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CubColtPacer

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  1. Oklahoma and Oregon got a big boost by Boise State losing. Boise was stuck in between Alabama and Oklahoma/Oregon in the polls and that will allow them to get a lot closer to Alabama then they were before. The problem is for both schools is that Oregon is ahead in the polls while Oklahoma is ahead in the computer rankings which might end up killing them both. Oregon is also hurt bigtime by having to play at least a 4 loss team and maybe a 5 loss team in the championship game (right now UCLA is actually in the lead to go to the title game, although it will probably be Arizona State or Utah at the end of the season). The other interesting question right now is if Boise actually falls enough to fall below Houston or not. I'm guessing they will, but it will be somewhat close. BTW, Sagarin's ratings love, love, love the Big 12. 7 teams in the top 17 and 9 of their 10 teams are in the top 28 of the country. And yet Oklahoma State is behind LSU and Oklahoma is behind Alabama, Oregon, and Arkansas. That really doesn't make much sense.
  2. Wake just missed a short field goal but still leads Clemson by a TD with 8:45 left. If Wake holds on, they'll be in the drivers seat in that division and Clemson will need Wake to lose to Maryland to avoid going from undefeated to not even playing in the conference championship game. Clemson is driving now though.
  3. I think they'll end up signing Hamels. It doesn't fit with their MO of the last few years to not sign him. How they'll fit in the rest of the roster, I have no idea.
  4. This was Sickels Cubs top 20 list for 2009: Obviously in some ways they're not all that similar (Castro is much better at making contact, Lake probably has a little more power and speed, Lake in the past at least wasn't as coachable) but they do have a lot of similarities as well.
  5. The problem still becomes that the wind blowing in hurts offense in every form. It suppresses power by the wind blowing some balls back into the field of play for outs. It allows the pitcher to attack the hitter a little more aggressively which cuts down on walks. And it can let a fast defense cheat in a little bit to stop the line drives knowing that it's harder for teams to hit it over their heads. It's very hard in that sort of environment to get on base enough to score runs consistently. Now how many times does that happen? I'm not sure, but I do remember from looking at a couple years game logs that the wind tends to blow in at Wrigley more often than it does out (it blows across the field a fair amount as well).
  6. I'm guessing they're finally going to give Brown his chance in LF. I don't think they are going to have too much problem replacing the guys they lost in 2011, but it's the guys they are going to lose in 2012/2013 that are going to be an issue. They aren't going to be able to keep all of them, and they don't have many replacements for them waiting.
  7. I've never heard that before either. Too easy otherwise for the punter to just throw one in the direction of the gunner after he starts getting blocked.
  8. http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/11/10/elimination-of-bcs-aq-status-being-discussed/ The biggest fanbases would get a whole lot more BCS games if the automatic qualification was eliminated unless it were replaced by a simple top 10 in the BCS go (which the bowls would never go for). It might eliminate switching conferences but it would cause a much bigger problem. A simple "top 10 in the BCS go" is exactly what they're discussing in the article. The only opponents to that would be teams that are part of crappy AQ conferences right now. Nah, the bowl committees and some college presidents would be against that idea also. Bowl committees don't want to lose the opportunity to invite an Alabama or an ND that may have slipped to 11-14 in the BCS standings and also be forced this year to invite both Boise and Houston into the BCS. College presidents would be nervous because it gets things one step closer to a playoff which some of them are ardently against. The ACC and Big East would be furious about this because they've benefited the most. And the Big 10/Pac 10 wouldn't be too happy either because in a year like this one the Rose Bowl wouldn't be able to take a Big 10 team if none qualified. I think there's too many power brokers against an idea like that to make it happen.
  9. http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/11/10/elimination-of-bcs-aq-status-being-discussed/ The biggest fanbases would get a whole lot more BCS games if the automatic qualification was eliminated unless it were replaced by a simple top 10 in the BCS go (which the bowls would never go for). It might eliminate switching conferences but it would cause a much bigger problem.
  10. I look at it this way. I can't watch 13-15 games at once during two time slots on Sunday afternoon especially if my team is playing in one of those time slots (even if I had Sunday Ticket). If there were only games on Sunday afternoon, I'd see the Colts, Bears, and one other game every week. Night games allow me to see many other teams, see many of the best matchups, and just give me more games in a week overall. What's not to like about that? If they turn out to be duds of matchups, I can just not watch and be no worse off than if that game was on Sunday afternoon. The only loss is when your team is on a night game, and that cannot happen more than 40% of the season at the most.
  11. I thought he was "worth" like $19-20m a year based on his WAR with the Yankees. Even if he was (which is hard to quantify since first base defense is hard to judge) when a guy is signed through his age 36 season he should be doing better than just barely not be worth his contract during his prime years. By fangraphs WAR, Texeira has been averaging about 18.5 million worth of value for the contract and is getting paid 22.5 million per year. Those would be fine numbers for a total contact, but when those were supposed to be his 3 best years out of 8? Not so good.
  12. As I've said repeatedly, I'm willing to stick my neck out on a massive contract. Just not for either of these two guys, on anything longer than 6 years. I mentioned Teix and Gonzalez as two guys I would have been happy to sign at the years and dollars they received. Elite offensive, elite defensive, young and in shape players are out there -- just not this offseason. How's that Teix contract working out? good no? Or am I missing something? I'm sure the Yankees were wanting a lot more out of his early years than a guy with a .846 and an .835 OPS the last two years at first base. They are the Yankees so they can afford it, but that's not a lot of offensive production for a guy making 22.5 million.
  13. The NFC North is dominating the NFC South head-to-head this season. In my opinion the NFC South is the second best division in the NFC behind the NFC North... By default. The AFC appears to be the superior conference this year, at least 2 of the NFC divisions are pretty bad. I don't think the South is that great either. NO is pretty good, but Carolina stinks, Tampa is schizophrenic and I'm not sure about Atlanta either. How do you even come close to this assumption? Yeah. I haven't done the math, but it looks like the AFC is the weakest it has been in years. None of the current playoff teams in the NFC have even lost a single game to the AFC yet.
  14. Z's had last chances before (for example coming off the suspension in 2010). He is who he is. The Cubs can either accept that and move along with him or trade him. I don't think though that being on his best behavior will help either avoid incidents or help his pitching. The falling off of his pitching is not due to any concentration issues but much more likely to be the result of an arm that has logged a lot of pitches.
  15. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/princes-improved-approach-at-the-plate/ An article from Fangraphs on trying to isolate Fielder's improved strikeout rate this season. It looks like he hit more ground balls this season and his HR/FB percentage wasn't quite as good as his best two seasons, which is why he hit less home runs despite striking out a lot less.
  16. Remember how I said it was disconcerting that Gillick's hand-chosen successor wasn't very good? I have to think the Phillies believe their payroll is going to be at the Yankees level soon. Or maybe they think they are too far gone at this point for the future and so are just gearing up to try to win in 2012 and maybe 2013, because it's looking uglier and uglier for them after that.
  17. By "eat some of his contract" do you mean any of his contract? I've been pulling for us to just pitch Z next year, but if a team were willing to take on $12M I'd jump up and down, followed by cartwheels, followed by a small drinking binge. If what you're suggesting is that if the Cubs have to eat all but one million and get warm crap in return, then I agree. The question is where the line is drawn in between. The question becomes what is the Cubs response going to be if Z has another incident next year? If it's going to be a suspension, then I'd be willing to eat all but 5 million. If they are going to let things slide because it's the last year of his deal, then I'd probably need to have 8-10 million savings to make the deal. That's with getting nothing in return-if the other team sends something the Cubs would probably need to eat more. I'm not worried about Z's particular character concerns other than how it affects his ability to pitch 200 innings. But it's hard to ignore how worrying last year's numbers were for his pitching also, and his bat isn't going to be as good every year as it was last year.
  18. With that said, if the Giants have a good stretch against those teams they could be in the driver seat for a bye. Maybe, but San Francisco has 5 of their 8 remaining games against their own division. Unless they are much worse than they've shown it would be hard to see them win less than 4 of those. Their 3 other remaining games are tough (NYG, Bal, Pitt) but they have two of them at home. It looks pretty likely that the 49ers will have 12+ wins, so the Giants would both have to beat the 49ers and then only drop another game or two in order to get the bye.
  19. NBC has to be really annoyed at this point. They've already been forced to give the Pats-Colts game to CBS twice out of the previous 4 seasons, and 2 out of the last 3 times NBC has managed to get the game either Brady or Manning has been hurt.
  20. Yeah, I forgot to take into consideration that OU would have to beat #2 OSU for this scenario to be possible. But a loss at home against Texas Tech is much worse than a (road?) loss to Alabama. But I don't see a scenario where a 1-loss Arkansas would be ahead of a 1-loss Alabama. They'd be the SEC champ and have a better win than any of Alabama's wins (LSU). Yes, they lost to Bama, but those two factors should supersede that, one would think. They'd only go to the SEC championship game if they were ranked higher in the BCS rankings than Alabama to begin with (IIRC, that's the SEC's tiebreaker in a scenario like this). Any of the 3 could end up being the SEC West representative if that happened.
  21. Yeah, I forgot to take into consideration that OU would have to beat #2 OSU for this scenario to be possible. But a loss at home against Texas Tech is much worse than a (road?) loss to Alabama. But I don't see a scenario where a 1-loss Arkansas would be ahead of a 1-loss Alabama. The thing is though, Oklahoma is already ahead of Arkansas in both the polls and the computers. LSU and Oklahoma State are currently tied in the computers so I'm not sure how Arkansas would jump Oklahoma in the computers (their other games are according to Sagarin harder for Oklahoma-Tennessee and Mississippi State for Arkansas, Baylor and Iowa State for Oklahoma). So many people would have to move Arkansas ahead in the polls for them to pass Oklahoma, and I don't see how that would happen. The only reason I could possibly see it is because the Arkansas-LSU game is the week before the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game.
  22. Or LSU losing to Arkansas. No, Arkansas would just play for the title then (presuming Stanford and Okla St lost). That'd be a pretty open-and-shut case. How would Arkansas pass Oklahoma in that scenario? Or even Alabama?
  23. If Alabama gets into the title game over an undefeated BCS team, all hell will break loose. Stanford has the tougher schedule remaining. If they win out, they'll certainly move ahead of Bama, probably after this week if they beat Oregon. And there's no chance Bama finishes ahead of an undefeated Oklahoma State either. Exactly. The story is how far Alabama is ahead of Boise and the other 1 loss teams. Stanford will move ahead if they win next week, plus they still have ND and a Pac 12 championship game while Alabama only really has Auburn left. And also remember that voters may think differently if the possibility of a rematch becomes more real. Michigan initially moved into this same sort of position in 2006, but a couple weeks later Florida suddenly moved ahead of them for no real good reason other than the rematch suddenly was possible when USC lost.
  24. If they're not idiots about it the city will get paid back tenfold over time if they help with the initial investment. It's a win-win. If it's that much of a profit-maker, then the city knows the Cubs will eventually do it anyway, and then they can reap the benefits without sharing in the costs.
  25. Are you not in an area where ND/WF is the ABC game? I guess I just assumed Okie St/KSU would be on ABC with ND/Wake on ESPN(2) It's regional. Here is the map: http://www.hdsportsguide.com/news/2011/abc-regional-map-for-november-5-800-pm-eastern-games/
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