Jon

And now the Bulls have fallen apart.

Bulls back in it. Down just 7 with over 9 minutes to play.

Or to phrase it another way, the offense blows so far tonight.

Unfortunately, something this place has had very little of this offseason! It's been hard at points to read this board when you have to wade through pages and pages of arguements that lack reason, an objective view, and have some really skewed logic. The negativity (and I can understand it a bit) on this board has been SO bad this offseason it's crazy! Despite that, this is still head and shoulders above any other forum, I just wish more people would heed jjgman21's advise above. And posts like this one ^^^^ What do they accomplish? This isn't a thread on debate tactics, its a thread on the signing of Jason Marquis. I don't like it. There is a good chance that he will not get better and you will be on the hook for 21+ over 7 years. The following young pitchers can outperform Marquis. Sean Marhsall Carlos Marmol Juan Mateo There was really no point to this signing. Just trying to remind people about what made this board great and how it seems as though it has gotten completely out of hand this year (96 loss season do tend to do stuff like this though). There are a lot of stubborn people on here and I doubt that much will change, hopefully people realize how they have been acting and try to tone it down. Now what does your post accomplish? You tell me that 3 of our young guys can outperform Marquis, fair enough, but where is your logic behind it? Tell me why they will outpitch him, otherwise your post is just as pointless as you think mine was. I can say player A will outpeform player B all I want, give me something of substance to prove that point. BTW, personally I dont really like the signing much either. Sean Marshall outperformed Jason Marquis last year. Is that not the kind of evidence you are looking for. Exactly. Marshall: 5.59 ERA, 1.52 WHIP, .270 BAA, 77 K/59 BB, 20 HR Marquis: 6.02 ERA, 1.52 WHIP, .289 BAA, 96 K/75 BB, 35 HR Marshall will be good in a couple of years. But he does not have a 4.45 carreer ERA like Marquis does. I don't like this signing particularly. But counting on Marshall is not a good idea. Seasoning him in AAA and viewing him as a possible future Cub, is a good idea. Yep. Why rush these kids? Didn't we learn our lesson with Wood and Prior? Let them build up the proper arm strength. bump. see the bold Jon. You should do the same. Again, you need to stop making blanket criticism. If your quest is to improve the board, contribute to it. Don't just complain about it.

what do you fail to understand about "totality of the body of work and at least an attempt to make a reasoned prediction?" So you want us to back up our claims but we're not allowed to use stats? Makes sense. don't play daft. you know exactly what I am saying. you don't use one year to evaluate and compare two players potential for the future. I can say "Marquis had a 113 ERA+" and it would be true but that really doesn't encapsulate what we can expect next year or give us a basis to evaluate this signing, now does it? And that wasn't what they were talking about. you're wrong. that's exactly what the post was about. one poster said he didn't think there was much basis for saying Marshall would outperform Marquis next year, another poster said he did last year, Raisen "backed it up" with last seasons stats. I find it better to cut off prior posts when the quotes get too long, but if you look back a couple pages, you will in fact see that predicting Marquis and Mashall's future is EXACTLY what this has been about. Wrong. The point of discussion was about whether or not Marshall "can" out-perform Marquis. It wasn't about whether or not he will, but whether he has the ability to. I'd say those stats are plenty to backup that claim. When are you going to start making your own posts instead of criticizing everyone else's without offering any support of your own?

what do you fail to understand about "totality of the body of work and at least an attempt to make a reasoned prediction?" So you want us to back up our claims but we're not allowed to use stats? Makes sense. don't play daft. you know exactly what I am saying. you don't use one year to evaluate and compare two players potential for the future. I can say "Marquis had a 113 ERA+" and it would be true but that really doesn't encapsulate what we can expect next year or give us a basis to evaluate this signing, now does it? And that wasn't what they were talking about.

That's ridiculous. Hill has to make the rotation first. By all accounts Hill made the rotation during the 2nd half of last season. Everything I've read has him as the #2 or #3 starter in the rotation. Prior, Miller, Hill, Guzman, Marshall, etc. will all be competing for the two remaining open spots in the rotation. Those won't be settled until March.

what do you fail to understand about "totality of the body of work and at least an attempt to make a reasoned prediction?" So you want us to back up our claims but we're not allowed to use stats? Makes sense.

LOL. Are you taking a list of posters who don't like the Marquis signing, then(should Marquis actually pitch decent in 2007) call them out in every thread like this: "OMG Dude, you send Marquis would suck in Dec, but now he is good man! Dude you have to eat some major crow man! just eat the crow " Nope. I'm just pointing out that saying the rotation is worse off than last season isn't going to be true. Those that are negative right now will be pleasantly surprised. Lilly and Marquis will be fine. Hill will pitch well. Z is a beast. Maybe we'll get a nice surprise from Prior or Miller or one of the many rookies with potential. Who is saying the rotation will be worse than last year's?

That's ridiculous. Hill has to make the rotation first.

Probably because Wells hasn't had a season in which he was both good and healthy since 2003. Marquis sucked last year, but he has made his starts. That's most likely why Hendry was willing to overpay so much to get him. I'm a little late to this thread, but is there any reason to think that he will or won't bounce back from 2006? I think he will, but that's not to say I don't think he is criminally overpaid. That's a bad contract. At any rate, to say Marquis and Lilly can't post numbers as good as Marmol's 6.08 ERA or Guzman's 7.63 from last year is a stretch. So Marmol and Guzman aren't going to improve at all? Those two were going to be on the roster this year for very little money. It's not an argument about whether Lilly and Marquis will put up significantly better numbers than what Marmol and Guzman did last year, but whether they'll put up significantly better numbers than what Marmol and Guzman could do this year.

Unfortunately, something this place has had very little of this offseason! It's been hard at points to read this board when you have to wade through pages and pages of arguements that lack reason, an objective view, and have some really skewed logic. The negativity (and I can understand it a bit) on this board has been SO bad this offseason it's crazy! Despite that, this is still head and shoulders above any other forum, I just wish more people would heed jjgman21's advise above. And posts like this one ^^^^ What do they accomplish? This isn't a thread on debate tactics, its a thread on the signing of Jason Marquis. I don't like it. There is a good chance that he will not get better and you will be on the hook for 21+ over 7 years. The following young pitchers can outperform Marquis. Sean Marhsall Carlos Marmol Juan Mateo There was really no point to this signing. exactly what I am talking about. "good chance?" what does that mean? "can outperform." there's simply no basis for it. there is no point to this post. it is simply hyperbole, in no way based in facts or analysis, whatsoever. your conviction on the matter doesn't change the fact that your post lacks fairness, logic and reason. Wow. You sure set him straight. Again, you're doing nothing to support your claim. If you want to claim an intellectually and borderline-morally superior position in your posts, something to back up your claims might be nice.

And what quality arms did you want? Schmidt didn't take a competitive offer from the Cards, the WS champions. What makes you think he would have come to the Cubs? We weren't even a finalist for his services. He wanted to stay on the west coast. Hendry decided to pay for arms instead of trading for them. We're going to need our farm system to start producing. It can't produce if you keep trading away the cream of the crop. I'm not down with trading the likes of Pie for a #2 starter (at best) in Jennings. What FA did Hendry not get that you would have been willing to pay for? Drew? If Wood and Prior taught us anything, it's not to count on injury prone players. Not many trades have gone down this offseason. Why is that? It's not b/c Hendry is stupid or Hendry is fat or Hendry eats too many donuts, blah blah blah. So are we in agreement that he didn't really improve the rotation? The two arms he added, Lilly and Marquis, most likely aren't going to keep up the collective ERA when compared to the pitchers that were already on the team last year (some of whom are you and will improve). If you're going to spend $60 million on a pair of pitchers, they should really help you out. The OBP will see it's biggest increase with the return of a healthy Lee. Soriano, DeRossa, and Izturis won't be responsible for a significant improve to the team's OBP. At least not to the extent that they needed. Relying on mediocrity is no better than relying on good to great players with a history of injuries. Has Hendry had the resources to make better moves? Absolutely. You can speculate on who was or was not available and which teams were or were not willing to trade until you're blue in the face. But the bottom line is that at this point, Hendry really hasn't made the team that much better, in my opinion.

You are free to respond to individual posts. But saying that there's plenty of utterly nonsensical comments being posted in here doesn't really do anything and certainly doesn't support your claim that this or other moves are good moves.

Some of the things Hendry had to do this offseason to make the team better: -Improve the rotation -Improve the team's OBP And some smaller things like -Move Izturis -Find a platoon partner for Jones (if Jones remains a Cub) Hendry hasn't done any of those things. He added arms to the rotation, but hasn't really added quality arms.

So Rothschild kept his mouth shut for three years while risking his reputation, career, and the health of his pitching staff? Personally, I find that far less believable than him having a significant role in it. And I can't say I was too pleased with how he handed Hill.

And that having a pitching staff like that of the '06 Cardinals is not a good thing. I doubt Hendry consciously wants to be overpaying for mediocrity. He doesn't. It's just that he doesn't correctly value players in terms of either performance or market value.

They are. They're not. Great arguments I put forth, huh? What does that have to do with my post? I never said that's what they were aiming for.

Turner just better start things off by establishing the ground game early. The last thing this team needs is for him letting Grossman start to panic early and letting things snowball. Once they start to run the ball, it's going to make things a lot easier for Rex.

The Cubs should be aiming for more than just 83 wins, especially with this payroll. You can't just build a team in hopes of the rest of the league sucking pretty hard.

:roll: :?:Hendry is really sacrificing performance for stability here. This makes two multi-year deals for back of the rotation starters while the Cubs are most likely going to have several higher ceiling options for those spots once the Cactus League starts. And Lilly and Marquis are less likely to be moved if there's excess pitching than younger guys who have better chances of putting up better years for far less money. And since I doubt Hendry really knows Hill's true (market) value, I'm not exactly holding out my hopes that if Rich were traded, that he'd bring back the most in return.

This is a 3 year, $20 million minor league contract with Marquis having to fight for a spot on the 25-man roster, right?

Above .500!

Gordon extends the lead to 3 and then makes a stupid decision to give the Raptors the ball back with 25 seconds left.

And the lead falls back to 1...