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The Cubs can afford to overpay for certain players they need because of their payroll. To be completely efficient with your payroll is to have holes on your roster because the perfect player for your squad is rarely out there and it is even more rare for that player to have a reasonable cost. The Cubs may be more cost efficient with Hoffpauir instead of Lee, but they very likely wouldn't be better unless they found either a great 1B from somewhere or be able to find the player that makes a bigger upgrade at one of their other holes. And since the Cubs have built a team that is focused on balance (not any superstars, but not any major holes) it becomes very hard to upgrade positions with extra money. The Cubs might very well have to either pocket the money or spend it on a player who becomes even more overpaid than what you already had. So I understand your argument although I do question its relevance in this case. But I guess it depends how much of a downgrade you think Hoffpauir is from Lee and how much re-signing Harden is a priority.

They won without him producing last year. I just don't see how they need him to produce this year if they are going to win as a team. Obviously one would hope he improves a little bit from last year's production. I don't want him to miss the season. But if last year's team thrived despite Lee "not showing up" for 5 months, I think this years team could likely survive if Hoffpauir has to replace him for a month or two. Even if they have a little bit of a drop because of less production at 2B mostly (the OF shouldn't be too much worse. Bradley will make up for Edmonds, Reed will likely regress a little bit, Soriano will likely play more games unless he has another fluke injury, and Fukudome will likely at least repeat his production if not improve) they still have some wiggle room. Last year's team scored 855 runs in 161 games. They could have quite a dropoff and only score 800 runs and still be one of the top offenses in the league. In fact, that would have been the top last year (but not in a normal year). So sure, the Cubs without Lee improving will likely not score as many runs as last year. That doesn't preclude them from winning though as they can have a less potent offense and still win a ton of games. How far do you really see them dropping CubinNY? 775 runs? 750 runs? I don't see how the Cubs have enough downgrades to be down anywhere close to 100 runs difference.

Yes, most of the conferences did almost exactly what the committee thought they would do overall. Some were a little better, some a little worse. What makes the Big 10 different than the other conferences is that they were the ones who were heavily criticized for not deserving what the committee gave them. So when they go out and do just a little better than the committee envisioned, it ends up being much better than most of the national perception. The Big 10 proved they deserved to have 7 teams in which was quite far off from what most people were saying around Selection Sunday. They were saying that the Big 10 would get 7 teams in, but that the play in the league was so low that they shouldn't get 7 teams in, and that opinion was mostly defused by the last couple of weekends. Most of the other conferences it was agreed that they were treated fairly by the committee, and the tournament results have borne that out (with the exception of the ACC).

Not if they keep all of Vizcaino, Gaudin, and Guzman. I think Jeff to AAA is assumed right now but the Cubs still have to clear even more room.

he's still gonna get 10K I know, but still. I'm sure there were safer picks than that game the final few days before it resets. True but it was quite obvious the streakmaster was whoring picks from him... look how many picks there's been the last few days. Another interesting thing I saw.... if drock were to get to 26.... and bet his streak on a game... would you bet 50K on the OPPOSITE outcome? I know I sure would. You could lose both since the game is rarely a Pickem in Vegas while it is always that way on the Streak. It will only be a couple point spread, but it's still too risky when you're talking about money that you simply don't have.

There will be no more talking about other posters instead of the topic or else warnings/suspensions will be handed out.

IU had 2 national titles before Knight arrived there. That would still be tied for 6th all-time. IU's really only had two great coaches and one decent coach in its history. However, those two great coaches coached the team for 52 out of the last 71 years and the decent coach was there for 14 years before that.

I'm pretty happy with the Big 10's tournament. A +2 already compared to seeds, a team in the Final 4, and a chance for more. That's definitely a successful tournament even though the huge number of teams with low seeds means a mediocre actual record (8-6 so far). The Big East is a -1 compared to seeds but that's still pretty impressive with how many games they were expected to win by their great seeds. Two final 4 teams is also impressive. If they can get 1-2 wins in the Final 4 it will be a great tournament for them. The Big 12 has also had a very solid tournament posting I believe a 0 number so far with 1 team still left who can add onto that. The only thing that will save the ACC is a North Carolina title. They are at -5 right now which is just a miserable effort. They are also 0-3 combined against the Big East and Big 10. The Pac 10 was subpar and the SEC was as expected terrible.

I believe Wood ended up being in higher leverage situations overall but that's because Lou put Marmol into a bunch of 5-7 run games where he didn't need to be in. If he avoids more of those innings this year, his leverage average would go way up.

Apparently Marmol, Heilman, and Cotts all threw in the minor league game on Friday, so Marmol did get his back to back in. I still don't know why Lou wouldn't want to see him personally if he supposedly is basing part of his decision on it.

AT&T does contract with one of the satellite companies (although I believe it is now DirectTV but it was Dish for quite a while). However, U-verse is a completely different product. It's not satellite at all. It uses an Internet Protocol service to send the information. You have no dish and it sometimes runs with the same coax cable that your cable company would use but it also might use Cat 5 cable to run the information. Until it hits your neighborhood, the information runs on much better fiber. As for the original question, U-verse does not carry the MLB network right now. Hopefully they'll get it soon as it is really sad that the cable companies have it and Uverse doesn't. I personally am willing to trade it for being able to have CSN and getting 70 more Cubs games a year than I was with cable because of what market I'm in. I do know that's not the case for most people though.

If I felt he could cover the positions the Cubs need, then I would be pretty happy with him. But he hasn't played a game at third since he was 27 and a game at second since he was 28. That was a long time ago and at 35 years old I don't really think he can do anything but play the positions that the Cubs already have covered with better players (1B and LF). So I would have to pass on him.

Marmol was supposed to pitch today to complete his second half of back to back outings. Was there an explanation of why he didn't? If there wasn't, that seems to be very good news for Gregg in the closer race as Lou is still supposed to announce the winner on Sunday.

Mark_R and Flames24Rulz have been PM'd.

Cro Magnon has been PM'd for the next pick.

He was always the most likely of the possible transfers. He has talent, but he always struck me as being more happy as a possible star in a more wide open system. He was always going to be an energy guy for IU that played a lot in some games and not at all in others. I wish him well. He apparently was a very hard worker. The only thing I'm worried about is that it hurts IU's shaky APR even further, but if that's the only point lost from this entire year (or maybe 1 more if somebody else transfers) it won't be too bad.

Really depends on what you mean by regular basis, but, then again, I don't see how what you're saying contradicts anything that I said. If you're trying to suggest that he was averaging anywhere near 95, you're way off base. Yeah, I looked at the graphs and according to those, Harden threw at least 5 95+ pitches only once in a Cub uniform. He did lose velocity towards the end of the year though. When he came to the Cubs he was averaging 92-93 on his fastball and touching 95-97 3-4 times a game. By the last month of the season (other than on 9/18 where he seemed to be pushing what he had left) his average fastball was down around 89-90 and frequently his best recorded fastball of the day was at 93-94.

Cubs statistics have Hill throwing out 5 out of 7 baserunners this spring while Bako has thrown out 3 of 7.

I think he's hit really well in the spring. I haven't been paying much attention. Koyie Hill has had a very good spring but the problem for him is that Bako's resurgence the last couple days means that he's right on his heels: Hill-39 AB's, .385/.429/.538 Bako-31 AB's, .355/.394/.516 They really have a chance to pick either one of them but Hill's claim on the job has greatly diminished over the last few days.

Oh no. I'm happy that you brought it up. Fox is an interesting case. As for the last question, it's one of those dilemmas for the organization. They don't want to really use him but they haven't really had the 40 man crunch to need to take him off that roster either. Plus in an emergency he's better than some of their other minor league options. Unless they get some talent for him they're unwilling to lose him. So he languishes in the minors until they either give him another chance or they find a taker for him. BTW, this is what Bruce Miles had to say on the subject just 3 days ago on his blog: Here's the link on that: http://blogs.dailyherald.com/node/1676

I love hearing that... I hope its true about the World Series thing. i think they're being awfully generous, unless they have a different definition of "down the line" and "foreseeable future" than i do. i think this needs to be the year. I tend to agree...our hitting core is actually pretty old. Lee will turn 34 this year and already might be slipping. Aramis is turning 31 this year, Soriano is 33, Fukudome is 32, Bradley is about to turn 31. It's unfortunate that the steroid era was the real reason that players were still peaking at age 35+. 2-3 years ago, I'd look at a 31 year old ARam and think he has 5 more years left at his numbers...now I have to be safe and say maybe 3 more years. That's the thing with being a large market team though..they are very hard to evaluate past 2 years. Yes, Lee is almost certainly declining (although he might have a slight bounce back this year) and Ramirez will be soon. At the same time, it's certainly possible that both those players are off the Cubs payroll in 2 years. Add in Lilly and that's 35 million dollars off of the payroll for 3 spots. If they can find one homegrown cheap player to fill 1 of the spots, they'll have plenty of money to sign 2 good to great players for the other spots without even increasing payroll. Teams at the Cubs payroll level just don't stay down very long unless they give out several horrible contracts. When you start having 30-40 million dollars of dead money you can have major issues, but the Cubs really don't have that. So this Cubs team probably has a very small window (1 or 2 years). But the Cubs have the payroll to be able to shift their focus of the team really quickly without having more than 1 mediocre season. Then if you get even decent contributions out of players like Vitters and Samardzija it just makes that process a whole lot easier. I just don't see the Cubs huge future problems unless the payroll goes way down or unless the Cubs have a couple spectacular failures in free agency. Getting contributions from their farm system would give them even more margin for error and allow them to have a couple bad failures in free agency and still be very good.

gathright will be to micah hoffpauir this year what ronny cedeno was to daryl ward last year. A guy who plays a different position and has little connection to him? I think he's saying that Gathright's use will be as a defensive replacement for Hoffpauir when he starts just as Cedeno frequently came off the bench as the pinch-runner for Ward. It's not an airtight comparison (as Cedeno did get a decent number of at-bats last year so that wasn't a majority of his role as it likely will be for Gathright) but it is a similar sort of relationship. The weaknesses of the 2nd players mentioned add value to the otherwise limited 1st players mentioned. close. i think that gathright will pinch run for hoffpauir when hoff pinch hits and gets on base, just as cedeno so frequently did for ward last year. I guess I could see that as well although Hoffpauir runs a decent bit better than Ward did. It will probably be much more situational while with Ward it was almost automatic that he'd be coming out for somebody (sometimes Cedeno, sometimes Marquis, sometimes another player).

gathright will be to micah hoffpauir this year what ronny cedeno was to daryl ward last year. A guy who plays a different position and has little connection to him? I think he's saying that Gathright's use will be as a defensive replacement for Hoffpauir when he starts just as Cedeno frequently came off the bench as the pinch-runner for Ward. It's not an airtight comparison (as Cedeno did get a decent number of at-bats last year so that wasn't a majority of his role as it likely will be for Gathright) but it is a similar sort of relationship. The weaknesses of the 2nd players mentioned add value to the otherwise limited 1st players mentioned.

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Take Lincecum if he's available :) He was a keeper. I ended up with Arod and Holliday. Pretty happy w/ my team actually. C- V Martinez 1B- A Gonzalez 2B- Derosa SS- Drew 3B- Arod/Cantu til ARod comes back OF- BJ Upton (keeper) OF- Holliday OF- Bradley U- Ortiz SP- Halladay (keeper), Lester, Dempster, J Johnson, J Sanchez RP- Marmol, Devine. Figure when Arod comes back, I'll try to trade Papi for a 2B and SP and play Cantu at U. why would Hanley, Pujols, Reyes, Wright, Sizemore, not have been kept? Because it's a rule of their league that the 1st 3 rounds from the previous year cannot be kept.