jersey cubs fan

Rizzo is probably starting the year in AAA anyway, he doesn't have to stay up for good until 2014, and if necessary he could start in a corner OF position for a year or two, or get traded for more value after a year in Iowa.

Options are generally one year at a time, no? An opt-out as any particular point in the contract is a one time thing. My guess is it matters for accounting reasons, as well as having the agent be able to say he signed a 6/120 for his client instead of a 3/60 with options.

who are you quoting, and why is Tice making personel decisions?

For years now, the Cubs hitting prospects have disappointed. Castro appears very good but he's the only one. Soto's okay, but after that there have been no guys of note. Prospect after prospect has disappointed at the plate. Vitters, Colvin, Pie, Choi, Patterson. Vitters still has a chance, but he certainly has underperformed to date. Now the Cubs top 10 is dominated by bats. None of them are elite bats with the possible exception of Rizzo, but there are far more bats than arms. And that's new. For a long time, the Cubs were known to for producing a fairly consistent string of mostly power arms. Now? Next to nothing. I'm betting that'll change, but for the first time in a long time, the number of highly regarded Cubs hitting prospects clearly outweighs those of their power arms. According to many prognosticators the Cubs top 4 prospects are all hitters and their highest ranking pitching prospect is either McNutt who is coming off of a down year or Maples who has yet to throw a professional pitch except in instructs. That's new. Yeah, I get that there are numbers now that haven't appeared before, but the issue remains they aren't stocked with blue chips at upper levels and they still need to acquire more bats. I just think it's a mistake to emphasize pitching at the expense of hitters in the minor leagues, the Cubs can use both right now. They hardly have a glut of anything, outside of maybe mediocre space fillers, which they seemed to stock up on in recent years.

So he could have been interviewed for 45 minutes from late Thursday night until Friday morning

I don't even know what any of that means.

He said a lot of positive things about Martz in public but supposedly didn't actually mean all of it. Perhaps he's saying the same stuff about Bates publicly, or at least hopefully. If they are directly going against his wishes by not even interviewing guys he likes....., well, that would suck.

Isn't the hitting prospect situation pretty similar to the pitching prospect situation? There isn't a plethora of upper level guys in this organization that look to be the equivalent of top of the rotation pitchers in the lineup. A lot of the potential blue chippers are in the lower levels and far from the big leagues/relative unknowns. They seem to have stocked up on team controlled pitching that will at least hold their own the next few years, but there's 8 positions to field and only SS appears to be settled for the next several years, followed by maybe 1B and CF.

I'm not sure you can either, but it'll be a very limited use. Those situations worked because you signed them initially and then paid them to leave football. You'd need to scout 2-sport guys who might have a legit chance at sticking with the other sport and that's just a very limited supply. You aren't going to get the elite baseball prospects on that plan because they will be baseball centric athletes.

I don't think there's any question whether they can afford to resign him, I think they might just not want to resign him. My guess is management might not view him as the elite pitcher he will no doubt be paid to be.

I hope that source is Jay Cutler or his fiance because if they passed on him because Lovie was insulted he wouldn't interview last time I'll be pissed. There seems to be an awful lot of inside sources letting the media know how Cutler feels about things, and they often times conflict. The Bears seem intent on hiring either the OC from Tampa or the OC from Jacksonville, two of the worst GD offenses in the league. This is discouraging.

I understand it's a conflict to you. But it's not a conflict of interest. His job is to negotiate on behalf of the owners. He's not an independant arbiter or judge, he's the owners' CEO/Lawyers/Chief Negotiator.

Things rarely are ideal, but a head coach hiring his coordinators is absolutely what everybody should expect.

A) He's not an owner and hasn't been one for a while. B) The commissioner's job is not to mediate between players and owners. The job of commissioners in US sports has evolved from the theoretical independant overseer to a direct representative of ownership of those franchises. The fact that he was an owner is a meaningless point, when you consider the whole point of his job is to help his fellow owners maintain stable value of their properties. If the fellow owners didn't mind having him lead them, then there is no conflict of interest.

What session will this be at?

Apparently the Padres sale to Moorad hit a snag today and has not been approved. This coincides with Leigh Steinberg's bankruptcy filing, and he was Moorad's former business partner.

I don't think your ratio is accurate, and even if it were, the good things have been much better than the bad things have been bad.

It shouldn't be a surprise that they would hire an OC before the GM, as hiring the coaching staff is what the head coach does and the Bears made it very clear Lovie hires his coaches. I see no reason to wait for a GM to be hired to give input.

I remember he was a career college coach and part of that staff of "teachers" Lovie originally, and unsuccessfully, put together. He should be competent enough to coach the line on ND though.

Looking at his wikipedia profile it reads like the guy has gotten multiple OC jobs simply out of default because he was there and the team sucked and they didn't want to go get somebody else.

What are you talking about? They have more than half a dozen guys that can go out there and not embarrass themselves for a season or two.

Well that's not confusing or anything. When was that tweet? The trib, Biggs I think, already wrote an article about Olson interviewing for the job this week. Not sure TODAY needed to be emphasized. Anyway, he was QB coach with the Bears under Jauron, and has been TB's OC. He was around when Freeman emerged as a solid QB, but also around when he regressed into garbage. Overall he ran a pretty horrible offense in his tenure there. He may be qualified, but I think he's a completely uninspring selection.

he's got such an ego that he can't just ignore people trolling him. i love it. I turned on CTL last night just as he was about to introduce a "well yesterday it looked like Kerry Wood was leaving and now it looks like he's staying" segment and the smirk on his face just screamed, "damn right I'm the reason this got done".

Wait what HOW WAS THIS ALL BUT MISSED. It was not missed, more like ignored.

I guess I don't disagree, but I'm kind of surprised you put so much stock in that. It's not like he was pitching in an empty Miller Park this year, but I suppose our media could easily break him. He's white. Just have him wear eye black and a dirty uniform. He's a goofy, stammering man-child. I don't think our media will like him - mental midget, anti-leader, and all that. They were nice to Quade.