jersey cubs fan

There's like one big ten school that's hard to get admission to.

:beg: I'd have to think it's just a matter of time. Still have no idea why he was brought up this year, though. He was kind of set up to fail. No idea? He was hitting well at AAA and plays a position where the Cubs were getting nothing at the major league level. I can see being against the call-up but I don't know how you can have no idea why it happened.

On his radio show on Monday, he said that he would be clean shaven the next time he was on the show the following Monday, so I'm guessing that means he shaves it on 12/1 at 12:00 AM Why is he staying up so late two nights before the game? This is awful.

he was stellar against Dallas, and i don't deny that, but the defense themselves outscored Dallas up until a garbage-time TD with :34 left in the game. i already gave you the Carolina game too, and looking closer you're probably right about the Colts game (29% WPA, +13.8 EPA) but the Detroit game, he had a completely neutral effect on their win probability and expected points, and didn't even muster 5 YPA. this also wasn't a game where you could say the OL completely betrayed him. PFF: "Customarily the offensive line draws the ire of Jay Cutler due to its pass protection, but their Pass Blocking Efficiency this week as a unit was 82.5, their second best mark of the season with only Lance Louis (-0.3 pass blocking) grading negatively in pass protection." so even then, we're left with 2-3 games you can argue they might have had a tough time winning with just an average backup QB (of which they have none, of course) playing instead; i just feel most other QBs can make that argument, plus some also, fwiw- he's in the bottom 10 amongst QBs for WPA, EPA, QB rating, which is the main cause of my puzzlement over these articles that have started popping up of late First off, those stats are hardly gospel. They are extremely flawed and in a game like football where what the man does next to you can extremely effect what you do, as opposed to baseball, you should not treat them the way you are trying to treat them here. Secondly, it's been shown time and time again that without Cutler the Bears offense goes in the toilet. They don't just struggle, they are impotent. And again, there is not actual Cutler for MVP talk. He's not in the running. A couple talking heads have thrown his name around as a way of talking about how lost his team is without him. But at the end of the year he won't be anywhere close to getting the award.

Latest in a long line of meathead ex-players who don't belong in the HOF who piss and moan until they're let in. Leave Santo out of this.

Well it's not like saying that at all actually and you know that. He shouldn't be in the actual talks for the award (and really he isn't, despite a couple talking heads just doing what talking heads do), but the fact that the team is lost without him playing should at least be acknowledged. As for the results, you must be thinking of only the Jacksonville and Tenn games. Without Cutler, and with the offense playing as inept as they always do without Cutler, they arguably wouldn't have been able to win the Indy, Detroit, Dallas and Carolina games, and in all honesty they probably struggle against Minny as well. Cutler still had to improvise plays throughout that game. They defense hasn't been doing it all. And a lot of what they have done has been in situations where Cutler's offense has put the opposition in a position where they have to throw a lot to scramble back into the game. Without Cutler this offense would do nothing and the defense would be on the field forever. As old guys who play a bend but don't break style, having an offense at least move and keep the ball is vital. Without it they will wear down and look awful.

Just saw that, what does that mean? Did the Cubs bring him back or did he really get dumped by a winter league team?

Name one. I could see how Mike Trout would have won the MVP if he played in New York vs. Anaheim based purely on market exposure. And you could also point to the Jeremy Lin non-stop coverage last year- I highly doubt that he would have received that type of attention if he was playing in Utah instead of the Knicks (I use Utah as an example because the Jazz and Knicks had similar finishes in their respective conferences last year). Having said that, I realize I'm comparing two different sports but could you imagine the hype that Russell Wilson would have if he was putting up the same numbers in New York/Philly/etc. as opposed to Seattle? I mean, 17 TD's, 8 INT's, 93 QB Rating, and several high-profile comebacks is awfully impressive for a rookie QB. Not to mention how well-liked is he by the media (and we see it first hand how much the media plays into a players perception on a national stage). Cutler is a good player who is constantly lambasted by the national media as a horrible malcontent that hurts his team despite all the evidence to the contrary. That treatment is not at all similar to Mike Trout missing out on MVP to a triple crown winner.

Name one.

Wow, would the Bears maybe make this move? Are they really in need of a 32-year-old making $16 million over the next three years? Well he's been released. If he clears waivers his contract is null and void. If he is picked up on waivers what he is due to make 3 years from now is meaningless. And this isn't the Cubs, so a 32 year old is still technically allowed to contribute to the team.

It's one offseason plus a partial offseason where we've already made three free agent signings. In this case, "half" is meant in the colloquial sense of "partial." There's no point in referring to it in that manner, he's been here a little over a year.

No actually, it cannot. Your theoretical projections assume the team is trying to win. They were not. They never were. They fielded a team that would be bad enough to justify further selling off at the trade deadline. The fact that they may have projected to win 70 games on opening day doesn't change the fact that they were going to sell off veterans whenever possible, it is completely disingenuous to now pretend that wasn't their plan. Proof of this? Not being in a coma the past year.

No actually, it cannot. Your theoretical projections assume the team is trying to win. They were not. They never were. They fielded a team that would be bad enough to justify further selling off at the trade deadline. The fact that they may have projected to win 70 games on opening day doesn't change the fact that they were going to sell off veterans whenever possible, it is completely disingenuous to now pretend that wasn't their plan.

A) Only an idiot expects a team to perform at the high end of their expectations. B) They made it perfectly clear their number 1 goal was to trade veterans for prospects. C) The higher end of realistic projects by non-morons wasn't high in the first place. I'm not "acting" like anything. Rather I am actually living in the real world where the Cubs took an obvious dive last year and lost a lot of games as result. It wasn't luck that did them in, it was not trying to win games in the first place. The fact that the team at the end of the season was worse than the opening day roster was not a result of a weird series of events, it was the whole goddam point in the first place.

No. The team as constructed has a range within which they can reasonably be expected to perform. If they substantially alter what the team is, that's not variance. That's changing the composition of the team and changing the expectation for it. That's nonsense. Teams don't finish seasons exactly how they start them. The Cubs went into that season with every intention of dealing away as many veterans as possible for prospects. That was the goal. It was painfully obvious. The opening day team stunk and it just got worse and worse. It doesn't matter what the opening day roster "projected to win". They were never going to go through the season with that opening day roster.

That's variance. And they've more or less promised to do it again at some point, which probably means this coming season. That's ridiculous. I guess 140 losses is within the range of variance next year because they might trade the entire major league roster and bring up the I-Cubs. That's ridiculous because last year's team was certainly capable of losing 100 games and they did, while 140 losses is a whole different ballgame.

Who the F cares if he likes it or not? Paying customers who care how the team performs should care that the team hasn't tried to win yet and doesn't look poised to win for a while.

I'm beginning to wonder if Jed Hoyer is a little incompetent. I know they share duties, but technically everything that went wrong last offseason was on his desk. was he not at the forefront of the Rizzo acquisition?

That's what parallel fronts means. You try to win baseball games at the major league level while strengthening the minor league system. If you lose 100 games you either didn't try to win baseball games at the major league level or really suck at it. I don't think these guys are incompetent, but rather dishonest when they speak about parallel fronts.

You're right, all plans must start succeeding and show immediate results from day one with no time to allowed for adjustments and a foundation to be built all while changing an entires organizations paradigm from the top down. Well, yes. It's a results-oriented business. If they didn't think they could operate on parallel fronts, then someone else should have been hired. who says this isn't parallel fronts though? They lost 100 games last year, it's not parallel fronts. Anybody who is being the least bit honest will admit this isn't parallel fronts.

10 months? It's bad enough people buy into the notion that Theo should get 3-4 years of not winning before he can be judged, but now we're going to pretend he's had less time than he really did?

Stop with this nonsense. It's not "the right way". It is a way. A lazy and unnecessarily conservative way, but only one way.

I'm concerned with the fact that the roster still looks like crap and that all signs pointing to them not doing a whole hell of a lot about it before 2014. But as to the specific concern with Wood as #2, I'm not really sure how that fits.

I will admit, it's hard from that angle to tell if it was helmet to helmet at all. It's still illegal to "launch" yourself at a guy and leave your feet isn't it? "Launching" can be a fine/suspension worthy play if it's deemed bad enough, right? Launching is illegal in certain situations, like with a defenseless receiver, although doubtful with an open field block. But much like the Steltz hit on the guy laying near the sideline, it's a play that is generally accepted as part of the game but completely unnecessary and should be banned.

Would? The Cubs were 71-91 two years ago and 75-87 before then. We've already seen two horrendous seasons in a row.