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This is backward thinking. If its close it should go to Guzman. Miller should only get the nod if he is clearly better. I fear this is going to be another case of the Cubs stunting the progression of a young player for the opportunity to give a mediocre veteran with no upside a chance to improve. It's not just those two players in a vacuum though. If Guzman wins the job: Miller is traded for not very much If somebody goes down or is ineffective, then the next pitchers in line are Prior (if he's healthy by then), Cotts (who hasn't been effective at all), Marshall (who is well behind and not might be ready to pitch at all, let alone be effective) and Mateo (who is not major league ready) If Miller wins the job: Miller either gets the chance to increase his trade value or he is ineffective and released after a while-not much loss if we didn't get much for him in the first scenario, and a possible gain. If somebody goes down or is ineffective, Guzman is waiting in the wings to take over. If they are similar pitchers, it's better overall for the Cubs this year to go with Miller to start off with-it gives you much more of a margin for error.

There's guys in the NBA who have been around forever for no apparent reason. The NFL has them too. In most cases they're called special teamers, but they play other positions as well. Not really. Special teamers are dominated by young guys who haven't cracked a starting lineup. Besides, they do what they do well, otherwise they are cut. Baseball is the one sport where really bad players can stick around forever. I agree with you about the NFL, but again, the NBA goes right along with baseball in which bad players stick around for a long, long time.

Thanks for the help from both of you. It has popped up a couple of different times the last few days (and I fixed it each time) but BBB's suggestion of the cause makes sense, as I usually have NSBB up in multiple windows when there is a game thread going. I'm going to try next time it happens to see if just closing my browser down and loading it back up will work as well.

Since Stevens was just arrested in Arizona for DUI and possession of marijuana, do you still want him? Nope. If he's getting busted when he's a Free Agent, what does that say about his character? Nothing that hasn't already been known for a while-Stevens is one of the dirtiest players in the league-I'm not surprised that this happened, and with his production he may not have a much longer stay in the league.

I like UCLA, but go Weber State tomorrow night! It wouldn't feel great though if it's because Collison was down, so I hope he's ready to go tomorrow.

Hey, I ignore goony's posts. Apparently you ignore my posts as well :D

Was Wade Miller able to maintain his velocity beyond the 1st two innings? He was making minor league rehab starts last year where he would touch 87-89 and a maybe flirt with 90 once or twice and by the 3rd end up around 84-85. It appeared he was. This also falls under the category of "all things being equal." In fact, even if Miller's velocity does drop during games, the Cubs will figure that he'll "know how to pitch" without it. I'm not saying that's right or wrong; it's just what they'll figure. And don't discount the minor-league option that Guzman has. I understand all this, but don't you think it would be more wise to give Guzman a chance with the big boys first, before just burning that last option? If they send him down right off, then the next time they bring him up it's for good or gone. I also think Prior has a place in this argument. Even if Miller were traded, Mark might be able to progress enough to be ready after maybe 3 Guzman starts. That would buy a little breathing room to consider a Miller trade in my mind. You can send Guzman up and down as many times as you want this year and it only takes 1 option. He won't be out of options until next ST, and by then it certainly will be time to either stick in the majors or not. Besides, if that last option is going to be used it's going to be used this year. It's not very likely that Guzman stays up the entire year this year and then they decide to send him down and use that last option next year.

They aren't going to pay him that much money and then not basically guarantee a rotation spot anyway. Besides, even if he had come into camp as simply one of the front-runners for one of the spots and not guaranteed, he already would have earned one of the spots with his ST performance so far, so it doesn't really matter now that the spot was his from the beginning.

That's why if it's close, we should keep Miller-that way Guzman can be the insurance policy.

I don't like the idea of making roster decisions based on service time, and who is going to put up the biggest stink. I agree with your premise, but we don't really know what the Cubs told Miller to entice him to sign again, either. If they told him he would be starting or traded, then he has every right to be upset if they send him to the bullpen. Regardless, he should make the rotation because he wins the job with everything else being equal, not because of ancillary concerns. It really doesn't matter what they told him. It doesn't? Let's not be too short-sighted here. In what way? Wade Miller is a washed up rag tag arm that wasn't getting much attention from anybody the past couple years. The Cubs paid him to rehab. They owe him nothing. They don't risk alienating future free agents by putting him in the bullpen if they feel that is what is best for the team. They didn't have to entice him to sign, they offered money, when most others weren't interested. Last year, that is true. I'm not sure you can claim that this year because no other team even got a chance to show interest in him before he signed. I don't think it matters here though, because I doubt Wade was guaranteed a rotation spot, and so the Cubs can really do anything they want with him.

If they determine that Guzman is clearly better, then they should start him. If they decide that it's close, Miller should get the nod.

I doubt they cut him in the spring out of fear of losing a grievance. I thought the whole idea behind cutting Walker, if they do, is to do it before the end of ST. That way the team would only owe him around $650k. He will be an expensive bench player. If San Diego is going to risk a grievance and cut him, they actually have to do it by the end of tomorrow-we'll know soon if he's on the market again. Their GM said if he was one of the best 25 players they'd keep him-unfortunately, he's made that decision a lot harder (if he is one of their 25 best) by putting up a .227/.261/.273 line so far in ST.

Since the cubs announced they would seek a trade for Miller if he didn't make the team (which as everyone knows will up his value :roll: ), I don't see Miller losing this job in any way unless he gets hurt at this point. I didn't think the club announced that at all-Miller just said that he wasn't going to be a bullpen pitcher and then the reporters said that Hendry would likely accommodate him-I didn't actually see any quotes from anybody associated with the Cubs to that effect.

Well, he only hit 90 once-they said he was 87-89 consistently. That's still a good improvement from the earlier reports, and I think he can be effective at that speed. And I also think he'll add a mile or two... I would agree with that-in fact, I almost put it in my original post. I think he'll be able to hit 89-90 consistently and touch 91-92.

Well, he only hit 90 once-they said he was 87-89 consistently. That's still a good improvement from the earlier reports, and I think he can be effective at that speed.

Agreed-if it's anywhere close Miller will win because if Miller wins, Guzman is still there if anything goes wrong with one of the pitchers. If Guzman wins and somebody goes down, you either have to start Cotts, hope Prior has come back, or turn to one of the other minor leaguers.

Personally, I think another MI that can hit right handed pitching somewhat well would be better-Theriot and DeRosa are already both very good against left-handers.

I'll never understand how Hendry could justify going into 2005 with the OF he had, which pretty much guaranteed Burnitz would get a ton of playing time. He was, uh, hamstrung by the sosa situation. Which is why we had to have Burnitz instead of Beltran. Or something like that. Yeah but we had this dude named Matt Murton who could have used some more starts but Dusty just had to play Burnie damn near every day. It was like Burnie was some indispensable superstar and not a washed up geezer who wasn't going to be on the team the next season. No way did he need or deserve to get 155 starts. Wasn't this the year where we were all pleading for DuBois? Yes it was. Murton was in the minors for most of the season in 2005.He came up on July 8th and played very little until mid-September. Meanwhile old man Burnie continued to start almost every game. Would've much preferred to see Murt get some of those starts, or anybody else who wasn't washed up and who already had his bags packed. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/gamelog?statsId=7597&year=2005 As far as I know, Murton hasn't played any RF at all but just LF. Burnitz didn't play any LF at all that year, so he didn't block Murton whatsoever. Plus, when do you pack it in for the season? The team was in the Wildcard race as of mid-August and still had an outside shot a few days into September with 7 games against the wild card leader coming later that month. Edit: Personally, I would agree that even if the team was in the race Murton would have helped the cause out if he played more, but part of that is hindsight about how well he ended up doing in September and this past year.

FAMU was complaining? Niagara was the team that had the gripe. i thought it was FAMU. Maybe I was wrong Oh, I didn't read any quotes. I didn't mean you were wrong, I meant that if one team had a right to complain, it was definitely Niagara. In my paper, Niagra was definitely complaining-I do agree, there were definitely a few teams that were worse than them during the season-I'm not sure why there were relegated to the play-in game.

Why would Z feel compelled to take that? Oswalt is clealy underpaid in a market in which Gil Freaking Meche gets 5/55. Even if Z has a down year or gets hurt he'll still be in line for a huge payday, as evidenced by Jason Marquis getting 3/21 after putting up a 6.02 ERA. Z would have to have a totally catastrophic injury not to get more than what Marquis got. IMO Z was correct in his initial assessment that he should demand what Zito got. Somebody will give it to him if he just stays firm in his demands. I don't think Z will take that, but I do see a 5 year deal for him. Hendry probably won't want to go over 5 years, and Z is on record saying that he will accept 5 years. He might me willing to go for 5 for 82-85 million.

I think this means Ronny is headed to AAA. The Cubs want a polished backup. I think that quote from Piniella screams for a trade more than an in-house option. He has decided he doesn't want just one backup MI (which I agree with, especially since Theriot is the main weapon pinch-hitting when leading off an inning) and he doesn't see anybody he wants to take with him to be that. I don't mind Muskat in this case speculating Cedeno and Perez-when looking at in-house options right now of middle infielders, they would seem to be the two candidates, and Muskat is not the type to spontaneously think about who they would possibly trade for. I do see a deal coming quite possibly trading one of the Cubs excess bullpen arms for another backup infielder.

Miller's velocity was in the high 80s however, he hit 90mph once. From the interpretation of that quote and from their outings, my guess is that if Guzman has a good outing on Friday, he'll be the leader-if he has an average to below average one, then Miller will be the leader right now. It is encouraging to hear Miller in the high 80's and hitting 90 rather than 82-84 like we were hearing early in camp.

The second person to leave the Colts-Nick Harper. He signed a 3 year deal with the Titans, financial details were not revealed: http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070313/SPORTS01/70313070 Harper was a good corner for the Colts, but the Colts have so many young corners ready to get playing time (Jackson/Hayden/Jennings could all fill Harper's spot and were high draft picks ready to play) that they just couldn't justify paying him. It will be interesting to see if he can play man coverage in TN now though.

Two players peripherals right here-both are on NL Central teams right now, both were on the same team in the years these were taken from, and one is expected to be average while the other one is not: Year 1- A-6.17 K/9, 1.97 K/BB, 2.17 G/F, 1.42 WHIP B-5.27 K/9, 1.69 K/BB, 1.59 G/F, 1.37 WHIP Year 2- A-4.35 K/9, 1.45 K/BB, 1.59 G/F, 1.32 WHIP B-5.28 K/9, 1.81 K/BB, 1.43 G/F, 1.38 WHIP Here is year 3 for one of those 2 pitchers B-4.93 K/9, 1.51 K/BB, 1.61 G/F, 1.45 WHIP Based on those peripherals, what do you think of these two pitchers? Are they both destined to be pretty bad? Where is the third year for the other pitcher? I was going to post that and make a further point after someone evaluated those two on those peripherals that were stated. Is pitcher B better than Pitcher A on those numbers? How much better? Then the obvious answer is the one who has the worse secondary stats. The point that is lost in this not so original example is that every data set has an outlier or two. In other words, just because it happened once or twice doesn't mean it is likely to happen. I'm just trying to point out that people are pointing out that Marquis's peripherals even from 2004-2005 were going to catch up to him and that last year was more indicative of the type of pitcher he was than 2004-2005 was. They are trying to say that even if he has 2004-2005 peripherals he's going to be a below average pitcher. I disagree with that-I think pitchers of that type can succeed. For people with even better ground ball rates but otherwise peripherals are very similar, look at Jake Westbrook and Aaron Cook. Then if you go down a little bit more into Marquis's range, you have pitchers like Clay Hensley, Miguel Batista, Zach Duke, Jeff Suppan, Dontrelle Willis (his 2006 was very similar to 2004 for Marquis). All of them had similar peripherals in 2006 to Marquis in 2004-2005, and all of them had ERA's that I'm sure everybody would be happy for Marquis to have (all under 4.7 I believe, and some under 4). Those are not just outliers-high ground ball pitchers can and do be average to good major league pitchers with the type of peripherals that Marquis put up in 2004-2005. Suppan (the one in the example) has successfully done it for years now-I'm sure some of the others fall into that category. Can he post 2004-2005 peripheral numbers? That's debatable, although the very early indications are encouraging on that, it's still a long way to go to be anything for sure. What I do question is if those peripherals necessarily say that he's going to be a worse than average pitcher, and I think a few pitchers in the league show that it's not as uncommon as it seems to have been said to have those peripherals and yet come out with an average to good ERA, with some pitchers able to do it year after year.

Two players peripherals right here-both are on NL Central teams right now, both were on the same team in the years these were taken from, and one is expected to be average while the other one is not: Year 1- A-6.17 K/9, 1.97 K/BB, 2.17 G/F, 1.42 WHIP B-5.27 K/9, 1.69 K/BB, 1.59 G/F, 1.37 WHIP Year 2- A-4.35 K/9, 1.45 K/BB, 1.59 G/F, 1.32 WHIP B-5.28 K/9, 1.81 K/BB, 1.43 G/F, 1.38 WHIP Here is year 3 for one of those 2 pitchers B-4.93 K/9, 1.51 K/BB, 1.61 G/F, 1.45 WHIP Based on those peripherals, what do you think of these two pitchers? Are they both destined to be pretty bad? Where is the third year for the other pitcher? I was going to post that and make a further point after someone evaluated those two on those peripherals that were stated. Is pitcher B better than Pitcher A on those numbers? How much better?