jersey cubs fan

I don't understand the concern about Davis getting a start. Somebody like him should have been around a month ago.

Personally I think 90 is a pretty low threshold for being a so called "very good team". And I wasn't the won who pretended they did it a lot in the 2000's. If you aren't winning 90, you are pretty much in a large group of average teams. The Cubs had 1 very good team in the 2000's. They snuck into the playoffs 2 others times thanks to no competition, but they were not very good.

For the record, there is no rational or logical explanation for wanting to keep Hendry beyond this year.

Wasn't that the FJM article where they blasted Plaschke for saying how great the scoutiest scouts were for finding Ethier as a diamond in the rough, when he was the A's organizational player of the year? Yes, it was glorious. Some fat dude was sleeping in the corner or something and his ears perked up when he heard the name because he remember one swing where he looked like the perfect player or something. Just beautiful.

Other than the lack of production on offense and poor showing on defense, I can't think of anything he's been bad at.

Where do you come up with this nonsense? The Cubs had one very good team in the 2000's. One. They won 90 games, once. They spent a ton of cash but lost 90 games three times as often as they won 90 games. And furthermore, who cares if guys reached the majors? The fact that Tyler Colvin has reached the majors is not meaningful to the debate about how well the Cubs have drafted. He's a sub .300 OBP hitter in the majors. He was always a safe bet to make the majors, the problem is he stands very little chance of being good in the majors and wasn't worthy of the high selection. Andrew Cashner has reached the majors. Yay. He probably could have slotted right into the bullpen if that's what they wanted, but the question with him has always been about the ability to throw 6+ innings 30+ times a year.

To be fair, I'm sure 97% of the reason for that walk was because he knew Koyie Hill was up next.

If you are creating a list of candidates in season then it is pretty much a waste of time to keep Hendry through to the end. Certainly you want to begin the process before you can him, but that should already be done. You can't really narrow it to 1-3 guys while he's still in the role. If you want to keep him until August, it doesn't matter. It's not like he is some fantastic fire seller or anything. But if you do keep him with the intent of getting rid of him then you have to watch his movement like a hawk and potentially nix any trade he does come up with.

So you concede that you don't really trust Hendry. This also assumes new management won't come up with alternative ways to improve the team in the offseason that Hendry might not. I've said many times in this thread that there are valid reasons for not trusting him. I feel like your thinking is way too binary here. It's possible to not be in love with the job Hendry has done and still feel that it may be the best thing to retain him for a bit longer. Not in any logical way. This isn't a guy in his third or fourth year that we have questions about. He's proven his inability quite repeatedly. The time for hemming and hawwing was a long time ago. Every year there is a new excuse to hold onto him for some people, and those excuses stopped making sense a long time ago. The man's job is to put a baseball team on the field that wins a lot more than it loses. He hasn't done it. There's no reason to pretend a true deep thinker would look beyond that and see some mythological reason why keeping him is the best option. Rickets has had more than enough time to consult with the right people and find the right man for the job. If, at this point, he sticks with Hendry any further, he will have made it clear he has very little interest in winning. He will have chosen the cowardly comfort of barely passable mediocrity over the potential for actual success based on the nonsensical fear that "things could be worse".

fits in perfectly if you ask me.

Id give him time too, but the way hes playing, hes not going to get time, playing time at least which is why they should give him some time in Iowa and call up someone from there. All we really need at this point is a 5th outfielder. Our starting OFs are too streaky to send Colvin down, I think. With Soriano and Kosuke making up 2/3 of our outfield, almost any at-bat could begin an extended slump. It's at least more convenient to have Colvin ready on the bench as opposed to having to call him up and send another player down. He may not be getting a ton of playing time now, but with the streaky outfielders we have he'll get his ABs in time, we're just in a period now where the streaks have been hot for both of them. I'm not sure the convenience of being able to have him around is all that great of an argument for keeping him here. It's not like one game can tell you if a guy is going into a slump. And sitting around waiting for a slump won't help much. He'd be better prepared to fill-in for a slumping player with more regular at bats. At the same time, we aren't talking about a guy who accomplished all he could in AAA or anything.

Well a lot of teams wanted Lebron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh too. Why does Riley get credit for them, but GarPax doesn't get credit for Thibs and the bench? Riley cleared cap space and actually got the big three to sign for less than max. Then he got some decent role players to sign for league minimum. You could argue that not many other execs could've pulled that off. Or wouldve even tried. Didn't the players get together and convince each other to play together?

Who's argued that in this thread? Several people. Can you name one or two of them and give posts that state that position? Because I haven't seen them. tim and cubcoltpacer appear to doing so in painfully obvious fashion

Unfortunately.

So what? This organization blows. Why would anybody miss the people who have put together a mediocre team on a huge budget and an average at best farm system? But at the same time, it's pretty ridiculous to worry about "reports indicating that losing Hendry mean losing everybody." There's no rule that says you have to lose everybody. If you want to keep a couple guys, you can, with ease. The scaredy cat view that things could actually be worse if they hire an even bigger failure so let's just hang onto him because we're comfortable with our occasional flirtations with 88 wins is ridiculous. This isn't a mid major college team that should be happy with the occasional bowl game. This organization should be a hell of a lot better than they have been under Hendry and the only way to fix that is by replacing him.

I don't really understand how you can say the things you are saying. They have not been competitive. They've avoided long-term contracts because Hendry put them in such a crap position and there was no money available, not out of strategy. They've opened up spots for young players in a way they haven't done in a long, long time? What? Castro forced them to play him and in a way Colvin did last spring, sort of. They cleared the way for Cashner by dumping Silva, but that's the only clearing they've done, and it was a no brainer of a move. The change is Castro and Soto are something they never had or never produced when Hendry was in charge of that development. Jim Hendry is a piss poor GM. He's been given uprecedented opportunities to produce a winner in Wrigley and he's struggled to compete with the Florida Marlins when it comes to what matters most, wins. There is no mythological philosophy that better fits Jim Hendry than the philosophy of the guy who lucked into a position and was signed to extensions twice by outgoing superiors. He's done a terrible job and it would be nothing short of idiotic to think he will suddenly learn how to do a better job.

He had him bunting and Barney pulled the bat back on 2 pitches right down the middle of the plate. They were not near right down the middle. They were moving in on his hands and were just barely strikes.

The ump wanted to call an out regardless of outcome, and it was not an out.

You just have to love that "human element".

Fitness for pitchers is relative. Throughout his career he's almost never gone to the mound within a couple minutes of running the bases. And he had to run at each spot. Four 30 yard dashes, and then go out and pitch.

I always fear the post "pitcher ran around the bases" inning.

Part of it was timing of the injuries, and how they were forced to (or chose to) deal with the problem. Missing defensemen early and having Keith play 30 minutes a game with barely any time off from the previous season had long lasting effects in my opinion. Bolland missing time late in the season and to start the Vancouver series hurt. Seabrook suffering his injury in the playoffs hurt. Hossa and Kane overlapping their injuries at the beginning of a season in which they were trying to find some chemistry with a bunch of new guys skating together made it tough to ever get it done. They didn't come close to suffering the type of injuries Pittsburgh dealt with, but they missed so many guys at so many inopportune times, and effectively ruined their best defensemen in the process. It was probably more the exhaustion of last season/olympics/playoffs/party + top guys like Keith and Toews having to pick up slack and just making it worse, rather than missed time that hurt.

Yay Cubs, .500 here we come!

i'm pretty sure you won't be able to get into the game if you try to use tickets you printed yourself, stupid I went to the Bears first playoff game this year with tickets I printed myself.

Isn't he listed at 6'2", 250 ish? That's pretty good size, even on the interior. He can run like an outside LB though. He has produced in college. And he was one of the top recruited HS players a couple years ago. I think Burflict's a better LB, but that's the only one in potentially the deepest ILB class I've ever seen. 6'2" is on the short side for an NFL linebacker, and that's a college listing. College listings are notoriously generous. There is no way that is true. That's got to be at least average. LB is a position where height does not help. There are all sorts of 6'0" to 6'2" LB.