apete6

Ya, they'll get the USC treatment. However, if Cal finally gets brought into all of this, he's cooked.

Fast and good. However there's some issues with him switching schools because of attitude problems I believe. A good get for Iowa. In other news, both Anthony Davis (top 10 nationally) and Mike Shaw (top 50-100) both on campus at DePaul this week. Getting those 2 would be like the Q Richardson class in 1998. Needless to say, DePaul fans should be excited.

I wonder how far those negotiations went. If the Cubs bullpen still included Ohman, Wuertz, Wood, and Farnsworth in addition to Marshall and Marmol, maybe we wouldn't be 10 games out. Although we would then have a Yankees like payroll.

When Vitters is ready, he'll take over third. I don't really see much of a realistic scenario where either Lee or Starlin are a regular third baseman. As has been mentioned, just not enough power potential. If everybody pans out, the likely 2014 infield is Vitters (3B), HJ Lee (SS), Starlin (2B), ? (1B). My dream 2014 infield would be Lake (3B), HJ Lee (SS), Starlin (2B), Vitters (1B) Was it that long ago that our dream infield was going to be Kelton (3b), Montanez (ss), Hill (2b), Choi (1b) ???? If we can get out of this projection what we got out of that one (Ramirez, Lee, 3 playoff appearances and almost an NL pennant), I'll be happy.

Only the Cubs would trade their best trading chip for a prospect that plays the same position as their best player (production for $$$ wise) and a position in which their organization has some depth.

Here's an LOL http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/teams/chc/stats?stat_category=mlb.stat_category.1&sort=mlb.stat_type.26

I'm personally pretty sick of him batting .180, although now is a weird time to boo him since he's been decent since coming off of the DL.

During the season with Lee still on the roster it would be a pretty dumb move. If Lee gets traded and we officially mail in the season, we might as well try and get someone to learn 1B whether it be Colvin or Soriano. Like I mentioned in the 2011 roster thread, I'd rather not give a huge contract for 2011 to Pena or Dunn with Gonzalez and Fielder set to be FAs after 2011.

I'm glad he cares. I'm not glad that he's bad at baseball, though. I'm sorry, haven't you heard? The problem is that this team just doesn't care. If they cared more they'd be 154-6. Sorry I missed that. Let's start smashing Gatorade coolers.

I'm glad he cares. I'm not glad that he's bad at baseball, though.

He's been busy running the Royals and Pirates... And BP

He's been busy running the Royals and Pirates...

Adam Dunn would be a guaranteed run here. DLee? Probably not so much.

At least Silva won't get a loss here. Another good start from him. Would prefer not to give up 11 hits, but if you don't walk anyone, we can live with it. Nice job again Carlos.

So what, Cleveland will be 12-70 next year without LeBron. Dude is seriously probably worth 30 wins on his own easily to a bad team. Less so to a decent team, so unfortunately the Bulls won't win 71 with him. So they'll be 42-40? They have some factors but people tell me Harris/Lopez and then I say 12-70. That's not run of the mill bad...that's among the very worst teams in league history. But yeah, I'm worried about the Jay-Z/Prokhorov thing. 42-40 if they just add LeBron? Ya, that sounds about right. However, they also have room for another max guy via sign and trade or an almost max guy as a signing. Let's say they get LeBron and Boozer, that's a 50 win team in the East.

Koyie Hill is coming dangerously close to Neifi territory.

So what, Cleveland will be 12-70 next year without LeBron. Dude is seriously probably worth 30 wins on his own easily to a bad team. Less so to a decent team, so unfortunately the Bulls won't win 71 with him.

Ricketts spent $845 million to buy this team, how about another $100m or so to get rid of basically the entire offense. Come on Tommy, let's do it.

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/rec_yds_single_season.htm This list skews pretty young, with the exception of a couple all time greats who show up repeatedly and played for heavy duty passing teams. if you take out every receiver over 30 that had a good season, i admit, it skews pretty young. I'm reading it differently than you. With the exception of Rice and Harrison, that list is dominated by younger receivers. I don't know about you guys but the fact that Marcus Robinson had the 59th best receiving yardage season of all time is still pretty mind boggling to me. Especially when you consider that the QBs were Shane Matthews, Cade McNown and Jim Miller.

Hence one of the reasons why it said we could be a year away, not a few days away.

I think we're just in an in-between stage right now. Hockey isn't quite popular enough but Toews and Kane are superstars, Rose is just too young, and 1 good season from Cutler will have the city extremely superstar satisfied. Add in LeBron and/or Bosh and we're set. Think about it this way, we could be a year away from having 2 of the top 15 hockey players, 2 or 3 of the top 15 basketball players, and a Pro-Bowl QB. I'll take that any day over some of the "eras" we've had in this town. Then again, the Bulls could strike out in free agency, leaving Rose to be overwhelmed and not progress, Kane could drink himself to death leaving the Hawks and boring Toews very average, and Cutler could be decappitated because of a terrible offensive line and we'll be stuck with an over the hill Urlacher, an overpaid Soriano, a douchey Mark Buehrle, and Ozzie Guillen will be the most recognizable sports figure.

If you go with a Cantu or Wigginton type guy, you're really not overpaying much and you're getting pretty good production. Cantu could play first next year and then shift over to third and play there until Vitters (hopefully) is ready. If you go with Wigginton, he'd probably be perfectly fine with a 1-year deal and then you can potentially trade him at the deadline for a prospect or two. I wouldn't like going for a Carlos Pena and giving him a 3-4 year deal, though, and killing our chances of going after Gonzalez/Fielder in 2011, but a stopgap type guy like Cantu or Wigginton would be semi-cheap production for a team that needs that. Agreed on Wigginton if he's OK with a 1 year deal. Cantu may cost a bit too much and if Ramirez doesn't opt out, he will be his own bridge to Vitters. If Ram opts out, you might have to try and get both Wigginton AND Cantu to fill those 2 gaping holes.

Agreed. And why the hell don't these guys have one of their boys be a designated driver? A lot of pro athletes have at least 3-5 people with them at all times, why not make one of them drive you everywhere? There's no reason to ever have a DUI when you make that much money. Really never an excuse, but especially when you can afford a driver or at least a limo or cab.

I've always thought of Castillo being closer to the majors than the other two. I don't know that any of them will be overly productive major leaguers, but Castillo is in AAA and seems to be the next in line once Koyie Hill moves on. I agree with Dew, but the reason I put Castillo on is I believe that he would be Rule 5 eligible if he wasn't protected next year and if you move one of the other guys onto the 40 man there may not be room for Castillo. I'd rather just give him a chance as the backup than lose him for nothing. If that's not true, then Chirinos or Clevenger would be fine as backups. Let's be honest, if any of those guys is getting playing time over Soto, we're screwed anyway like we are this year because our manager is butt buddies with Koyie Hill.

Most everybody. Agreed that he sucks. But I'm sick of the overpaying 2nd tier players in an attempt to fill the stadium and get fans excited when you're just crippling your team long term. If we would have just taken the rebuilding approach before going buck wild in FA with Soriano, Fukudome, etc... we wouldn't be in such a dire predicament right now. Granted, we had a great year in 2008, but outside of that, we haven't gotten anything out of the Piniella/Soriano era yet (2007 doesn't count because the division sucked so bad) because we're paying 5 or 6 guys as superstars when they're just good supporting players (Bradley (now Silva), Lee, Soriano, Zambrano, Fukudome, Dempster, and even Ramirez to an extent even though he's a top 3 at his position when healthy). When the Yankees overspend, they get great players like ARod, Teixiera, and Sabathia. When we overspend, we get guys who are a bit over league average but paid like superstars. Why would we start that all over again by overpaying a guy like Carlos Pena instead of just taking our lumps for a year with a guy like Hoffpauir? I know it's been 102 years, but why not allow for a rebuilding year? Unless you're going to spend $200 million every year and/or draft & develop extremely well, you need to have intentional rebuilding years. Maybe if the Cubs understood that, we wouldn't be like 1-7 against the Pirates with the 3rd highest payroll in the league. But, you're right, starting Micah Hoffpauir for 1 rebuilding season would be the worst thing that's ever happened to the Cubs.