jersey cubs fan

I wish we could find a talented 25 year old to put on the field. I'd rather have 2 guys under 25, one of which is a top 5 player at his position (Castro) and another could well be a top 10 at his position after the year (Rizzo). it's a good thing Hendry's people brought us Castro and the guy who was traded for Rizzo then

People on the Seattle message boards are not just worried that it's a round game, but also that it's an early game. Like NASCAR?

12th Man, False Start City, etc. There really is a higher occurrence of false start penalties in Seattle than any other stadium. Sure, that helps. But it shouldn't be so completely overwhelming an advantage. Shouldn't, and for most teams it isn't, for them it is.

I'm sorry, but that's silly. Sports team purchases are almost always financed with debt. There's absolutely no reason to believe that Fox Sports, or anyone for that matter, would need to check under couch cushions to scrape together 2 billion on day one. I think we're still missing the point, here. I found a present value calculator online that allows you to calculate the present value of an annuity. Essentially, this calculation allows you determine the value today of a group of future payments given a specific rate of return. Now the actual present value of the payments will vary depending on the details of the payments, but even without those it's a very informative exercise. What I found is that a yearly payment of 270 million dollars (this seems to be a common midpoint in reports I have seen), at an 8% rate of return (I pulled this out of my ass, but it's pretty healthy), for 25 years is worth 2.8 billion dollars. No matter how you look at it, Fox Sports just paid more than the cost of the franchise for the rights to broadcast some of the team's games. I don't understand how you can really think that's business as usual. It's completely bizarre. If you're curious to know more, here's a brief definition and explanation of the present value concept: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/present-value-annuity.asp#axzz2DfR9MQrF You realize in year 25 they'll also probably be paying a $270 million payroll at the same time right?

If we're assuming Clemons' first year on the juice was 1997 and Bonds' was 2000, then I'm not sure i agree with his premise in Clemons' case. That would have been a pretty Albert Belle-like peak and flame out. But regardless, there's a major flaw in his reasoning - There's no proof whatsoever that Sosa was on roids from 1998 to 2001. There's also no proof whatsoever that Bonds wasn't on roids prior to 2000. It's all guess work. @ the Clemens stuf....what in the world? He won an MVP, 3 Cy Youngs, had 2590 Ks, 100 CG, 38 Shut outs, through age 33. Six 8-win seasons, eight 6-win seasons, plus another 5 win and 4+ win season (from 84-96). Pretty much a no doubt HOFer. ETA: How does someone flame out when their last season over the sample you are looking at had a 7.6 WAR (1996). Yeah, but how many rings?

This is what I was trying to point out earlier when Rose came out; what does the latter have to do with the former? If we're going to argue "everyone was doing it" and "it was kinda banned but not enforced" and all that stuff (which I agree with), what does that have to do with Rose? Rose was consciously breaking rules at the time that had basically been baseball's original sin for decades. It's not like it's something he can plead ignorance on, or point to a pervasive culture at the time that he got swept up in. That said, I have no problem with Rose in the HoF; the thing that should stand (and seemingly bugs him even more than being left out of the Hall) is his lifetime ban from MLB (no coaching, managing, announcing, etc.). The Hall is a separate entity and should put him in if people vote him in. Rose should stay out just to piss off people stupid enough to care.

Local old school NY sports guy Russ Salzberg gave his thumbs up to Clemens and Bonds with a no to Sosa since the other two "put up HOF numbers before doing steroids".

Name one. oldie but Steve Largent. To be clear not talking just about Seahawks and their lack of media exposure. Are you kidding me? Steve Largent received Jay Cutler treatment? You're delusional.

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.