Banedon

Correct me if I'm wrong, but he was handed the midday slot from the very beginning of WSCR. It's possible that a lot of guys could have been pulling in ratings taking that slot for that station at that time. I don't have the ratings info to really be able to debate this with any facts backing me up, but the midday slot has been problematic since North left it though, so clearly it's not an "anybody can do it" situation. BTW...I hate you all for making me defend Mike North in any way.

Marshall for Boldin rumors in 3....2....1.....

Would Dusty Baker have gotten a huge major-league contract if he wasn't delivering the wins? Sometimes, being in the right place when good things happen can convince people that you made the good things happen. Dusty had a team full of good players that delivered wins. Mike North was the only guy on the radio...ok he shared time with some other guys that failed with other pairings...Buffone...Huebner...Jiggetts. People didn't listen because he had a kick butt producer or something. That's a terrible comparison.

Why not? He may of got a lucky break, but at some point you have to marketable, and he has been to warrant a contract that paid him 1.5 million a year. Is that pure luck? I never listened to this guy It doesn't take talent to talk and think like your idiot listeners. It takes talent to get people to listen to you that don't think like you. I don't know if North was able to do that, if he was... He wouldn't have gotten a $1.5 million contract from a local sports talk radio station if he wasn't delivering ratings.

The AL East is close, but it's the same old story. Yanks and Sawks. There are now just 4 games between 1st and 6th in the NL Cen. But I do realize we would have to have a 6 way tie for 1st to get any National notice. No, we just need to have a team in the division that is better than 5 games over .500. Being close isn't compelling. Being good is.

And shrewd.

I was 9 when the Bears won the Super Bowl. And of course, all of MJ's wins.

The Feds just charged the founder, who apparently declared bankruptcy about 5 times this decade. Which makes you wonder what North, who has shown himself to be pretty shrewd with his career, was thinking getting into business with this dude. Really? Shrewd? He was a hot dog vendor who was lucky to get a gig as a radio host then profited off the fact that so many fans are idiots that like to hear an idiot talk like them. He's still an idiot. He's still an idiot, but how many hot dog vendors become millionaire radio stars for the better part of a decade. It's not just luck. Exactly. The dude turned a hot dog vendor gig into a $1.5 million contract at the Score at one point. You have to make some right moves to make that happen. He surely had the ball bounce in his favor a few times, no doubt, but he still parlayed that into a pretty successful career, like him or not. (not!)

I don't think they'll be playing untelevised games. MLB only stands to lose money doing that. Put the All Star game around that time and take an extended ASB.

The Feds just charged the founder, who apparently declared bankruptcy about 5 times this decade. Which makes you wonder what North, who has shown himself to be pretty shrewd with his career, was thinking getting into business with this dude.

Ok, so Webio fired Mike North on Friday, but it looks like there's a lot more to that story. http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/chi-mike-north-webio-15-jun15,0,2220326.story

The Cubs would be a Super Bowl favorite.

This division may not be terrible, but it's surely not very good. A division full of teams at or near .500 is probably not going to get a whole lot of national discussion.

It's actually a considerably different pattern. Last year he started off pretty well, and slowly, gradually started to have his numbers fall off. 2008 OPS April .837 May .792 June .789 July .688 August .546 September .577 There was no really dramatic falloff. You could point to June-July-August, but that still is much more gradual than what he's experiencing right now. April 1.053 May .830 June .405 That's a MUCH more dramatic drop, from a whole lot better start. And it's happening a lot earlier than it did last season. I won't pretend to know a reason for it, but it's pretty clear to me that this is different than what happened last season. He never had a single month last season that was as bad as his June has been so far. Last year, you could point to pitchers adjusting, and him getting tired. He shouldn't be tired in June, and I don't think the pitchers are doing anything different. I think he's getting into some bad mechanics. Maybe Von Joshua helps...I dunno.

One Iglesias in town is not enough.

Way to bag on the only guy that's hit all season when he hits his first slump of the year.

Pedro for closer?

Drew Rosenhaus's twitter:

It would last about 5 minutes. They did pay money to get an exclusive WWE show recently, so they do have bit more original programming than they used to. They got WWE Superstars, which is essentially a recap show covering the "highlights" of RAW and Smackdown. Unless it's changed since I last watched that stuff.

Seriously. We now have Fontenot, Miles, Scales, and Blanco. What's the damn point of having so many 2b? Seems like a recurring problem for this team. 2006 middle infielders Neifi, Womack, Cedeno, Walker, Theriot, Hairston, Jr., Izturis

I thought I had heard on the Score this morning where Fields had been pretty good as of late, but looking at actual numbers, I see that's not actually the case.

Except....that was a book cover...not a video. :) Looking at the Amazon page there's a book and a vhs of the same title/same picture of Dusty But the cover above has a quote from Hank Aaron referring to "this book". I stand by my claim. :)

Ha! I got hung up on that part of his post too.

A QB winning a Super Bowl doesn't necessarily mean anything about his talent level. Agreed...Rex made it to a Super Bowl, and I think we can agree he wasn't a franchise QB. But lets be honest, usually these kinds of lists do factor in those kinds of achievements. It's just unclear exactly what he's using as measurement other than complete subjectivity...that's all I meant by that comment. The fact that his best QB's have only ever been in one system is more of a problem for this list I think. The problem is always going to come that the best QB's are always going to only play on one team (I would argue that the system is going to change over the years for these QB's as the people around them change, even if they're still wearing the same uniform). Why would you get rid of a top QB? It simply becomes a measure of how well-rounded the QB is. And while I understand the need to put some subjectivity in it (different teams ask different things of QB's which skew stats) there was too much subjectivity in this article. But it's a really hard task to try to compare quarterbacks because of the vast differences in talent and the fact that most QB's who are any good at all stay with their original team for most of their career. I actually also like his rankings for the most part. There's a thin line between the QB's ranked 4th through about 12th, and so a writer has a hard time going wrong putting those quarterbacks in just about any order. I'm not saying that he's wrong for picking QB's that were only one one team. I'm saying his definition of franchise QB is lame because there's no possible way for him measure the capability of Tom Brady outside of Belichek's system, or Phillip Rivers without Ladanian Tomlinson. I understand that some subjectivity is going to be involved in ranking QB's without a straight stat comparison. But he's adding additional subjectivity by projecting them into a scenario that we can't possibly draw any realistic conclusions.

A QB winning a Super Bowl doesn't necessarily mean anything about his talent level. Agreed...Rex made it to a Super Bowl, and I think we can agree he wasn't a franchise QB. But lets be honest, usually these kinds of lists do factor in those kinds of achievements. It's just unclear exactly what he's using as measurement other than complete subjectivity...that's all I meant by that comment. The fact that his best QB's have only ever been in one system is more of a problem for this list I think.