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Thanks for the report-it will be an interesting case to watch. I think the Padres win this one only because for Walker to win his side has to prove that without contracts being in play, it would not be reasonable to release him. The Padres to refute that can point to: 1) The fact that they didn't release him until the end of ST, which allowed Walker the full time to try to impress the staff and cost the Padres 300k more than if they had released him before March 15th. 2)The fact that the Padres had said in January and February that they were going to take the best 25 players that were with them in ST-they have the discretion to decide if past year numbers are more important or if ST numbers are more important to decide that current year's roster. 3) Then they can point to ST numbers from this year and show that the two backup infielders (Branyan and Blum) had much better numbers during ST than Walker, and that is what made them decide to take those two instead of Walker, not his contract. I'm sure the Padres were at least predisposed to releasing Walker, but I do think they win this case-we will see if that leads to a tightening of the rules in this area or not.

Hill 3/6 Z 3/7 Miller 3/8 I guess Lilly will start the HOU series 3/9 Because Z is going to start every 5 days, he is going to be in a different place in the order as they go throughout April and possibly the season. The order of Lilly/Marquis/Hill/Miller should stay the same, but where Z is in that order will continue to change depending on his pitching schedule.

Wow-nice defense there, and I don't understand what Prince was thinking-he looked like he didn't want to put up the shot when he had the opening, and by the time he had to take the shot he was being covered very, very well. Good win for the Bulls there.

What-the argument that Prior at this point has let some things get to him mentally, and that doesn't make him soft but just human with all the things that have happened to him (he's gone through more scrutiny then most people have their whole careers combined), but there are other people in the majors who are a little soft mentally, and just because they are in the majors doesn't exclude those players from that distinction? I don't see how that is so hard to believe. Because the road to the majors is pretty tough - it already weeds out the mentally "soft" players. I certainly do think it weeds out most of them Now comparing it to some other sports-is being a star in the minors that much tougher than being a star of say college football or basketball? It's obviously tougher, but the lifestyle of the minor leagues is offset by the media scrutiny that college football and college basketball players are under. If it's not that much harder taking all that into account, why would baseball be able to weed out all the people who can't take the pressure/media scrutiny/ability to recover from adversity but sports like football and basketball cannot?

What-the argument that Prior at this point has let some things get to him mentally, and that doesn't make him soft but just human with all the things that have happened to him (he's gone through more scrutiny then most people have their whole careers combined), but there are other people in the majors who are a little soft mentally, and just because they are in the majors doesn't exclude those players from that distinction? I don't see how that is so hard to believe.

I'm really not sure how that's relevant (again, I'm not calling Prior soft :D) How could it not be relevant? Leaf was thought to be good enough to hang in the NFL, but he wasnt. That was proven the moment he stepped on the field. Mark dominated AA, AAA and MLB before the injuries started. Maybe he never throws another effective major league inning, but I don't think it has anything to do with him being soft. I've always believed that Leaf in the right system could have developed into an NFL QB. I don't think it was his talent that lost it for him-it was his mental makeup. The expectations in San Diego plus the media scrutiny plus the poor performance (which should be expected for a rookie) got to be too much for him). He was coming back a couple of years later and I think could have had a nice career before he got hurt and had to retire. Prior didn't have all the whispers through the minors-he was always the golden child. His confidence was sky-high because wherever he went, he dominated. From NCAA to double A to Triple A to the majors, he was dominant. The injury in 2003 was concerning, but he came right back and dominated again. 2004 he was pretty good, and 2005 he was really good again before the next injury. I do think that at this point Prior has been beaten down by the questions and the fans and the expectations. I do question the timing of it though-if he really was soft, he should have broken down in 2004-2005 when the speculation and pressure was really turned up, not 2006-2007. Instead, because he made it that far before letting it get to him, I just think he is a normal person-anybody under that much stress for that long is going to be thinking about it at least a little bit. So I don't think Mark Prior is soft, but I disagree with the assertion that anybody who has made the majors and has had success is automatically not soft.

I'm really not sure how that's relevant (again, I'm not calling Prior soft :D)

I disagree with that assertion-Ryan Leaf is one example of a player who made it to a similar level in another league and was most definitely soft. Not a good comparison. Leaf didn't have to get promoted through 4 levels of minor league football. Well, technically, neither did Prior (only 2 levels to go through). Leaf also had a lot more media scrutiny/poor performance than Prior did early in his career-Prior didn't really start getting that until 05 (some in 04, but not that much). The loss of confidence due to that poor performance/media scrutiny is what usually people define as "soft", although I question the use of the word for Prior. I don't think we can know ever if he is soft or not-after all the scrutiny he's been through, after all the questions he's had to answer and the injuries he's had to go through, I think most anybody would be a little broken down mentally by now. I don't think that makes him soft at all, although I do think that he does have some mental things to work through along with some physical things.

What whispers? What executives? What players? Who specifically has called out Prior? I don't know specifically (and btw, I am not one of the ones who are calling Prior soft in this thread or any other, although I do have my doubts)-but the guy is not making up stories that haven't been reported. Here's just one example of an article that points to that: http://www.suntimes.com/sports/deluca/213815,CST-SPT-deluca17.article

I disagree with that assertion-Ryan Leaf is one example of a player who made it to a similar level in another league and was most definitely soft.

Both Cubs World Series years started w/ spring training in West Baden, IN. Maybe that's been the problem all these years! Let's go back! West Baden has actually been in ruin for much of that time-and now they are being restored due to money influx into the area-anybody see any similarities? :D

There's a lot of evidence to show that he was bad last year largely in part to how infrequently Dusty would use him due to the team being so bad. When he was used on an even somewhat regular basis, he did pretty well. His bad periods typically came after Dusty sat him at least 3 games or more. Not that I'm disputing what you're saying, but what evidence would that be? I'd genuinely like to know. It's hard to tell because ESPN doesn't have the info for 2005(well, compiled that is, I'm not about to go diving through game logs right now), but Dempster was awful on 3+ days of rest last year, and he threw almost 1/3 of his innings in that situation. With more regular usage those gaps between outings wouldn't happen. Of course, last year Dempster was also awful on 0 days rest, so take it FWIW. I'm less worried about the 0 days rest-he was pretty good on that at the start of the season, and a decent amount of the damage in that was in August and September, which Dempster said he just kind of gave up and wasn't pitching hard during that time. Unfortunately, looking through 2005, Dempster was very good on 3+ days rest, only giving up runs in one outing, and that outing was not a save situation.

There's a lot of evidence to show that he was bad last year largely in part to how infrequently Dusty would use him due to the team being so bad. When he was used on an even somewhat regular basis, he did pretty well. His bad periods typically came after Dusty sat him at least 3 games or more. Not that I'm disputing what you're saying, but what evidence would that be? I'd genuinely like to know. Quickly going through the game logs-I looked at every Dempster outing that was after at least 3 days off-it counted an off day as 1 of those days but not the All-Star Break. With just this quick look, Dempster gave up 15 earned runs in 18 1/3 innings after this type of break, which meant he gave up 25 earned runs in the other 56 2/3 innings.

I posted a very similar list in the game thread a few minutes ago (sans Selma, Alabama - that wasn't on my list and I didn't know about that). My list seems to disagree with you on a few, but I'd guess that the Cubs' own site would know what's up. I wish they'd come back to Pasadena...it'd be so awesome to have to only drive 5 minutes to go to spring training. Oh, and spring training in Champaign or in Indiana has to suck. Maybe not-I had never heard of West Baden, so I looked it up-it actually is West Baden Springs-it's right next to French Lick (where Bird was from). West Baden was home to a very popular health spa resort in those days because of some wonderful mineral springs-that seems like a nice way to relax those muscles after a day of playing baseball.

One error does not lose a playoff series. You don't think there's a very good chance we would have been in the WS if he had simply turned that double play? Maybe so, but you could say that about a lot of things-abuck is right, I think defense is more important than what he is saying, but the Gonzalez example is really, really bad for that.

Good, get a third rounder if the Bears have to give up their first rounder. Washington doesn't have one-they've already traded away their second, their third, and their 4th.

Well, they've got a little bit of a look at Jones as well-so he must be that bad at this point also. I do think Soriano will get better at CF as the year goes along, just as he got better at LF last year as he got more games under his belt.

Vance, we are going to pick the 3 or 4 3rd round compensatory selections, right?

If you said that to Briggs and he decided to come back week 5-6 and you don't play him, then the Bears will be paying him 5 million dollars or so without playing a down for the Bears this year (and I believe he also gets credit for the 6 games since he came back ready to play in time). If you do decide to play him, he could always refuse to play again once he hits his 6 games.

Murton was a great hitter before he reached the big leagues, but he wasn't a great power hitter. His highest ISOP number in the minors was 2005, and that .156 He had a .200 in the majors due to kind of a fluke home run rate (he hit 7 home runs in 140 AB's in the majors compared to 8 in 313 AB's in double A of the same year, also his ground ball rate in 2005 was higher than it was in 2006). In 2006, he started off what his minor league numbers would indicate (.156 in April, .125 in May). By August and September, he had developed into a much better power hitter (.244, .228). I'll give you this-the staff should have worked harder with him in the offseason so that he didn't have to go through the slump he did, and the time off during the season probably prolonged the time it took him to learn this-but he did develop much more power over the course of last season, and I think a little more aggression helped him in that regard, so I credit Dusty and his staff for that. If there was one thing Dusty and his staff were all right at, it was developing power in hitters-unfortunately for the Cubs, the organization bringing up aggressive hitters (Patterson and Cedeno to name two) combined with Dusty's aggressive approach was a really bad combination, and so only hitters that had learned patience in other places (Lee, Ramirez, Barrett, Murton) really came into their own under that coaching staff.

I think Dusty and company actually helped Murton out. A manager and his staff have to work to try to get every hitter a balance between patience/aggressiveness depending on the hitter's strengths coming in. Dusty's staff didn't do that-they just preached aggressiveness to everybody. For Murton though, it was a good thing-because he came in a little too patient. Sure he slumped during the adjustment period-but when he came out of that slump, he was a better hitter than he was before and was driving the ball a lot more. Cedeno, however, was too aggressive to begin with. Dusty and his staff continued to preach aggression to him, and that just left him hacking at everything and continued to make him worse and worse.

True, but the quote that was being disputed initially said that there was no way that the report was true because Z would never sign for that little because he could get more on the open market. They then just pointed out a couple of pitchers who took similar contracts-why can't Z do the same if reports say that he is close to doing just that?

I'm not sure I agree with you that the closer concept should never have been invented. There is still a mental toughness about closing out the 9th inning that some relievers simply can't handle. Now, this doesn't have to be your best reliever, and it's probably preferable if it isn't-but a closer by committee usually only works IMO if you have multiple people who could be closers by themselves instead of going to a committee because you have no one who could be a closer by themselves. For the Cubs, if Dempster can bounce back he's pretty good for the role. He's not the team's best reliever, but he does have the ability to be a closer, which allows us to bring in our ace relivers like Howry and Eyre in key situations.

Hopefully Angelo can exchange the 1st picks and steal their 2nd rounder. Probably a lot to ask for but hey if they get that you can't complain. I hope you wouldn't complain-that would be quite a steal:) Seriously though, if you read the Redskins board on the thread, most of them want the Bears to throw in their 2nd or 3rd rounder to make this deal even. While I think that's definitely excessive, the 6 for the 31 and Briggs is tilted a little bit towards the Bears. (Just think-the Redskins could probably trade down twice and get at least two extra second round picks along with a first round pick at 28-32. Briggs is likely worth less than 2 second round picks). To ask for more would have a low probability of success, but with the incompetent Redskins ownership, it just might work. If you reject this deal and move on to a team like the Patriots though who work more on true market value, you're going to get a deal less than this one.

It doesn't at all. Briggs totally went about this the wrong way, so we should return in kind. Who cares? I want to what is best for the Bears and having a vendetta with Briggs doesn't seem like that would be the best way. The point was, the Skins did this and wound up rewarded with 2 1st rounders. If we wait, it *could* result in a better deal than swapping 1st round picks, which is what some have suggested isn't good enough. True-in fairness though, that is the only time in the history of the league that it is ever happened, and it set back the franchise that did it a couple years (in fact its labeled as the worst move in the short Panthers history)-I doubt anyone is going to be trying that anytime soon, although if anybody would be silly enough to try something like that, Washington would. I was hearing though when it Peyton was franchised for a couple weeks 3-4 years back that it was unlikely that anybody would even sign him and give up 2 first rounders. I do think that if people want the extra pick rather than the top pick, that the Bears probably could get a pick in the 20's or maybe a little later for Briggs. That's not worth quite as much as moving up to 6, but it does pick up an extra pick that may fill a need.