abuck1220

gonzalez also did a running jump kick aimed at cedeno.

bowden fleeced both the rangers (for soriano...was he the gm then?) and the reds (for lopez and kearns). his team was operating with a significantly lower payroll than the cubs (and playing in a tougher division), and the nats won more games than the cubs. i'd probably rather have hendry than bowden, but it's not unthinkable that someone would rank him ahead of hendry. i don't know why hendry gets any kind of credit from anyone. since he's taken over the losses have increased each year (despite an increasing payroll) and the farm system has gone in the toilet. so he traded for ramirez and lee...what's that gotten him?

Epstein has been pretty good. Got them a WS ring, and he signed all the available FA's this year that I wanted the Cubs to sign. Hendry is where he deserves. Those bottom tier GMs are pretty bad. I don't know about all that now. Hendry may be bad, but is he worse that Jim Bowden or J.P. Ricciardi? I'd put him somewhere between 15-17 personally. Hendry is bad, very bad. Any monkey can sign players through FA if they have the available funds to do so, and Soriano didn't come cheap either. Whether you think its a fluke or not, I dont know how you judge Hendry without at least mentioning Lee, Barrett and, here's the big one, RAMIREZ. i judge hendry by wins. and in that regard, he's bad. and if you judge him by win per dollar, he's the worst.

And I hope Hendry is right about Izturis. But, I'm very, very skeptical that Izturis will be any better with a bat than the worst SS's in the league. if he stays healthy & plays great defense, does it really matter what he hits? the sox & cards won the WS with guys who had .713 & .694 ops's respectively. Of course it matters. That black hole in the lineup has more of an impact than anything he does on defense, no matter how good his glove is. Those teams may have won with those shortstops, but it wasn't because of them. how many teams have won anything on the offense of their 8th place hitter? so the cubs should intentionally play a crappy hitter just b/c other teams have won with a bad 8th place hitter? that makes no sense.

i wonder what bill simmons thinks of the "tom brady face"...

my understanding of the rules is that he would not be exempt at all...but i may be wrong.

how is phillips exempt (let alone for the first time)? he had 370 ab's with the indians in 2003.

how do the giants look like fools? they got tremendous production out of him.

so you don't think prior has good mechanics?

who said he "had" to wait until january 18? what's the cutoff date for good players to sign? zito signed in late december, and he certainly doesn't suck. i guess three weeks makes a big difference as to whether you're the highest paid pitcher in baseball history or a bum.

hate to be the one to break the news about santa claus to you, but you've likely been rooting for drug users your entire life. Wow, so who cares then right? Let's hire the biggest drug user of them all, 'cuz after all everyone's doing it! Everyone's doing it anyway. So that's where we're at in this country now? Lovely. exactly. and the best part is, no one on the cubs has or is taking performance enhancers, so we can really enjoy the team purity!

That's like saying it's insane to lock up Gotti. Murders and racketeering aside, that guy still knew how to make money! Are you really serious? Are you really serious? So I used an extreme example. The point still holds. How can anyone simply brush aside Bonds' obvious drug cheating just for the fact that he can eek out a few more years of performance? Is that what we're reduced to now? Just a bunch of number crunchers, ogling players for their production only, the devil be damned if they even care about having an ounce of integrity? So we should be like the Rockies then? Are you saying it's impossible to win without worshipping at the altar of Barry Bonds and his BALCO buddies? hate to be the one to break the news about santa claus to you, but you've likely been rooting for drug users your entire life.

clutchness, obviously.

because just b/c pecota says it's gonna happen, doesn't mean it will. i don't think there's any way pie puts up a .340+ OBP and/or out-OPS's jones.

I laughed out loud when I seen that. why?

so the scouts are the arrogant ones, eh? you do realize you couldn't be relying on more biased sources unless you asked the players' grandmothers, don't you? i mean, come on.

i really can't comprehend how you think it would be better for BA to get their information from talking to beat writers than to get it from talking to scouts. both sources are secondhand and both sources have seen the players play...but beat writers are going to invariably be very, very, very biased in their opinions. plus, and no offense, i would trust the opinion of a scout over a media guy every day of the week. announcers/writers are students of broadcasting/media, scouts have likely spent their entire lives in baseball. also, go ahead and look at their top 100 list from last year. they have managers' quotes all over the place. they absolutely do talk to managers/coaches, and you're simply wrong in saying that they don't. and they're also flat out right year after year on some guys. and you're flat out wrong on some guys. it's not an exact science, and, despite what you say, i don't believe BA promotes itself as the "gospel," nor do i think anyone else believes it to be.

He had very good numbers, but apparently needed to show a little more love. What do you mean? Just because he chased a heckling fan in the stands, destroyed a bathroom, hit a fan and a photographer with balls thrown into the stands, charged the mound numerous times, verbally destroyed NBC reporter Hannah Storm, chased egg-throwing teenagers in his car on Halloween, basically murdered Fernando Vina, and stalked his ex-girlfriend doesn't mean anything. :-D Nope, it doesn't mean anything unless you cheated on the field. Hell, Ty Cobb makes Albert Belle look like Mr. Rogers. belle did cheat on the field.

Everything I heard from Cubs brass is that this reported deal never happened....at least not the $7 million part....for what its worth... Do you have any info on what he did sign for? For what it's worth, my informatin was based from ESPN and Baseball America. BA sucks....from what I was told is that he got slot money (250k) for being drafted as the Cubs 2nd pick....and then is just paid like any other minor leaguer unless he completely ditches football....then they will renegotiate his deal...but does anyone really see that happening when the NFL signing bonus for a 1st rounder is a 7 figure deal? do you have any support for your constant claims that BA sucks? i'd love to hear a few examples of guys that you correctly predicted to succeed that BA thought would suck or vice versa. How about Eric Patterson and Sean Gallagher for starters....you guys have to understand that BA writers rarely, if ever see a player more than once or twice....they rely waaaaay too much on others for their "expert opinions"....very few MILB people use BA as a source.... first of all, neither patterson nor gallagher has done anything beyond AA, so let's not chalk those guys up as successes just yet. patterson was in BA's top 10 last year, and i'm sure both of them will be in the top 5 or so this year, so it's not like BA has some kind of vendetta against them. and you constantly rail against BA for relying on others' opinions...how else do you expect them to do it? have one guy fly from sacramento to tulsa to norfolk to boise to vero beach just so he can see a guy with his own eyes? you want us (people who haven't seen the guys play) to rely on you (someone who has seen the guys play)...yet you don't want BA to rely on the opinions of people who have seen the guys play?

Everything I heard from Cubs brass is that this reported deal never happened....at least not the $7 million part....for what its worth... Do you have any info on what he did sign for? For what it's worth, my informatin was based from ESPN and Baseball America. BA sucks....from what I was told is that he got slot money (250k) for being drafted as the Cubs 2nd pick....and then is just paid like any other minor leaguer unless he completely ditches football....then they will renegotiate his deal...but does anyone really see that happening when the NFL signing bonus for a 1st rounder is a 7 figure deal? do you have any support for your constant claims that BA sucks? i'd love to hear a few examples of guys that you correctly predicted to succeed that BA thought would suck or vice versa.

he's right...there's not too many first basemen who could save two or three runs per game. zero is not very many.

3/21 for a guy who was replaced by a guy whose team basically ate his contract and waived him last year.

Justin Verlander, Jake Peavy, and Jered Weaver are going to have some arm problems as well. i'll raise you one and say that almost all pitchers are going to have some arm problems.

**rolls eyes** yup no one was saying things like that in 1998, they were to busy sayding "DAMN that kid is good". In my mind that 20K game was the single greatest dominating pitching performance ever. If it wasn't for Kevin Orie's ineptness, this would have been a perfect game/no hitter. The simple fact is that the mechanics, bad or not are what made Kerry the dominating pitcher he was. Most people will remember 1998 for the homerun chase, I'll always remember it for Kerry Wood. That game is burnt into my memory more than any other single baseball event in the history of the game. Its the kind of game I waited a lifetime to see and will probably never see again. I saw it as it happened, live in my living room. You want to crucify Kerry Wood for his poor mechanics? Go ahead I guess if it makes you feel better, but just about every time I watch a baseball game I hope for something like that game to happen, and I thank God for that day in May of 1998 when I saw pitching perfection. No matter what happens to Kerry Wood for the rest of his career, he's given me a gift that no other Cubs pitcher can ever touch. why did you quote what i said? it has nothing to do with what you wrote.

congrats on predicting an arm injury after he already suffered like seven of them. you're like a doctor or something.