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Dempster's deal wasn't way above market value though so I'm not sure what comparison you're trying to make there. If anything, it was maybe a little under market value. I remember it being the perception at the time, but I don't have a full list of the 2008 off season contracts to verify Here are the starting pitcher contracts of the big 4 pitchers from last year: Sabathia: 7 years, 161 million Burnett: 5 years, 82.5 million Lowe: 4 years, 60 million Dempster: 4 years, 52 million There were only 3 other starters to get multi-year deals last year (Oliver Perez 3 years 36 million, Kawakami 3 years 23 million, Uehara 2 years 10 million). The perception may have been that the market completely collapsed last year, but the top guys still all got paid. Dempster was among them and the reports were that he would have likely been signed by the Braves to a deal similar to the Lowe deal if the Cubs hadn't resigned him. Why does Dempster get to be compared to those players? Because we're talking about market value. Several of those teams had reports that they weren't sure who they valued more between Dempster, Burnett, or Lowe. Dempster was signed early which took him out of the bidding but before that he was right up there with the second level of starters (obviously Sabathia is in a completely different league). It doesn't matter what their actual value was likely to be. The Cubs couldn't have waited and then paid Dempster less. If they hadn't paid him that much they would have lost him. That makes him not overpaid compared to the market. As far as actual value, after this year Dempster has just as much if not more chance of fulfilling his contract than Burnett or Lowe do.

Dempster's deal wasn't way above market value though so I'm not sure what comparison you're trying to make there. If anything, it was maybe a little under market value. I remember it being the perception at the time, but I don't have a full list of the 2008 off season contracts to verify Here are the starting pitcher contracts of the big 4 pitchers from last year: Sabathia: 7 years, 161 million Burnett: 5 years, 82.5 million Lowe: 4 years, 60 million Dempster: 4 years, 52 million There were only 3 other starters to get multi-year deals last year (Oliver Perez 3 years 36 million, Kawakami 3 years 23 million, Uehara 2 years 10 million). The perception may have been that the market completely collapsed last year, but the top guys still all got paid. Dempster was among them and the reports were that he would have likely been signed by the Braves to a deal similar to the Lowe deal if the Cubs hadn't resigned him.

Dempster's deal wasn't way above market value though so I'm not sure what comparison you're trying to make there. If anything, it was maybe a little under market value.

NFL doesn't feature as many mismatches as college football. That's what makes it more exciting to watch because so many games are likely to be competitive. College basketball gets most of their mismatches out of their way in the holiday season where people don't have as much time to watch sports and when they do they have both NFL and college football to watch. And most people don't watch large parts of the college basketball season. College football has the most mismatches of any sport out there. There has to be a reason to stay interested in those mismatches and the pressure of needing to stay undefeated does that very well. If good to great teams can drop a couple games, there won't be much reason to make sure to watch those games. There are still plenty of reasons to be excited in your team until it loses 3 games in the current system. And typically 3 losses would keep you from a playoff anyway. So while having a chance at a national title would be more exciting, it's still your team and so having a good team is entertaining. And the intensity of having to show up for every game when it's your team is exhilarating. The postseason is the worst part of college football but it comes in a time that many people don't have the time to sit down and watch football during the week. Having a better system to choose attractive matchups for bowls would go quite a long way towards helping the bowls be exciting without needing it to determine the national championship. And while a playoff might be great, it doesn't make up for the damage it would do to the prior 3 months.

Right now, college football is must see TV for 3 months straight on Saturdays. Watching top 5 teams battle through potential upset bids to not have their seasons ruined on any given Saturday. If a team gets upset, there are always other teams to take their place. A 16 team playoff would make me not care very much until the last couple weeks of November except for watching my team play. That would be incredibly sad and a couple good weeks of playoffs would not come close to making up for that.

No, he has definitely dropped a couple pitches. In fact, early in his career his changeup was his 4th most used pitch. He was a fastball/slider/splitfinger/changeup pitcher at the beginning of his career (a couple years he used the slider more, a couple he used the splitfinger more..the first year fangraphs actually has him throwing a few curveballs as well). In 07 he stopped throwing the slider as much, and then in 08 he mostly cut out the splitfinger. This year he threw the changeup much more often than he ever has before and is the first year he is listed as only throwing two pitches.

Harden could have refused to be traded. The Braves were lucky that Soriano was willing to agree to the trade.

As Bruce said on his blog talking about the likelihood of the mystery team being a bargaining maneuver: I would tend to agree with that. Hendry is seen as one of the most honest and forthright GM's in the business. I really doubt he made up the mystery team rumors.

Regardless of whether he was a clubhouse cancer or not. How dumb was it to air out the dirty laundry in public, suspend him, and tell everyone what a cancer he was. The season was over. The Cubs were done. They should have made nice and traded him to another unsuspecting team. Now, we are going to get fleeced and pay another team so he can play for them. And he'll probably have a career year. Thanks Hendry. Thanks Cubs. As CubsWin said, the suspension didn't add much to the problems that were already public. Bradley's repeated comments to the media were the cause of the problems and every GM had access to those. The suspension only showed that the Cubs were likely not going to bring him back because of those, but as soon as Hendry started throwing Bradley into trade talks other teams would have realized the same thing even without the suspension. And then of course his value in trade talks would have started out even lower than it was last season just because of his play on the field and injuries even before the attitude was taken into account. I don't really think the suspension did a lot of damage to Bradley's value because of how he responded to it. He was quiet and took it well. That made the Cubs look a little bit worse and Bradley look a little bit better. It's really sad to think how close this situation was to working even after the rocky start. Bradley was starting to play better and the fans were finding new villans to worry about. If he hadn't made those comments in late July/early August about not wanting to play any longer than necessary, this spiral likely wouldn't have happened. If he hadn't continued to make comments in September, it probably could have been repaired. The team probably erred in making Bradley speak to the media on a day to day basis. Now it's too late to reverse that error because shielding Bradley from the media now just becomes a constant reminder of the comments that caused that change in policy in the first place.

Having one of the strongest farm systems, an ever expanding payroll, a history of not winning a World Series in nearly a century and some fine players on your major league roster as something to build your future on made his job a dream job of sorts. . I mostly agree with the rest but I'm not sure about this part. In hindsight, I'm not sure that Hendry really walked into a great situation. The farm system turned out to be not strong at all (most of the strength had already left the minors at that point). The major league roster had an amazing starting pitching core. The lineup and bullpen were both old, expensive, and fading fast though. And the payroll was expanding but it wasn't expanding that much faster than an average team until more than halfway through his tenure where it then exploded. Don't get me wrong, it was still a good job. The Cubs still had an above average (growing to well above average and now to upper echelon) payroll. They also had that amazing pitching core. But there were huge problems too. Just over three years after he took over, every single position player that was there when Hendry got there was gone. For most of them, their last good days came as a Cub. There were no star position prospects in the minors to fill any position when those players left so Hendry had to fill all of them through either free agency or trades. That's too large of a problem to be a dream job.

He probably doesn't sign a 7.5m deal then. Since he probably would have gotten a few more million by accepting arbitration. I wish luck to Harden, and he does well and finally reaches his potential. But 7.5m is too much for a pitcher who only throw about 150 innings once in his career 5 years ago. Especially when last season he pitched 5.1 innings or less in 11 of his 26 starts. With the Cubs money issues, Rich Harden just wasn't a good risk anymore. Maybe he signs for less. One of Hendry's few good features was his ability to avoid arbitration. Harden wanted to come back. Seems like something could have been worked out knowing that the Cubs had budget constraints. Hendry just usually settles somewhere in the middle of the two numbers. And there's no incentive for Harden to settle for less than he thinks he can get as soon as he accepts arbitration. The Cubs would have had to settle in the middle again or risk the hearing.

It will be interesting to see if that option is a player one or a club one (more likely player, but with his injuries it might be a club). It looks like the question about arbitration has been solved. Harden very likely would have accepted unless like Tim suggested Hendry had strong armed him into refusing. So it looks like the Cubs would have not gotten picks for Harden regardless and that they at least gauged the market correctly. The question of if he will be worth the contract he would have gotten in the arbitration process is still to be answered. Edit: Saw that the contract may not be finalized yet after I wrote this. I definitely agree that going to the Mariners would be the better move especially if Harden is trying to use this year to play his way into a huge contract.

I think they'll steal a few more games than people think. They've really looked pretty good tonight and have been much more competitive this year than last. It helps when you don't have an unathletic midget playing a bunch of minutes at PG. Jeremiah Rivers isn't much better. Whoa? Rivers isn't a world beater by any means, but Daniel Moore can't even carry his jock. Of course, that's much more of a slight against Moore than a compliment to Rivers. Thank God Moore didn't see the court last night. Hopefully that trend continues. It was a really nice win for this team. I was impressed with their rebounding and physical play underneath. I will say, Pitt looked really bad. Well Rivers is a way better defender, but the 2 of them just seem to have the same offensive gameplan of drive into the lane head down and then realize they can't shoot. Last year Indiana wouldn't have been close to Pitt, and it's not so much that the talent level is so much higher than last year, it's that sucking vortexes like Moore don't have to see the court due to lack of depth. I still don't think they'll do much in Big Ten season(though I may need to bump them ahead of Iowa), but they have the bodies where a loss won't be a foregone conclusion before they take the court. I would agree that in many ways Rivers is just a better version of Moore. Both of their strengths are intensity on defense and ability to get the ball up the court. They also are both good at getting into the lane. They are both weak at shooting from beyond 10 feet. They also both try to do too much with passes that lead to turnovers. Rivers is much better on both ends though. Moore could never finish the play after he got into the lane. By the end of the year, teams were actually not even rotating over knowing that he'd have to pass or have the guy who he just beat block his shot from behind. Rivers can score when he gets into the paint which makes the pass more of a weapon. Also of course Rivers doesn't get beat on defense nearly as much because he can close so quickly on people. I'm hoping that Jones steps up more like he did last night. Right now IU desperately needs Rivers on the floor because he is the only one that causes mismatch problems for other teams. If they put Jones as a ball handler a little more he can also cause those problems. I like Hulls a little better than the start of the season but he's not going to be the guy who is going to beat his man off the dribble. I've been impressed with both Creek and Watford's defense. They both have an ability to be lockdown defenders and they both have really quick hands. I've been disappointed with Watford's play at times (he is learning more than anybody else how fast and how athletic players are at the college level), but with his great ability to shoot free throws for a 6 foot 9 player and his athleticism if he learns how to draw fouls he could be a scary player to guard. I just can't see that being this year.

From Bruce's blog yesterday:

With Pittsburgh and Baltimore struggling as they have, pretty much the only team that could be tricky to catch is Jacksonville. Denver, they probably won't catch. I think 9-7 has a pretty decent chance of making the 6 spot in the AFC. But I can't see the Titans making it. They have terrible tiebreaker scenarios. They have head to head losses against both Pittsburgh and the Jets. They will lose the divisional tiebreaker with Jacksonville. And they will lose the conference tiebreaker to everybody. So the only way they could sneak in the playoffs is if the only other team to get to 9-7 is Houston (who they would beat because of a better divisional record). But they need everyone else besides Denver to finish 8-8 or worse (I'm assuming that Denver wins at least one game out of their last 4) and that would be very tricky to have happen.

I think the idea would be for the Cubs to flip Burrell to the Mets for Castillo. Like the Cubs with wanting to trade Bradley then sign Cameron, then Mets want to trade Castillo to sign Orlando Hudson. that's not wsr's plan though. he wants to keep burrell Burrell would platoon with Fukudome in RF, be the power RH bat off the bench, and be a starter if any of the 3 OF's got hurt (since Fukudome could slide over if Cameron went down). Burrell would be a nice backup plan in case Soriano went down for a decent part of the season again. He'd be a horribly overpaid platoon player (and the Cubs would probably need to carry a 5th OF as a defensive replacement for him) but he'd have a role on the team. Even if the Cubs sign Cameron, they have to find a platoon partner for Fukudome somewhere.

I'm hoping the fact that they played last year in the bowls means that they switch around the matchups after all the picks have been made (which is possible under the contract of the BCS). That's especially true when they can make two compelling games by just switching one team. The best matchups I think would be to switch Cincy to the Fiesta bowl and have them play Boise (last one with the ball wins) and put TCU in the Sugar and let them see what they can do with Florida. And if you don't want to do that, you can switch Boise instead and put them in the Sugar which leaves a TCU-Cincy matchup for the Fiesta. A third alternative would be to let all of them play who they were supposed to originally. Boise with Iowa, Cincy with Florida (or GA Tech), TCU with Ga Tech (or Florida). That lets the 3 big football schools play the 3 smaller football schools. All of those would be better than TCU-Boise, which would just leave confusion on how good either of them are even after the game.

I saw the review on a Fox game break and it looked pretty obvious to me. The reverse angle showed that his elbow was very likely down before the fumble. In fact they just showed a zoomed in view that pretty much confirmed it. And of course there's the fact that there was no recovery on the field before the play was dead. I'm glad this has happened in this type of game though. Referees have calling this sort of play wrong several times this year (they called it wrong late in the game in the Detroit/GB game for example on Thanksgiving) and hopefully this will cause them to pay a little more attention to it.

Agreed. It likely wasn't out, and the whistles blew before the recovery. Even if i was a fumble, it should have to go back to the Redskins (although the officials have been forgetting about the whistles lately when they do reviews).

I don't think it's that likely. It didn't happen when Michigan lost to OSU a few years ago, and Florida had a loss that year. I'm not an expert on voters though. The problem is the first deserving team after Texas this year would be a mid-major. We'll see how responsive the pollsters are to that. Agreed. While I don't see it as incredibly likely (I'd give both Cincy and TCU better odds than the loser) there is a definite path to a rematch here. The key is to stay ahead of Cincy in the polls and ahead of TCU in the computer rankings. Then if enough voters are split on which one of TCU or Cincy is better, then there is a possibility the loser of the title game could sneak in there. But it would be really hard because a few writers might drop the loser behind Boise which would really hurt the overall average. But a few writers/coaches (probably southern ones) who left them 1/2 might counterbalance that. Looking at Colley's computer rankings which allows you to play around with scenarios, his rankings for this week are Alabama, Florida, Texas, Cincy, TCU, Boise, Oregon. I put in a Cincy win, Alabama win, Nebraska win, Oregon win, and Boise win this week and got this: Alabama, Cincy, Florida, Texas, TCU, Oregon, Boise. There could also definitely be some voting shenanigans going on. Boise might suddenly move ahead of Cincy/TCU on some ballots. It's hard to say what will happen.

That makes no sense. TCU is not going to jump both SEC teams, no matter what happens. An unconvincing win gives a greater chance of both these teams having a rematch in the championship game. That's not gonna happen. Even though this year's SEC is more respected than '06's Big 10, if they didn't give Michigan a rematch against Ohio State, I can't see them giving this loser a rematch. Michigan lost by 3 on the road, dropped to 3rd, then the 2nd place team (USC) lost, and Florida jumped them both just so that a UM/OSU rematch didn't happen. There is a huge difference between the voters sending Florida to the national title game and TCU/Cincy though. If Alabama wins, does that make it more likely that Cincy might jump TCU in the rankings especially if Texas loses? It looks like Florida might still remain ahead of TCU but behind Cincy in several computer polls. It would depend on the human polls though, and I'm not sure a comeback victory is going to help Cincy enough. I think they needed a blowout. But some writers might give Cincy the edge being in one of the BCS conferences especially if it comes down to putting one of those two in the national title game.

In the minors there were rumors that Fox didn't take very well to coaching, but it appears he's gotten past that with his offensive resurgence. Plus that's not really relevant to clubhouse relationships and the like. Agreed. There were rumors that he wouldn't change his swing even when coaches asked him to. And then the rumors escalated when he was summarily yanked from a game and quickly taken off the major league team in August 07 (which was after he went into Lou's office and asked why he wasn't playing in Spring training 07 which Lou initially liked). But he's also been seen as a great guy in his personality and in the last couple of years he's been willing to do just about anything to make sure he makes it to the major leagues. There's been nothing to indicate that Fox is anything but a great clubhouse guy which is what is relevant in this situation.

I wouldn't like the contract or the loss of draft picks. Is he a fantastic fielder? Boston has had SS issues, right? I don't even know who the incumbent is. Is it there one weak spot? His reputation is very mixed defensively. Many see him as average to below average defensively at SS. And Boston has definitely had SS issues. They had Alex Gonzalez there at the end of the year but he already went to the Blue Jays. There was talk of moving Pedroia to SS but with Scutaro on board it looks like that won't happen.

I wouldn't want to give up a first round pick for Scutaro. The money and years looks about right, but to give up a pick for what is probably a slightly better version of Ryan Theriot is not something I'd normally consider.

J.P. Blevins and Mike Wuertz Cubs have given up Damien Miller, Jerry Blevins, Mike Wuertz, Rob Bowen, Sean Gallagher, Eric Patterson, Josh Donaldson and Matt Murton In return they've gotten Rich Harden, Michael Barrett, Jason Kendall, Chad Gaudin, Richie Robnett, and Justin Sellers. I'd say Hendry is whupping Beane's ass right now. Yeah, the Wuertz trade is the only one that Beane has really won. Even the Blevins trade hasn't been a problem for the Cubs after they got a little lucky and managed to net Flaherty because of Kendall. While I will agree with you and Rob that the Cubs have come out looking much better on these deals, I will say that it isn't really a fair fight. Oakland is a small market team that is constantly forced to move their veteran talent (bonified major leaguers) for prospects that may or may not make the big leagues (the ratio of minor leaguers who make the bigs is not very good, let alone to become veteran major leaguers) to knock down payroll while Jimbo has the ability to retain his veteran players AND increase payroll. We are kicking Pittsburgh's butt too, but again, not a fair fight. Payroll has not been a key factor of any of those trades though. Barrett and Miller made about the same amount of money (Miller actually made more but the Cubs sent cash to offset the difference). The Kendall trade was just Beane trying to get anything he could get for a player that wasn't helping a team that was already out of contention (he didn't anticipate that Kendall would play better with the Cubs and drive up enough interest that the Cubs ended up receiving a compensatory pick for him). The Harden trade was Beane trying to trade a pitcher after he had finally shown health for a couple of months. And now this trade the Athletics took on money and traded prospects away. So the biggest win for the Cubs (Barrett) had nothing to do with money. And the others had very little to do with money. In two of those four trades Beane got the veteran in the deal. So while I agree that Oakland as a whole has to make some deals because of money, their dealings with the Cubs haven't really been about that. It's just a matter as Tim said of the Cubs and Athletics liking different things in players making them natural trading partners and so far the Cubs have won in that department (with the exception of Wuertz).