RichHillIsABeast

One and done my hiney. Bring on the Frenchies.

I'm not a Jacque Jones fan, but he's a great deal better than those two. We shouldn't just trade Jacque just to get rid of him. Sweet Lou will kick his arse into gear.

Mike Brown and Tommie Harris did. :cry: We're getting (relatively) healthy though.

Bonds might just be the most talented hitter of this generation. It's too bad he has to cloud his records with stupid decision making. Hurry up and retire. I'm tired of the negative pub for baseball.

Here's an idea, don't be a pompous jerk who thinks the world revolves around you because you have money and are borderline famous. Then you won't have to worry about going to jail. Where you're from you can get arrested for being a pompous jerk? I didn't think so, thanks for stopping by. If your comments are taken as an attempt to incite violence, you can be arrested. That's determined by the discretion of the officer. I have no idea what Peavy said, but just swearing at an officer doesn't merit an arrest - thus sayeth the US court system. Double parking at an airport terminal merits a ticket and a towed vehicle. I don't doubt Peavy did a lot more than just double park and tell the officer to write him a ticket.

I read somewhere that the Seahawks signed someone to their active roster who was working as a loan officer and was studying to be a border guard until Seattle contacted him. There's a guy that's last game had been 1/1/06 that played on Saturday, probably the same guy. It floored me that Dallas didn't go after him. His coverage what crap, but that's to be expected. he didn't have time to understand the schemes. Grossman had better be all over whoever is matching up with him. We're going to own this game if the offensive gameplan is halfway decent.

Seattle's secondary is a joke right now thanks to injuries. Even Grossman should light them up, assuming he prepares for this game. :lol:

It's easier to go opposite field with power. It's really easy to get hits off inside pitches, instead of shattering lumber or getting handcuffed. A lot of college pitchers don't know how to use the inside part of the plate b/c of this.

That's what he was doing.. security raised a stink because there was nobody in the drivers seat while he was unloading... essentially leaving the vehicle 'unattended'. It's been the rule since 9/11. Some airports let you do it and they shouldn't. It's one of the few security measures that has a snowball's chance in hell of preventing a terrorist attack. Just about everything else is window dressing to make people feel more comfortable flying.

Having money doesn't give you an excuse to break the rules, especially where airport security is concerned. Nice job, cops.

If traded for wisely, A. Jones makes this team a contender NOW, playing any of the OF positions. Pie is still a huge gamble. CF is a gaping hole on this team right now, and they need another big hitter desperately. Jones in CF doesn't make this team a contender. The only thing that will make us a contender are the successes of Hill and Prior. A CF, even one as good as Jones, doesn't make enough of a difference offensively to overcome a rotation of 1 ace, a #3 (Lilly), and some veteran projects (Marquis and Miller).

Interesting ... my own initial reaction was: "I'm more worried about seeing Prior on the list than Sosa." Why? It's not like he just inexplicably caught the injury bug and therefore steroids must be the reason.

Andruw Jones is a PERFECT fit for us. Jacque Jones will be finishing up his contract about the time Pie is ready. What's that based on? A few WL ABs? His defense is more than ML ready. His basestealing seems to have really come around. He's shown the ability to hit the ball throughout his minor league career. WL statistical performance for hitters doesn't impress me, although it's always preferable to see a guy have success in the offseason.

It looks like Wood has incentives in his contract for games FINISHED. :D link See u later, Dempster!

I'd rather keep the young talent. The Cubs just spent out the backside in FA to keep our young guys. Switching strategies mid-stream is a good way to end up with a horrible team in '09 and beyond (backloaded contracts and little quality ML ready talent in the pipeline). A. Jones is a good player, but he's not the right fit for us, especially with Pie looking to man CF for years to come.

2003: 113 ERA+ 2004: 103 ERA+ 2005: 73 ERA+ Good luck finding a youngster in our system that will give us a healthy season with an ERA+ over 90. Marquis had a bad season. Just for reference, Sean Marshall threw up an 83 ERA+ last season and didn't even stay healthy. It's one think to say that we could replace Marquis's production at a fraction of the cost and another to point out some guys in our system that are ML ready and actually capable of doing it. Sean Marshall and Angel Guzman are the only really legit SP options for the '07 Cubs. Neither have shown the ability to approach league average production in the bigs. Neither has shown the ability to stay healthy. Marmol and Mateo are bullpen material, IMO.

Oh wait, I actually specifically addressed that season.

Are you referring to Marquis? 2004: 3.71 ERA 2005: 4.13 ERA 2006: 6.02 ERA That's not a 4A pitcher. It's a quality ML starter with one bad year in the last 3. The reasons for that bad year have been explained in other threads, so I won't do it here.

Is Jim Hendry still on a lot of medication? So I take it from your comment you know for sure that there weren't 3 or 4 other teams willing to pay him that much? Like it or not, the market for SP is ridiculous, both via trade (e.g. Jennings) and FA (Lilly, Meche, etc.). No one wants to pay those prices. In an ideal world you have enough young SP in your farm system. We thought we did with Wood, Z, and Prior. It's pretty easy to fill in the other 2 spots in a rotation. It's going to take some time to get young pitching from our system now that Wood and Prior can't be counted on. You don't replace #1 starters easily. Veal, Gallagher, and Pawelek are the next wave, but in the meantime we had to pay out the backside. Hendry knows it. He had a choice. Give up our B+ prospects (Pie, EPatt, Veal) via trade and kill our chances at cheap young pitching down the road, or overpay for #3-5 starters in the FA market. While I give Hendry props for not repeating the mistake of running out quad A pitchers or not quite ready pitchers again, it seems as though you minimize the impact of overpaying for mediocre talent. Unless you view this overinflated market as static (i.e. it's not going to correct itself), those contracts could definitely come back to haunt the Cubs. Lilly and Marquis will be movable later in their contracts, assuming they don't go down with injuries. Starting pitching is almost always movable. We may have to eat a couple mil and send out some B prospects to do it (worst case scenario IMO), but that's the tradeoff for keeping your better prospects right now and seeing just who can make it. We're going to have Rich Hill in our rotation for a long time. Veal, Gallagher, and Pawelek will arrive in Chicago just in time to offset the backloaded contracts. We will have a ton of decent arms in the pen making the league min as well (Rapada, Cherry, Marmol). Looking down the road 3 years, we're going to be in good shape financially, even if the payroll goes down to the 100MM level. Wilken will make sure of that. That was the best signing the Cubs have made in the last 10 years, IMO. He knows how to get young talent that produces at the ML level.

You wouldn't think, but he did trade for a banged up Mike Hampton who hasn't been particularly healthy with the Braves either. Not to mention, after a few years of having somebody else pay Hampton's salary, I believe they are on the hook for the next couple years. Maybe they need to get creative to make some room. Schuerholz is big on IP when evaluating pitchers. Hampton may have been banged up, but he took the mound 30+ times for years when the Braves traded for him. Prior hasn't pitched much the last couple of seasons. Maybe he came to the conclusion that emphasizing quantity over quality can be exremely risky and that consistent innings isn't the same as stable pitching. It's all a risk. Taking the guy who might make 32 starts but probably won't do all that well may or may not be smarter than taking the guy who probably won't make 32 starts but will do well when he does start. And of course, Hampton showed him that consistently making your starts doesn't guarantee you will in the future. The pitching gods are fickle. Maybe the market for mediocre innings is so overheated that a $4m gamble on a guy who might not pitch much starts to make a lot more sense. If your budget is tight, shedding one high payroll player and getting back a potential great player (and more payroll flexibility) could become an intriguing option. Hampton caught the injury bug all of a sudden after the Braves acquired him. Prior hasn't just caught the injury bug. Prior would net us peanuts right now. If he comes back healthy to ST and pitches like he did in '03, his value skyrockets. We're not counting on him and his salary is peanuts (with the Cubs payroll). Holding onto him now is the smart move. He tanks and they're out a couple mil. He is healthy and we probably make the playoffs or we can deal him for actual value.

Is Jim Hendry still on a lot of medication? So I take it from your comment you know for sure that there weren't 3 or 4 other teams willing to pay him that much? Like it or not, the market for SP is ridiculous, both via trade (e.g. Jennings) and FA (Lilly, Meche, etc.). No one wants to pay those prices. In an ideal world you have enough young SP in your farm system. We thought we did with Wood, Z, and Prior. It's pretty easy to fill in the other 2 spots in a rotation. It's going to take some time to get young pitching from our system now that Wood and Prior can't be counted on. You don't replace #1 starters easily. Veal, Gallagher, and Pawelek are the next wave, but in the meantime we had to pay out the backside. Hendry knows it. He had a choice. Give up our B+ prospects (Pie, EPatt, Veal) via trade and kill our chances at cheap young pitching down the road, or overpay for #3-5 starters in the FA market.

You wouldn't think, but he did trade for a banged up Mike Hampton who hasn't been particularly healthy with the Braves either. Not to mention, after a few years of having somebody else pay Hampton's salary, I believe they are on the hook for the next couple years. Maybe they need to get creative to make some room. Schuerholz is big on IP when evaluating pitchers. Hampton may have been banged up, but he took the mound 30+ times for years when the Braves traded for him. Prior hasn't pitched much the last couple of seasons.

The only player the Cubs have that could land a player like Teixeira, Willis, Jones, Markakis, etc is Z and he's about to get real expensive. The Cubs don't have the pieces to pull this off, IMO. A bunch of B+ prospects won't do it either (Pie, EPatt, Veal, etc).

If not before... I agree. However, with Boras as his agent (if he is still z's agent) I'm thinking talks won't start until after Zito is signed. Just my 2 cents. Either way, I expect Hendry to get him signed. Hendry seems to be playing with monopoly money this year. Z ditched Boras a while back. His new agent still should wait until Zito signs anyway, which should happen in the next 2 weeks I would think. Let the market dictate price.

If not before...