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Yeah, 3B has just been a black hole this year. The AL has a few teams doing really well at 3B but are even worse overall. Soto is costing the Cubs bigtime with his terrible play this year. Pena's play shows the Cubs could still get a major upgrade there. Even as much as the offense has struggled, they are still 4th in OBP, 6th in SLG, 5th in OPS. They're 9th in RS but only 10 runs behind 5th and they've played 1-2 less games than everybody else. The offense hasn't been too bad overall. It's the rest of the team (especially the rotation) that has been terrible.

Brett Jackson with a home run. It must have been a controversial one as both the manager and left fielder got thrown out right after that.

It could be too that they were just balancing out the system. The Cubs system right now is seen as a lot of high floor low ceiling guys. There are enough guys already in the system to fill the bench/bullpen/marginal starting position player needs the Cubs will have the next few years. So drafting high upside guys really gives another dimension to the system overall.

After Lockart it has been: Shawon Dunston Valley Christian High School Jacob Lindgren St. Stanislaus High Schol Trey Martin Brookwood HS Dillon Maples Pinecrest HS Justin Marra Michael Power/St Joseph HS

I look at Aramis the same way as Wood. Both gave up a lot of money to stay with the Cubs. If they want to refuse a trade for the same reason, that's perfectly ok with me.

I got nothing. They have a scouting video up of him: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?topic_id=18674140&content_id=15212829

I would probably choose the 2006 guys as a collective just based on those four guys, but it wouldn't be an easy decision. The advantage the 2011 Cubs have is that they have most of the harder positions filled. The 2006 Cubs had a very good first and third baseman, a decent right fielder, a pretty good catcher, a very good starting pitcher and a potential very good starting pitcher, and a decent closer. The 2011 Cubs have a very good shortstop and catcher, a decent CF, a decent LF, an ok second baseman, two very good starters and two pretty good starters, a very good closer and a couple pretty good setup guys. If you don't have a whole lot of money, I'd rather mix and match using the 2006 team as the core. If you do have a lot of money to spend, the 2011 team has an easier time of improving the team quickly.

Wilken just doesn't operate like that. I remember when he was talking about his Toronto streak of picks making the majors he said that several were questioned both on draft day and in the minors. He will make his pick no matter what has happened in the past.

I'm about ready to write him off. Or maybe see if he has any trade value. Wow, 374 OPS. I had no idea it was that bad. .223/.288/.438 for the career. (HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN STARTING AT FIRST BASE THIS SEASON!!!) Yeah, he's been awful this season. A 12.7% LD percentage, only 7.7 of his fly balls are going out of the ballpark, and a similar BB/K ratio to last year. It also doesn't help that he's had just horrific luck with a .094 BABIP so far. In 77 AB's, Colvin has 5 extra base hits and only 2 singles.

Not all the NFL stadiums in the footprint are open air. Ford Field and the Metrodome both have roofs. I don't think the Big 10 really wants to perpetuate that culture. I wouldn't have minded a rotation too much though just to spread the wealth although Lucas/Indianapolis would be the best of the bunch.

Having basketball alternate between Chicago and Indianapolis seems a good way to keep attention and interest high. It's a vastly different and good experience at both venues so why not keep it at both? I never quite understood why the Big 10 insisted on having a site for 5 years in a row in the first place. While in football Lucas Oil IMO has so many advantages that it was hard for the Big 10 to pass up not giving it the game every year.

I think they made a really good decision for both sports.

Shouldn't where they went in the draft be a big part of scouting in the lower minors though? The reports we get are so scattered that the vote of confidence that a scout really liked a player at one time by drafting him that high has to be worth something. And that would be a big difference between Kirk and Pignatiello.

And I don't think you would have been wrong to put him on. It's kind of a 50/50 decision there. I bet the instructions were somewhere in between pitch away and the unintentional walk. He probably was told to throw pitcher's strikes at best. At least that's what I think considering they did very intentionally come in to the strike zone on the 2-0 pitch.

Serious question... What did you think of the intentional walks Barry Bonds got a few years back when he was on that roid induced tear? Several of those were in similar situations. Bonds was a whole lot better than Pujols in those years. For four years he averaged about 250 OPS points better than Pujols's best year! Plus Jeff Kent was not as good of a hitter as Lance Berkman. So in the Giants case, the hitter behind Bonds was frequently 500 OPS points worse. In Pujols's, the hitter behind him will maybe end up 100-150 points worse. It's not anywhere in the same ballpark.

Pitching to the best hitter in baseball needing a home run or pitch to someone who has been one of the best hitters in baseball this year needing a double to win. Does walking Pujols really increase the Cubs chances of getting out of the inning? Yes, absolutely it does. You can't let Pujols beat you there. Pujols home runs by year: 2006: 49 2007: 32 2008: 37 2009: 47 2010: 42 2011: 12 Berkman's doubles+HR by year: 2006: 74 2007: 58 2008: 75 2009: 56 2010: 37 2011: 21 Is there a reason to expect that Pujols is more likely to hit a home run in the 12th than Berkman to hit a HR or double? I understand the psychological reasons of walking him as a heart move but I'm not sure if it truly is the best head move. Berkman is definitely worse than Pujols but he's not so much worse that if you give him another way to beat you he can do that just as well as Pujols can.

Pitching to the best hitter in baseball needing a home run or pitch to someone who has been one of the best hitters in baseball this year needing a double to win. Does walking Pujols really increase the Cubs chances of getting out of the inning?

It would take a while a long time to do it this way, but the best way to involve the community would be to take nominations for a top 30 list. Cap it at say 60 names. Then start a poll where people pick their top 10 choices. Once you figure out the top 10 vote getters, you ask everybody to rank those 10 in order of their preference. Once that is tabulated, you have your top 10 picks. Then you have another poll of the remaining 50 to get your next 10.

Seriously. I'd much rather bring back Reds44 and baseballnumbers Yeah. Only one sociopathic lunatic allowed at a time. The order of reinstatement should be: -FDB -To be determined EDIT: TT, imb! and Tree have all hit the nail on the head, and I'd bet that two of those three are the people that davearm thinks are too mean/snarky/cliquish. How can TT and Tree both hit the nail on the head when they said such dramatically different things? The board would look very different and be comprised of different members if it was run by TT's philosophy than if it was run by Tree's philosophy. Because I agree with large swaths of what they said? Not sure if Tree posted a philosophy so much as he broke down the two options that the board could go about addressing the complaints about snark, etc. Well, Tree says eliminate people who are consistently wrong even if they're civil about it. He even encourages people in the right to be aggressive about it. TT says get rid of the aggressive people if they are right or wrong. So if we think of it as 4 quadrents-civil people with unpopular opinions, aggressive people with unpopular opinions, civil people with popular opinions, agressive people with unpopular opinions. Tree wants to get rid of the first 2 groups and wants the 4th group to dominate. TT wants to get rid of group 2 and group 4 and then wants the other groups to have the discussion. So the only group that would survive in both iterations of the board is group 3. How is that even close to the same?

Seriously. I'd much rather bring back Reds44 and baseballnumbers Yeah. Only one sociopathic lunatic allowed at a time. The order of reinstatement should be: -FDB -To be determined EDIT: TT, imb! and Tree have all hit the nail on the head, and I'd bet that two of those three are the people that davearm thinks are too mean/snarky/cliquish. How can TT and Tree both hit the nail on the head when they said such dramatically different things? The board would look very different and be comprised of different members if it was run by TT's philosophy than if it was run by Tree's philosophy.

Theriot was a .271/.355/.337 minor league hitter and a .285/.348/.355 major league hitter. His best season in the minors was .304/.365/.391 and his best season in the majors was .307/.387/.359. So almost exactly the same hitter. I really don't think it's that unusual for a low strikeout, low power player to have their minor league numbers translate pretty well to the majors. They aren't dependent on pitcher mistakes to generate power and they tend to hit line drives that will fall in on any level.

That's the best statement of all, and indicative of a ship with no rudder. Even if one thinks Garza is a top of the line pitcher, it's still not a good trade given the ML talent levle and expected direction of the franchise. The fact that Garza is "only" 29 is meanigless. He's due for big, big raises in the near future. Garza's only 27. And yes, he's due for big raises in the future. If his pitching is worthy of that, so what? And the Cubs still control him for 3 more years so they have a lot of options with what to do with him. The Cubs appear to be building for either 2012 or 2013 and Garza will be a part of both of those years. If those years don't work out, the Cubs can always turn around and trade him.

Quote is from questionmarkgrace The Cubs ended up spending around the middle of teams on the draft last year. They did pay Szczur 1.5 million so they weren't just in money saving mode. And while they didn't spend a lot in the Dominican, they paid 2 million for two Cuban players along with all their money in Korea. I doubt if you took their international signings and draft signings that it was less than the years with the Trib. And while they didn't get many players from Latin America last year, they announced a major investment to upgrade their facilities down there to hopefully become more competitive in the future.

That's exactly what I was thinking.

Absolutely dreaming. Bulls aren't too far from the Heat's level. Beat them by 20 one game. Lost in OT one game. Blew a flukey 12-point lead in the last 2 minutes in another. All with a star player who's just 22 years old. The Bulls probably would have won games 4 and 5 of the Heat series if there was someone else the Heat had to guard. LeBron and Wade can only guard 2 players (Rose and Deng, and Rose schooled Wade when given the chance in the series). Get another perimeter guy in there that can make plays and Miami has a decision to make. Miami is bound to get better, though. I think they need more than another perimeter player. Miami can't get significantly better though because they don't have the money to throw around. After the Big 3, the only players making more than 1.3Mil are Mike Miller ($5Mil), Haslem ($3.5Mil) and Joel Anthony at $3Mil. Any talent they get is going to be at a similar level of talent. Even if they get their old guys to retire/leave (Dampier, Howard, House, Magloire, Z) that's still only frees up 5MIl. Haslem isn't going anywhere. And sure they could dump Miller and Anthony and those 5 old guys and bring in another high priced player with the rest being roster filler, but that's not realistic. They are going to do the same as they did this year and try to piece together a couple shooters and some veteran bigs to field the rest of the team and hope the Big 3 carry them. The Bulls and Heat are basically in the same cap situation. Both are over the cap and will have to use their exceptions to add talent. The Bulls have more draft picks but that's the only significant difference. Miami will slowly get better though because they'll use their MLE to add talent if the new CBA stays the same. Their cap number will continue to go up but that won't matter to them as long as they're winning.