Jon

The weather shouldn't be as bad as it's been here. Should be an average wind chill of about 50 during the game with a 20 mph wind blowing out of the NNW. Hard to tell about the rain. Everything's staying NE right now, but not by much: http://www.weather.com/maps/maptype/currentweatherusnational/usdopplerradar_large_animated.html

What is that, 3 2-out liners to the gap in less than 2 innings?

So, Javier Vazquez and his 4-1, 2.88 ERA would have zero wins without Thome in the line up? The Sox have a .358 OBP as a team. They would be scoring runs with or without Thome in the line up. Freddy Garcia has 5 wins, and he hasn't been effective at all. I agree that not having two of your best pitchers and your best offensive player weakens a team, but management has to take these things into consideration when putting together a team. Depth! It's important. Well, their team OPS would drop over 50 points without Thome's ridiculous numbers (a replacement player probably wouldn't do much too make up for the drop in the team's average OPS), but they most likely wouldn't be this bad. Of course, if you assume that Ramirez is going to have a similar year as last year, the luck would be on opposite ends of the spectrum. Ramirez hasn't been producing much at all while Crede seems to be hitting way over his head (.936 OPS compared to his .755 lifetime OPS). Something similar could be said for Konerko. Now if Thome were to be out while those two were slumping, then you'd see something similar.

Hasn't really moved south at all in the past hour, but rather just kinda hanging over Milwaukee. That may be a good sign. The Cubs and Padres won't have many chances to make it up, so a doubleheader wouldn't be a great option. Tomorrow is supposed to suck nearly as much as it does today and Sunday won't be all that much better.

Not just rain, but the wind chill isn't supposed to crack 40. If it's anything like today, they won't get it in.

A shocking turn of events!

Nice job, Barry. Wonder if he'll sit tomorrow.

So Pierre just conceded that he wasn't going to actually get a basehit?

Dusty seems to think that the odds are in their favor because Z hasn't won a game in a while and the Cubs haven't won a game in a while...

not sure on the answer. what I am sure of is it would be very difficult to find the figure because it was tied up with Henry taking over the RedSox, while selling the Marlins to Loria, while MLB was bailing Loria out of Montreal. they had to be the least valuable franchise in baseball at that time, yet when someone recently posted an article from one of the financial rags, I think Forbes, about the most valuable baseball franchises, the Nats were magically ranked in the top five. #6 between the Cubs and the Cardinals in 2005. They were dead last in 2003.

Haha. The Chronicle has had at least several of those kinds of articles the past couple of years about Baker. Not sure if they were by the same author, but they've all been just bad.

The weather will greet the Cubs rudely. Cold and wet.

Uh huh...... ....... Thanks, Bruce!

That sounds about right. Forbes had them at $179 million last year after revenue sharing and payroll taxes.

They'll be using the bats and then auctioning them off afterwards to fight breast cancer. I haven't seen any Cubs players mentioned yet, but I'm just going to assume the league specifically asked the Cubs not to use them. Rather, they're going to focus their efforts on the Strikeout Challenge for breast cancer.

The only information I could find is that the other 29 teams are getting approximately $11 million from the sale minus various operating costs and debts from the team's time in Montreal. There aren't many articles on the money right now and I haven't seen anything about that.

I agree with you on wanting Cuban as the owner because he does what it takes to win. However, I don't think winning 10 or so more games a season would really increase the value of the Cubs much more than it is or much more than it would cost to do it. The value of the Cubs is so high because they have a gauranteed profit every year from the ticket sales, etc. If sales are already close to maxed out, where is the potential for more profit by winning and paying to do so on top of that? Average attendance is 38,999 so far this season. It's good, but that leaves an average of 2,119 empty seats per game based on official capacity. Obviously that'll improve over the summer, but September sales could be pretty lackluster if the team doesn't improve. As I mentioned earlier, playoff games could generate a significant amount of more money, especially since playoff game ticket prices are higher than any regular season game. After several years of this, though, demand is going to drop. There is a pretty good reason for whoever owns the team to make sure the team is competitive, especially if they're already spending the money. Let's say it goes up in the summer, down in September and ends up about where it is. The revenue from selling those extra 2000 seats a game will fall far short of an extra 10 million spent. Yes, they could make a lot of money in the playoffs, but with making the playoffs consistently being as hard as it is, the more practical choice is to put in no more money than they already are. Oh, didn't realize you were referring to that $10 million.

I agree with you on wanting Cuban as the owner because he does what it takes to win. However, I don't think winning 10 or so more games a season would really increase the value of the Cubs much more than it is or much more than it would cost to do it. The value of the Cubs is so high because they have a gauranteed profit every year from the ticket sales, etc. If sales are already close to maxed out, where is the potential for more profit by winning and paying to do so on top of that? Average attendance is 38,999 so far this season. It's good, but that leaves an average of 2,119 empty seats per game based on official capacity. Obviously that'll improve over the summer, but September sales could be pretty lackluster if the team doesn't improve. As I mentioned earlier, playoff games could generate a significant amount of more money, especially since playoff game ticket prices are higher than any regular season game. After several years of this, though, demand is going to drop. There is a pretty good reason for whoever owns the team to make sure the team is competitive, especially if they're already spending the money.

Thank goodness for that 4-hit (?) day a few days ago, because Pie is struggling. Another 0-4 day at the plate leaves his BA at .264 and OPS at a disappointing .729.

How do you explain the 80's, and early 90's? I don't see the point in using such absolutes. It's not remotely true. the 80's can be explained by Steinbrenner's meddling in baseball operations. the early 90's can be explained by Stenbrenner's ban from having anything to do with the operation of the Yankees. once his pocketbook was back into play and his nose out of the transactional side of running the team, the Yankees became perennial contenders almost instantly. At the rate George is losing money on the Yankees (and it's a pretty high rate), though, it's not going to last. At some point, he's going to have to make cuts. When the Yankees can't afford to grossly overspend on FAs, that farm system of theirs is really going to kill them.

One of the most important things to remember is that if the Tribune Co. was in a position where they were going to/had to sell it, they could care less who they were selling it to as long as it meant the most money for them. There wouldn't be any guarantees that the money spent on the team would remain at least at the level where it currently is. And it's a big assumption to make that Cuban would be the highest bidder. Of course, if the Cubs weren't in a position where they needed to sell the team, why would they? As it stands now, though, the Tribune Co. owns the Cubs and has a strong interest in winning. They're spending the money anyways and get a far better return when the Cubs win. The boost in ticket sales (especially post-season ticket sales), merchandise sales, exposure, etc. all bring in more money. It would be pretty irrational for the Tribune Co. not to care about how the Cubs do.

IF he's alright, we'll probably put together a program? This just sounds very sketchy to me. It's basically a 25 pitch side session. Why are there still questions about him feeling "all right" after throwing 25 pitches? I just don't like the sound of it. I think that's pretty typical for Rothschild right now. He's really trying hard not to say anything other than what the immediate next step is. There's probably a little concern about him getting back on the mound, but he may have also just been referring to the illness.

You have evidence that the added seats haven't contributed to player expenses and won't? And internet broadcasts? I really don't know where you're referring to there. Let's not forget that the Trib will be paying the $40+ million bill on the Wrigley Field campus renovations and will not take any of that money out of the Cubs' payroll. Do we have proof? Besides that the payroll has dropped since last season. $40 million is nothing when its offset by 2,000 more seats sold per game, not to mention selling the naming rights to the bleachers, dropping payroll, Cubs garage sales, and raising ticket prices. As of this point, I doubt they're that far ahead of last year's pace of ticket sales. And I think most of those things have gone into the payroll, although I doubt the garage sale produced anything that significant. The main things were ads, the bleacher naming rights (did they ever release what the terms were?), and ticket prices. The official payroll rose from $87 million in 2005 to $94.8 million this year. In 2004, it was $90.5 million and in 2003, it was under $80 million. Of course, official payrolls aren't all that meaningful and don't really represent the available money or money being spent on players overall. The actual player expenses won't be known until next year, but here's the list from past years from Forbes: 2005 - $117 million 2004 - $106 million 2003 - $95 million 2002 - $89 million I don't see anything wrong with that trend. The Cubs have the 7th highest payroll in the majors, 3rd in the NL, and 1st in the Central. When renovations can take place while the available money for payroll grows, and I think every indication points to that, that's a sign of a pretty decent owner. The only major criticism of the Tribune Company I can think of is that they haven't fired MacPhail yet (who I wouldn't have as much of a problem with if he fired Hendry and brought in someone with a new philosophy, which may not be likely). The financial support is more than enough to win. They're maintaining Wrigley and keeping nearly half of the Cubs games on WGN (something that probably wouldn't happen with new ownership), too. The role of ownership is to put management in a position to succeed. They've done that. Everything else falls on MacPhail and Hendry.

You have evidence that the added seats haven't contributed to player expenses and won't? And internet broadcasts? I really don't know where you're referring to there. Let's not forget that the Trib will be paying the $40+ million bill on the Wrigley Field campus renovations and will not take any of that money out of the Cubs' payroll.

25 pitches? :? This was post-food poisoning and 3 days after throwing his previous bullpen session, not 5 days.