jersey cubs fan

good point you handsome fella

Gotta take some pitches here Jones. Zambrano needs to catch his breath.

There's a good enough chance that they'll be good enough to justify the purchase. I don't even know what that means. It means I don't know if they will be good enough for it to be worth the cost. But I think the odds are in our favor that they will be good enough. I justified it to myself years ago by thinking about how much I'd pay for any individual game. I'd easily pay $2 for any game that's on. I'd pay $5-10 for certain games, depending on where they are in teh season, who they are playing and what my other options are. People think of it as $150 (or whatever it is), but it's $150 for 6 months worth of games, which could be as much as 480-500 hours of entertainment.

There's a good enough chance that they'll be good enough to justify the purchase.

In two days off you can do a lot of slumpbusting. Hope nobody got herpes during the break. I think that is what happened to ARAM...."wrist" = herpes What's a "bad back?" It's a low grade brokeback.

The media keeps bringing up the fact that the Cubs spent $300 million in the offseason on players - and they say it all the time - but I rarely hear that the Cubs have a $300 million payroll. Maybe it's because I don't read the Chicago papers but I rarely hear it. That doesn't mean I haven't already tired of hearing the number $300 million though. Oh, I've seen it more than once. Plus, even without that -- the Cubs actually did not *spend* 300 million dollars. They entered into contracts which, if they all come completely to fruition with the Cubs, will eventually equal $300 million (approximately) after about 8 years. That's a massive difference, IMO. There's no way to intellectually say the Cubs spent 300 million dollars this offseason. And no, not everyone knows the semantics of it -- that's why people come back out and start saying the Cubs have a 200 million dollar payroll. I'm with you man.

hip hip, hooray

injured starters

Here's to a crazy ugly lineup pulling a big game out of their collective backside and putting the Cubs on the board at home. :pint:

your examples are pathetically desperate attempts to justify a head in the sand approach to this story. Anybody who uses Clemens and Ryan as examples to dispute the notion that fatigued pitching can be harmful is missing the point. The fact that there are so very few Clemens/Ryan types, and so many more Wood/Prior types should be ample evidence to at least accept the fact that it's likely the abuse was a problem.

But probably something like 95% of the most fatigued and stressful motions. Pretending that the 120th pitch is at all equal to the 1st is silly.

He had several extremely high pitch count games in 2002 and 2003. And he did go into 2003 with a calf issue. That was revealed the next spring. He also injured his shoulder in 2003 and went on to pitch despite the problem. That 5 months of rest is meaningless. There have been very few that did what Prior did at the age he did it.

This reminds me of a post made by a great American philosopher who went by the name of goony's evil twin, where he broke down, in great detail, just how much Baker abused Prior in his first 2 years of professional baseball. If I could find it I'd love to quote it here, but I'm not sure I'm worthy of attaching my name to that genius's work.

I think that's the most important point. "Ready" is a subjective term, and can mean completely different things to different people. Is he ready to come up to the majors and star? Probably not. But he's probably ready to come up to the majors and not have his career destroyed. He could come up and put up acceptable 1st year numbers. Some people, like Dusty, think a prospect has to be 100% major league caliber good to earn the right to play in the majors. I disagree. I think you have to be willing and able to continue the coaching process of young players at the major league level. The major drawback to bringing a guy up too early is if he ends up being yo-yoed back and forth to the minors, and sits the bench a lot. At some point you have to give a guy a prolonged shot, and be willing to live through any struggles. Because just about anybody but Pujols and Cabrera are going to struggle, and they need exposure to major league pitching in order to learn to hit major league pitching.

Since moving out east many moons ago, the Devils are the closest I've come to becoming a fan of a local team. I think it started when I would play them in NHL '94 because the Blackhawks were just so unfairly good. Several of my friends are Devils fans, but I don't know when the last time any of them went to a game. I've only been to one, when they played the Blackhawks years ago. I'm hoping to get to a playoff game this year, but it will have to be in the second round. Good seats are always available.

I don't think he's going to get the chance to pound Grossman. I see Turner coming out with a huge, heavy dose of Benson in this game to prove a point starting the '07 season. And I see Turner instituting more shotgun, too. He's said he will look into that. I think he's going to do it. Shotgun doesn't prevent pressure.

On XM this morning, they said that someone on the bench mentioned it to Narron, who hadn't seen it. He then watched the replay. Tattle-tale.

Well, if really enjoy on pace stats at this point in the season, A-Rod is on pace to hit 121 HR for an 81-81 Yankees, and Felix Hernandez is on pace for a 0.00 ERA and 297 Strikeouts for a 97-65 Mariners team. I agree. I always love looking at pace stats early in the year. Another one, the Washington Nationals are on pace to go 18-144 this year. I didn't even know they won a game already.

Edge is only gonna be 29 in August. Of course, he is going on 9 years in the league, but he doesn't have that many carries. Not many compared to whom? He's got over 2500, and another 400 catches. That's not Walter Payton and Emmitt Smith territory, but it's more than most featured backs in this era of bigger, faster, stronger defenders. Including Priest Holmes, the recently retired Tiki Barber, the shadow of his former self Corey Dillon, the short lived Ahman Green, even the relatively steady stalwart Warrick Dunn. And it's a heck of a lot more than Terrell Davis. I think in this current era, that any team should feel fortunate to get 2000 solid carries out of a guy before he starts to fade fast. A platoon situation could help spread those 2000 yards over 8, 9 or 10 years. But any runner who has the workload of Edge should not be counted on for the longterm, especially when he's already shown a sharp dropoff in effectiveness. I see your point, but your comparisons aren't very good, because Barber, Dunn, and Holmes weren't feature backs for the first 4 years of their careers. Davis had a much shorter career and he and Holmes had many more carries per game in their prime than Edge did. Dillon's about even in his career RPG. I wasn't comparing the guys to find an exact replica. I was showing that he has a lot of carries when you compare him to just about anybody but Emmitt Smith and Payton. And that finding him a platoon would be very wise, considering how often guys at his age/mileage, lose effectiveness.

What's the point of releasing Prior? He's under contract and the Cubs probably can't get anyone for him until he shows he can pitch. I'm putting him out of my thoughts until he starts pitching in games either in the minors or majors. It would put us Cubs fans out of their misery, and we could finally get on with our lives. Just wondering...If we knew Prior was going to pud out so quickly, would Hendry have come into the season with a better fifth option than Wade Miller? He already did, Angel Guzman.

Edge is only gonna be 29 in August. Of course, he is going on 9 years in the league, but he doesn't have that many carries. Not many compared to whom? He's got over 2500, and another 400 catches. That's not Walter Payton and Emmitt Smith territory, but it's more than most featured backs in this era of bigger, faster, stronger defenders. Including Priest Holmes, the recently retired Tiki Barber, the shadow of his former self Corey Dillon, the short lived Ahman Green, even the relatively steady stalwart Warrick Dunn. And it's a heck of a lot more than Terrell Davis. I think in this current era, that any team should feel fortunate to get 2000 solid carries out of a guy before he starts to fade fast. A platoon situation could help spread those 2000 yards over 8, 9 or 10 years. But any runner who has the workload of Edge should not be counted on for the longterm, especially when he's already shown a sharp dropoff in effectiveness.

The Cubs have done some different things with the draft in recent years. They've spent big on the best guy they could find, and they've cheaped out with guys at times. With the ownership situation in flux, and no real PR reason to sign a guy, like there is with Zambrano, does anybody see them going cheap in this draft. And if they did, who would come into play?

Not really new news, but things still sound promising. Zambrano's "instability" is completely overblown. He's emotional, big deal. But he's as stable of a pitcher, and baseball player as you're going to find. He's not a crime risk, he takes the mound every turn. He doesn't have Roy Oswalt's groin or Pedro's shoulder. I can't think of many more stable pitchers out there. Ideally you wouldn't have to commit to 5 years to any of these guys, and you could put them on a series of 1 year deals with a team option. But that's not realistic.

I think that's a pretty extreme case of patience there. This season will probably be lost if that lasts into June. I can see waiting out April, but all of May as well? That's 1/3rd of the season right there, well over 200 PA and plenty of time to draw some conclusions. It's not extreme at all. You have to look no further than Ramirez last year, who didn't really start hitting until July. I'm pretty sure there's about a 0% chance Soriano is hitting .200 still in June, which is the only point that matters. Ramirez routinely produced. Soriano routinely puts up weak OBP numbers. There's quite a difference. If he hasn't improved significantly by sometime in May, it's a safe assumption we can rule 2006 a fluke, as far as Soriano putting up decent OBP numbers. We're not talking about benching the guy, we're talking about not relying on him as the leadoff hitter getting on in front of Ramirez and Lee.

we did about 10 picks in a few hours on Tuesday and now we've done 2 in 48 hours.