abuck1220

what are your feelings on sixth inning double switches? couldn't get walker and cedeno out of there fast enough...

walker's defense is just KILLING the cubs today!

big sigh of relief for ollie's start today. of course, jenkins gets on by a dropped third strike, so he doesn't get the QS, but i'm not complaining.

normally i wouldn't like it, but it did get jones' limp dick bat out of the game.

dunn spent the offseason working on his one weakness.

jackson and weston were at fitch when i was in mesa in the middle of march. i thought that i'd seen spearman at some point this spring, but i haven't heard/seen anything about bartosh, norton, or frese.

ah, gotta love the old 'save this guy for one strategically placed ab/late inning defensive flexibility' over getting him 4-5 ab's.

once again, you guys are assuming that everything that went wrong last year was merely bad luck and will reverse itself this year. and everything that went right was not a fluke and will repeat itself. wood and prior missing the whole season won't likely happen, so this argument is pretty meaningless. you may disagree w/ me that missing your #2 and #3 starter for the entire season will cost you seven games, but it's going too far to say that this makes me delusional. and i realize that the team has made upgrades. but i don't think the improvement added thru jones, pierre, howry, eyre, mabry, pagan, and bynum are that substantial, especially when you consider the possible/probable regression of guys like lee.

i like cain and all, but if he's comparable to sheets and patterson...well, i guess nsbb is going to be pretty good. geez, they're pretty high on oswalt. and if barrett's only 18 points better than estrada, i was pretty stupid to take him in the 4th round. sorry to leave you out raw...use it as bulletin board material for your team. :D

Agreed. That crowd was so jacked up when he hit that. I thought for sure the game was going to the Cubs after that. I'll never forget Len Kasper saying that Wood's home run was the loudest crowd he's ever heard. Now excuse me while I go puke for a moment. Uh, Kasper wasn't around back then. with the marlins.

those rotations are bad. i think we're going to have to agree to disagree, b/c those rotations are terrible (unless guzman experiences NO growing pains and is able to throw 180 injury free innings). the cubs lost 83 last year w/ prior and wood making 37 starts. if they make ZERO this year, i don't see how the cubs' worst case scenario for them in 2006 can be losing 83 again. jones, eyre, pierre, and howry aren't big enough upgrades to counter the loss of 37 starts from two great starting pitchers.

so you're saying that group A (jones, pierre, eyre, howry, rusch and marshall) are not only as good as group B (burnitz, corey, remlinger, hawkins, prior and wood), but are SEVEN WINS BETTER? now who's being ridiculous? I don't see where anyone is writing that. Back to the argument, if you're confident in your prediction that we're a 90 loss club, then let's make a wager. If they lose 90 games this year, I'll buy you a year of premium. If we're .500 or above, you owe me a year of premium. Anything in the middle, and no one owes anything. dude, have you even read my posts? i said they were a 90 loss team IF PRIOR AND WOOD MISS THE WHOLE SEASON.

like papelbon. :D oops...thought i read somewhere that he had a bad second half. or maybe it was a bad second half of the second half. either way, he's a bit of a question mark. :D

But flexible! because you never know when you're going to win or lose a game based on how many guys you have that can play middle infield and the outfield. and they're fast!

that's a bad bench.

i picked up all four of those guys in a fantasy league where comradery is a category.

i wouldn't really call it analysis... infield: seems like everybody's got at least one weak point/question mark/middle of the road guy. buddiga has arod and ortiz at the corners, but belliard and adams in the middle. NSBB has pujols, wright and weeks, but barmes is somewhat of a question mark and estrada's middle of the road. tootie has kent, tek, and aram, but johnson's not a top flight 1b, and renteria's coming off a bad year. GHS has barrett, teix and tejada, but cano's iffy and blalock sucked last year. alamo has posada, helton, soriano, but encarnacion and hardy/drew are questions. PofM has thome, glaus, and jeter, but pudge is slipping. the best IF's are probably DB (javy, dlee, utley, and young) and HBC (vmart, delgado, cantu, chavez, and lugo). if rolen's healthy, lynx is pretty tough too (konerko, giles, crosby, mccann). outfield: lot of good ones...GHS has matsui, drew, clee, and bradley. FL has griffey, ichiro, baldelli and clark. both teams have injury risks in their OF, though. lynx has wells, bay, and crisp...pretty solid (and healthy). if delmon comes up this year, HBC's already good OF gets better. class of the league (OF wise) are raw dawgs (vlad, sizemore, holliday, and wily mo) and NSBB (bonds, dunn, sheff, gomes, and abreu). i'd take NSBB even though bonds is a risk and gomes had a bad 2nd half last year. if wily mo was playing full time in cincy, raw's could possibly be better. SP: GHS's rotation is made up of teams' #1 and #2 starters (sheets, beckett, ollie, myers, patterson). sheets, beckett, and ollie are BIG risks though. NSBB has a better (and more reliable) top two in oswalt and halladay, not to mention webb. cain and liriano are young, but certainly have a ton of potential. alamo (buehrle, cc, lackey), HBC (z, pettitte), buddiga (zito, willis), BB (felix, peavy), FL (smoltz, hudson), NCC (pedro, aj), and tootie (prior, colon) are all tough at the top, but lack the depth of GHS and NSBB. the difference b/w GHS and NSBB may depend on each team's respective wild card -- wood for NSBB and clemens for GHS. RP: only a few teams have three closers. DB (dempster, wagner, and weathers), GHS (turnbow, street, nathan), quakers (cordero, hoffman, krod), and buddiga (jobo, foulke and gordon). nc only has two, but they're tough (cordero, bj), same goes for SofS (izzy and rivera) and BB (armando and gagne). let's face it, weathers sucks, so that eliminates DB ( :D ). and i'm not betting my life on jobo. both GHS and quekers will rack up a bunch of saves, but cordero's peripherals aren't that great, so GHS probably gets the edge. though turnbow has the potential to be a one hit wonder, so that evens it out a bit.

so you're saying that group A (jones, pierre, eyre, howry, rusch and marshall) are not only as good as group B (burnitz, corey, remlinger, hawkins, prior and wood), but are SEVEN WINS BETTER? now who's being ridiculous?

also, you guys seem to be assuming that everything that went right for the cubs last year (cedeno, murton, lee, ramirez, dempster, ohman, wuertz) wasn't a fluke, but everything that went poorly last season (expected W/L, injuries, pierre's performance) was just the result of bad luck and will reverse course this year.

where did this woe is me, everything that could have went wrong did theory come from? barrett and neifi had career years. lee hit 60+ points above his career average. ramirez (when healthy) was better than his career #'s. dempster had been mediocre at best before catching fire last year. ohman, wuertz, novoa all exceeded expectations. murton, while he was up, played amazingly well. quit acting like the only reason the cubs fared so poorly last year was because they were sooooo terribly burdened w/ bad luck.

No, they're not. Not even close. We didn't have Wood and Prior for most of last year, and we didn't lose 90, and we're better this year. you gotta be kidding me. they lost 83 last year when the two of them combined for 37 starts. you really think that if they started ZERO that the cubs wouldn't lose seven more games? with this offense (and the fact that their replacements would be rusch/williams/hill/marshall) the cubs could lose 95-100 w/o those guys. Even without Prior and Wood all year, the Cubs are nowhere near a 100 loss team. For a frame of reference, no one in the entire NL lost more than 95 games last year. well, not many teams had a back end of a rotation as bad as maddux, rusch, williams, and marshall could be. they probably wouldn't lose 100 w/o prior and wood, but it'd be a miracle if they lost less than 92-95.

thanks for the insults (regardless of they were spelled correctly or not). the article said that the cubs were a 90 loss team w/o prior and wood. i agreed. in fact, i think they could be a 95 loss team if they don't have either of those guys. they lost 83 last year (w/ those guys making 37 combined starts). i don't know how it's 'ridiculous' to say that if they made ZERO the cubs would lose a mere seven (or twelve) more games. in fact, to say that the idea that a prior and wood-less team could lose 90 games is ridiculous is, in itself, ridiculous.

No, they're not. Not even close. We didn't have Wood and Prior for most of last year, and we didn't lose 90, and we're better this year. you gotta be kidding me. they lost 83 last year when the two of them combined for 37 starts. you really think that if they started ZERO that the cubs wouldn't lose seven more games? with this offense (and the fact that their replacements would be rusch/williams/hill/marshall) the cubs could lose 95-100 w/o those guys.

he was at fitch when i was there on the 21st. i'll miss boot cut bacon.

i wouldn't put the tigers so high, but i don't know what's so terrible about his predictions. the cubs are a 90 loss team w/o wood and prior.