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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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/

Are you not in an area where ND/WF is the ABC game?

Marshall's deal is actually for 3.1 this year. He signed a 2 year deal before last season.

If you sign a player before Nov. 23, you have to give his team whatever compensation is due, whether they intended to offer him arbitration or not. You can sign players earlier than that. Examples would be stupid teams who don't care, players who are definitely going to be offered, or players who don't require compensation to be given up by the signing team. Free agency formally begins Nov. 3, six days after the World Series ends. It used to start much later than that, but they moved it up this year. And players don't have to formally file anymore, they just become free agents. So what used to happen if a player was up for free agency but decided not to file? I looked at a couple sites, and the assumption is that it would work the same as a player with 3-6 years experience. The player could try to work out either a contract or go to arbitration with his current team, and the current team could non-tender him if they wished. Since all those options are still present after becoming a free agent (the team can decline to offer arbitration, they can work out a contract, or the player can accept arbitration if it's offered) they took away the paperwork of having to formally file.

Got a team or teams in mind? Pitchers suffering from bad "luck" may be the result of a slight systematic bias. The xBABIP formula is designed to project players with large amounts of plate appearances (you can observe actual lines approaching adjusted lines as plate appearances go up just by looking at the Cubs). Guys who hit as poorly as most pitchers do tend not to get many plate appearances, so they may not be adequately represented. Also worth noting, most pitchers are told not to try to beat out grounders. With this few plate appearances, beating out a couple could make a HUGE difference in an overall line. Also outfield positioning can hurt weak hitters like pitchers (and this could be true for players like Campana and Barney too). When a player has so little power that the team can play in, some line drives and bloops that would have been hits for a different player are going to be caught for outs.

Why is Jackson being thrown into every trade? I understand good young pitching is hard to come by, but the Cubs don't have a lot of up and coming bats in the system as it is. Plus, he's a high OBP player like Theo seems to like. Seems like one of the last guys we should trade. BJax is a high OBP guy? I thought he projected to something like .350? Good but he's not JD Drew. And doesn't he strike out in 1/4 of his ABs? I don't think we need to shop him but I don't know that he's really the type of player Jebodore values highly. Yeah, most people only project him to be a .350 OBP player because he strikes out 25-30 percent of the time. He'll walk at an excellent percentage, but it will be hard to keep the batting average above .265 with that kind of strikeout rate which limits his OBP value.

I was about to say. His FIP and xFIP have been 4.00 or higher the past two years, more or less... 2010 FIP: 4.19 xFIP: 4.29 ERA: 4.64 WAR: 1.2 2011 FIP: 3.99 xFIP: 4.23 ERA: 2.98 WAR: 1.5 I'm all for exploring to acquire him because I do think he's a fine pitcher, but I think he's being a little overvalued here A 2.98 ERA in 23 starts is only good for 1.5 WAR? That seems really low. That's because his WAR was killed by 2 different things. One is that he only pitched 150 innings. And the second if that his peripherals weren't that great. He doesn't strike many people out, and was only average at giving up home runs. The reason he had a 2.98 ERA is because he had a .269 BABIP against (even though he gave up 21.4% line drives) and 81% of the runners who reached base against him were left on base which is really high. So he got some good luck behind him, and then he was unbelievable at pitching out of jams this year.

I'm not following you. How does Jeromy Burnitz compare to Headley or Sizemore and how does Soriano compare to Matt Kemp? Sizemore has been broken for like 2 years now and just got non-tendered by Cleveland. You're hoping you catch lightning in a bottle with him. I have no idea what a Headley is, but it sounds like a league average player. Its settling for like the 5th best options out there. And you're on drugs if you're going to put all your eggs in the "Matt Kemp will definitely hit the market, and when he does we'll sign him so it's ok to pass/miss out on every good offensive player going into 2012 because we'll get Matt Kemp" basket. That's not exactly the kind of sound planning that wins championships. If we sign Pujols or Fielder, fine. Whatever. If we don't, no amount of mental gymnastics and projecting 2013 signings or whatever will make us not suck on offense. There's no really likely scenario where we aren't really below average in 2012 offensively. I don't know how likely this is, but if Soto has a 2008/2010 type of year and the Cubs upgrade their backup catcher spot, the Cubs will have basically switched 3rd base for catcher offense next year. That's one decently likely way that the Cubs could have an average offense even with the loss of Ramirez. Upgrading one outfield spot or Castro improvement would help also. It would be very unlikely for the Cubs to be any better than average, but they could make it to average with Pena and no Ramirez (they'll more likely be a little below average though).

Right. It's clearly not ideal, but having a fantastic pitching staff and a really good defense can work if you get some breaks. A team with a $130m payroll in the NL Central shouldn't have to rely on pitching health and "breaks" No, they shouldn't. But that's the scenario the Cubs have been left with. It's not like if they sign Pujols and Ramirez and call it an offseason (they'd only have a few million left at that point) that they won't be relying on breaks to not be more than average. In that case, they would have a good offense and a terrible pitching staff. Is that better? There really isn't a good way to build a great team for 2012 with the available payroll which is actually an argument against signing Ramirez (since most of his value would come in 2012 while other free agents the Cubs might pursue will be more likely to contribute in future years).

True, but large market teams shouldn't sign long-term deals to aging, declining players just because they don't know how they're going to fill their spot either. Ramirez has been an amazing player for the Cubs (unselfish too with taking less money last time) and still has some gas left in the tank. But the chances are not good that he's going to be worth anywhere close to the type of deal he's going to get on the market. Ramirez knows this is likely his best chance to get one last decent deal which is why he declined his side of the option, and the Cubs are just not willing to be the ones to make the mistake of signing him to that deal.

It's less than 400,000 and if they try him as a starter and he succeeds, then they may be regretting tearing up the 3.5 million option for 2013 (I don't know how successful as I'm not sure how his current salary being so high factors into a first year arbitration hearing). One of those moves that's pretty close either way though, and if they leave him as a reliever it's definitely the right move.

Right now, I'm getting the sense that this might actually be Boise's chance. I don't have confidence in Oklahoma State, Stanford, or Clemson to win out (right now, my gut tells me one of Stanford or Clemson loses tonight, although I'm open to that prediction being hilariously wrong). If none of them do, that leaves Boise fighting it out with the LSU/Alabama loser, Oregon, and Oklahoma. Could they hold off those teams? Maybe. Their non-conference SOS isn't bad at all this year. Playing UNLV and New Mexico will really hurt in the computers, but I think their computer ranking will still be strong enough that if they even have a small edge in the polls they could sneak in.

I don't think they'll be able to define it using a rulebook. The rule will have to end up being that the umpire will use his best judgement to determine where the runners would have ended up if the play was different. That's what they already have to do on fan interference calls. That then will usually cause an argument by whichever manager doesn't get the benefit of the call. Suddenly you have a several minute break in the action and while you now know the original call was right, you have no idea if the call on where to send the runners was right. If it was something that happened rarely like it was in football, then the benefit of replay would outweigh that. But this would be an issue on many, many replay calls. I'll give another scenario to something I wouldn't want to see: Runners on 1st and 2nd, 2 out. 3 and 2 count. Runners run and there is a ground ball up the middle. 2nd baseman stops it and throws to 1st while runners are rounding the bases. Batter is called out and he is safe on replay. Do the umpires let the run score? The 1st baseman could quite possibly have thrown the runner out, but he could quite easily have scored as well. There's no real fair way to decide that.

Explain your terrible position. I'm questionable about expanded replay because of the logistical issues. For example, Runner coming around 3rd for home. Batter gets tagged out at 2nd base for 3rd out. Replay shows he's safe. Does the runner score? Does he go back to 3rd? Same scenario but the guy is thrown out at home with runners advancing behind him. Do the runners get the extra base or not? Ball was ruled foul off batters bat but replay shows it was fair. Does the batter get a single? A double? Where do the runners on base go? Ball was ruled a catch but replay shows it was a trap. Does the runner get a single? A double? Where do the runners go? Football really only has this type of play once (fumble recovery/interception that was initially ruled no good). Baseball would have these thorny issues all the time. It would seem a lot would have to be left to umpire's discretion, and I might rather have a few calls be wrong than let the umpires be deciding who goes where all the time.

It's hard to say with Dempster. On one hand, he got hit harder last season which is a worrying sign. LD percentage jumped up, BABIP jumped up with it, swinging strike percentage was the lowest of his career. Could that be a sign of declining stuff? Maybe. At the same time, all the traditional peripherals didn't decline. K/BB rate, HR rate, HR/FB were very close to what they had been in previous years. That's why his FIP was actually better than 2010 and his xFIP has been remarkably consistent for 4 years straight (3.69, 3.76, 3.74, 3.70). So his run last year could be the first sign of trouble and his peripherals could collapse next year, or his peripherals that would suggest he was unlucky could level out and his ERA would return to the high 3's. Hard to say which.

It still chaps my hide that they went after Latroy Hawkins as a Type A free agent for middle relief without caring about the repurcussions. It just speaks volumes toward Hendry's absurd values. The saddest thing is that in six drafts of five rounds, any team that simply holds onto their existing picks would have made 30 picks over that time. That's the bare minimum assuming you don't go after any kind of compensatory picks. The Cubs (and Orioles?) couldn't even manage that. Yup, although at least the Cubs stopped losing picks a few years ago (I think Soriano was the last pick they lost, and that was the only one they lost with that 2006 shopping spree). They've only gained 2 picks during that time though and both of those were luck (Pierre and Kendall both signed before the deadline). That's the area the Cubs really need to improve in as they've had a couple of really good chances to get picks that they've squandered.