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Because he couldn't hit but still played, and received praise. Therefore he must be good at defense. Plus the Cubs won a lot when he played his first couple seasons, and then right as his reputation was growing he had the season where he threw out a bunch of runners. Add in how inconsistent Soto has been (which increases the hype for the backup), and it's pretty easy to see how Hill's reputation has just grown a life of its own.

You could also say the Western Conference is really good at defending their homecourt: Eastern Conference: 51-38 at home, 44-69 on the road Western Conference: 78-34 at home, 28-60 on the road So the Western conference has a 12 game lead on the East so far, but has played 23 more home games!

Allen's contract isn't bad. I think he could fetch a decent amount of talent without having to take on a bad contract in return (the only issue is how receptive teams are to a rental). They'd have a really hard time finding a Garnett deal that would work. I'm not saying give up right now. But I think that should be a significant option by March. Limping into the playoffs as the 7 or 8 seed and hoping the very old roster can somehow turn it on in the playoffs and immediately beat one of the two favorites doesn't seem to me to be a great risk. Not being able to sign West in free agency and then immediately losing Green really hurt.

I guess I just don't understand why Boston would want to try to push forward with the Big 3 one more time. Yes, they very likely will get in the playoffs and if they're lucky maybe win a round. But I really don't think they're just coasting right now, and their chances of winning a championship are pretty small. Why not trade Allen and/or Garnett (although I have no idea if Garnett is even tradeable right now) and combine that with your cap space for next year to quickly rebuild your team. I can understand if that was their plan before the season, but I'm not sure it's the best plan anymore to just go down with the ship.

And the Falcons made it in 1998, so it's not been forever for them. The Vikings have made 2 NFC title games since 1998. LOL at the Lions, Cowboys, and especially the Redskins. That's true. I forgot to mention one more-if the 49ers win, the NFC West will become the 1st division in football to have all their teams in a Super Bowl in this century. Of course, they haven't won one this century yet.

If the 49ers win, they'll be the 11th different team from the NFC in the last 11 years to make the Super Bowl. The only teams who won't have made it in that timespan are the Cowboys, Redskins, Lions, Vikings, and Falcons (and looking over that list, the NFC would have a plausible chance to go 12 for 12 next year). If the Patriots win, it will be the 9th straight appearance by the Patriots, Steelers, or Colts. Whichever team wins, the AFC will have had only had 9 teams represented in the last 27 Super Bowls.

I forget who it was, but one of the Raptors airballed two against the Pacers yesterday. Jamaal Magloire. I was puzzled when I saw his career stats. Shot above 70% from the free throw line 3 years in a row and then suddenly went to the 35-55% range per year. He is 2 for 11 so far this year!

Every single player on every major league roster is a "question mark." What does that even mean? Are you saying Felix, Sabathia, Castro, Cabrera, Pujols, etc. are all question marks? To answer your question, a "question mark" is a player that doesn't have a track record to predict whether he will be productive. Every player on a major-league roster has a significant track record from which we can make reasonable projections about their productivity. Every player on a major-league roster has a non-zero chance of performing significantly differently than what we expect, including the so-called "sure thing" stars. That's not true of prospects and foreign players. The track record in the minors or foreign leagues often doesn't translate to reasonable projections about their productivity. Every failed player that's called up to the ML obviously had a decent minor league track record or they wouldn't have been called up. The players that I named may have a "non-zero" chance of performing significantly different than what we expect, but it's darn close to zero. The question mark players have a high chance of performing differently because there is no base line to set expectations. Wood has 200 major league innings and Volstad has 600. Even if we didn't have a good base because of their minor league record (which I don't agree with) we have plenty of major league results to base a decent projection on. And in the case of Wood's 200 innings, it matches up very well with what he did in the minors which gives further proof that it's sustainable. Wood, Volstad, Maholm with Wells backing them up is significantly better than Zambrano, Wells, Cashner, Coleman, Davis, and Lopez gave the Cubs last year.

Every single player on every major league roster is a "question mark." What does that even mean? Are you saying Felix, Sabathia, Castro, Cabrera, Pujols, etc. are all question marks? To answer your question, a "question mark" is a player that doesn't have a track record to predict whether he will be productive. The question becomes what you do with those question marks. It's not right to assume that all of them are going to bust, because a lot of players don't bust. But some do, so it's not right to assume they're all going to play well either. You just have to project them the best you can. And the reasonable projections for the Cubs four players (Wood, Volstad, Stewart, LaHair) would say that the team will probably not be much worse if not better than last year. The 2012 Cubs will have better pitching, better defense, and worse offense than they did in 2011. The depth will be important this year. The 2011 Cubs had several players who were beyond horrific last year (Colvin, Hill, Coleman, and Davis) Giving those innings and at-bats to even bad players will help the team a pretty good amount. And most of the players returning (Soto, Byrd, Dempster for example) had poor years last year and should bounceback a little bit.

I guess the NBA wanted to get all the trips out West early. 11 teams from the East have played more road games then home, 3 have played the same number, and only Boston has played more games at home than the road.

I don't think that's certain at all. That's right about where I have them. I have them being between 70-75, but projecting the Cubs win total with any level of confidence will be really hard next year because there are so many players who could range all the way from breaking out to being awful. The 2013 projection even without any upgrades between now and then would be higher than that just because Jackson/Rizzo will probably outproduce the players playing in that position in 2012. And as much money as the Cubs had this year, they'll have a whole lot more next year.

For years now, the Cubs hitting prospects have disappointed. Castro appears very good but he's the only one. Soto's okay, but after that there have been no guys of note. Prospect after prospect has disappointed at the plate. Vitters, Colvin, Pie, Choi, Patterson. Vitters still has a chance, but he certainly has underperformed to date. Now the Cubs top 10 is dominated by bats. None of them are elite bats with the possible exception of Rizzo, but there are far more bats than arms. And that's new. For a long time, the Cubs were known to for producing a fairly consistent string of mostly power arms. Now? Next to nothing. I'm betting that'll change, but for the first time in a long time, the number of highly regarded Cubs hitting prospects clearly outweighs those of their power arms. According to many prognosticators the Cubs top 4 prospects are all hitters and their highest ranking pitching prospect is either McNutt who is coming off of a down year or Maples who has yet to throw a professional pitch except in instructs. That's new. Yeah, I get that there are numbers now that haven't appeared before, but the issue remains they aren't stocked with blue chips at upper levels and they still need to acquire more bats. I just think it's a mistake to emphasize pitching at the expense of hitters in the minor leagues, the Cubs can use both right now. They hardly have a glut of anything, outside of maybe mediocre space fillers, which they seemed to stock up on in recent years. They could definitely use some of both, but if they have to choose it makes sense to add pitching. The best two sure bets in the minors are hitters. Most of the high upside guys both in the upper levels and the lower levels are hitters. They shouldn't take a vastly inferior pitcher just to take a pitcher, but pitching is clearly the biggest need of the Cubs system right now.

Enough.

There was no way the sixers ever played 5 games in 6 days last season. They probably averaged 3 or 4 games per week. They didn't. Back to back to backs were eliminated from the NBA about 10 years ago. But no team has more than 2 on their schedule this year. Philadelphia's other one isn't until April, and for that one they have 2 days off before and after that stretch. After this week, they'll return to playing 3-4 games a week (mostly 4).

The Cubreporter always has a nice breakdown of who has options: http://www.thecubreporter.com/cubs-40-man-roster

Just for comparison: From December 26th to the end of the season last year (April 13th) the Pacers played 55 games. From December 26th to April 13th this year, the Pacers will have played 59 games. Comparing 2009 to this season it would be 55/60 (since the end of the season in 2009 was April 14th). So they are having more games, but the NBA was already playing a pretty compact schedule to begin with. It's debatable whether 4 or 5 more games over an almost 4 month stretch is a huge difference or not.

A huge difference in their hit tool. Pierre has a career 5.7% strikeout rate and was at 4.7 during his two best years. Campana strikes out 17.3% of the time in the minors and 19.4% of the time in the majors last year. Campana's walk percentage is a decent bit better, but it just doesn't come close to making up for the difference in strikeout percentage. Pierre is a career 1:1 BB/K ratio, while Campana was a 1:2 ratio in the minors. And as horrible as Pierre's power is, it's still a little better than Campana's. Campana's speed and defense might be so elite though that he could be a legitimate starting center fielder or at least a good 4th OF in a big ballpark even with his horrific bat. Or he could be used to try to let RF/LF be used for players with little range. Neither of those seem to describe the Cubs going forward, so it doesn't seem likely that he's a fit. And the speed/defense is still a question if it's simply great or if it's truly elite.

Enough everyone.

Is the Bulls reluctance to go into the luxury tax a money thing or a strategic one? If it's money, will they really amnesty Boozer before maybe a year left to go on his deal? That's a lot of money to eat.

All the computers have the Big 12 better, and at least one computer says the Big 12 had the best year of any conference in the past 13 years.

He made $12M in 2006 and resigned for $1.75M for the 2007 season at age 30. Resigned again for 2008 for $4.2M. His career looked to be over after 06...it was hanging on by a thread. It being his arm. IIRC though, he was being offered double or triple that figure by other clubs. It was definitely a hometown discount.

LSU also finished ahead of Oklahoma State in all but 1 computer (and that computer had Oklahoma State 1, LSU 2, Alabama 3). It just depends on if you put a higher value on the bowl result than all the other games of the season.

How? Whether the team that signed him to that deal paid that money sooner or later, they were going to pay it anyway. Toss the money in with the deal if that's what's keeping the deal from happening. Let's just keep throwing money at the player. Assuming this was a normal Cubs signing of the past handful of years, the player was already 30+ and declining in value. In a 2/7.5 contract, I'd rather pay 4.8 and 2.7 assuming the player in his prime now will perform at a higher level then next year when older. Additionally, in year 2, a potential trade partner could view the lower value as an acceptable level of compensation instead of requiring money with the deal. It's not about the total value you're spending on the player, it's aligning pay and performance. If you want to backload a 5 year deal for a 26 year old, that'd align with expected performance curves. But if you pay the guy 2.7 and 4.8 instead, that gives you flexibility. You might only have to throw 1 million into the trade to make it work. Even if you have to throw in the full 2.1 to make it work, you're not in any worse shape than if you had paid the 4.8 to the player to begin with.

did he have an AP vote? that could explain the one moron who voted lsu #1. I know one AP voter was quoted before the game that he was going to vote for LSU no matter what happened in the championship game. He said they would still have the best overall resume even with a loss to Alabama.

I'm not completely sure about this, but I think Samardzija's NTC is gone. As soon as they declined that option it should have gone away.