davearm2

LOL so now we have another class of racist -- those that point out when others have incorrectly attributed racism to a situation that involves none. The lunacy in this thread has officially reached mind-numbing proportions.

Oh brother... has everyone here taken a bottle of crazy pills?

Why exactly is Sammy on that list? Point taken. He shouldn't be.

Yeah, if you quit following the Cubs because Bradley is here I'd bet heavily on you being a racist, or an idiot at the very least. Seriously, I'm only the 2nd person to think race played any part in this? How do you come up with such incredibilyi ignorant statements? So why didn't a racist like me quit following the Cubs when they had Sosa and Dunston and Dawson and Fergie Jenkins and Billy Williams etc etc. on the team? You realize those players are the same race as Bradley right? these comments are basically doing exactly the opposite of what you want them too. you just look more racist. Not to anyone with a functioning brain and a grasp of what the term racist means they don't.

Yeah, if you quit following the Cubs because Bradley is here I'd bet heavily on you being a racist, or an idiot at the very least. Seriously, I'm only the 2nd person to think race played any part in this? How do you come up with such incredibilyi ignorant statements? So why didn't a racist like me quit following the Cubs when they had Sosa and Dunston and Dawson and Fergie Jenkins and Billy Williams etc etc. on the team? You realize those players are the same race as Bradley right? I'm sorry, did you quit following the Cubs? Did I call you a racist? Can you read? Find me a person who quit following the Cubs due to the presence of Milton Bradley, and refuses to come back to following the Cubs until he returns, then I will call that person a racist. You are writing about them on this website right now so it's pretty safe to assume you haven't quite following them. Even if you are so clueless as to think only Milton Bradley and myself think race played any part in what happened here. I read just fine, thanks, and frankly I'm flabbergasted at the crap you're spewing here. Dislike Bradley = not a racist. Dislike Bradley enough to stop following the Cubs = racist. Un-freaking-believeable the bat[expletive] crazy nonsense people think up sometimes.

Well if a person "left" the Cubs solely because of Milton Bradley, then either their dislike of Bradley is especially strong, or they were pretty indifferent Cub fans to begin with. There aren't probably very many folks in the first group, but there sure are a lot of casual Cub fans out there that it wouldn't take much to get them to lose all interest. Of course fringey fans like this probably aren't going to care much about individual players/situations like Bradley, and they're probably not the ones buying tickets and merchandise either.

Yeah, if you quit following the Cubs because Bradley is here I'd bet heavily on you being a racist, or an idiot at the very least. Seriously, I'm only the 2nd person to think race played any part in this? How do you come up with such incredibilyi ignorant statements? So why didn't a racist like me quit following the Cubs when they had Sosa and Dunston and Dawson and Fergie Jenkins and Billy Williams etc etc. on the team? You realize those players are the same race as Bradley right?

No it wouldn't. The Cubs aren't going to lose money because Milton Bradley is around. They aren't going to lose fans to the White Sox. The only fans that would leave the Cubs because Milton is around would be racist white people, and I don't see any racist white people who are Cubs fans rushing to support the White Sox. The Cubs will lose fans, and money, if they wallow around in mediocrity much longer. If they go back to the 2005/2006 let's just make sure we're all nice guys who get along no matter how much we lose ways, then they will lose fans and money. The way to make money in Chicago sports is to win. Wrigley didn't become the place it is today until after 1998, and it didn't become the year-in-year-out sellout until 2003 when fans were given the taste of what could be. Nice guy teams and PR strategies don't sell tickets. Winning does. Wow you're way out of bounds playing the race card there. Being turned off by Bradley's antics doesn't make a fan a racist. It's not his skin color that's creating this animosity. Did you leave the Cubs? then it doesn't apply to you. methinks you dost protest too much. Same question for you. If I did, would that make me a racist? It's completely asinine, and I'd hope you could see that.

No it wouldn't. The Cubs aren't going to lose money because Milton Bradley is around. They aren't going to lose fans to the White Sox. The only fans that would leave the Cubs because Milton is around would be racist white people, and I don't see any racist white people who are Cubs fans rushing to support the White Sox. The Cubs will lose fans, and money, if they wallow around in mediocrity much longer. If they go back to the 2005/2006 let's just make sure we're all nice guys who get along no matter how much we lose ways, then they will lose fans and money. The way to make money in Chicago sports is to win. Wrigley didn't become the place it is today until after 1998, and it didn't become the year-in-year-out sellout until 2003 when fans were given the taste of what could be. Nice guy teams and PR strategies don't sell tickets. Winning does. Wow you're way out of bounds playing the race card there. Being turned off by Bradley's antics doesn't make a fan a racist. It's not his skin color that's creating this animosity. I'm turned off my his antics as well. But I'm not going to stop being a Cubs fan because he's a around? Would you? If I do, am I a racist? Until now the only person who thought race had anything to do with this ugly mess was Bradley himself. I guess we can add your name now too. Well you're both way wrong.

But I wouldn't trade prospects for those guys, so why not just release Bradley if that is your goal and keep the prospects? Giving people prospects so they will accept a virtually free Milton Bradley is insane. The only logical choice is to keep him on the team. If you insist on getting rid of him because you feel you have to, then just release him. Don't lose prospects in the process. You are already making your team worse, no reason to add to your problems. The notion of adding a prospect as enticement is an interesting one. Basically you're assigning a cash value to the prospect. Say Team X says, we'll take Bradley + $15M for a PTBNL, or we'll take Bradley + Flaherty + $10M for a PTBNL. Now Flaherty's value in the trade is $5M cash. Would the Cubs sell Flaherty for that? Who knows. They guaranteed him a whole heckuva lot less than that when they drafted and signed him. Now more likely is, Hendry says we can't add more than $10M, so Team X says put Flaherty in or it's no deal. Now the pricetag on Flaherty isn't a clear-cut $5M, but rather the cost of either taking a lesser package from some other team, or keeping Bradley and dealing with that set of pros and cons. Regardless, it's easy to construct scenarios where adding a prospect is the right choice.

No it wouldn't. The Cubs aren't going to lose money because Milton Bradley is around. They aren't going to lose fans to the White Sox. The only fans that would leave the Cubs because Milton is around would be racist white people, and I don't see any racist white people who are Cubs fans rushing to support the White Sox. The Cubs will lose fans, and money, if they wallow around in mediocrity much longer. If they go back to the 2005/2006 let's just make sure we're all nice guys who get along no matter how much we lose ways, then they will lose fans and money. The way to make money in Chicago sports is to win. Wrigley didn't become the place it is today until after 1998, and it didn't become the year-in-year-out sellout until 2003 when fans were given the taste of what could be. Nice guy teams and PR strategies don't sell tickets. Winning does. Wow you're way out of bounds playing the race card there. Being turned off by Bradley's antics doesn't make a fan a racist. It's not his skin color that's creating this animosity.

Yeah that math doesn't work. A guy half as good isn't worth half as much. If you wanted to take that sort of approach, you'd compute what 50% of Harden's innings plus 50% replacement level innings would give you in terms of production, then try and find a pricetag for that, then deduct the second guy's salary from that number, and then make some downward adjustment for the fact that you need to use 2 roster spots for one role. (Even that's a simplification, because the 50% of innings Harden doesn't give you is not spread to one player, but to many, some starters covering missed starts, and some relievers covering early exits.)

Curious to see how Harden ranks relative to those guys in IP per start, and average #starts per year. Striking out guys at a high rate is a valuable thing, no doubt. So is pitching deep into games, and taking the ball every 5th day. Harden doesn't score particularly well in those areas, and in fact he's pretty poor at those things, which is why is value is what it is. At any rate, bravo to whoever it was early in this thread that said hopefully we can stop hearing about the draft pick Hendry let get away. It's pretty obvious now that it was never available, since Harden would've accepted arb if it was offered.

Albert Einstein would call you insane.

I would reject that with the swiftness of a thousand cheetahs ... and the Twins would take that over what they got for Johan Santana with even less hesitation than that.

Mark Schlereth tells a funny story of the time Daniel almost threw a fastball through his ribcage while he was catching him in a side session. /hijack

"Might" being the operative word in that sentence. I'm not holding my breath.

Reports are Braves will look to trade Soriano, he has to approve a trade before June 15. Knowing that Hendry is looking for a vet out of the bullpen Soriano could make sense, if they aren't asking a ton for him and it's more of a salary relief move. That June 15th rule applies to guys signed as free agents, not guys retained through arbitration. Corey Patterson was traded in the same offseason after accepting arbitration, for example.

Fuld seems a bit like the CF version of Fontenot -- effective in a part-time/bench role, but likely to be exposed in a starting role.

That feeling's been there for the last 2 months.

Yet when the Phils do it, the same folks are full of praise. Actually no, many of the folks have pointed out it was too much. But you don't care about facts you just want to cry about unfair treatment of the great Jim Hendry. There absolutely is a double standard at work here (both in this thread and on the board in general), and I don't mind pointing out the hypocrisy of it.

Winning ballgames is what sells the tickets. The fans will always find players to dump the "face of the franchise" label onto. OK so suggest a trade that allows the Tigers to win more ballgames in 2010. Why is 2010 the only year that matters? Even the Mayan apocalypse crazies believe there'll be 2011 and 2012 baseball seasons. OK then suggest a trade that allows the Tigers to win more ballgames over the next 3-4 years.

Yet when the Phils do it, the same folks are full of praise.

The reason is simple, Hendry didn't sign Polanco. could be that. or it could be that polanco been worth 3 to 3.5 wins a year over the past 5 years and grabow has been worth barely over 1. same thing, basically. Looking back 5 years is pretty disingenuous IMO. What these guys did back in 2005 isn't very informative about what they'll do going forward. However over the last two seasons, Grabow has averaged 2.2 wins, and Polanco 2.9. If that level of production continues going forward, Grabow will be paid $1.7M per win, and Polanco $2.1M per win.

As I posted above, Polanco is not average-to-slightly above average offensively, and a switch to 3B makes his defensive value uncertain. Whatever control issues Grabow may have have not prevented him from being effective.