CubColtPacer

You notice he never goes to point out what schools like St. Augustine or Texas Southern did. Basically they were paying some players and using ineligible people in competition. One of the schools was arranging for fake grades to be given to athletes while the other one covered up some of the evidence. Their crimes were absolutely more intentional and on an order of magnitude quite a bit above what IU did. BTW, even though St. Augustine did all that, they didn't receive a punishment that was much harsher than IU's. They had to vacate wins when they used ineligible players (of course) and they had reductions in scholarships in the sports where they were cheating along with their probation. He makes good points with the destruction of the team, although IU could argue that they could have kept Sampson and had a very good team this year. Most of those dismissals for team rules wouldn't have happened if Sampson had still been the coach. Usually the NCAA has to give incentive for the school to clean out those type of students from a particular program, but in this case IU had already dismissed all of them. And BTW-IU did not hire a coach that had committed major violations. They were classified as minor violations, and would have been again except he violated the terms of his sanctions. The refusal to follow sanctions became the major violation. There is some inequality in college football/basketball between big schools and small schools (things like the USC situation are a great example of something that would have already not been tolerated at smaller schools). I agree somewhat with his overall point (and he even acknowledges that IU didn't necessarily deserve more sanctions). It's just the way he wrote it that doesn't hold up to scrutiny, which is ironic because that's exactly what he accuses the committee of.

Yeah, my heart's just oozing with sympathy for the guy. Especially considering Hendry was the only GM crazy enough to offer him a 3/$12MM deal at a time when everyone thought it was ridiculous. DeRosa should love Jim Hendry. everyone on this board thought it was ridiculous. i didn't see any reports suggesting that other teams saw the contract and thought "oh man what the hell are the cubs doing?" In fact, I remember that the buzz at the time was that the Phillies were strongly considering making DeRosa their starting third baseman after 2006 and were reportedly offering him 2 years for 8 or 9 million. When DeRosa took the 3 year deal with the Cubs instead, the Phillies went out and immediately went to their backup plan of Wes Helms. Their new GM might have been the one in that organization who was pushing for DeRosa at the time, and so it isn't much of a surprise that they would show great interest in him again.

I hate doing MLPeel's job. He was much better at it than I. If we could get CubColtPacer to post here more often, I would bequeth that responsibility onto him. :thumbsup: Someone thinks I don't post enough..I'm glad I have it in writing or else my wife would never believe it :grin: And you're doing just fine with the job :D. Both you and Tim were correct. That deadline was November 20th to protect players for the Rule 5 draft. BTW, the Padres roster is at 37, so they have some wiggle room to add as they see fit. As for the person earlier on the page who asked about Towers, he's a well respected GM who is willing to take risks in trades. Things might not work out between the Padres and the Cubs, but it won't be because Towers refused to make up his mind or keeps changing what he wants.

Chalk me up as one person who would feel that DeRosa would be the straw that broke the camel's back on this one if he were included as mostly an addition and not a substitution. First, let's assume DeRo is an addition. We're sending him to Philly for Happ, Pie to Baltimore for Olsen. We're packaging those with Vitters and Marshall to San Diego. I personally don't believe that will ever happen, but for the sake of the discussion let's assume the reports are correct and that is around the deal being discussed. Let's look at 3 things-what that deal would do for the Cubs in the regular season, what it would do for them in the postseason, and what it would do for them post 2009. In the regular season, the pros of getting Peavy would be: upgrade from Jason Marquis. This is a likely 1.5 point or so of ERA upgrade over 200 innings. That is a huge upgrade. The cons of doing the deal would be: loss of a 5th starter. A 5th starter with Harden and Z in the rotation probably would make around 10 starts next year. Marshall is around a 4.1 ERA as a starter over the last 2 years. Gaudin is probably around a 4.5 or 4.6 type of starter in Wrigley Field. So that's a .4 decrease in ERA over 10 starts or approximately 60 innings. Marshall would also likely pitch around 25 innings out of the bullpen, and because of favorable matchups he can probably pitch a 3.5 or 3.6 out of the pen (he's a career 3.03 out of the pen in less than 30 innings). The Cubs would probably have Kevin Hart fill that spot who would likely give around a 5 ERA. So that's a 1.4 ERA loss over 30 innings, only half of which are in any kind of leverage situation. A platoon at 2B can probably duplicate DeRosa's production. Therefore the loss at 2B is going to come in 3 ways: 1) Much easier to put in a reliever to shut down either Fontenot/right handed platoon partner in the 6th or 7th. It's typically too early for the Cubs to substitute the other one in (because what happens in the next at-bat). So there will be more wasted at-bats in a platoon situation. 2) Flexibility. First, the Cubs will have to sign a player who can backup both 3B and the corner OF positions (or let Cedeno play 3B when Aramis isn't playing, which isn't a great option). Before, an injury to LF, RF, 3B, or 2B made Fontenot get more at-bats. Now, those at-bats will have to go to whoever is the backup at that position, and it is a lot harder to get 3 quality backups than just 1. Plus, it's much easier to ride hot hands when you have a starter quality versatile player who can effectively bench whoever is in a slump. 3) Obviously the simple loss to the bench in pinch-hitting situations from Fontenot to whoever will be on the bench. Pie unless he hits his potential upside is not a huge loss to the team as a role player. My feeling the Cubs could find someone to fill that particular role on the team. So that's the regular season impact of Peavy coming. Let's look at the postseason impact next: Pros: Peavy is still a big upgrade over the worse pitcher of Dempster/Lilly. Not as much as in the regular season with Marquis, but still a big upgrade. Cons: 1 and 3 from the 2B situation above. Neither one is a huge con though. Now, let's look after 2009 Pros: Peavy's contract accelerates, but he's still a great pitcher. Cons: Cubs lose their best trade chip in Vitters. No 2 draft picks from DeRosa leaving. Harden is likely gone. The Cubs aren't likely to pay another huge contract to a starter with how much money will be in the rotation in 2010. Peavy coming here makes it very likely that 2009 is Harden's last as a Cub. This will hopefully be offset slightly by getting picks from him leaving. No potential cheap starter in Marshall or potential upside of Pie being a cheap OF. I think Peavy is potentially worth the value we would be giving up to get him. However, the fact that we have 4 other capable starters makes me very wary about trading a huge positional piece that offers easy depth along with the best pitching depth the Cubs have. The ideal team might be better with Peavy, but 1 or 2 injuries from any of 8-10 people and the Cubs would have been better off the other way. If DeRosa is out of the deal, then the loss of the pitching depth and trade chips are offset by Peavy being a huge boost to that pitching staff and it becomes a good trade. If DeRosa is in the trade, then any injury will really hurt the offense, as opposed to just hurting it a little bit by being able to plug Fontenot in at 2B and DeRosa almost anywhere in the field. Obviously, Peavy is still an amazing pitcher, so it really doesn't have much capability of being a terrible deal. A talent like that eases a lot of pain. But I think DeRosa being added into the deal should make them say no. It will be a little different if DeRosa being added makes Marshall or Vitters disappear from the deal though.

Hey Lou! Ibanez will cost more in annual salary AND draft pick compensation. It's time for you to like Milton Bradley now. Lou's past his prime. I'm guessing he's not interested in fighting his own players anymore. Besides, he probably likes players that will actually play more than 60-70 games a year. Lou probably doesn't care about the farm system, since he won't be around long enough to see just how barren it will be when the Cubs forfeit 2 picks in the June Amateur Draft. Luckily, Lou isn't the one making the decisions. A little bit of a nitpick..the Cubs only give up 1 pick, not 2. But I do agree that is one factor that should push Ibanez to the back of the pack considering the other two won't cost any compensation.

Does UZR have questions with first base defense? I noticed you hadn't posted Lee so I looked him up. According to UZR, Lee had his best defensive season of his career last year, and it wasn't even close. Overall, he's in the negative for his career. Are there particular positions that it is supposed to be better at than others? I know that is the case for some defensive rating systems.

I think the blowout is good for Texas although I disagreed slightly with your analysis earlier this week. I think most voters were going to cave and move Oklahoma ahead of Texas when they became B12 champions. But with the blowout, that also means that Oklahoma is going to pick up a lot of the #1 votes away from Florida. The big key is if the voters penalize Texas for not playing in the conference championship game and ranking them as a collective group behind Florida or if a decent number rank them #2.

The Cubs did offer arbitration to both Pierre and Kendall. In both those situations, they signed before the arbitration deadline. Since they were already under contract with another club, there was no risk for the Cubs, and so they were able to offer arbitration and get the picks.

The 5 most comparable teams with the Cubs over the last 6 years? Probably the Mets, Angels, White Sox, Dodgers, and Mariners. They've all had similar payrolls (most have actually been higher than the Cubs, but they are pretty similar), most are in big markets, and none of them are in the tough AL East. Their results? Mets: 494-478, postseason appearances: 1 Angels: 547-425, postseason appearances: 4 White Sox: 519-454, postseason appearances: 2, titles: 1 Dodgers: 503-469, postseason appearances: 3 Mariners: 452-520, postseason appearances: 0 Cubs: 504-468, postseason appearances: 3 Not too much shocking here. The Angels have great leadership and got a little lucky to have their superstar come to them in a down year on the market. The Mariners have terrible management and have consistently spent 10-12 million dollars on mediocre players. Everybody else is up and down. Payroll has nearly doubled, although the biggest jump came from 2008 to 2009 and we don't know the results of that season yet. Payroll expanding has been a huge help to Hendry, and there is no denying that. As for what Hendry had when he started? He had young pitching and a highly rated farm system. His offense was incredibly old. He had 5 starters 31 and older (including 3 35 and over), and the 3 starters under 30? Mark Bellhorn, Alex Gonzalez, and Corey Patterson. Plus there wasn't much help coming for the offense in the farm system. The offense had to be completely rebuilt. The pitching that was already stocked was a big help to Hendry in 03 and 04, and then he's mostly had to rebuild that since then. There's exactly 1 pitcher left that was even to AA when Hendry took over. I will agree with you on most of this. The biggest issue is that Hendry is not very creative in how he goes about his GM duties. He has a plan, it involves certain types of players, and he doesn't seem to have a lot of backup plans available. What saves Hendry is that he still knows how to pick players better than most GM's out there. The production he got out of the free agent market in 06 compared to what the rest of the league managed to do is remarkable to look at. He also typically knows what prospects to trade away. This skill has helped him overcome his problems in figuring out true free agent value/trade value of players. As for Epstein, it's hard to judge. He inherited a team with a big payroll and caught some breaks early. Can you imagine how we might view his GM tenure differently if somebody had picked up Manny Ramirez when the Red Sox were ready to let him go for nothing in 03? Even with that said, his credentials speak for themselves, and he has rebuilt his team pretty nicely while making some mistakes. I would still definitely rather have Epstein than Hendry, but that doesn't mean Hendry isn't a good GM. Epstein has just been one of the best in the league. BTW, when did most teams in the NL Central become small market teams? The Astros and Cardinals cannot keep up with the Cubs recent spending, but they are certainly not small market teams. The Brewers and Reds are no Marlins or Rays, but they definitely could be classified small market, and the Pirates are absolutely in that category. But 1 big market and 2 more decent markets is still pretty much the same as most divisions outside the AL East.

this....you NEVER take points off the board...it was a stupid call at what turned out to be a critical part of the game. the coaching this year has been horrible. This wasn't taking points off the board. Taking points off the board is accepting a penalty on a made field goal. This is going for it on 4th down from the 1, which teams do all the time, and should do all the time. To pretend that you should NEVER eschew the field goal for a potential TD is absurd. I definitely agree with you here Jersey. I almost always love going for it from the 1 (unless you desperately need a field goal). First off, you have a pretty good shot of getting it. Even if you don't, the odds of the other team picking up even 1 first down from the 1 is extremely low (the area of the field severely limits the types of plays that can be run). So most of the time, you're going to get the ball back around the 50 yard line anyway, which gives you a great shot of kicking a field goal on the next drive. So you're gambling on 4 extra points, but most of the time you have the field goal in your pocket anyway as an insurance policy. It's actually statistically one of the easiest decisions a football coach can make. Kicking a field goal in that spot most of the time severely decreases your chances of winning.

If Lance Moore is still available in your league, you have to pick him up. He's scored at least 1 TD in each of his last 5 games. It's shocking that nobody has picked him up yet. That doesn't mean he's an automatic bet to produce, but I certainly like him better than Edwards.

As someone mentioned the Todd Walker situation is not really applicable to Wood. Walker was cut and the Padres had to pay only 1/6 of the salary, but part of the deal was that the Padres had to show a reasonable argument showing that Walker was not better than the players they decided to keep. The fact that he was only average the year before and had really struggled in Spring Training (every middle infielder played better than him in ST) made it a hard grievance for the union to win, and so they chose not to fight. With Wood, the Cubs would have to show that all 7 relievers were kept instead of him for a reason other than the money. That would be nearly impossible. I also believe that Wood would get 10+ in arbitration. The fact that he made 8 million or so last year hurts the Cubs case for him to not get a substantial raise. Looking at comparable closer salaries hurts the Cubs. Part of it would depend on how the market comes out for K-Rod and Fuentes, but I think he would have gotten a lot of money. With that said, I still think this was a mistake. I think there are valid reasons for both sides of the argument, but I find the risk of offering arbitration to be a much stronger case. The Cubs could really use those draft picks. I would only change my mind if it came out that the budget was both extremely tight and the medical reports were iffy on him. It will also be hard to judge the market for Wood, as he just became more desirable to any team without the pick attached. He might receive an offer that he otherwise wouldn't have.

Yes, they sometimes do. I don't understand how you are trying to incorporate the players association into this argument. Jer: I recall posts in other NSBB threads over the years suggesting that the players asso/union has some level of influence when it comes to contracts, the argument being that it is not good for ALL players for one to accept a deal that is substantially lower than another being offered. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm only saying I've never heard of a player accepting a one year deal for $8 mil over a deal for 3-4 years at $6, 7, or $8 mil per year as has been suggested in this thread. Can you provide an example of a player that did something like that? Randy Wolf signed a 1 year, 8 million dollar deal with the Dodgers a couple of years back (with a team option for a 2nd year) when there were multiple teams offering him 3/22-24 in that crazy starting pitching offseason. There are others, but they are decently rare.

I'm only going by what I've heard from people. But can you deny that the last two weeks or so Kiffin was practicially daring Davis to fire him? Having Sabastian kick a 70 yard field goal, releasing DeAngelo Hall, not being including in the I believe the defensively side of the ball. I'm not saying it's all Kiffin's fault, but Lane didn't necessarily handle it the best way. Kiffin wasn't involved with the release of Hall. That happened a couple weeks after he was fired. As for the field goal, it wasn't the best clock management to bleed it down to 1 second before half. Janikowski has kicked kicks that have been long enough to make it from even 76 though occasionally (I seem to remember him hitting the upright near the top of it from 60). It was likely a bad decision, but not one so bad to just think he was begging to get fired.

Well, I guess this is the ultimate extension of letting the other guys beat you. Stephen Curry was held scoreless last night as two defenders followed him around the court, even if he didn't have the ball. So Curry just stood in the corner with his 2 defenders and let his team play 4 on 3 on every offensive possession: http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/recap?gid=200811250156&prov=ap

are you upset ball state is not going to a bcs bowl? if i were you i'd be happy. Several million dollars plus that huge exposure would do a lot more for Ball State's football program than any win in a lesser bowl game. They could really use the money up there. Plus, there are probably 3 other teams who are no better than they are in the BCS (Oregon State, ACC Winner, Big East winner) so if they somehow got matched up with one of the last two they'd have a pretty good shot of winning that game. Let's just put it this way. Ball State can go to the Motor City Bowl and play bad teams a lot. There aren't a lot of chances to get the huge exposure of a BCS bowl. Even if the worst case scenario happened and they simply got destroyed, it would still be better for their program than the alternative. I doubt the difference in exposure is all that meaningful. And don't they have to split that money? They do have to split the money with the other small conferences and their own conference. But Ball State would still receive somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4 million of the 17-18 total that is paid out. Going to a minor BCS bowl probably will have them earn half a million or less. That's a huge difference for a school that's football program makes more what other schools basketball programs do. As for exposure, it's hard to say for sure what kind of positive impact it has on recruiting and other areas. Anecdotal evidence would say that it does, but most of the time that comes from coaches and administrators that are predisposed to say that. There is no doubt that many more Americans would watch Ball State in a BCS game though if they play in Detroit on the day after Christmas.

are you upset ball state is not going to a bcs bowl? if i were you i'd be happy. Several million dollars plus that huge exposure would do a lot more for Ball State's football program than any win in a lesser bowl game. They could really use the money up there. Plus, there are probably 3 other teams who are no better than they are in the BCS (Oregon State, ACC Winner, Big East winner) so if they somehow got matched up with one of the last two they'd have a pretty good shot of winning that game. Let's just put it this way. Ball State can go to the Motor City Bowl and play bad teams a lot. There aren't a lot of chances to get the huge exposure of a BCS bowl. Even if the worst case scenario happened and they simply got destroyed, it would still be better for their program than the alternative.

Nobody keeps numbers based on who is defined as the #1, etc..because on most teams, those definitions are pretty grey and can change throughout the season. However, if you want to talk about what a typical team gets out of their best performance pitcher that year, what they get out of their 2nd best performance pitcher, etc. there is that available, although the latest one I've found is a couple of years old. Here is the raw data: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 3.60 4.14 4.58 5.10 6.24 But as the article explains, that can be misleading because of injuries. So he redid it based on how the top 6 starters to begin the year fared and came up with this as the average numbers: ERA GS IP #1 Starter 3.91 28.5 181.2 #2 Starter 4.61 26.6 165.7 #3 Starter 4.74 27.6 167.5 #4 Starter 4.82 20.8 123.4 #5 Starter 4.96 20.6 126.8 #6 Starter 4.77 15.5 95.1 That makes a lot more sense. As you can tell, pitching ERA's have inflated more than people would like to believe most of the time (which is why people are frequently surprised when Cubs rotations are near the top of the league every year even as they're calling the rotation a problem). At the same time, there's no way a #5 starter can maintain an over 6 ERA and keep his job, so the 4.96 number is a much more logical average. It's still not a foolproof way to look at rotations, but it will get you in the ballpark. http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/another-look-at-starting-rotations/

The NFL would have to redo their entire scheduling philosophy to redo the Super Bowl. Any random AFC team against an NFC team will happen only once every 4 years, so that particular matchup wouldn't be likely to happen unless it happens to hit one of those years. The NFL is in a little bit of a quandary here. As much as people complain about the Lions on Thanksgiving, it also is good business for the NFL to put bad games on Thanksgiving. Everybody is already watching anyway, so there is very little incentive to waste one of your best games that could get great ratings at a less desirable time slot.

Oklahoma got essentially the same thing. One less year of probation for Oklahoma, but otherwise almost exactly the same. Oklahoma and IU's situations were close to the same. IU gets hit with extra for hiring Sampson, but the committee found that Oklahoma got quite a bit of benefits from the phone calls (several players went to Oklahoma from all those extra calls, plus there were a lot more calls than at IU) while IU ended up getting almost no benefit from the cheating. I would have been fine with IU getting monetarily punished. They have already paid millions for this mistake, but I'm always in favor of a school getting punished with their pocketbooks, because that actually hits the people who authorized the mistake. Yeah, the APR thing is silly. IU took 2 additional scholarship reductions this year as a preemptive move with the APR. So they're down 3 scholarships this year, but they weren't that likely to need them.

You don't think Indiana got hit hard? well, technically they hit themselves with the self-imposed restrictions on recruiting and scholarships. the ncaa basically said that was good enough (plus 3 years probation). i believe those restrictions are still in effect on Crean until next summer or something. The self-imposed scholarship thing was a joke. Oh you've got 13 scholarships to fill in one year and you're only going to allow yourself to fill 12? IU's self-imposed restrictions were worthless. Those restrictions were put on the team when that scholarship was a major loss as were the recruiting restrictions. The fact that the team blew up after that, which made the scholarship issue a much smaller deal because they couldn't possibly fill them, shouldn't take away from that fact. The joke was that the NCAA rules allowed IU to take the APR penalty in advance this year, but the scholarship restriction in November was a huge deal. There's very little the NCAA could do here. The facts of the case were that the school has two things wrong. The fact that they hired him, and the fact that they got a small benefit from the illegal phone calls. In contrast, the school did many things right. Without the school self-reporting, none of this would have happened. Then the school imposed restrictions, and they did buy Sampson out (although credit for this is lessened significantly because they didn't do it immediately). Their compliance standards were actually found to be stricter than most schools, which was partially what enabled them to find the problem in the first place. If you put something like a postseason ban on IU, then you have no room to go up in punishment when a school pays players or does many other worse things than the violations they were found to be guilty of. You also have no incentive for imposing strict compliance standards, because if IU had been more lax in their compliance this isn't an issue at all. There's only so many penalties that the NCAA can give out especially major penalties. You have to save the worst of them for the worst offenders, and the facts of the case would indicate that is not IU.

I absolutely would rather have Blanco up there against a left-hander than Fontenot or Edmonds. 3 year splits against left-handers for each: Fontenot: .247/.305/.370 Edmonds: .169/.233/.293 Blanco: .287/.321/.420 Other than 2007 when he was playing with a major injury, Blanco has been better than a .700 OPS against left-handers every year since 2004. He had a .759 OPS against them in 2005, an .870 in 06, and .771 last year. The danger is that you lose Edmond's superior bat for the rest of the game. But if you're in the 8th or 9th facing a left-hander, Blanco is a much better option for that at-bat.

Isn't their draft spot safe due to finishing in the bottom half of the league (top 15 in the draft)? It really doesn't matter to them, except for Minny's comp pick pushing SF's picks down one spot. Being in the top 15 of the draft just means that the Giants will lose their 2nd round pick for Renteria instead of losing their 1st.

It was addressed on the previous page. The deadline is Dec. 1. Actually, that's a slightly different question. The Cubs have until December 1st to offer arbitration. If the Cubs do offer it, Wood has until December 7th to accept it.

They do have a deadline..December 1st is the last day the Cubs can offer arbitration to Wood.