stitchface

the hummer ad is stupid and makes you wonder who they are marketing toward. the steelers are very dislikeable.

I have 4 of the Angels top infield prospects. Unless Wood is switched to third, Aybar and Callaspo will have to be traded to another team to realize their true potential. If anyone is interested, these two prospects may be available. I saw that you were cornering the market on Angels MIF prospects. Too bad Cabrera's in the way, huh? :D Every team needs a neifi.

Let me tell you what happened. Illinois started 13-0 Dee and McBride jumped around pointed at PSU, then we coaxed. Up 14 at half. The Randle and Augustine decide to get in one of your guys face. Then we don't review the clock when Smith is fouled with 2.6sec. the clock sets at 2.2. McBride makes a shot a.0001 of a second to late. We deserve the loss though as we mailed it in. sounds exciting. Surprising that the clock thing wasn't reviewed....you'd think the Illini would get home court advantage on that sort of decision Ah they didn't argue, they deserved to lose. They took you guys for granted and then tried to act all superior and lost as a result of it. I cannot believe that Dee let this happen. I would not want to be in practice with them tomorrow. they don't play until next Sunday either, right? Should be a fun week.

shut up! :D

not a bad idea! ah the beer won't even taste good. ohhh, there you are wrong!

not a bad idea!

the illini give away the big ten title by playing only 20 minutes tonight. pathetic.

one side effect seems to be that the illini failed to play defense during your operations.

looks good so far! buh bye 2003!

IU led by 8 in the first half. Down 5 at halftime. Down by 20 early in the 2nd half, and the closest they got after that was 7. The players battled. Calloway was excellent. Davis however got outcoached out of halftime as he has in nearly every game all season long. I fully believe we had a shot to win if Davis wouldn't have been so strict with Killer after his 2nd foul. He sat the final 7 minutes of the first half. IU's 9 point lead was soon a 5-point deficit. In a game like today's, you gotta either stick with him with 2 fouls and build on the lead while you have the momentum, or put him back in when the momentum started to swing the other way. Then you use halftime to adjust accordingly if Killer has 3 fouls. And I'm not a big Davis hater. But I think he has single-handedly killed Ben Allen's jumper. No playing time will do that to an 18-year old kid. yea, I think in a non-conference home game versus #1 you take the chance with killingsworth. not like you have much to lose.

did IU ever get close?

I can see both sides of this but I think I would prefer him to a faceless corporation.

Is UCLA the only tourney team out there? Can Cal get in? Despite losing to Wazzou today, it's hard to see Washington missing the tourney. Yea, but they've had some losses lately. If they keep playing this way they could end up short of 20 wins. Without 20 wins and an unimpressive end of the season, its conceivable they get left out. Not likely I agree though. Boy, Iowa just pasted Michigan. They could win the Big Ten.

Is UCLA the only tourney team out there? Can Cal get in?

That's the way it should be of course, but I could see Pujols' star power changing that. I think Lee has enough offense to combat that. Didn't McGwire win a GG? What a joke that award is!

but he has a walk. that's something.

I'll go down as saying there's no way either of them put up those numbers. I'll agree that Murton won't get the .318 BA and .378 OBP, but I'd say he gets 13 HRs and 53 RBI. I don't think there's any point in projecting RBI's, and I guess he might get the HR, that part being accurate is almost irrelevent to me in light of the total production. The reason I included the RBI's was considering where Murton will probably bat in the lineup. If he's hitting 6th, then he should easily eclipse 53 RBI's. I understand your point about RBI's being irrelevant to overall production, but Murton should put up at least 53 RBI's and 13 HRs. If the Cubs #6 hitter doesn't surpass 53 rbis, we're in big big trouble.

I vividly remember that as well. The Cubs were rolling right up until that game. One-dog got hurt shortly thereafter, didn't he? I also remember the August run though - the Cubs were hot and almost back in the race - we were flying from SFO to Chicago for the series against St. Louis while the Cubs were playing someone else. We left our house and the Cubs were leading like 5-1. By the time we got to the airport, the Cubs had blown that game and then got swept in that series. They won the game we went to but lost the other two against St. Louis and that was that. I remember this vividly because that was my wife's first trip to Wrigley and she was just learning the life of a Cubs fan.

I didn't realize eric had hit for that much power - that really is a pretty stellar year.

agreed tim. I think we'll learn a lot with his performance in AA this year. That .405 to .358 helps offset the k difference (which is pretty small really). I'd like to see his pitch/AB since that is probably a big part of the reason for his ks. maybe? can he hit a big league curve - or at least lay off of it?

This is what he said: First of all, avoiding arbitration is much much much easier than fielding a winning team. How many players go to arbitration? Maybe about 10 of the 115 eligible this year? How many consistently winning teams are there? 1 out of every 4, maybe? Secondly, there's no proof of a lack of a commitment to building a winner. Lack of correct philosophy maybe, but that's a different argument. and now you arguing the point, at least in your second point (the first point is irrelevant). I agree with you - hendry is trying. he just isn't good.

Points well taken, all. I'm not about invoking hostility on this board. Again, I apologize. Zips' numbers may indeed not be realistic. In my opinion, it's kind of a crap shoot anyway, but it does give a starting point for hot stove discussions. Trading Jones for Abreu, the increases mentioned for Cedeno & Murton, plus a couple of career years by others would just about do it, no? I know you're not. I wasn't including pitchers when I was thinking about it to be honest - that is a huge drag. I think if Walker is closer to career norm and jones exceeds those projections by 30 points or so (not an impossibility if a tad unlikely), then the 8 position players could be there. Regardless of the actual team OBP, the good news would be a better distribution of offensive contributions.

I suppose that depends on whether one is satisfied that the additions of Jacque Jones, Scott Eyre, Juan Pierre, John Mabry and Bob Howry was worthy enough of an improvement to be a playoff caliber team. I suppose it also depends on whether having more than 40m to spend this offseason, lots of trade commodity, and plenty of available players on the market to improve the team and the moves that were made met your satisfaction. I don't think any member of our community that isn't happy with the moves made this offseason really deserves the catch phrase "faulty logic". I don't think anyone who wishes to be optimistic about this offseason deserves it either. Since 2003, this team has taken a step backwards. They did win a game or two more in 2004, but the team was more poorly run than the team that took the field in 2003. They were clearly more talented, also. But, 2004 did not feature playoffs like 2003 did, so yes, 2004 was a step backwards. 2005 was a horrible year to be a Cub fan. Not all blame should be pointed at management. Injuries did factor in. As far as I was concerned, the stars were all in alignment this offseason. A big splash could have been made to improve this team. They had the resources to make a big impact improving this team. Instead, they went with a modest approach. Whether an argument could be made that players could have been attained or not is not what I am going to debate. We do know that many talented players were available this offseason and maybe no other team outside of the LA Dodgers had more money to spend this offseason than the Cubs. I think this offseason was filled with mistakes right out of the gate. Sending Nomar packing was not a good idea. He would have been fairly cheap to bring back and he seemed to have a chip on his shoulder to do Chicago right. I'd much rather have seen Nomar's bat in RF this coming season than Jacque Jones. Well, I'd rather have seen his bat at the plate behind Lee and Aramis anyway, but you get my point. I would have much rather seen him have a healthy season with the Cubs than with the Dodgers. That does remain to be seen, but it was a gamble worth taking. With Cedeno and Perez, SS had 3 capable players. Nomar could have moved to RF and he also would have been a nice replacement at 3b if Aramis got hurt. If he misses most of 2006 due to injury, then I deserve a heaping helping of crow. But, I think he's going to have a healthy season and many of us will regret that we didn't hang onto him. Especially when he's ouproducing Jacque Jones by a healthy margin. I do think this team is better than last year. But, I don't think it's enough. The whole season is riding on the starting staff. Based on past history, not a good idea. When I look at the list of players that could have been obtained this offseason, and then I see a line up that features Jacque Jones in it, it makes me ill. To see that he's probably the best option to hit 5th makes me very ill. I do like Juan Pierre. I would have much rather seen a guy like Coco Crisp, and I would have liked to seen less spent to acquire a guy in the final year of a contract, but lead off HAD to be addressed. I've been screaming for that for quite some time. All in all, I'm not happy with the offseason. I don't think this team is playoff caliber. I hope I'm wrong. I'll cheer for them anyway and hope I'm proven wrong. But, if I see Neifi Perez hitting 2nd in the order, I'm turning off the tv. I will not pour salt into the wound that was opened up last year when Dusty consistently gave Perez top of the order at bats. I don't trust him to not do it this year. My best remedy is to just not watch when that happens. I'm tired of watching mediocre baseball from an organization that has no excuse to field mediocre teams. I'm frustrated that what was once an organization with a strong farm system, with plenty of resources and a positive direction nose dived as quickly as they did. None of this has anything to do with avoiding arbitration. The only way the original point has any validity if the Cubs didn't improve the team in lieu of not going to arbitration, which doesn't make any sense. or if you interpret the statement the way the author likely intended it.

But there's no connection there. It's not like avoiding arbitration is the thing that's keeping them from creating a winner. yes, everybody knows that. its more like saying their energy is focused on the wrong things. a true statement.

Fred, I don't really care - the reason I made the point is that this forum is seen as increasingly hostile and unfriendly by many and I think those kind of statements lead to that sort of thing. I think you are a great poster actually - I obviously hadn't done any math when I made the statement and your correction is certainly valid - I just think perhaps we could say something more like: my analysis based on this indicates you are overly optimistic instead of invoking kool-aid. yea, its overly sensitive, but I think it leads to better discussion and less hostility. Two points: 1. I don't see those numbers as realistic. 2. I was including Jones and Pierre as over .300. If you review those zips, Jones obp is clearly a drag and a return to .300 would greatly boost the Cubs obp. Making the Abreu switch shows that its not enough I see.