jersey cubs fan

Because if you wait for mid-season (if he lasts that long) you are saddled with the same situation you are now with no RF'er. I just don't see how there's anyway he'll somehow pull it together and be a productive positive force next year. You're going to be saddled either way if you do something stupid and just dump him. And who the F cares if he's going to be a positive force? He's a baseball player, not a community activist. If he's the best man for the job, and with the current assets in place he clearly is, then play the man. If people want him gone, too bad. He didn't make Soriano and Soto suck this year. His attitude is not why they are going to miss the playoffs. His absence is not going to make them better via happiness. They still need baseball players, and as much as a douche as he is, he's still a baseball player. Until they can get a better player, they have to keep him.

That has a lot less to do with ECB than with their ongoing issues of conflicts of interest.

Either way we are screwed. I'd rather get rid of him and be sucky, then have to deal with this again and still be sucky next year. The most important issue is to be not sucky next year. Trying to make the Bradley situation work is the best way to do that. Which is to get rid of him. Ideally, if you can trade him for something decent without being saddled with the contract, sure. But it's really stupid to just dump him and pick up the tab. Bradley's idiocy is not why the team struggled. This was not a chemistry issue. This was a flawed team that had its flaws exposed.

So you want him to get on a conference call with the team in the clubhouse or call everybody individually on their mobiles? This is stupid.

Prior, Cruz, Hill and Choi were all top prospects at one point. Let's hope these prospects end up better than those did. Let's hope that any of them end up as good as Prior. Yea and Id be happy as hell if any of them equal what Choi did for us. Choi didn succeed as a Cub,but he landed us Derrek Lee. Id take that agin from any of these guys. Choi was playing really well for the Cubs in his age 24 season until he broke his brain.

How much does a team really have to prep for Seneca Wallace? He is more mobile than Hasselbeck. So you at least have to prepare for that much. This is probably where the downgrade from Urlacher to Hillenmeyer would most be noticed. Urlacher can beat the crap out of mobile QBs, Hunter will not. They will have to scheme.

And the burnout rate for pitchers was a lot higher "back in the day." Is it true that organizations may have gone overboard in "babying" pitchers? Sure. There are quite a few pitchers who can easily surpass the arbitrary 100 pitch mark without significantly increased injury risk. Young pitchers with an already huge jump in their workload though? Come on. There's truth to both sides of the argument here. I just don't see any reason to shut down Wells at this point, in this context. If there's truth to both sides of the argument then you can's say there is no reason to shut him down at this point. If there's no reason, then you don't think there's any truth to the side of the argument that young arms should be treated somewhat cautiously, especially when there is nothing to be gained by using a guy, and the team has been talking about reducing his workload for over a month already because he's gone way beyond what he's ever done before.

He's suspended from the team, how is he supposed to get the apology to his teammates in Milwaukee before the Cubs release it to the media?

Gotta love that thought process. We Could get to 85 wins, missed every starter for some period, Aramis Ramirez for two months, Soriano and Soto had zero seasons, and Kevin Gregg blew a ton of saves. If half of those things don't happen we are getting reading to get swept again in the playoffs. This team doesn't need anything, but one more shot next year. They also got the 2nd best season of 33 year old Lee's career, a shockingly great performance from Randy Wells, Angel Guzman healthy for nearly an entire season, and Ted Lilly's career year. There were plenty of people who thought this team would struggle to eclipse the 90-win mark this year. They were pretty old, with multiple injury prone players, and they aren't going to be any younger. This team absolutely needs stuff unless the plan is simply to hope the competition all regresses. I see no reason why Derrek and Ted can't put up similar years to what they've done this year and if Sori and Soto come back at all they won't even need to. As for Guzman, that kind of thing happens. Who would have thought Chris Carpenter would have put up this kind of year after missing the last two? So you see no reason why top of the line performances can't be repeated but you don't think disappointment can be repeated? Okay. Those kinds of thinks happen, as you say. What you've line out here is the hope everything works out perfectly approach. And it's not a good one. This team needs stuff. They are old, injury prone and seriously lacking at multiple positions. They can contend in 2010, but it won't be as easy as just showing up.

Or he might just do what he's done for 6 years and be really good.

Gotta love that thought process. We Could get to 85 wins, missed every starter for some period, Aramis Ramirez for two months, Soriano and Soto had zero seasons, and Kevin Gregg blew a ton of saves. If half of those things don't happen we are getting reading to get swept again in the playoffs. This team doesn't need anything, but one more shot next year. They also got the 2nd best season of 33 year old Lee's career, a shockingly great performance from Randy Wells, Angel Guzman healthy for nearly an entire season, and Ted Lilly's career year. There were plenty of people who thought this team would struggle to eclipse the 90-win mark this year. They were pretty old, with multiple injury prone players, and they aren't going to be any younger. This team absolutely needs stuff unless the plan is simply to hope the competition all regresses.

hey fans, look at jim hendry stick up for you...you don't want that guy fired, do you? I cannot defend Bradley's actions this year. However, in what way are Hendry's comments any different than Bradley's? Using the media to communicate with each other is not just a horrible idea, but just plain stupid. Bradley proved that. Hendry only further illustrates that. Hendry and Bradley deserve each other, but...somewhere else. In what way are they similar?

No he can't. He can complain and threaten to sit out, and then the Cubs could suspend him again, and the MLBPA can get involved and the Cubs could lose and wind up paying his whole contract. If he never shows the Cubs wont' be on the hook for the entire contract.

In other words he's not better than nothing.

There's a big difference between thinking he was done/wanting him cut loose and thinking he wasn't going to do anything like this. I thought he was about to settle into the mediocre level he was pre-2005. Useful, but not valuable. And I'm more than happy to admit I was wrong.

Of course the first thing a new regime wants to do is clear out the trash.

I was going to call you out on the same hitter comment but man, you are right, he has been remarkably consistent. Of course he had performance enhancers to help with that and he's about to be 37.

Do you honestly see any hope of this situation being rectified at this point? It's not happening. I don't see it happening but there's absolutely no reason why it can't. I'm hoping Ricketts comes in and either fires Hendry immediately and the new regime makes it work, or he tells Hendry "we've wasted way too much money paying guys to play elsewhere, figure out how to keep Milton without having the team fall apart." That is unless he can make a reasonable trade. I'm fine with dealing Bradley, but not in an overwhelmingly lopsided move. Cooler heads can prevail, eventually. It's still September. No I don't think they will, but they can.

Elia was fired the year he made those comments, later on. But the situations are quite different. First, it was 1983, there was minimal coverage. Second, there was a lot less business to lose. And third, it was a one-time rant. Bradley has been pulling this crap all season. He plays poorly and blames others, including fans and his fellow employees.

I'm far from the world's biggest Hendry supporter, but that's not entirely fair. The Cubs will have made the playoffs in three of Hendry's seven years as GM, along with a near-miss in 2004. 2005 and 2006 sucked, but I think Dusty deserves more of the blame there for his destruction of the pitching staff. This year has been a big disappointment, but not all of it can be blamed on Hendry; a lot of players severely underperformed and that had a major effect. Clearly, we should expect more given the Cubs' market and payroll, but you can't say he has "nothing" to show for his efforts. The Cubs have been about as competitive during Hendry's tenure any non Yankees or Red Sox team during that time. Hendry hired Dusty when it was easy to predict that move would not work out. It's his fault Dusty had the chance to ruin that staff. They've had some success, but not nearly enough. They've blown a perfectly good opportunity to dominate their divison throughout his tenure.

*If* Hendry has to eat Bradley's contract and they have to fill holes in house and also have to cut payroll- all real possibilities- would likely mean not being very good the next couple years. I don't want Ryne Sandberg to ever manage the Cubs. Trammell absolutely should replace Piniella as manager. What I was trying to say was that the new owner might want to make a big spalsh by bringing back the hometown hero to manage the team because he won't/ can't afford the payroll it would take to improve the product on the field. As a Cubs fan, Ricketts probably has fond memories of Sandberg the player. That may cloud his judgement about Sandberg the manager. I don't see them cutting payroll. They may not raise it much, but they won't cut it. I agree Sandberg remains a really interesting option as part of the "need to create excitement by February" plan.

The guy has said he wants to get off the field as soon as possible, takes himself out of games, and has refused to take the field. Guys argue with managers all the time, and usually it involves disagreeing with being taken out of a game. With Bradley it's been about not wanting to play and blaming everybody else when he plays poorly. And he has played poorly. Multiple players have expressed that they are tired of his act. Soriano, Ramirez, Lee, Johnson and Dempster have all said in varying degrees of diplomacy, that it's on Bradley to stop being a douche and get with the program. And on top of that, it's delusional to pretend that it doesnt' matter if a guy says you can tell why they haven't won in 100 years with all the negativity of the fans and the organization and that he needs a more positive environment. He called out the organization and blamed them for his shortcomings. As much as you want to pretend a baseball players only job is to play baseball, you're wrong. A baseball franchise exists to make money. Plain and simple. The most important thing for a player to do is play well. But there are other aspects of the job. Critizing the paying customers, repeatedly, is the exact opposite of what you should do. It's bad for business, and a completely legitimate reason for a team to take action against a player. They waited until the season was all but done, because they recognized that he was the best player for the job, but when it stopped being necessary to put the guy who gives the team the best chance to win today, they finally took action. Milton Bradley is not a vital part of this organization. He's somewhere between the 5th-10th best player on this team. He has been barely better than Ryan Theriot, playing RF and making much more money. He's an asset, but he is a devaluted asset, due almost entirely to his own actions. If Hendry didn't suspend him, does anybody honestly think teams would be fooled into thinking the Cubs weren't all that intent on moving him? Seriously? If you do, you are dumb. Stop with all the whining about the suspension. He deserved a suspension and he was suspended. He brought it on himself. Jim Hendry has been a crappy GM for much of his time here, and Paul Sullivan is annoying, but this is not the wrong decision and this is not the media's fault.

He was still listing 8 names as potential top 100 prospects, which doesn't make a lot of sense. The Cubs might have 4 out of a basket of 5 potential candidates, I don't think they have 3 more that will just miss the cut.

I'd much rather let Trammel take over and have Sandberg be bench coach. I don't see any value in getting the Sandberg nightmare over early. I still want to see them make the most out of the Lee and Ramirez era (not to mention perhaps the last couple good years of Zambrano and Soriano).

I think it was an okay showing, mostly by Cutler, Davis and Knox. Nobody else impressed me. Olsen and Forte disappointed.