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The Cubs reportedly make somewhere around 10-15 million more per year on the games they broadcast on CSN than they would if they were all on WGN. In addition, there is still the somewhat confirmed thought that the Cubs actually have to pay a substantial amount of money per game in order to put games on a superstation that breaks into other teams broadcast areas. It's a huge source of revenue that the Cubs have a hard time ignoring even though it may cause them to have a smaller fanbase in the future.

Rush is potentially available. It would probably have to be a 3 team trade as the Pacers are really looking for a PG. They would almost certainly give up Rush in order to get one.

He's had 5 innings or more in every one of his starts and only allowed 6 runs once and 5 twice. He's given up at least 2 runs in now 13 of his last 14 starts but he's pitched deep into ballgames and never had the disaster start which has allowed his ERA to remain low.

With any other GM I'd feel confident in getting value for Lilly, but I'm prepared for something like an Omar Infante + PTBNL. Not a big Hendry fan here but I do not think that is fair or accurate. I think Hedry normally does fine making trades, but the last time he was in this situation they traded Maddux for Izturis, so there may be some cause for concern. Hendry then made some sort of weird comment after the trade about not wanting prospects or something (I don't remember exactly). I don't think Hendry said that. One source said that the Dodgers were offering prospects and Hendry refused. Another source said that the Dodgers were refusing to offer prospects and Hendry agreed to take Izturis instead at the very last minute. I would definitely agree that Hendry trading away established players has not been as good as his trading for established players. The 06 trading deadline is the only one we've really seen the Cubs sell and he had 1 good trade (Walker/Ceda), 1 terrible trade (Maddux/Izturis) and a couple inconsequential trades (Williamson and Nevin were also traded for little). Since then the Cubs have had dumped a few established players (Jones, Marquis, Bradley) and traded one for value (DeRosa). It's hard to say what will happen with Lilly because the Cubs have never really sold a pitcher like him before. But it's likely that the players the Cubs do get will not be liked initially because if the Cubs have any pattern they tend to get raw players who haven't figured it out yet (which is what happened in both of the Walker and DeRosa deals that worked out well).

Why? Because he had to go to another team to get his Pippen/Shaq? Whatever anyone's opinion of Pippen, he was never a top-4 player in the entire league like Dwyane Wade is. At best, LBJ and Wade are 1A and 1B. And for that matter, Shaq is a poor comparison too, because he was The Man on those first 3 Lakers teams, not Kobe. Pippen was one of about 10 active players named to the top 50 players in NBA history. He was seen very highly during his playing days.

So If Jordon in his prime went to play with Isiah, Magic, or Bird you wouldn't have a problem with it? Great players have their own team and identity. It's like Bird joining Magic in their prime. I can't say I would care at all. LeBron's legacy isn't tarnished by Cleveland's inability to put a second star on the team with him. Right. It's tarnished because Lebron had to pair up with another great in their prime to get a ring. What greats do that? Kobe forced Shaq out because he wanted to be in charge of his own team. Create his own legacy. Sorry, if you don't understand that but people and players respect that. So forcing another player out and hurting your chances at a title to feed your own ego is worthy of respect. Demanding a trade because your team hasn't acquired enough talent is worthy of respect. But signing with a team and taking less money to have the best chance at championships makes you lose respect? The NBA is a messed up league if that is all true. Everything has been turned upside down.

If they were in a 3rd party city, yes...it would be completely different. If he was 30, not 25 and wanted to win it would be completely different. If Wade and Bosh were not top 10 players in the league it would be different. So basically LeBron is a villain for not being arrogant enough to not want all the credit by being the undisputed leader. It's not like him, Wade, and Bosh are going to change what they do on the basketball court just because they are in Miami rather than some other city. It's only who the public gives credit to that will change. So LeBron's legacy is diminished, but do we really want individual players making decisions about what will be best for their legacy?

Who had him arriving in 2010? That was incredibly dumb. BA did after the 2008 season.

If LeBron, Wade, and Bosh had formed a team out in the middle of nowhere that none of them were connected to before, does that still make LeBron a villan? Or is it just the fact that he went to a city where Wade happened to be there already?

Nah. He's really young for AA and has had stretches of dominance at Peoria and Daytona. His status as a prospect took a hit this year, but to call him a bust would be quite premature. Didn't that status take a hit last year? I thought he was considered a top 40-50 guy early in his career but then after stupidly being promoted to Daytona too early and then not hitting at all for a couple months most people bumped him down lists. He dropped from 51st in 2009 to 70th in 2010. That's in large part to the fact that they thought he would be a quick mover in 2009 (they had his ETA in 2010) and by next year they moved his ETA back to 2012. Sickels had Vitters as a B+ in 09 and a B+ again in 2010 (although he said he was borderline to possibly be a B) So he dropped a little bit after last year but not much.

In the blind scouts eye of Jim Hendry they did. But they are essentially the same team, only older. Why you insist on ignoring the fact that 30 something players get worse is beyond me. Of course they get worse. But they tend to get worse slowly not fall off a cliff especially if they haven't hit 35 yet. When they do fall off a cliff, they tend to have bounceback seasons. Soriano is having one of those now and while his numbers are still not as good as at his peak which do show a decline as he gets older, it's still a lot better than 2009. Lee and Ramirez and to a small extent Theriot and Nady are experiencing that this year. None of them should be expected to hit anywhere near their peak production next year because they are all declining. But they all are somewhat likely (Ramirez the best, then Lee, Theriot, Nady) to have bounceback years. Falling off a cliff at 34/35 is hardly unprecedented. That's what Lee is doing. No although usually it involves injury,playing one of the harder positions, or lack of being in shape that causes such a swift decline. Sometimes a lack of walks will contribute to it as well or a player highly dependent upon speed. It would be highly unusual if this was not just a bad year for Lee since he doesn't really have any of those things and should be an ideal candidate to decline more gracefully.

Just in case this gets lost, I think this is the thing that most will agree on including me. I want Theriot traded tomorrow if possible. He's a bad starter or a vastly overpaid backup.

In the blind scouts eye of Jim Hendry they did. But they are essentially the same team, only older. Why you insist on ignoring the fact that 30 something players get worse is beyond me. Of course they get worse. But they tend to get worse slowly not fall off a cliff especially if they haven't hit 35 yet. When they do fall off a cliff, they tend to have bounceback seasons. Soriano is having one of those now and while his numbers are still not as good as at his peak which do show a decline as he gets older, it's still a lot better than 2009. Lee and Ramirez and to a small extent Theriot and Nady are experiencing that this year. None of them should be expected to hit anywhere near their peak production next year because they are all declining. But they all are somewhat likely (Ramirez the best, then Lee, Theriot, Nady) to have bounceback years.

23.5% of his AB's in 2007 were against left-handers. 27.5% of his AB's in 2010 were against left-handers. He was used part-time for part of 2007 but he really wasn't platooned. Playing part-time didn't prop up his numbers much and it's questionable if there is a link there at all. The 40 point drop in OPS from the first half to the second half suggests he got worse once he played every day. But regardless of how you want to characterize the difference, he's been nearly the same player. That could be although he had a dropoff in both 2008 and 2009 as well. But the fact that he's only been a little worse than his worst year doesn't mean he's likely to repeat that year again.

The NL being down across the board offensively is a good point although the fact that the NL boasts the 2 worst offenses in the last 18 years makes the numbers look much worse for the league as a whole than they are. But even that is a 10 point drop compared to the Cubs 19 point drop and the Cubs have an increased talent level offensively where they upgraded one of their positions offensively and got deeper off the bench. And it's not like last year was some charmed year where the Cubs got great years out of their regulars (which for example 2008 mostly was).

23.5% of his AB's in 2007 were against left-handers. 27.5% of his AB's in 2010 were against left-handers. He was used part-time for part of 2007 but he really wasn't platooned. Playing part-time didn't prop up his numbers much and it's questionable if there is a link there at all. I do think he has a good chance to be better. I completely agree with you that he is not a starting 2nd baseman and shouldn't be used that way. He's a decent backup middle infielder at this point. The Cubs would be best off to get rid of him.

Why would you assume that? He's doing what he did in 2007. He's doing what his career was mostly likely pointing to until he had his peak year in 2008 that surprised many, but he fell right back to earth and he is what he is. You are talking about a bunch of 30-somethings, most with injury histories. The notion of underperforming what they "should" have done is vague. They are who they are, which isn't good. Ramirez is the only one whose level of underperformance is surprising, but he's also the one coming off the most serious injury and was injured this year (something everybody expects every season). This is an old expensive bad team. Quit trying to find excuses. Theriot is 40 points worse than his worst season out of his other 3+ years and is currently 80 points below his career average. Even accounting for regression due to age Theriot should improve. Lee has only had 2 months in the previous 3 years that were worse than his best month this year. For him to struggle this much is very, very surprising. Ramirez was miles worse than anybody could have ever expected. In fact before the last week it was hard to find a comparable in the last few years in baseball to what he was doing. Nady had a wide range of potential projections. His number is reasonable but definitely unlucky for him to be healthy enough to play but not healthy enough to be anything but terrible. He's had a questionable enough career combined with the injuries that he isn't a great bet to improve although he still has big upside compared to this year. The reason I'm even bringing this up is that I'm trying to figure out how far this team is away from contention to help decide if the Cubs should try to make upgrades to contend in 2011 or not. How unreasonable the current core's performance this year is plays a large part into that.

Ryan Theriot isn't underperforming, he's just not good. He's 30 now, and 30 year old middle infielders with scarce productivity on their resumes should be expected to suck. Lee is playing almost exactly like he did for 6 months, between 2008 and 2009, before he bounced back for what looks like his last gasp of productivity. I think it is absurd to suggest this team would improve just by bringing everybody back. It's already an old team full of players whose best days are likely way behind them. It's also absurd to suggest Soto is somehow underperforming anything. Soriano is right on best hopes for production. This team is not better than it's record. That's the same BS nonsense we hear every year when the team doesn't win enough, because everybody needs to look for excuses to cover up Jim Hendry's failures. Just stop already. It's a poorly constructed baseball team. 2009 wasn't some 95 win team that just didn't put it together. 2010 was actually predicted to be quite bad by many people. This isn't a team that is stunningly underachieving. It's not a good baseball team. Every team deals with fluctuations in individual performance. The good ones win despite those struggles. The Cubs aren't good, and their record reflects it. There's room to say that the Cubs are both not a very good baseball team and that a team who is 11 games under .500 at the break is underperforming. If the same team is brought back next year they are really, really likely to win more than 71 games which is what they are on pace to win this year. Hopefully the Cubs don't bring back the same team because there are significant improvements that can be made ( for example while Theriot would be expected to improve next year, he still will be a bad player and there could be many ways to upgrade at 2B). But if you project out player by player, it's hard to come up with a scenario where they finish near 70 wins again. Let's look at one preseason projection sorted by number of at-bats this year. From the highest number of at-bats every 50 below that I put a space to show who has gotten the majority of the at-bats. Theriot: 94 points of OPS less than projected Byrd: 37 points more Lee: 179 points less Soriano: 55 points more Ramirez: 239 points less Fukudome: 11 points less Soto: 87 points more Castro: 37 points more Colvin: 163 points more Fontenot: 3 points less Nady: 168 points less Baker: 90 points less Hill: 130 points less The fall off has been staggering. While the Cubs have had a couple surprises, the downsides have been a lot larger and with players who tend to get more at-bats than the ones to the upside.

How you view this season depends on how you view Soto and Soriano. If you thought last year was a huge aberration for both of them, then this year the players are way underperforming. Sure, there are a few overachievers that have been mentioned (Colvin and Silva are the two biggest and Gorzelanny should also be mentioned. Byrd isn't really a strong candidate as his numbers are pretty close to the last 3 before that.) But they don't match up whatsoever with the underachievers (Lee, Ramirez, Zambrano, Theriot, and possibly Baker and Nady). If Soriano and Soto are seen as overperformance, then it becomes a whole lot closer although still in underperformance territory. I'm interested to see what happens after the season. Bruce doesn't think Hendry will be fired but I think a lot of fans are assuming he will. This team is definitely not as bad as its record and should improve markedly just bringing back the same team but definitely has some big needs as well. And the fans problems of being sick with the current core might play into a larger dismantling than might be needed.

Unless they flat out say they need him to start next year, I don't see why there would be pressure, albeit increased pressure as you stated. The 40-man roster does pose a problem, but the Cubs can always drop someone from that if need be. RISP is sometimes overlooked, and it shouldn't be. RISP tends to be overlooked because it is good at measuring how valuable a player is that season but it doesn't really tell you anything about what a player will do in the future. So it's useful in determining All-Stars, MVP's, etc., and also useful in figuring out why a team might not have performed the way they should have. But a GM should see it as irrelevant because it's so random and cannot be used as reliable for figuring out what a player will do in the future. If I'm reading the rules right and Jackson would get a 4th option if he is added anytime this year or next, then bringing him up in September is not that big of a deal. There won't be much benefit and the only cost will be that the Cubs will be able to protect one less player for the Rule 5 draft.

A very good prospect at first base or second base would be what would tempt me with Dempster. I would add third base to that list, as well. Josh Vitters :( I'm not exactly writing him off. He's still young, but he obviously has a long way to go. Would be nice to have another option at that position. I'd put third base on the second tier by itself. It's definitely a bigger need than the OF, SS, C, or starting pitching. But with 2011 likely having Ramirez there and Vitters still being one of the Cubs better prospects it becomes a little less important than first or second which both have holes on the major league level next year and prospects being either farther away from the majors or nonexistent.

A very good prospect at first base or second base would be what would tempt me with Dempster. On one hand, he is a big component of the 2011-2012 teams. On the other, the Cubs have so much potential starting pitching that it would be hard not to trade him if an opportunity to fill other organizational needs comes up.

I'm very conflicted. I'm not a fan of how LeBron handled it with the TV special. But I do respect him for one thing. He said all along that he was going to choose his team by who had the best chance to win. For most athletes it's lip service but LeBron seems to have taken it to heart. He took less money and hurt his potential for an amazing legacy for a better chance to win titles. Isn't that what we want our sports stars to do?

It may not be an impossibility, but that plan is based on getting solid to good role players, or basically luck into them in the draft. The Heat will offer a 5 year 30 million dollar deal to the best role player on the market every single year. And who wouldn't want to sign with them because of the great chance of winning a championship? Their depth would continue to increase. And that is added on to the veterans that might sign on with them to win a title or the draft picks that will add some depth. Adding role players in the NBA is not difficult because of all the exceptions the NBA gives you. Teams don't need cap room to add role players. They only need cap room to add stars and Miami will have plenty of those. no team except for maybe the knicks and bulls can afford to be that far into the luxury tax. would they be deep? yes. they'd also be broke, real broke. That's hard to say. Their revenues would definitely be much higher with all the excitement. And their owner is pretty rich even as owners go. But that is a possibility.

That's true although the soft cap is pretty good for both sides so I'm not sure who would push hard enough to change it. But even if the CBA does dramatically change, that still leaves Miami with 3 stars and in pretty good shape every year. I doubt Lebron does that because of the money concerns and the image concerns. But that team would definitely be scary this year and really scary the years after that.