CubColtPacer

Did those people watch on WGN local or WGN America? If WGN local, why wouldn't they be able to watch on other local Chicago outlets? I'm considering those who are outside the WGN local area but inside the Cubs broadcast territory. I assume whatever local channel they land on will have around the same coverage area as WGN local does. So they watch it on WGN America? I'm not trying to be a smart ass...I'm genuinely asking. I'm asking because I'm pretty sure WGN America is dropping all national Chicago sports broadcasts. So those people would be screwed over by WGN regardless of the Cubs leaving WGN. I somehow missed WGN's decision to do that (although it doesn't surprise me, the Cubs were their most valuable property and were talking about leaving at the time they decided to do that). To rephrase my initial statement, there are lots of people who are going to be stuck with many less Cubs games (maybe all of them depending on if their local carrier carries CSN or not) with no way to get them. But really, that just puts Cubs fans in the same place as fans of many teams throughout the country thanks to the blackout rules.

Did those people watch on WGN local or WGN America? If WGN local, why wouldn't they be able to watch on other local Chicago outlets? I'm considering those who are outside the WGN local area but inside the Cubs broadcast territory. I assume whatever local channel they land on will have around the same coverage area as WGN local does.

The people who will be affected by the move away from WGN are those in the Cubs broadcast territory who will not have any access to whatever channel the Cubs land on. Those people will have no ability to legally watch those games. I completely understand what they are doing, but there are people (millions of them overall, hard to tell how many are Cubs fans) who this will be a significant downgrade to access even if they are willing to spend money.

What about Hendricks makes people think he's a lock for the rotation/is going to be good? His FB averages only 87 MPH and he struck out like 5 per 9 last year. I get he has really good control, but his stuff just isn't there. I don't know that he's going to be good, but the reason people are optimistic about him is that he's done it at every single level. His peripherals were strong at every single level of the minor leagues. Even though his strikeout numbers went way down when hitting the majors, the rest of his peripherals were still very strong. Players with his stuff profile also tend to be extremely hittable. In addition to limiting home runs, Hendricks has also been very solid at avoiding runners on base. Minor league numbers of 8 hits per 9 and 0.4 HR, and that was almost exactly what it was in the majors last year (8.1 and 0.4). Obviously his lack of overpowering stuff is going to bring hesitation. But he seems to have every other piece (great command, good offspeed pitch, ability to keep the ball down in the zone). Even if he regresses back to his xfip number next year, that's still a 4 ERA cheap back of the rotation option.

Raw, I would try to package Watkins/Beckham and Miller/Tate for a RB (I'd prefer to trade Watkins and Tate). Maybe you could only get a mid number 2 runningback for them, but you definitely need depth there. UM, I don't trust West at all to keep the job in Cleveland. I can see why you would want to make the deal as far as roster construction, but I'd maybe try to find another RB candidate. Selling high on Bryant would make sense though, his TD's seem so unsustainable.

Weird to think after the start of the season and 3 SEC teams ranked in the initial top 4 that there is still a quasi reasonable scenario out there to have no SEC teams in the playoff. It would involve lots of moving parts, but no single step is crazy. Step 1: Games hold the way they are at the moment (LSU beats Alabama, TCU wins, Michigan State wins) Step 2: Mississippi State loses two of the three games between at Alabama, at Ole Miss, and the SEC title game. Step 3: TCU, Oregon/Arizona State, Michigan State, and Florida State win out (the only ranked teams each of them play are Oregon at Utah tonight, Arizona State at Arizona, and Michigan State vs Nebraska in a Big 10 title game). That isn't all that likely to happen, but it's an interesting scenario.

Take that deal in a heartbeat I would say. Big upgrade from Wallace to Nelson, and all it costs you is a guy who you aren't guaranteed to even start from week to week. Plus Robinson has a bye next week.

It really depends on what you mean by homer. I always say a local team's announcers should be like the guy that if you got a group of fans together would be the most rational one. They are definitely rooting for the team and they focus most of their commentary on that team, but they recognize the opponents strengths and weaknesses and don't get too high or too low as the game continues. They get upset with the referees occasionally, but they're not going on and on about calls every other game. Their initial reaction to a call might be a little biased to the team, but on replay they try to look at it with objective eyes and admit when their team gets a break along when they get a bad call against them. There are a few announcers out there who act like the slightly drunk fan who refuse to give the opponents respect and tend to think that every 50/50 call has to go for them. From all I've heard, Heinsohn in Boston is a great example of this, although there are others. Some people might like that type of announcer, but I find it irritating to listen to even if you root for that team, and borderline unwatchable if you're neutral or rooting for the other team.

I'm planning on dropping him in both the leagues I have him soon. I just don't see how he plays this year. The trial isn't until after the year, and the Vikings rushing him back before the trial doesn't seem at all likely. If he pleas, the NFL plans to hit him with a severe suspension. That means he would have to reach a plea deal soon to have any chance of seeing the field this year, and the reports are that there are no talks of a plea deal. The chances of the charges being dropped in this case don't seem very likely because it is based on physical evidence more than eyewitness testimony, and both sides seem to be stipulating to most of the facts.

Yeah, it is amazing how much they are just making stuff up as they go along. I cannot believe Minnesota thought they could reinstate him without blowback, and then they turnaround and cave to the blowback? Yeah, that is astounding. And I don't understand why the NFL has done nothing about AP. Why have they left this to the Vikings? Isn't child abuse a form of domestic violence? The domestic violence policy is triggered only when there is a result of the case. There would have to be a conviction or a plea agreement.

I guess Grimm is where you draw the line?

Wait, how can a player be pulled back after being DFA'd? I thought the whole point was that you got a free 25 and 40 man roster spot for 10 days while you figured out what to do with a player. The downside is that by the end of the 10 days, you have to either trade him, or release him (through a waiver claim or outright) or send him to the minors. If you could pull a player back, why wouldn't teams be abusing this left and right to get free roster spots for 10 days? The way I'm understanding the rules, the Marlins have basically no leverage because it's August. They can send Turner through revocable waivers (normal August waivers to try to make a trade) immediately (this is assuming this has already not been done in August). If someone claims him, they can pull him back if the other team isn't offering anything. But there would be no point to that, because at the end of the 10 days they would have to send him through waivers as part of the DFA process, and the same team could just claim him again and take him. If they had done this in July or if he has already somehow cleared revocable waivers, then they could trade him to any team. But that doesn't appear to be the case here.

PTR may be responsible for most of it, but the front office quite explicitly said they left payroll on the table this year. well good for them! fortunately the $10-15m or whatever they didn't spend actually still exists, rather than being piled up and burned in a massive bonfire, so they now have the option of spending it in future years. I would not be so sure about that. That's generally not how businesses run themselves. That's true. But it was reported this spring that this was the first time that the Cubs have allowed their front office to roll over money from year to year, and the front office took advantage of that by not spending all their money this offseason.

That's dumb and by extension you're dumb, you dirty apologist. It's uncanny how the assessment of our chances in each year always goes down after the fact, when it makes things look better to retcon those chances. Okay, good talk. The first part was meant jokingly, of course. The second part is dead-on. Every year that's gone by, the state of the Oct. 2011 Cubs gets downgraded retroactively in order to justify what's happened since. Baseball is far too high-variance of a sport to pretend like Epstein couldn't have had the Cubs in position to have a chance by 2013, even if we stipulate 2012 was gone (which we really shouldn't, and weren't at the time). Every year, teams that projected to be in the middle of the pack before the season end up in the playoff hunt. Last year, one such team won the World Series. Epstein failed to give the Cubs that chance (and let's not pretend he didn't try. Edwin Jackson wasn't given $52m to be flipped). He just failed. When we were projecting the Cubs in October 2011, most people didn't expect the payroll to go down by 30-35 million a year. That's the key variable that changes everything. In 2011, the Cubs were a 71 win team. Their two position players who had above an .800 OPS were both 33 years old and free agents after the season. They had one starting young position player that was projected to take a leap. They had an elite reliever and an excellent starter in their prime, and another very good young starter coming off his first year. They had one other pitcher that had the potential to make a leap, and not very much impact talent beyond that coming from the minors. When they went into 2012, they had 72.6 million committed before arbitration for players like Garza and Soto. When they potentially had 50 million to spend after that, it would have been a very interesting free agency year. When that turned out to be 20-30 million and they still had to replace the key parts of the offense in Ramirez and Pena just to get back to where they were, that become much less so. There really wasn't a great path to relevance in 2012-2013. Not when you had a league average payroll where only mildly productive players are taking up close to 30% of it (Soriano and Marmol). Some young assets to balance them out but not enough, and not enough money anymore to spend their way out of trouble. If the Cubs payroll had kept growing slowly instead, the equation looks quite a bit different.

I was initially fully on Aiken's side, but the more I read suggests that the Astros weren't at fault here. Let's review the timeline. As the BP article suggests, the Astros select Aiken and Nix, and do so in a way that suggests that 1) they are very confident in signing them and 2) Marshall isn't given a high importance. They then announce verbal agreements with both that match up very well with that strategy. When Aiken goes into that MRI, in order for the Astros to be in the wrong they either had to be a) looking for something to use against him (which doesn't make sense with the clear strategy they were using and the relative unimportance they had shown Marshall), or 2) the doctor had to show this abnormality, declare it not a concern, and the team than hastily came up with this plan to play it up to try to gain leverage on talks that had already been completed rather amicably. It seems much more likely that the doctor brought it up because he thought it was a concern. I do think the Astros made a mistake here. The doctor should have known he was not with most of the medical community on this issue, and the Astros should have known that Aiken would not be happy once he confirmed this with other doctors. As the BP article demonstrates, they did underestimate Aiken's ability to bet on himself knowing that other teams would not be scared off by this issue and the PR problems they would get. If anybody's at fault, it's the MLB rules here. Not being able to get medical information beforehand combined with no ability to trade the selection gives teams very few options. The team is boxed into a corner and you then give them compensation, and it starts to seem to them like a way out of the situation which leads to things like this. I believe the doctor did have what he thinks is a legitimate concern here. Comparing this to the other similar case recently (the Saffold contract with the Oakland Raiders) it seems far more likely in that case that things were dirty than it does in this one.

I don't think Love even can sign an extension right now. He's only two years into his deal, and I think you have to be three years in to even have a chance of an extension. What he can do for security though is essentially opt in to his 4th year of his deal, which would give the team who trades for him at least two years.

Between 70 and 75 is usually what I've seen quoted lately. Of course, those are mostly based on average run scoring tables. Teams that run the majority of time in smart situations (with poor hitters due up, when they need 1 run, with runners on 1st and 2nd, etc.) can lower that break even percentage by another decent bit.

Not exactly what I was saying, but the Cavs have a lot to work from that has value if not a huge headliner(Waiters, Thompson, Bennett, a bunch of future firsts). In the worst case scenario you can certainly take your shot without Love this year and have him join in the fun next year, my point is that the Minnesota isn't going to get a player as valuable as Wiggins from anyone else, so having him be the sticking point doesn't mean as much(especially if there's smoke to the rumor that Love would be interested in an extension w/ LeBron in Cleveland). Minnesota thinks they can get Klay Thompson and Barnes out of a deal (and they may ultimately be right). The problem for Cleveland if even if Wiggins today is more valuable than Klay, if you don't include him the rest of their assets don't come anywhere close. Wiggins becomes the sticking point even if he's the most valuable player Minnesota could get because the dropoff is pretty big after that.

The next first round pick Brooklyn could have offered would have been the 2020 one because of the picks Boston has already.

This post of mine from last year details when top 5 hitters over the last several drafts (2005-2012) have made it to the majors: viewtopic.php?p=2964509#p2964509 The only players to make it up the year after they were drafted for more than 20 PA were Zimmerman and Zunino. The only other player to not spend at least some time in the minors two years after they drafted was Gordon. The normal timetable for somebody like Bryant would be somewhere between a September callup this year and a June callup next year. Gordon, Longoria, and Wieters are good examples of hitters who hit very well in the minors and yet none of them were up before the end of their first full professional season.

The fact that they signed McRoberts for the exact amount of money as the MLE and Granger for what looks like the BAE suggests that the Heat are not planning to go under the cap at all. That's the end of the Heat's free agency money except for minimum salary guys or of course trades.

I can wait an extra three weeks to keep him an extra year. Or we could pay to have him that extra year rather than potentially cost us games in a year where we can't afford to throw away our slim margin for competition. If he's any good at all, you just paid like $20m for 15 games of him. Nobody does that. If you think there's any chance of doing that, just bring him up now to get extra time to adjust. If they only keep him down until late April, he'll be a Super 2. The Cubs will have that extra year of team control, but they're just creating a 4th year of arbitration by delaying free agency a year. Is 4th year of arbitration money and 1st year of free agency money that big of difference? The money really changes if they kept him down close to half the season next year, but I doubt they'll do that.

Force Houston to match and spend the money; consolation prize if they don't. That would force the Bulls to amnesty Boozer and then tie up more than half of their cap space for three days while Houston decides. That might be worth it for a chance to get Parsons, but it's not without risk for the Bulls as well.

From a team perspective, that's too bad if they wouldn't be considered. That team is absolutely stacked in that scenario. They would be better than any of the Miami versions we've seen over the last four years. They would be extremely talented, fit very well, and be incredibly deep as well. Of course, I could see them passing because of ownership concerns. That team might end up being one of the more expensive ones in basketball history to keep together, and their owner sold draft picks in the past to save cash.

Potentially, we have a road of Belgium, Argentina, Netherlands, Germany/Brazil. That's as bad as it gets. Couldn't it be argued that Belgium would be the 2nd weakest group winner though? It seems like the four favorites have been separated nicely into each quadrant of the bracket. And the teams who are on the edge of that (France, Chile, Columbia) are all on the other side of the bracket. I'd put Belgium right behind those seven. Everybody who isn't one of those eight teams is going to have a really hard road if seeds hold since they're spread out so nicely.