CubColtPacer

Jesus Christ are you guys all dense? Like I ALREADY said that affects it. However he is not the only on in this situation. He is however the only one with this many picks meaning he is not doing well. Open your eyes and read what I am writing rather than jumping all over a statement that is fact. He leads the league in INT's and is not the only one with a bad o-line and running game. He is forcing way too much. It's not hard to see ... unless you have blinders on. One more and you're banned. Brinoch..please let the non-Bears fans who are not very emotionally invested in this game handle it. I'm watching both sides..he's not doing anything wrong here. And Cubbiebum, do not call people dense or anything like that. This is your warning on that.

I don't think anybody has a good idea of what has happened in the David Williams situation. I don't know why he would be explaining his decision soon if it was something like Indiana chased him off, so it seems like many people are leaning towards personal problems or wanting to stay closer to home for some reason. However, he might not have wanted to come into what seemed like to him to be a hostile environment either. I think it's way too early to make any kind of good guess though. Could be, just reminds me of the way David Palmer didn't end up at Illinois. If you offer the guy, you should have to honor that offer as much as the players should honor their commitment. IMO. I agree. I think an offer should always be honored unless the player has legal troubles or something like that. This is just a strange situation. Some say that Williams never really was offered. He also might be backing out on his own. But I agree, it's not a good situation and reflects badly on the university if it ends up coming out that the offer was made and then was later pulled.

I don't think anybody has a good idea of what has happened in the David Williams situation. I don't know why he would be explaining his decision soon if it was something like Indiana chased him off, so it seems like many people are leaning towards personal problems or wanting to stay closer to home for some reason. However, he might not have wanted to come into what seemed like to him to be a hostile environment either. I think it's way too early to make any kind of good guess though.

Indiana came on late for Selby, but it appears they've made up ground fast (they made his cut down list after only recruiting him for 2 weeks). We'll know more after this weekend when Selby visits (although he won't be there in time for the game on Friday). His former teammate Oladipo might help sway him to Indiana as well. I would say the chances are still no better than 1 in 5 for Selby, but I don't think any fanbase is feeling real comfortable right now in that recruitment. Kendrick is the other one they are after. He visited IU a couple of weeks ago. IU's best connection to him is that he is A.J. Moye's cousin who was of course beloved in Bloomington so that should help. He has a lot of schools still on his list so I have no idea what Indiana's chances are. He has been pretty quiet about all his visits so far, at least from what I have seen.

People tended to describe him as the tall point guard that protected the ball, wasn't really a scorer, and played great defense. He's actually much better at driving the ball than I expected but he is probably only a little above average for a point guard at protecting the ball. He is not only long but athletic and is willing to take chances when he sees an opening. I can understand why Crean wants to start him because Rivers wants to push the ball up the court quickly as much as Crean does. I still have no idea what level of effectiveness he will have when playing against better players, but his philosophy out there is much different than I expected.

Indiana's also deciding to do a very risky strategy in the recruiting game by saving places for 2 top 10 recruits that won't decide until the spring. It would be a huge boost if they can get one of them. I can't even decide if they want the program to show progress or if they want IU to have another miserable season where they can try to ride in and save the day. I think it's the right strategy because Indiana will have plenty of depth by that point but could use an elite player. But it definitely is going to make for a tense month or two in the spring.

How many games do you have IU winning in the Big 10 this year to finish last again? I have absolutely no idea what to expect out of IU this year. They have a decently talented squad. Rivers was not what I expected whatsoever. Watford and Creek both look like they will quietly score a good amount of points. Miniru actually surprised me..he is raw, but he moves better on the court than I would expect. He can actually provide a few meaningful minutes this year and I didn't expect him to get much on the court at all. It's not all good..I'm not sure Hulls is quite ready for the speed of the Big 10 yet, but we'll see. But having a full squad will definitely help quite a bit. In the exhibition games though, I saw no evidence that they really knew how to work together to be as efficient as possible. Part of that may have been the frequent substitutions, but that will be interesting to watch as the season goes along to see if they get an identity. And they were so much worse than everybody else in the Big 10 last year that improving quite a bit might not move them up very far in the standings. But I really don't see how they are worse than Iowa, unless you feel that Iowa's strange system guarantees them a few wins every year.

Buh? So a greater percentage of the nation can get an early start on their Sunday chores? It's not as strong of competition as usual for that particular slot that week because of the three Thanksgiving games in addition to the Sunday night/Monday night games. It's Fox's doubleheader week, and their choices to move to 4:15 were this: Bears/Vikings Panthers/Jets TB/Atlanta Seattle/St. Louis Arizona/Tennessee Washington at Philadelphia Arizona/Tennessee is probably the only choice that gave them pause but Bears/Vikings almost certainly gives them better ratings.

I'd start Jackson. NO is not a great run defense, and as they showed against Indy STL might actually still run Jackson even when they are way behind. I have no idea which of the 3 I'd bench though as they seem to be about the same this week.

When did that happen? It was said in July when Hill was put on the DL:

The Cubs received cash for Hill.

I don't know when you expected Hendry to do something about Bynum. He got only 136 AB's in his 1 season with the Cubs (and he had a 764 OPS). Half of those came in late August and September when the Cubs were hopelessly out of it and were running short on available players as well. He was then traded in the offseason for better talent. Neifi wasn't really a problem until 06 when he was on the multi-year deal (obviously the Cubs didn't intend for him to get that many at-bats in 05 but he did fine as the backup SS pressed into starting duty). Hendry then made the mistake of re-signing him to a 2 year deal, but by August he had "admitted" that mistake by trading him. There are definitely situations where Hendry has kept too much faith in guys for too long, but there are also plenty of situations where players and coaches have had shorter leashes. I have a hard time seeing how he's worse than any other GM in that area.

I guess they could have continued to try to force the ball to Gore in the Colts game, but the reason they went away from it is because after the big run in the first quarter, he was getting stuffed. Here are the rest of his runs for the day: -1, 3, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, -1, 3, 7 The big run inflated his stats, but the running game wasn't really moving the chains whatsoever in that game. They did try to line up and just run it on both 1st and 2nd down in 2 different drives and it led to 3rd and long both times and then 3 and outs. So I agree with you a little bit (they probably should have tried 3-4 more runs during the course of the game) but I can't blame them too much because getting 2 yards a run is not going to get many drives started and Smith was throwing the ball well. I'm not sure what happened this week though.

Hmm, you're right now that I look at the standings. USC is the only one that has the quality opponents ahead of it and enough sex appeal to derail a Boise bid I think. When I'm putting in both TCU and Boise, I'm also putting in USC. I think they are a lock unless they lose again. I think the at-larges will be TCU, Boise, Alabama/Florida loser, and USC if those teams win out. What other team will be attractive enough?

The big winner today is likely Boise State. The Big 10 likely ruined their chances for a second bid. ND ruined a chance for theirs. That leaves space for both TCU and Boise to get into the BCS. If those two stay undefeated, I have a hard time seeing either a potential 2 loss Iowa or a 2 loss Penn State team getting selected over them (or a 2 loss Wisconsin). I also can't see the Pittsburgh/Cincy loser getting in over them. In the ACC, you have maybe Ga Tech (if they lose the ACC title). And would they really select Oklahoma State without Bryant? So unless they derail, I have a hard time seeing how they both don't get in. Bowl organizers will hate it, but it's going to be really tough to do anything else.

I didnt think this deserved its own thread, so I figured Id hijack this one for a moment. While I dont knowmuch about Thames defense, he is the offensive equivelent of Cameron, so why not get him for cheaper instead? If we must get as player we dont really want, may as well be the cheapest one. Thames is a poor defensive corner OF. He's much closer to Jake Fox than a legitimate option in the OF. There is a huge difference between the impact that Cameron would provide and the one that Thames would.

The Colts are having a bad week so far. Tyjuan Hagler is out for the season with a ruptured biceps. Marlin Jackson is out for the season with another ACL tear. Bob Sanders is going to have surgery on his elbow and is out indefinitely. Kelvin Hayden has a knee injury and is out around 4 weeks. Anthony Gonzalez had knee surgery this week and is out at least another 2-3 weeks. The defensive injuries are the scariest as the Colts are carrying a very thin secondary into the next 4 games against some very good QB's (Schaub twice, Brady, and Flacco).

I used to think icing the kicker was stupid until I saw the stats for the past couple seasons. Don't remember it exactly but it was for kicks deciding the outcome in the final seconds and no timeout was 70% made while timeout was 57%. That stat has a lot of noise in it. If a team is already in close field goal range, then the other team is forced to take its timeouts on the earlier downs in an effort to get the ball back. Usually, the only reason why the defense still has a timeout to call right before the field goal is because it was iffy if the offense could move it into field goal range, which would usually indicate a longer field goal. Unless they accounted for that (sorting the kicks by distance as well as timeout) the stat doesn't end up meaning much.

There are several reasons why the game yesterday was so damaging for Iowa. 1) 6 TO's. That's quite a bit, and since all of those were when Iowa was trailing the sloppy play in a blowout rationalization doesn't work. 2) The officials. How much of an impact they had is debatable. But when certain calls are a joke (the 2nd TD replay certainly was when the best anybody can say about it was that they weren't sure if the foot was down or not) that tends to stick with people. 3) The fact that the plays in the 4th quarter were so easy hurt Iowa. They didn't really need to make plays to win the game-they completed two medium length passes and Indiana just let them go all the way for scores. Then the INT that sealed the game was just a duck. There is the perception out there that Iowa ended up not having to show they were the better team as Indiana just stopped playing. On that last point, Iowa's first 3 TD's in the second half were on a fluke interception, then 2 good 20 yard routes where the receivers were allowed to run up the field and score without much opposition. Iowa clearly showed they were much better than Indiana. But the way that was accomplished was worrying for them. Indiana was able to drive on them (2 60+ yard TD drives and would have had 3 if not for that horrible overturn on the replay). Iowa made lots of mistakes with the turnovers. After being given lots of chances, they were able to have some plays that got them back into the game and then allowed them to pull away. Now, this does happen to other teams. In many ways, this was much the same game as the Florida-Mississippi State game. But these type of games build on each other. Almost everybody has 1. It's not unusual to have 2. But to have at least 3 and possibly 4 of these types of games against really bad teams is a very bad trend for Iowa.

The advantage to Burrell over the other options is that it is only for 1 year. And if you brought in some other pieces around him (a player to hit most of the right-handers and a defensive replacement on the bench) he just turns into a very expensive platoon OF. And he has value in such a spot. The Cubs could accomplish that in two ways. Either find somebody in CF and have Fukudome/Burrell in RF or trade for somebody like Luke Scott who could platoon with Burrell, and have somebody like Fuld on the bench who can come into the game late in CF and have Fukudome shift over to RF. The other names on the list have bigger contracts and their deficiencies are not so easily hidden. Burrell is still not a good option, but it's much less ugly than any other bad contract.

I didnt even know thats how it weant down. Well Im glad they forced him on us, considering hes our best players and everyone else involved in the trade is long out of baseball. That's because it didn't go down like that. We were after Ramirez, Lofton was a 1/2 year rental that we got thrown in. You certainly botched the quotes on that response. But, the trade happened basically on the same day Tom Goodwin got hurt, which was less than 3 weeks after Patterson went down for the year. To me, Aramis was a throw in by Pittsburgh just to be rid of his salary. It certainly helped that the Cubs had Jose Hernandez playing 3rd base. But, it cost the Cubs Jose Freaking Hernandez, Matt Bruback and Bobby Hill to get both Lofton AND Ramirez. Any team in the league basically could have beaten that offer, Hendry was just lucky enough to be in desperate need for someone who could field the CF position for half a season when the deal was consumated. The Cubs were in need of a 3b long before July 22nd, 2003. It's when they no longer had a viable CFer that the trade actually happened. If Patterson never gets hurt, I'm not so sure Aramis ever gets traded to the Cubs. If you want to call it working some sort of magic, go for it. But, to me it's just dumb luck. The Cubs had been trying to trade for a 3rd baseman for the previous 2 months. They were chasing after Lowell and then the Marlins suddenly didn't want to trade him. When the Patterson injury then happened, the chance to get Ramirez and Lofton together was a big opening. But I think the Cubs would have very likely gone after Ramirez even if Lofton wasn't in the picture. He wasn't their first choice, but he would have been the fallback plan at a position that the Cubs were desperate to try to upgrade. I do agree with Jersey that in Pittsburgh's mind it was a salary dump though.

I'd probably question the guy who is in second to last and ask why he wants to make that deal. It might need to be rejected. It's probably unfair, but there might be a legit reason. Wayne's injury and the unknowns related to that might be enough to let it be accepted (he might play this week but he might not). As for the other, I'd probably rather have Nicks. I don't know who is going to have more points the rest of the year, but Nicks has fantasy starter upside (if he is named a starter in NY) while I'm not sure Knox will be any better than a very good bench option. But they are really, really close so both ways are easily justifiable.

Agreed on Gaudin. He wouldn't have been an awful fit with the Cubs, but he isn't anything that was a problem to just let go either. Here are two pitchers this year: Pitcher A: 8.8 H/9, 7.3 K/9, 4.3 BB/9, 1.5 HR/9, 1.452 WHIP Pitcher B: 8.5 H/9, 8.1 K/9, 4.1 BB/9, 1.1 HR/9, 1.41 WHIP Pretty similar numbers right? Pitcher B seems to be just slightly better based on the peripherals. Pitcher A is Gaudin with the Yankees this year. Pitcher B was Aaron Heilman this year with the Cubs. The difference in their ERA's (3.43 for Gaudin compared to 4.11 for Heilman) isn't really based on anything sustainable. Gaudin's total numbers for the year are also that type of pitcher: 4.64 ERA, 8.9 H/9, 8.5 K/9, 4.6 BB/9, 0.9 HR/9, 1.507 WHIP Gaudin would have been an average bullpen arm like Heilman was, but that HR rate in Chicago and the Yankees is concerning. It might be a result of moving out of the West divisions which are more forgiving to fly balls. If he keeps up that HR rate and that walk rate, he's going to have a really hard time staying somewhat effective.

I don't know if it will be anything significant, but other teams are interested in Bradley for the same reason teams like the Cubs, Rangers, Padres, Athletics, and Dodgers were in the past. They know that if they can harness Bradley's talent they can get a steal, and they always feel like they have the correct situation to where he won't act up as much. The deal will essentially end up be what the second most interested team thinks Bradley's true value is. That's where the Cubs leverage will come from. If two teams think that Bradley is not very much overpaid (and that he's actually worth 7-8 million each of the next two years), then the Cubs will not have to pay very much of the contract. If only one team is willing to take a chance on him for much more than minimum salary, then the Cubs are in trouble as far as negotiating a decent deal because they will have no leverage. We're basically talking about a garage sale here. An owner puts out a damaged good and puts a 25 cent price tag on it. Three people come by and one decides they can repair it and make it worth 10 dollars, another 15, and another 20. The person who thinks it's worth $20 isn't going to stop offering more when the bidding gets to $5 just because the owner would have let it go for a quarter. That wouldn't be rational of them because they would be hurting themselves out of paying only $15 for what they think is a $20 product. All Sammy Sosa really did was walk out on the team on the last game of the year, and the Cubs paid 17m of his guaranteed 19m. The Cubs got Jerry Hairston, Mike Fontenot and one other guy who thought it would be better to retire rather than grace us in a Cubs uniform. Adding in the current financial climate out there and I just don't see how the Cubs can expect anything significant for a known pain in the ass. Sosa was a little different of a situation. Teams didn't want him because they felt he wasn't going to be productive anymore and not quite as much because of his attitude. Sosa was 36 and seemed to be quickly falling off the cliff. The Orioles took a chance on him to sell tickets and paid 5 million of his contract. Bradley has a much bigger attitude problem but not nearly as much of a production problem. There are plenty of people around the league who feel like he'll bounce back and be very productive the next two years. But I do agree that I don't see the Cubs getting anything significant. They'll probably get a better deal than the Sosa one but not by that much.

I don't know if it will be anything significant, but other teams are interested in Bradley for the same reason teams like the Cubs, Rangers, Padres, Athletics, and Dodgers were in the past. They know that if they can harness Bradley's talent they can get a steal, and they always feel like they have the correct situation to where he won't act up as much. The deal will essentially end up be what the second most interested team thinks Bradley's true value is. That's where the Cubs leverage will come from. If two teams think that Bradley is not very much overpaid (and that he's actually worth 7-8 million each of the next two years), then the Cubs will not have to pay very much of the contract. If only one team is willing to take a chance on him for much more than minimum salary, then the Cubs are in trouble as far as negotiating a decent deal because they will have no leverage. We're basically talking about a garage sale here. An owner puts out a damaged good and puts a 25 cent price tag on it. Three people come by and one decides they can repair it and make it worth 10 dollars, another 15, and another 20. The person who thinks it's worth $20 isn't going to stop offering more when the bidding gets to $5 just because the owner would have let it go for a quarter. That wouldn't be rational of them because they would be hurting themselves out of paying only $15 for what they think is a $20 product.