Derwood

This is correct. This season is likely to be another where the Cubs should look to the future and don't. I can't wait till we trade Gallagher for a middle reliever in July. the Cubs would be in last place in the NL West and in second to last in the AL East, AL Central, AL West and NL East

no way he can go back on his request at this point. it's on a constant loop on ESPNews

the trade machine accepted Kobe/Bynum for Gordon/Wallace/Khryapa :lol:

Although I think the sound of a metal bat hitting a fastball on the screws is the best sound in all of sports. i could not possibly disagree with you more

Soriano12 doesn't read other people's posts methinks You didn't have Julian Wright in the equation 8-)

Soriano12 doesn't read other people's posts methinks

good for kobe. i've heard several reports this week that the whole "kobe demands shaq be traded" think was BS. My only hope now is that if he's not traded to the Bulls, that he stay in the Western Conference

thankfully for us, the Bulls have a GM who has done exceptionally well in the draft

no wonder Raisin has so many posts....he uses 3 posts to introduce these threads when he could just do one

i do agree that it makes for some unnecessary trade scenarios. Looking way back to the Pippen-to-Houston trade, where the Bulls signed him, traded him for junk, then cut the junk....only because they had to take back salary under the rules. The Bulls should have been alowed to just trade him for whomever

i've been trying to remember those terms. i kept thinking it was Dynacrat and something

The majority of NBA teams are over the salary cap but under the luxury tax threshold. If a team is over the salary cap, the salaries of the traded players need to match up within 25% of each other. I understand that they need to, but my question is what's the purpose? I generally understand the rules of baseball's CBA and the reasons for specific rules. But I don't get the point of the NBA having this rule. The only goal, it seems, is to stop teams from making trades. Unless it was just a failed attempt to force teams to think twice before signing guys to bad deals in the first place. perhaps it's their way of trying to create financial parity (by making rules that more or less force every team to spend the same amount of money on their teams)?

The late 90's Yankees were stacked with home grown talent. The 114 win 1998 team had Jeter, Bernie and Posada among everyday position players, along with multiple bench players. Then you had Pettite, Irabu and El Duque who came into the bigs via NY's system. Plus, you had Rivera, and a couple bullpen arms. It wasn't until they started going hard after the biggest money free agents that they stopped winning it all. The Braves have been mostly internally developed. I believe the Angels teams were quite home grown as well. No team is ever going to win with 25 home grown talents, but good ones generally develop a significant amount of their players from within. The Cubs have zero everyday players developed from their own system. Coming into the season the closest thing they had to an internally developed everyday position player was Matt Murton, who actually spent more time in Boston's minor league system than the Cubs'. Theriot is the only position player on the roster who was drafted and developed by the Cubs. Obviously they've done a better job of it with the pitchers, with Hill, Marshall, Zambrano, Marmol and Wuertz. well the system did a good job of setting up the major league roster with Zambrano, Wood, Prior and Hill, but it's not the scouting departments fault that Baker and co. ruined them. Also, the Cubs used their homegrown players to acquired the core of the offense (Hill for Ramirez, Choi for Lee, etc.)

in some cases, "waiting for your pitch" means swinging at a meatball on the first pitch.

There aren't a lot of recent WS winners (with the exception of the '03 Marlins) that are full of homegrown players.

do we automatically go back to the end of the list after our turn?

btw, anyone else read this headline and hope the words "wooden bats" would appear somewhere?

you can't compare baseball to the "big 2" (basketball/football) because those players aren't on partial scholarships. The transfers in those sports are almost always going from one full ride to anotehr

try looking here

I like when Aramis leaves the bat on his shoulder and/or Jacque decides he's going to swing no matter what

I continue to be happy with my decision to not order EI this year

i voted for the pirates so in the very, very, very off chance that they do I can say I told you so

i can't see it happening, but just for fun: PG: Hinrich SG: Bryant SF: Nocioni/Rookie PF: Thomas C: Bynum i'd buy that for a dollar!

poor Jim Riggleman. I imagine he could ahve been quite good with any sort of talent on his team aside from Grace, Sosa and Beck

Projected final stats for our starters: C Michael Barrett - .244, 25 HR, 89 RBI, 50 R, 25 2B 1B Derrek Lee - .353, 11 HR, 100 RBI, 93 R, 68 2B 2B Mark DeRosa - .248, 18 HR, 75 RBI, 61 R, 32 2B SS Cesar Izturis - .267, 0 HR, 20 RBI, 40 R, 28 2B 3B Aramis Ramirez - .297, 42 HR, 126 RBI, 91 R, 25 2B LF Alfonso Soriano - .293, 15 HR, 44 RBI, 102 R, 54 2B CF Jacque Jones - .250, 4 HR, 58 RBI, 62 R, 33 2B RF Cliff Floyd - .293, 8 HR, 81 RBI, 49 R, 16 2B P Carlos Zambrano - 16-13, 5.24 ERA, 162 K, 102 BB P Ted Lilly - 13-6, 3.20 ERA, 178 K, 44 BB P Jason Marquis - 16-3, 2.60 ERA, 108 K, 64 BB P Rich Hill - 13-13, 3.06 ERA, 181 K, 73 BB P Ryan Dempster - 3-6, 3.97 ERA, 70 K, 35 Sv these projections are just extrapolations of the season so far