jersey cubs fan

Geovany Soto spent 3 years at Iowa before coming up at age 25. Chirinos is 26 and has put up ridiculous wOBAs the last 2 years including .428 this year. I'm not saying he is anywhere near the caliber of Geovany Soto but you can't tell me that no team would consider him a decent inclusion in a trade package. Obviously he isn't a centerpiece, but he has value. I think he could be a good candidate for backup catcher next year, but in no way do I think anybody would assign him any value in a trade, especially this offseason. Maybe if somebody got desperate for backup catcher help next July and he had a hot month, but nobody is trading for him this November.

Simmons hates the Bears and is laughing at this line. I agree with his thoughts on this line. 6.5 is pretty nuts. I do not get it.

All you want is for people to focus on the positive aspects of your proposal? That's absurd. It's a bad proposal and the fact that it has no chance of coming to fruition does not make it unnecessary to point out that it's a bad proposal. I think you just like to argue. I wanted feedback. That includes positive and negative feedback. If you think it is a bad proposal, fine, tell me why. Don't just say "this is lame." Because the business of college football is based on the tradition of college football and the tradition is heavily invested in conferences, especially the big three longterm ones, Big Ten, SEC and Pac 10. Those are where most of your big money teams are. You are breaking those up, and adding a bunch of worthless teams for no good reason at all. It's out of the box for the sake of being out of the box without making one lick of sense because there is apparently no rhyme or reason for your new setup. If you want Boise State to get a chance at a title there's no reason to mess up everything else that's great about college football just for the outside chance that this happens. And I didn't want to argue about this, I was just happy pointing out how dumb it was. But then you whined and asked me to argue with you, so now I kind of have to.

All you want is for people to focus on the positive aspects of your proposal? That's absurd. It's a bad proposal and the fact that it has no chance of coming to fruition does not make it unnecessary to point out that it's a bad proposal.

Because you knew it was a bad idea? What makes it a bad idea? Because you said so? I think if it WOULD happen, (which it never will) that it's a GREAT idea. Because there's no good reason to break up all the conferences and the way you did it was silly, at best.

There's not much you can do in baseball. But in HS sports you can and should absolutely let up when humiliating an opponent. 70-0 football games and 100-2 basketball games are stupid.

Because you knew it was a bad idea?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/tom_verducci/09/07/playoff.format/index.html?eref=sihp I think this is the first time I've seen a major national writer promote the idea I've been talking about for a while about having 1 extra WC in each league and making it a 1 game play-in game to face the #1 seed. I've stated the benefits before and Verducci essentially says the same thing. I really don't see a downside unless you are just allergic to any change at all. He quotes Joe Maddon talking about it being unfair for a 162 game series coming down to 1 game, but that's a really silly stand to make when a season can already come down to one game, and going to a 5 game series isn't all that much more fair.

timely

Since when does "likely better than most in the NFC" translate to "possibly in the top 50%" or "a pretty average QB right now"? When he says "likely better than most", he is absolutely saying that Hasselbeck is one of the best QB's in the NFC. Not sure how you can argue in his defense. Most = majority (or more than 50%). Therefore, "better than most" literally means "better than 50%". and still most likely wrong

Does getting caught not matter?

The lack of position player development is an approach that I don't agree with but at least I see the logic in focusing on high-ceiling pitching. I guess it just seems so incredibly standard for a team out of the race to give players like Chirinos (or Castillo) and Smith PAs, if only because a hot month might turn them into an auxiliary piece in a trade. Yet here are the Cubs, passing them over for the likes of Bobby Scales. Of course this isn't the most detrimental oversight the organization has made, it's just so basic in my mind. I don't see the point in getting so worked up about this specific situation. September callups generally don't play enough to get really impact their standings.

And he's probably wrong on both accounts.

Because one is grovelling to an attention whore and the other is a standard holdout negotiation.

Michigan isn't in the top 25, so what's the problem? Even if they were, who cares? Being 23rd or whatever is hardly an accomplishment.

But the fact is the Bears are right there with almost everybody else except for Washington and Dallas. The NFL has 2 giants, a few scrubs and everybody else. The idea that the Bears are a poorly run business is simply not a story. It's pointless nonsense meant to sell magazines and get pageviews.

The Redskins are both the model franchise for running a team the right way and a joke on the football field. Why are the Bears supposed to be more like Washington? Dallas had more success in the early 90's, but that was a different era. The Giants aren't top of the heap even though they "should" be, why aren't they criticized? Oh because they got taxpayers to build a $1.6b monster of a cash cow stadium while the Bears tried to stick within the traditional venue of Soldier Field and kept their stadium much smaller. Those bastards. They aren't big enough whores for some people. That's not a story.

It's pretty freaking idiotic to go from either praising their business genius or ridiculing their stupidity. This is a non-story. They aren't "poorly run", they are as somebody else said more conservative. Big deal. There's nothing wrong with that. It hasn't jeopardized the organizations ability to function as an ongoing concern.

There is plenty of disputing that. They run a profitable and successful privately held business. They just don't maximize revenues and whore out the team as much as Jones and Snyder. And make no mistake, their egos is the reason why they run their teams the way they have, and it hasn't translated to very much football success in Snyder's era or in the free agency era for Jones. They are run this way for the same reason they don't have cheerleaders, because Virginia is in charge. So be it. It has nothing to do with their lack of success on the field just like the Tribune's running of the Cubs business had nothing to do with their lack of baseball success. They haven't hired great football people, that's where they should be criticized, not because they don't charge enough for popcorn and training camp.

ABC has a contract to show the NASCAR race that night which is why there is no prime time game. Makes it all the more dumb.

That 2004 team gets overrated by so many people. It was a very talented pitching staff hanging on by a thread due largely in part to inevitable injuries to the guys they rode so hard the year before, and an average at best lineup. They had a team OPS+ of 99 and were 14th in the league in walks. The 2004 demise was going to happen the minute they signed Dusty Baker to a job managing a team with no patient hitters and complete reliance on young arms.

This story cracks me up every year. Basically, the Bears aren't as disgustingly over the top whores as the Cowboys and Redskins and they didn't get a $1.6 billion stadium built for them like the NY teams. Big fing deal. It's not the size of the market that makes the difference. "Sharing" NY hasn't stopped the Yankees from dominating MLB market values so why do the Giants get a pass for only being 4th? They are a private family business that is successful, but they get ridiculed for not being McDonald's. Everybody has extremely similar revenue numbers except for the two outlier teams with the most obnoxious owners, and even that isn't that crazy of a difference. This is a non-story, but they would get criticized if they acted more like Snyder and they are criticized for not acting enough like Snyder. I don't get it. They should have canned their football personel and started fresh, but the business is strong and healthy and this story is dumb.

http://www.chicagobreakingsports.com/2010/09/packed-house-to-watch-blackhawks-first-practice.html First practice starts in a week. Games are in 2 weeks and the regular season opens one month from today. Summer really wrapped up in a hurry, but I'm dying for these last days before the NFL season starts.

I think that is highly doubtful.

I actually think his return could be more than his value to this team. He's far from irreplacable and hardly a difference maker. He's only been more valuable than Fukudome because of playing time issues. And he just turned 33. It really wouldn't take a huge drop in production for his value to be gone, like 2009. He's had a nice season, but he's probably getting praised for more than he's actually doing (the Mets announcers were slobbing all over him while disparaging guys like Fukudome and Ramirez - deservedly so on the latter). If the general consensus on Marlon is fairly high especially at his price you could get something significant for him and/or him and another player. After you list a multitude of negatives about Byrd, you then think some GM is going to give you "something significant" for him. Byrd is not a big-name player so I don't think any GM is going to give you anything signficant for him. He's been a very solid hitter for the past 4 seasons (all working with Jaramillo) and I don't see any reason to predict a huge drop in production. It doesn't have to be huge to have an impact. And he's 33, guys decline in their 30's. I don't see why there has to be a specific reason that he will decline, it happens to everybody eventually. He's got 2 years left on his deal at which time he will be 35 and it would be unlikely that he's with the team beyond then. They've got other people who can handle his job, and it's possible they could get serious value for him. Some low budget team hoping to contend may love to substitute his salary into the lineup. Marlon Byrd isn't going to be the difference between the Cubs contending next year or not, and he's not going to be selling tickets either. You don't have to move him, but there is absolutely no reason why you can't look into it and pull the trigger if something of value comes up.