apete6

The only other negative on him is that he's sucked in the playoffs and this year's Texas meltdown, but the Cubs don't really have to worry about the playoffs next year.

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/quick-reads/2012/week-8-quick-reads Interesting, but what's the root cause? Does our line get skittish? Is it because the opponent's DL is fresh? Is Cutty's 4th quarter excellence padded by some garbage time performances? How much of this can be attributed to variance vs. a legit trend? I demand answers, damnit! My guess is probably 2nd half adjustments by the O-line probably improves protection late. And defenses getting tired. And, for the most part, the Bears been playing with big leads, so Jay hasn't necessarily had to risk any throws that could have negatively impacted his numbers, whereas most QBs have been behind at least 2 or 3 games so far and had to take some risks and had INTs that they may not have had in the first half.

Although them losing their perfect season to a guy named Chryst would be amazing.

DeMarcus Ware will have at least 3 sacks. In related news, this will mark the end of the JWebb Nation "era" Cowboys 20 Bears 13

Build it on the Forest Preserve woods near the Blue Line Rosemont Stop. Will never happen due to environmental protection, but close enough to the city via Metra and Blue Line and several major highways (90, 294) to be at least intriguing. Also, there's that new Rosemont entertainment district, outlet mall, and casino nearby...

Williams doesn't have any easier of a division, as many resources or as good of a chance to sneak in via wild card. He also outperformed Hendry so I don't see what your point is. I'm pretty sure that the Cardinals, Reds, and Brewers are far better organizations than anyone in the AL Central besides the Tigers. The Twins had their moments of being good, but their magical white guy pixie dust ran out. Williams is not much better than Hendry, who everyone eventually agreed was bad.

Agreed, he's a media darling in Chicago and that has driven the narrative of him being a good potential GM hire. Yeah, how great can he be with that farm system the White Sox have? Basically they've gotten lucky that all of their high priced FA signings/trades/waiver claims had a good year. And that their 35 year old catcher has a .900 OPS. Next year they lose Peavy, everyone else gets older, and Rios does his annual good year/bad year bad year. Also, Sale's arm probably falls off at some point. They have been a good story this year, but that team is not built to last.

Cubs told Greenberg "No thanks." http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/chi-cubs-take-a-pass-on-greenbergs-comeback-20120904,0,4216882.story Good decision. Yeah, nice of the Cubs to have a front office that is not into stupid pandering to the fans garbage like this. Old regimes would have not only signed him, but had some stupid on field ceremony for it.

Considering how little this front office says anything, it doesn't surprise me. My guess is they'll make an announcement sometime right before/after he makes his last start of the season. You nailed this one. They just announced that Brooks Raley will pitch today and then be shut down as he has reached his innings limit. I would imagine they do the same with Samardzija soon.

Exactly. We can/will likely go 1-1 without Urlacher. If not, it will be awful.

A great article that shows the positives and negatives of Livestrong and Lance in general. http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/athletes/lance-armstrong/Its-Not-About-the-Lab-Rats.html?page=all

Probably because they feel misled. They wanted so badly to believe his story and his accomplishments, and they're all disillusioned by the fact that he didn't do it on his own merit and cheated. Also, he is apparently a HUGE [expletive] to everyone that he comes into contact with outside of when he is on camera. He cheated on his wife after she stuck with him through all of the cancer stuff, treats his teammates like absolute garbage (no wonder why they had at least 10 of them ready to testify against him if he went to the trial), and is generally a giant phony who used his apparently un-earned celebrity status to create a multi billion dollar business under the guise of helping people (which he obviously still did and that is still a very good thing, but he still saw more profits from that than actually racing).

Since I am in the Poll making mood: http://www.northsidebaseball.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=61354

I have to believe they win at least 10, so I chose 11 or more. Bearssssssss

I don't think it would be that hard. Teams make massive transitions all the time. On offense maybe it will take time to click, but defense is basically just about the talent and the scheme can change from play to play, game to game and very easily over the course of an offseason. I think the hardest part of changing would be convincing Lovie to actually make the change. Bingo! I didn't want to include that part to avoid the Lovie conversation, but if they somehow don't make the playoffs, he has a chance to be gone (if Virginia McCaskey allows it). Unless the injuries keep coming, I seriously don't see how the Bears don't win 10 games, so it probably won't be an issue, but if it does, that defensive switch could come as part of a complete overhaul.

No, that is a fine thing to say. He's going to be 35 years old. Not too many MLB can keep going that long. He's a HOF franchise icon, but everyone needs to move on. Without this injury, I thought he had 2-4 good years ahead of him. Now? He may be done, or at least done as we know him. However, moving on from him basically means moving on from the Cover 2, which is basically only successful at this point in its existence because of #54. There are maybe 5 other people in the entire world who can do what he can do in that defense and I'm pretty sure none of them will be available to the Bears. Now, I know the Bears don't run Cover 2 on many plays, but it is their base defense and their personnel is tailored to it (smaller DT, very fast DE, ballhawking, yet not great covering DBs) and it will be hard to transition to a more effective defense in 1 offseason.

Poll: http://www.northsidebaseball.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=61351

What should the Nats do?

While the PC's are bad enough, even more frustrating to me was that Dusty left him in there to achieve some of those super high pitch counts in games that were well in hand. I want to say a couple of those 130+ games were games Dusty was trying to let Prior get a complete game shut out, or finish off an inning he got himself in trouble with. ETA: Perfect example was the 131 PC start against St. Louis with a 7-0 lead after 6 innings. Dusty leaves him in there for 8 innings. Next start, 5-1 lead after 5, Dusty takes him out after 7 with 129 pitches thrown. Dumbass! That's why it's not apples to apples and innings aren't all created equal. If they limit him on pitches, the innings number could be pushed. Also, it has to kill any pro athlete to basically sit down and watch his team try and win a title in what could be their only chance. I'm pretty damn sure numerous teams thought they were "going to be competitive for a long time" and "had a ton of young talent" and then ended up never making it back. There's no guarantee that if the Cubs shut down Prior in September of 2003 that he would have come back and dominated again in 04 or 05. They could have, however, certainly treated him a lot more cautiously. But, if he had gotten 5 more outs vs. Florida and they could have won the WS after that, I'm sorry, but I'd sacrifice his arm for that.

Its going to be sweet when all of this caution by the Nats pays off for the Dodgers or Yankees when he signs with them in a couple of years.

Garza and Vitters/Jackson for Upton/top pitching prospect of their choice (Corbin--or Skaggs :D ) would have been amazing. In the offseason maybe?

Which is fine, but don't give the indication that you are ok with bring traded. If Dempster would have come out and said I don't want to be traded, this wouldn't be a big deal.

In the age of Twitter, it probably wouldn't hurt to be a little more pragmatic. It's not hurting anything as is. And the leak probably isn't even from the Cubs FO, which has been pretty stealth since Theo took over. So now it's the FO's fault that they discuss/agree on a trade and the Braves leak it? Theo has probably discussed Dempster with 10 teams. Is he supposed to get Demp's OK before even talking to anyone?

How is it different besides the people? It's like Mad Libs with Theo and Dempster instead of Hendry and Lee.

But it was OK for everyone to berate Derrek Lee over the same thing? Now, anyone who is annoyed with Dempster (me) could be jumping the gun and he'll probably accept the trade, but it just seems like people are giving Dempster the benefit of the doubt when they wouldn't for others (Lee, McGriff). He knew the Cubs sucked this year and it would be a possibility. He clearly has talked to Theo and gave him a supposed list of places he would go. Apparently ATL was on that list. What is so hard about making a decision for 2 months? Unless they are requiring an extension, this shouldn't be difficult.