, wind or rain) don't help anybody, unless you're playing Indy.

I don't understand why you think it's that simple. Corey did put the bat on the ball and did produce acceptable numbers before, and he could do it again, if he was used properly. The only reason spot in the order matters is because not only did they bat him in the spot, but they expected him to do things he could not do, and de-emphasized the things he could do. You can't judge Corey on 2005 alone, when he was truly awful. He was not always awful, or close to it. He has been as productive or more productive than other guys on this team that management apparantly loves.

I don't think Tim was comparing the two players abilities, but rather how far of a regression each made. Burrell was horrible that year. But, he came back from it. And he did it with the same club. Whether Patterson could do the same is still in question. Point well taken, though I do think we have to consider the strong possibility that CPatt and Burrell are two different people, and thus CPatt may have been less able than Burrell to deal with the booing and pressure. Let me restate my point as I think it has been lost: I'm not saying that because Burrell recovered, Corey would too. I'm saying to those that claim there was no chance of Corey recovering here that others have done so in similar situations. It is not a sure thing either way, which is all I was trying to say. Exactly. Corey "may have been less able" than Burrell to pull it off, but you don't know. The point is that when the Cubs hit a crossroads, they bailed. They didn't try to get the most out of him. Like so many others, they decided to get rid of a guy, and ended up getting crap for him. To say you absolutely would not consider using Patterson as a 4th OF is denying the team the ability to maximize their resources. This is a team and a management group whose "way" has been routinely proven to be the wrong way. If they were more interested in fielding the best team possible instead of the team that most closely resembled their narrow-minded view of what the team should look like, they could have found a way to get more out of Corey. They decided it was impossible for him to do any good here, so they put the sale tag on him and listed him in the "must go" section. When they should have tried to either get the most out of him via trade (packaging him and others for an impact player) or get the most ouf him on the field (giving him one last chance in a non-leadoff role), because it is possible for one time "lost causes" to find themselves on their current team.

A lot of teams use that 25th man role on a minimum wage earner out of their own system, or a series of that type of player that can be called up or down, not somebody you trade for, save roster space for multpiple years, overpay and give raises to, and rely on them as often as Macias was used. And I don't believe for a second that Hendry is upset with the way Baker used him. He had the option of cutting ties last offseason and chose not to, knowing full well what Baker would do with him. Hendry likes that kind of useless ballplayer.

Guzman has been around for awhile now. He was slated to come up and take Priors spot in 2003 and only didn't because he got injured. There's a big difference between Pie and Guzman. Pie turns 21 next month, while Guzman already turned 24, and Angel has been around a lot longer. Given his track record, he pretty much has to prove himself this year or he's got little value to the team. Pie is still a couple years away from the time when he has to start producing in the majors or risk becoming a falling star. Until he costs the team something useful, there is no reason for him to "go away." It's not his fault, but they lost Sisco to an overstuffed 40 man roster. Now that the farm system is all depth and no high quality it's even more likely that guys will be lost because of a lack of space. They've lost the time, space and money so far. If it goes another year like it has since 2003, they'll have lost even more of the same. He's got to do some very good things in 2006 to justify them keeping him around.

Guzman has been around for awhile now. He was slated to come up and take Priors spot in 2003 and only didn't because he got injured. I don't understand why you would want him to "go away." What's the harm in him hanging around? Taking up space on the 40 man is the harm, not to mention relegating other prospects to lesser roles. It's not a problem now, but if he can't pitch well for most of 2006, they really would be better off cutting ties. He turns 25 next offseason, will have been on the 40 man for 3 years, 5 years removed from a good full season. You can't continue to pour resources into a player like that, when you're constantly giving up on and losing others for nothing because their ceiling isn't as high.

Guzman has been around for awhile now. He was slated to come up and take Priors spot in 2003 and only didn't because he got injured. There's a big difference between Pie and Guzman. Pie turns 21 next month, while Guzman already turned 24, and Angel has been around a lot longer. Given his track record, he pretty much has to prove himself this year or he's got little value to the team. Pie is still a couple years away from the time when he has to start producing in the majors or risk becoming a falling star.

All star caliber is a stretch. He didn't make the all start team. In his age 29 season, Neifi hit .236/.260/.303 for KC. The year before he was better, but still pretty bad. Lugo is better than Neifi was at the time, but not by a very wide margin. The point is he's already 30, not very good, and will be worse in the near future. He'll get overpaid. So, within a few years, you're risking paying $8-10m per year for a guy who might be putting up Neifi Perez numbers. And it's not just a shot in the dark risk, but a real possibility. Lugo is not anywhere near the elite SS, just like Furcal isn't elite. If you traded for him, the best decision you could make next offseason is probably to let him walk, but if you traded Cedeno for him, you've got no fallback option.

Neifi was once a backup, and still could be if Hendry puts enough pressure on Dusty to start Cedeno. He's stated over and over that Cedeno is here to start. I don't know how sincere he is, but he was never that way with other young players who got the shaft. The most he offered Dubois was a chance to get some time. I could easily see Cedeno used as a utility man in that situation. But that at least gives you the option of letting Lugo go in the offseason (saving yourself from overpaying) and inserting Cedeno into the starting role then. If you trade Cedeno, you basically have no choice but to resign Lugo, which doesn't intrigue me at all. The "other valuable chips" would probably be some low level bats that won't be helping this team for years, if at all, or some arms that would end up being lost to rule 5 anyway, or shunned for more proven relievers. As long as it's not Pie or Cedeno, I don't care who they give up for Lugo, assuming it's not 2-3 really top notch guys at once. I'd give up Cedeno in a deal for Tejada, where you are practically guaranteed solid SS production for several years, but not dime a half dozen Lugo.

You don't think Cedeno could match Lugo's production? If we have to trade Walker, I'd put Cedeno at 2B. That would be a pretty nifty defensive middle infield. I think Cedeno could, but I'm not willing to assume he will. There are many problems with trading Cedeno for Lugo though. Lugo isn't that good, and Perez is awful. Cedeno for Lugo means Neifi will more than likely start everyday. That might end up the case regardless, but at least if you keep Cedeno you have a chance of Neifi not hurting this lineup again. Lugo is a 30 year old MI with modest career stats coming off a peak season and approaching free agency. Unless he completely bombs this year, he will get a big money contract next offseason, something approaching the 4/32 range. And that would be a terrible deal for whoever signs him. He might repeated his 2005 numbers this season, and if he does it in the right market, with the right hype, he could get a 4/40 or more. And by the middle of that contract his new team will be regretting the move. He'll be a 32-33 year old middle infielder who has lost a step or two on defense, who has reverted back to his pre 2005 unimpressive offensive numbers. Looking at his numbers on baseballreference.com you notice the list of similar batters. Five current SS on that list, with the already overpaid Furcal at the top. All younger. Similar through age 29, and the 2nd name of the list is Neifi. Very close is Blauser, who failed with the Cubs and was done by 33. So, you trade Cedeno for him and this year's MI is Lugo/Perez. Just having Neifi in the same lineup with this poor OF is bad enough. Then you have to make the decision on whether to overpay him next year, likely regretting it within a year or two, or letting him go, in which case you traded Cedeno, and his chance to duplicate Lugo's (and so many other very similar SS in today's game) modest career, all while getting paid minimal salary for the next few seasons, and pre free agency dollars for several years after. I don't see the value in the Cubs trading Cedeno for Lugo, not without follow-up moves that drastically improved this year's chances.