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I'm almost glad Izturis swings at teh first pitch every time. Makes him go away faster HEY. If it weren't for him we'd be losing 1-0, so no bashing Izzy today. All of his at-bats have been pretty patient-he walked his first time, then singled on a 3-1 count his second time, then took two strikes before getting out on the third pitch the third time.

I may have to put him on my HACKING MASS team instead of Sean Casey. He platoons with Scott Hatteberg doesn't he?? Yeah, that's what I heard on Monday that those two are a platoon.

Sorry about the wait everyone-I just got in to Indiana 10-15 minutes ago. When considering my pick, I narrowed it down to LB, DT, and WR. None of the other positions need a possible 1st round pick. Of those, LB is out-the Colts do not like to draft a linebacker anywhere near that high unless he is a very special talent, and there is none on the board. They like to promote from within-expect them to draft a linebacker on the 2nd day again. I thought hard about WR, but I just couldn't do it. Meachem would have been the pick, but with him off the board none of the picks made enough sense. Rice and Jarrett do not fit in the Colts offense well at all, and Anthony Gonzalez and Steve Smith are much better fits but are a little too much of a reach to take a receiver here. Instead Polian finally decides to take a position of need-DT. I considered 2 people here, but the person I selected is: Colts select: DT Demarcus Tyler, NC State Tyler is a 1 gap DT that should give the Colts size while not giving up their penetrating into the backfield style that the Colts like to play. He is continuing to improve. This is a little bit of a surprise to see Tyler this high, but the Colts have never had the same type of player rankings as other teams-this simply continues it.

Very solid pick in my opinion. I never understood the "best player available" strategy. I mean, even if Adrian Peterson is still on the board at 14, would it really make sense for Carolina to pick him, already having Foster and Williams? You can always spin off the pick to someone who wants AD at that spot - it's not like there would be a shortage of teams to pick from. There has to be a limit to the BPA strategy, and you're right that you cannot pick BPA in football as much as some of the other sports. With so many football picks being busts though, if you have a player who you rate much higher than anybody else on your board, it makes sense to take him-rosters fluctuate so much that you usually can find a spot for them to play. That isn't the case at QB, OT if both your tackles are secure, and S if you have two great safeties, but every other position I think you can work players in somewhere. Now, if two players are similar, you always want to have need be the deciding factor on anything that is anywhere near a close call. Of course-I'm biased because the Colts have taken two offensive guys in the first round in the last 6 years, and have been criticized for it badly because they didn't draft for the obvious need on their defense-those two were Reggie Wayne and Dallas Clark, who were not needed at the time but now are integral parts of the team.

Well, in fairness-he's a fan of their rival. It's a lot easier to shake off one baseball loss than to hear your rival talk all the next year about their 3 titles in just over a year.

Yeah, I'm looking at him. I also was considering Griffin too, jerk. You don't want him-you really don't want him :D To let everyone know, I'm driving out of state in the morning-I will be in to a computer again, but I will be without any access for several hours. I was hoping my pick would come by tonight, but if my pick does not come up in the next 2-3 hours then I'll pick as soon as I can (tomorrow afternoon-early evening) Edit: If it's the particular receiver I'm thinking of anyway-which my guess is that it is, but I realized that there could be 2-3 different receivers that would fit in the Chargers better than this receiver, and so now I'm not sure.

I guess I just don't understand the argument very well. There are certainly more inexpensive entertainment options out there. They are not in the same class though because of two things 1) In entertainment, you have to pay a premium to see something live, to actually be there when it happens 2) These are the best at their profession When you take those two into account, and compare MLB to other top of the line parts of other entertainment options such as concerts, plays, opera, symphonies, and other sports, what do you get? Baseball is easily the most inexpensive option among all those things. So I just don't understand the argument-if you want to see the best live, you'll have to pay for it-and baseball has done a better job of keeping its prices down than a lot of other similar options.

You don't see a problem when it costs nearly $300.00 for a middle income family of 4 to go to a single baseball game (done the right way, of course)? To each their own, I suppose. Can you tell me how a family of 4 would spend $300 to go to a single baseball game? I'm sure it's possible, but it's not close to the average of what a family would spend.

This is *almost* right, I think. You can have different lineups every day. Each day's lineup contributes to your total score for the week, and whoever does best overall with total score in each category gets the "win" at the end of the week. Does that help? So are you saying that the "BN" spot does not contribute even if they play a game that day? So for example I have a util 2B guy playing tonite but my regular 2B is not playing, should I but the util 2B guy in to get some extra points? Yes-your guys are on the bench are partly there to handle the off days of your regular players. If your regular is not going to play, then put your bench guy in his place, and then put the regular back in for tomorrow's games. Points from guys who are on the bench the day they play do not count.

I guess it's nice that Angelo is being selective but I doubt we'll see a better offer than that. I'm dissapointed. briggs is a 2-time all-pro selection after 4 years in the league. a sure-thing. letting the redskins get away with swapping picks would be absolutely criminal. Briggs is as good as gone. Letting him walk and getting nothing in return would be criminal. briggs isn't in any kind of position to be dictating what the bears do. the seahawks went through this for a couple of years with walter jones. no one has ever held out after being tagged. Sean Gilbert is one example of a player who held out the entire year after being franchised. More and more players have also shown they are willing to hold out until week 10-Joey Galloway held out until week 10, Keenan Mcardell was at week 8 or 9 when he was traded, and the Patriots traded Branch after week 1 last year when it became apparent he wasn't coming back are all examples in the last few years of a player holding out for a long, long time. Is there a decent possibility that Briggs comes back? Sure-but there is also a decent possibility that he wouldn't come back until week 10 either following the examples of these other players. but hadn't gilbert been franchised before that? i'm not sure and don't know much about it, so i could be wrong. nonetheless, it's still a mistake to let one player run a team. let him hold out if he wants, i still doubt that he would sacrifice one of his prime years just to prove a point. anyway, i know that you don't want him to come back, the bears are a pretty good team with him, capable of challenging for a superbowl. Yup-the Bears are a very good team with him-definitely capable of winning a Superbowl and definitely the best team in the NFC. Still, if I wanted the best thing for the Colts, I would want the Bears to sign Briggs to a huge deal because I believe that would be a huge misallocation of resources. When I talk in this thread, I try to never go with that perspective, and instead always think of what's best for the Bears. Besides, I'm not sure Briggs feels that he would be wasting a season. If he doesn't force a trade, he still can play 6 games and make millions. As far as setting an example to show that the team is bigger than the player, I'm not sure how well that works in today's culture. It might set a precedent for 2-3 years, but is that precedent for 2-3 years worth more than he could get in trade? I don't think so, but maybe it is.

I guess it's nice that Angelo is being selective but I doubt we'll see a better offer than that. I'm dissapointed. briggs is a 2-time all-pro selection after 4 years in the league. a sure-thing. letting the redskins get away with swapping picks would be absolutely criminal. Briggs is as good as gone. Letting him walk and getting nothing in return would be criminal. briggs isn't in any kind of position to be dictating what the bears do. the seahawks went through this for a couple of years with walter jones. no one has ever held out after being tagged. Sean Gilbert is one example of a player who held out the entire year after being franchised. More and more players have also shown they are willing to hold out until week 10-Joey Galloway held out until week 10, Keenan Mcardell was at week 8 or 9 when he was traded, and the Patriots traded Branch after week 1 last year when it became apparent he wasn't coming back are all examples in the last few years of a player holding out for a long, long time. Is there a decent possibility that Briggs comes back? Sure-but there is also a decent possibility that he wouldn't come back until week 10 either following the examples of these other players.

Yeah, after looking at those batter/pitcher matchups I'm not too enthusiastic either. Let's hope they can drive up Arroyo's pitch count and get him out early.

Anyone who buys the Cubs will be A) A Cubs fan B) Someone who wants the Cubs because they are profitable No prospective owner will care whether Soriano's OBP slips. If anything, he is a benefit because he is one of the most marketable, popular players in the league and will most likely remain so for the next few years. Soriano's popularity will disappear very quickly if he can't hack it in CF and puts up an OPS slightly above .800, as he did in TX for the 2 years before 2006. Then he'll be a barely above average corner OF who's owed another $126 mil. That's not something a buyer would consider attractive. Soriano even if he regresses will likely be a 30/30 player (he has only missed once on each of those in the last 5 years, and with Lou running the team, he'll have many more chances to run the bases than in Texas, and he'll likely get enough at-bats from the leadoff spot to have 30 home runs). Soriano would be very overrated if he regresses like that and wouldn't be a great asset to help the team win, but his home runs and steals would make him very popular with the fans.

But the $300 million in debt is spread over many years. The fact remains that our payroll is very reasonable for a big market team. Why would this be bad? If people are willing to spend upwards of $600 - 1 billion, I hardly think a 100-110 million dollar payroll would matter... 100-110 mil. is still a very big payroll for an MLB team, and really it won't be enough to to field a contender in 2008 and especially 2009, assuming Z eventually gets signed. It'll take at least $125M to make a repectable attempt at contention in 2009, and very likely a good deal more than $125M. If I'm a prospective buyer that's the type of crap that would make me walk the asking price down, not up. I don't agree at all that it is likely that it would cost a good deal more than 125 million to contend in 2009. Adding in 17 million for Z, if no contracts are jettisoned that is 89 million for Soriano, Lee, Ramirez, Lilly, Marquis, DeRosa, and Z with the .3 buyout of Blanco's contract. So that is a lineup of: C-? 1B-Lee 2B-DeRosa SS-? 3B-Ramirez LF-? CF-? RF-Soriano P-Z P-Lilly P-Marquis P-? P-? Bullpen-none Ok, let's start filling in some of the blanks. Hill should have one of the starting pitcher slots, and hopefully Murton and Pie will take the two outfield slots. Those are all at least somewhat cheap players-I think everybody in that group that I mentioned would not be free agents until at least after 2010, so none of them will even be in their last arbitration year. The other starting pitcher slot will also likely be taken by a cheap player, whoever that is by that point (the Cubs have enough of them to project at least one will make it there). So that leaves C, SS, and the bullpen, and probably 20-25 million left of that 125 million. If one of C or SS is filled by a cheap player (Cedeno?) and a few of the bullpen arms are, which shouldn't be a problem, then the payroll shouldn't have to go above 125 and quite possibly even under it in 2009, which is easily the worst year for a money crunch. That's also assuming that none of the contracts get traded, and I see it as somewhat likely that one of the group of DeRosa/Lilly/Marquis will be gone by that time. Edit: Lol, of course the Bench..forgot about them, but they don't really detract from my point. The Cubs will likely have a cheap backup C by then, Theriot (if DeRosa isn't traded), and probably one cheap backup outfielder along with 2 other veterans to fill the bench spots-so that's only going to add 3-4 million.

UGH I'll predict that Lou isn't going to like the sound of that. You said it. Now, how do the Lilly, Marquis, and Derosa contracts look? I don't like that Hendry waits until the last minute to get this stuff done. He's had all winter. I've never been a big supporter of JH, but I don't think he can take all the blame here. He's had a history of getting guys signed right before the season or shortly thereafter, and it usually works in the Cubs' favor. If he had gotten Z signed for $80m/5 years, almost everyone on this board would have been thrilled. So the fact that the Trib gets sold and that puts spending on hold shouldn't mean Hendry wasn't doing the right thing by waiting to sign Z. There is/was no reason to wait until the end of ST to get the deal worked out. I don't give two hoots about Hendry's track record. If the owners look at the current payroll and say "no more spending" the sunk costs of Lilly, Marquis, and DeRossa look bad when they could add up to or help with the costs of signing Z. The sunk cost had absolutely nothing to do with it. The ownership froze spending because the assests are in the process of being sold-the payroll could have been 90 million instead of 110 million and they still would have done the same thing. If the ownership had said no more spending because of too high of a payroll, they would have done so well before now. Which is why waiting until the last minute to get things done is not a good way to do business. Hendry and McDonough had to know something like this would happen and also had to have some knowledge of the process and how long it would take. There is no way Hendry doesn't get the blame for this if Z doesn't get signed, sorry. Hendry's doing his job using a formula that would have worked again. It might not work because of something that's absolutely not his job-the sale and its implications. It's McDonough's job to tell Hendry if something on the ownership/business side of it is going to impair negotiations. From their quotes today, it appears that McDonough did not do that-either that, or the ownership changed their mind and McDonough did not know either. Whichever it is, it's not Hendry's job to be concerned about that-Hendry has no direct contact with the Tribune company, and the only reason Hendry would ever be concerned about it is if McDonough told him that it should change how Hendry does his job-which he apparently did not do.

UGH I'll predict that Lou isn't going to like the sound of that. You said it. Now, how do the Lilly, Marquis, and Derosa contracts look? I don't like that Hendry waits until the last minute to get this stuff done. He's had all winter. I've never been a big supporter of JH, but I don't think he can take all the blame here. He's had a history of getting guys signed right before the season or shortly thereafter, and it usually works in the Cubs' favor. If he had gotten Z signed for $80m/5 years, almost everyone on this board would have been thrilled. So the fact that the Trib gets sold and that puts spending on hold shouldn't mean Hendry wasn't doing the right thing by waiting to sign Z. There is/was no reason to wait until the end of ST to get the deal worked out. I don't give two hoots about Hendry's track record. If the owners look at the current payroll and say "no more spending" the sunk costs of Lilly, Marquis, and DeRossa look bad when they could add up to or help with the costs of signing Z. The sunk cost had absolutely nothing to do with it. The ownership froze spending because the assests are in the process of being sold-the payroll could have been 90 million instead of 110 million and they still would have done the same thing. If the ownership had said no more spending because of too high of a payroll, they would have done so well before now. The end of ST thing? Well, that hurts now-and Hendry could have definitely got him done before now, but from the way he was sounding he was not informed that the process of the ownership sale would delay contract negotiations. Blame McDonough on that one.

Really? I thought his love for the Cardinals was clearly shining through, right down to the "oh no! oh no..." when the Cards grounded into a DP. I thought it was some of both. Joe was giving a lot of love to players of both squads last night-everything was the best or most exciting on both squads-it's your typical national announcer. Joe only gives love to one person, himself. The rest is just nonsensical talk. At one point when talking about the Mets he said something like: "They'll beat the bad clubs becuase they can hit. But when they play the good clubs they'll have to pitch." What the hell does that mean? Not that I agree with it, but he means that against most of the league the Mets lineup can beat up on any average or less starter. However, a good club, especially in the playoffs will have a couple good to great pitchers that can shut them down, and the Mets weakness at starting pitcher will kill them then. That's based on the assumption that a great pitcher can shut down great hitters on a consistent basis, which I'm not sure I agree with.

Come on Izturis-that was pretty awful. Harang has been really, really good against you-you would think that would keep you from swinging at the first pitch.

They couldn't do much more that inning-Jacque could have taken the pitch he hit into play, but most of that reason for that 11 pitch inning was just that Harang was throwing pitches in the zone.

No, the one who was on Florida.

Hmmm..... sounds like your wife and mine are related. :wink: Haha. She's actually pretty cool about it. She doesn't care much for baseball, but she lets me enjoy it and actually lets me turn on the game if we're driving somewhere. God, but do I love that woman. There are women that won't let you turn on the game when you love the team? Kill me before I get married. That's going to be big fight. It becomes "Who do you love more, them or me" sometimes-the trick is to not get it to that point. Let up sometimes, make compromises to not have to watch every game live (with a DVR that's much easier), and it makes it much easier to watch plenty of games :D

National TV games are blacked out on MLBTV-this game is an ESPN 2 game.

Doesn't that prove you wrong? Those numbers are for the 2006 season-it is unknown currently what the 2007 rates are.

Really? I thought his love for the Cardinals was clearly shining through, right down to the "oh no! oh no..." when the Cards grounded into a DP. I thought it was some of both. Joe was giving a lot of love to players of both squads last night-everything was the best or most exciting on both squads-it's your typical national announcer.

Do you see that St. Louis can win the division? I don't see how their rotation could be called better than ours-maybe similar, but certainly not better (btw, I know that you have Milwaukee winning the division, just curious if you think anybody else has a chance besides them). Yeah they could. Any of the 4 teams (Milwaukee, St. Louis, Houston, Chicago maybe even the Reds) can realistically win the division. My reasons for the Cubs not winning it tend to go beyond the rotation as well, I don't think the lineup has enough patience to be as productive as people are predicting it to be. I think it will be very feast or famine like our 2004 offense. 1B: Lee, Lee. Adv: 2007 (better now then in 2004) 2B: Walker/Grudz, DeRosa Adv: 2004 3B: Ramirez, Ramirez Adv: Push SS: Gonzalez/Nomar, Izturiz Slight Adv: 2004 C: Barrett, Barrett Adv: Push RF: Sosa, Jones Adv: 2004 CF: Patterson, Soriano Adv: 2007 LF: Alou, Murton/Floyd Adv: 2004 Plus our 2004 offense was actually better then this years. Then you add the fact that our rotation was better in 2004, and you can see that 89 wins might be out of our reach. I will give you that our bullpen is much better this year and our bench is better this year as well. Remember also when comparing to 2004 that the Cubs schedule is significantly easier because their level of competition is down. If the Cubs had that 2004 ballclub in 2007, they would probably be the best team in the NL, while they weren't ever going to challenge for that in 04.