jersey cubs fan

You do know that despite the homeruns, Mike Jacobs is a pretty crappy player as evidence of his career .262/.318/.498. So no thank you on Jacobs. You do know that Jacobs through 4 seasons (at a younger age also) has better numbers than Lee had at that point. Jacobs career OPS+ is the same as what Lee posted last year and he is a player on the rise while D-Lee is beginning to show that his career is certainly in decline. Also, Jacobs doesn't GIDP nearly as much. We also need to get more left handed, he's a possible answer. He's got a career OBP of .318 and he turns 28 in less than 2 weeks. He is not "on the rise". When DLee was 25, 26 and 27 he had an OPS+ of 112, 131 and 131. Jacobs has been 106, 100 and 111. And I would say that Lee's 550 PA age 24 season was more impressive than Jacobs 112 PA season at the same age. He's a bad option, the Cubs can't afford to lock in decreased OBP at any position.

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but Sam Rosen is doing the Bears game again, along with Tim Ryan.

I don't think a bad three games means the team folded under pressure, but that's just me. i think they choked, but that has more to do with HOW they lost than the fact that they lost. ryan dempster has a bad start? could just be bad luck or bad timing. but he walked more guys than he'd walked in any start since the '90s. struggling to throw strikes worse than you've struggled at any point in the last 10 years suggests to me that you're feeling the pressure and not responding well to it. same thing with game 2 - every infielder made an error, including an excellent fielder (lee), a good one (ramirez) and two guys who, while not great defensively, are pretty sure-handed (theriot, derosa). i don't know that it was what piniella did down the stretch, resting guys too much or whatever - i bet you can find lots of good teams that clinched early, gave their guys plenty of rest and then played very well in the playoffs. but i do suspect that piniella had something to do with the team being too tight and too high-strung to perform well in the playoffs. I agree I think weird things like Fukudome to the 2 hole were more questionable than resting people. He overdid the rest a bit too much for my liking, as I was really hoping they'd beat MIL and put the Mets in the wild card. But relievers pitching on Sunday, the starting pitchers being limited, guys not playing in the rain, I had no problem with that stuff and don't see how it could be blamed.

No Mariano Rivera, no Yankees, no Manny Ramirez and maybe even no Red Sox...........What will McCarver have to talk about? Each and everyone of those topics, at least once.

draft Tex

I, for one, already am. I don't know a lot about him, but I do see him as being somebody who is more qualified for the job. I'm not upset that Savard is gone, just confused about how it went down.

This game is all on the d-line and Orton. Harris needs to finally show up and make an impact. A loss here and the hopes of the playoffs turns into striving for .500.

I agree. They have a lot of holes to fill and only after a couple drafts will they then get filled. And they are missing key elements to a team, not just quantity. LT/QB/RB(Kevin Smith?)G's. Entire DL except for Redding, CBs. the Panthers were an expansion team and made it to the SB in their 2nd year. with the likely #1 pick and 4 more 1st day picks you can reasonably expect with a decent GM to get 5 starters and with the cap space another 3-5 through FA. it's really not improbable (assuming Marinelli's canned) that they could be a factor in the division next season. unless they take a QB with the #1, or retain Mayhew. Expansion teams start fresh and don't have to clean up previous messes. They also didn't make the SB in their 2nd year.

Why? what he do wrong? Did you see how terrible he made the lines the first 3 games? I know nothing of hockey strategy or what makes a good coach. My feeling when he was hired was that they hired the name to appeal to fans emotions more so than hiring a coach. I get the feeling there isn't a team in the league dying to hire him and he was only the Blackhawks coach because he used to be a Blackhawk (similar to Tallon).

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2008/10/hawks-fire-head-coach-savard.html

Wow? That's really really weird. Not that he was fired, but 4 games into the season. I don't think this is a good move. This will put more pressure on a young team. Weird timing. Why not fire him in the summer? I don't think he's all that great of a coach, by why start the season with him, and then fire him 4 games in, right after their best game of the season? You had to figure that Bowman's arrival and no contract extension meant he was on the chopping block, but now?

Hello bye week. Please pull this one out and then rest up.

They've got a long ways to go though, I think it's going to be at least 3 years before they are actually good. They might make some noise before then, but they are worse than the Wanny Bears.

Man, I had almost talked myself into not ordering Center Ice, now I'm wavering.

they're spread out over like seven years. and he's had a couple very good individual series. did he go from unable to hit postseason pitching in the '01 alds to being ok with postseason pitching in the '01 alcs to back to sucking in the '02 alds to back to being awesome in the '03 alds? And then absolutely god awful pathetic in the '03 ALCS, '03 WS, '07 NLDS and '08 NLDS. Soriano crapped the bed in the 2003 playoffs. Soriano has been horrible in the playoffs, I don't know people have trouble thinking that maybe there's a reason. My personal theory on Soriano is pitchers are just too confident in their own abilities to get him out as easily as he seems to get himself out. Early in his career pitchers thought he was just another young talented player who they could get out with their regular approach. They actually did that throughout 2001 when he was 25 and did next to nothing in the regular season. He exploded at age 26 during the regular season (2002 season) from a power standpoint, but he was still a fairly easy out. By 2003, however, teams were done challenging him "when it mattered". In the 2003 playoffs he struck out 26 times. During the regular season teams tried to beat him with high heat and while they still got him out 66% of the time he did enough damage that in the playoffs they weren't willing to take that chance. That carried over in 2004/2005, when he had Neifi-like OBPs. Perhaps he made some adjustments for the past three years, but he was just barely better than he was at his earlier peak, and he was still the same easy out that teams could shut down if they were not too proud or cocky enough that they'd constantly challenge him.

I hope Toews calling a players only meeting 3 games in isn't a sign of panic on the horizon.

Because if there's one thing Dallas is known for, it's player focus and effort at all times.

marcel has got to be one of the worst, though. it's not impressive at all to say your system is accurate when you just predict everyone in the league is going to be mediocre. it's the crazy stuff (on both ends) that makes a projection system interesting. marcel is not interesting. I don't think a goal of a projection system should be to be interesting.

Generally speaking the NTC is waived when a guy wants out badly or he's offered a carrot. Samardzija hasn't done enough for Hendry to smear his name (Sosa) or to justify offering any more of a carrot. A NTC isn't just a matter of getting permission, it makes trades very difficult, and often forces discounts that players value in trade.

They have Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy, 2 guys that a lot of teams would love to get their hands on, especially one about to embark on a full rebuilding phase. Also, Im thinking that the Pads will try to package Peavy and Khalil Green like the Marlins did with Becket and Mike Lowell, in which if a team wants Peavy, they'l have to take Green as well. Ian Kennedy isn't worth anyone's time. He's a 5th starter. If I am the Padres and I am looking to rebuild, a package involving Cano, Cabrera, Hughes, and a prospect or two for Peavy, Greene(could play 2B), and a prospect isn't looking like that bad of a trade. Are you seriously that enamored with the overhyped Yankees prospects?

That's a kickass uni. I'd like to see that one again on throwback day. If that picture was taken at US Cellular, I was at that game.

NFL Lines For Week 7 - NFL Football Line Week Seven NFL Line 10/19 - 10/20, 2008 Date & Time Favorite Line Underdog Total 10/19 1:00 ET Tennessee -8 At Kansas City 35 10/19 1:00 ET At Buffalo PK San Diego 45.5 10/19 1:00 ET Pittsburgh -9.5 At Cincinnati 37 10/19 1:00 ET At Miami -3 Baltimore 36.5 10/19 1:00 ET Dallas -7 At St. Louis 44 10/19 1:00 ET At Chicago -3 Minnesota 38 10/19 1:00 ET At Carolina -3 New Orleans 44.5 10/19 1:00 ET At NY Giants -10.5 San Francisco 45 10/19 4:05 ET At Houston -8.5 Detroit 47.5 10/19 4:15 ET NY Jets -3 At Oakland 42 10/19 4:15 ET At Washington -7 Cleveland 43 10/19 4:15 ET Indianapolis -1 At Green Bay 47 10/19 8:15 ET At Tampa Bay -10.5 Seattle 39 Monday Night Football Line 10/20 8:35 ET At New England -3 Denver 47

Dusty is to plate patience as Lovie is to Cover 2. Except it's the complete opposite.

Cubs started out 1-3 and the Brewers 3-1 and we turned out ok. Different sports, different season lengths, different spread between good and bad teams. And a very large spread between teams that make the playoffs and teams that don't. A slow start in MLB can make it nearly impossible to be one of the 4 teams in your league to win it, not so in NHL, with double the playoff participants. However, they are doing everything possible to eliminate the momentum from last season. The red carpet thing was tacky. They signed a purported #1 goalie in the offseason and can't allow the fans to rally around him because they are stuck with their last ill-advised goalie signing (probably) taking half the starts. They have scored just 2 goals a game after emphasizing goal scoring all offseason, and don't play well on defense. Blackhawks fans have had the rug ripped out from under them before, and I have to believe they may very well fear the same thing is happening now. A lot of people coughed up a big chunk of change in a tough economic climate, and if they aren't a winning team by November, they could completely lose everything they built from a fan excitement standpoint.

One particular fan who was excited about his team winning caught flak from at first a moderator when others piled up on him. His comments were innocuous in a game thread talking about a game that his team had won. He was correct when he was saying that he was cheering because his team won, NOT because the Bears lost. It seemed like the perpetrators of that issue with wading through garbage posts come from the Bears fans (and as I said, a moderator on this board got it started, and I have a ton of respect for Raisin). That said, I never received a response to my inquiry in the other thread about what "proper etiquette" would be in a Bears/Packers game thread considering there are a few handfuls of big Packers fans on this board. I had no problem with any of his posts during the game or even the first celebratory post but 2 celebration posts in a span of 10 posts in the thread seemed like overkill (and it appears as though I wasn't the only one to think that; but if a lot of you think otherwise, fair enough...). this will probably be my last post about it, but all i did was make two celebratory posts after an unbelievable win, then i left. When I came back, about 10 people complained about it (which seemed like overkill to me). So, I defended myself :bye: