Elrhino

In this division, in this league, 5 games is nothing. I, too, see lots of promise with our Pythagorean record. I see a lot of promising signs in general. It looks like Hill will live up to his lofty PECOTA projections. Assuming Z is just having his typical horrible April, and by last night's performance that seems to be the case, I'm really liking our pitching staff if Guzman can step up. I'm looking forward to seeing what the offense looks like when the sample sizes get bigger and our hitters get closer to their 3 year averages. I somehow highly doubt Soriano is going to keep at a sub .700 OPS. Bullpen is an unmitigated disaster at this point, but again, I'm projecting that eventually some of these guys will get closer to their 3 season averages, and Eyre will eventually do slightly better than a 15.00 ERA for the season.

where is it being argued that murton is a superstar? we're arguing that he's better than floyd (who has average to below average speed and certainly below average defense now, as well). So this is the official Northsidebaseball boogeyman of the 2007 season? A .820 OPS messageboard hero is getting a 60/40 split of at bats with a .800 OPS board persona non grata.

Thank God its finally getting addressed. Its really been one of the team's more underrated flaws for a long time, as its almost impossible to quantify. Its been horrendously bad forever. Dusty, Baylor, Riggleman. I swear you'll see more bad baserunning from the Cubs in a month than you will an entire season under the Braves.

He hasn't escaped suspicion at all, there have been plenty of questions about him. Maybe its talked about, but no where near the degree of Sammy and the other hitters. Do you hear any conversation that Clemon's shouldn't be a first ballot Hall of Famer based on the speculation that he could have used steroids? I don't. Also, I'm not sure that its a matter of pitchers vs. catchers either. The writer gave the example of Piazza, and he's definitely got some red flags. You're talking about a guy who went from a 62nd round draft pick to the greatest hitting catcher of all time. Then he came out and publicly opposed steroid testing for MLB players, comparing it steroid testing chess players. Then he coincidentally showed up much smaller for the 2003 season, attributing it to his new non-red meat diet and his new age health guru. Yet, I don't think the steroids issue will even be brought up when he's up for the Hall of Fame. I think its just a matter that he happened to fly under the radar because he didn't put up a monster 55+ home run season like McGuire, Sammy or Bonds did.

Actually, the max time will be this July. I don't see a dominant team in either league, and there will be plenty of suitors believing they're one Zambrano away from pulling ahead of the pack in a playoff run.

The constant need for imaginary scapegoats and sideshow issues like Floyd while constantly protecting our sacred cows like Zambrano from the dirty truth is tiring. I promise you .. the marginal difference in .OPS from Floyd to Murton at the difference in this year will not be the difference between what sinks or soars the Cubs 2007 season.

Why do we all have to tap dance around Z's mental makeup? Why can't we just call a spade a spade? Yeah, he has problems with his control, but its the symptom not the disease. He was doing fine with his control (one walk in the previous four innings) until he started mentally unraveling after the first two guys reached base. Then its 3 walks and a hit batter.

I'm on leave today, so this is personal time! Yay! And I have no idea how you can even compare what Kerry Wood makes to the average American. And then somehow relate it to the rest of the world?? Because to 90% of the world's population you're just as privileged, lucky and undeserving of your money as Kerry Wood is to you. So I guess you can never complain about your job now. The difference is no one is making posts about me and feeling sorry for me not having anything to do for the next 50 years, like you are for him. I never complained about my job or said that I was lucky to have my job! I'm not feeling sorry for him. Just pointing out that if you think Kerry Wood or Mark Prior are happy that they're careers are over and making "excuses" not to play, then you need to have an MRI done on your head. I don't care how diehard you are, no Cub fan is more disappointed and adversely effected about their injuries than they are, by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm on leave today, so this is personal time! Yay! And I have no idea how you can even compare what Kerry Wood makes to the average American. And then somehow relate it to the rest of the world?? Because to 90% of the world's population you're just as privileged, lucky and undeserving of your money as Kerry Wood is to you. Its all relative. So I guess you can never complain about your job now.

Poor guy. Hopefully that is enough free time to spend the millions he has "earned" Yeah, they're definitely priveledged and spoiled. Not like the average American ... who lives in the top 90%-95% of the world's population in standard of living, getting to surf the internet on baseball message boards, looking up OPS+ and calculating VORPs on our employer's time. Meanwhile there is some 19 year old in Cambodia making 19 cents an hour in a sweatshop doing back breaking labor for 19 cents an hour. So I guess relatively speaking that means you can never get upset about your job or getting laid off.

What's his excuse? I can understand the frustration with the situation, but I'll never understand the venom directed at these two by immature fans. You think Prior likes the fact that he'll never play beyond his rookie contract? You think he likes reading about the contracts of Barry Zito and Jason Schmidt this offseason, knowing that he'll never get to cash in on that? You think Kerry Wood likes having his career over at 29, having based his whole life around baseball up to this point? Having skipped college to go directly into the minor leagues, he now has to decide what he's going to do with the next 50 years of his life when he doesn't know how to do anything else. If anything these guy's careers are ruined because they either tried to come back too early from injury or they over-extended themselves in 2003 trying to bring the Cubs a World Series, and some Cub fans act like they're purposely doing this just to spite them. Get over yourselves.

I see Murton as a career platoon .830-.840 OPS guy. I haven't seen so much unwarranted man-love since the days of Bobby Hill.

Floyd has one of the most violent swings I've ever seen. No wonder he's always hurt. That's a lot of torque.

I wouldn't underestimate how much his ego effects his decisions. Also, at one time ... I'm not sure if he still does, he used to personally answer all the emails he got from Mav fans. He also used to frequent Mavs messageboards and post on them semi-regularly.

I'm pretty pleased we could score 4 runs off of Arroyo's A stuff in those kind of conditions.

And whose fault is that, exactly? Obviously, Bud Selig's.

You said the average cost of a family of four is $300. I certainly can't afford that ... at least not too many times a season. What I can afford is a $15 upper deck ticket, a .75 cent bottle of water and a $2 bag of peanuts . I would hope anyone who can afford to rack up tons of interest and annual fees by purchasing on credit cards could afford that too. Otherwise, their problems are with their own personal money management, not the ubiquitous "da man bringing them down". Anyone who feels any differently would be served well to travel the world a little bit, see what other people live happily with, and re-evaluate their sense of entitlement.

We probably shouldn't complain about gas prices either. Afterall, it's not criminal for a company to make money off their product. Or they can cut down on their gas consumption or take mass transportation. Its not your given right to entitlement to have cheap gasoline ... the rest of the world doesn't. But surely we can see the difference in elasticity between a baseball game and gasoline.

You don't see a problem when it costs nearly $300.00 for a middle income family of 4 to go to a single baseball game (done the right way, of course)? To each their own, I suppose. Nope, and given the rise of attendance figures, it doesn't seem to be a problem with many other people either. I just recently read that the Cactus League attendance was up 1.17 million over last year. If the family believes they have to watch the baseball game the "right way" (whatever that means) obviously they have $300 of expendable money to blow. If they want to, they can also do what I do ... buy a cheap ticket and bring your own peanuts and bottled water into the stadium. Many things in life can be as cheap or as expensive as you choose to make them. If you don't have $300 to spend at the ballpark, then don't buy the $6 hot dog and the $6.50 12 oz. cup of beer.

I didn't know it was now "criminal" for a company to make money off their product. I may be dating myself here, but I grew up with ONE televised baseball game a week. So I don't know how the "little guy" is getting squeezed today when they can watch upwards of 10-20 baseball games a week on just their basic cable package via ESPN, WGN, TBS, Fox Sports Network, local coverage and Fox Saturday Game of the Week. The MLB Package is a luxory package for people who can afford it. Presumably, these people can also afford to change cable subscribers if they so choose. Or they can subscribe to mlb.com and get video steams off the internet. Baseball consumers really have more options to get baseball than we could have dreamed of previously. So I really don't see how the "little guy" is getting depraved of baseball. It's just like the exclusively broadcasted games on the NFL Network ... I just have to laugh at how people said the NFL is making some sort of "big mistake" broadcasting their product over their own network and "squeezing the little guy". Football fans can now watch primetime football games four out of seven nights a week. It wasn't that long ago that Monday Night was the only night you got to watch a prime time football game. When your consumers can get more of your product than ever before, and its still not enough ... that's not a bad problem to have in business.

People will line up to buy the Cubs because, now that baseball has managed to get out of its own way in the wake of labor peace, owning an MLB team is a license to print money. The revenue from the audio and video streams from MLB.com has been such a cash cow that the site is conservatively valued at $5 billion. That is money that didn't exist 5-8 years ago that goes evenly into the pockets of the 30 teams, without having any middlemen or network broadcasters taking a chunk of it. When the Royals can afford to spend $10 a year on a pitcher, regardless of what you personally think of the acquisition, its a sign that even small market teams have cash flow at hand. Even the A's are operating at a payroll over $70 million. With the Mavericks Cuban is paying $90 million in salary this year in a sport with half the home games, in venues that only seat half the attendance of baseball.

If Cuban wins the NBA title this year, I strongly look for him to sell the Mavs. He's dropped hints all season that he's taken that franchise as far as it will go, and he's ready to move on to his next challenge. He also half jokingly said that when he was looking to buy the Pirates that his wife told him she would divorce him if he ever controlled more than one sports franchise at a time. Also, the thought that the MLB would never let Cuban in is also way over played. I agree, money talks. Cuban's biggest problems with the NBA have been the control the owners have to give over to a centralized "czar" commissioner like David Stern. The MLB is much more suitable franchise league for Cuban. I also think Cuban will also have a huge supporter in Tom Hicks, considering he combined in a joint venture with Hicks to get a dual purpose stadium built for the Stars and the Mavs.

Yeah, that will show him! Just like what we did with Maddux! So the Cubs better off getting into another Kerry Wood situation stuck with a huge contract for a burned out arm for the sake of avoiding another Greg Maddux. Besides, I know Greg Maddux. I've seen Greg Maddux. Zambrano is no Greg Maddux. Greg Maddux was an efficient pitcher who didn't rack up tons of pitches on his arm. (and you didn't have to walk to the mound and make Greg Maddux compose himself everytime a runner got on base. ).

This is manna from heaven as far as I'm concerned. The Cubs should not be in a hurry to give any pitcher 5/$80 million. This gives the Cubs the perfect opportunity to sit back for a couple of months and re-evaluate. If Z still wants to play hardball, he can be moved in July.

Didn't take long for the spring training talk of "I don't play small ball unless its late in the game" to fly right out the window.