Cubswin11

If Paul Sullivan said it, it must be true. If the White Sox got the Marlins 4&5 prospects for their head case of a manager, hopefully they'll send us something good for our headcase of a pitcher. Minimum of Hanley and Morrison for Z. One of our headcases for two of theirs.

Coleman breaks up the no hitter with a 3B in the 6th! He obviously failed to score as we have Tony [expletive] Campana batting leadoff tonight. Also I didn't realize that this series has big implications on where we draft next year. We currently have one fewer loss than the Padres.

Sexy Rexy had them driving there and was only a play or two away from getting into FG range for a possible 3-0 start :shock: . Too bad the line broke down there/he didn't protect the ball better.

Cubs currently getting no-hit through 5 by Latos. For those who care/accidentally open and read this thread.

Ridiculous. You don't cut a guy who can still be useful just because you don't like him. He still put up a .271 .312 .500 .812 line against LH pitchers this year. Why not just platoon him? If he's already complaining about batting 7th don't you think he's going to complain about being platooned? Also, though the numbers against lefties are slightly above average I fully expect his numbers to be even worse next year. I'd rather let Brett Jackson take up LF full-time or find a better replacement than have Soriano there against lefties and taking a roster spot to do so. That's my opinion of course. If Jackson is in LF and Soriano is cut to make you feel better, who is playing the other OF spot? Where is this better replacement coming from? Are we passing on Fielder/Pujols because we have to spend money on the OF to satisfy Soriano's bloodlust? There should be a decent amount of OF free agents next year that would come cheap and be better than Soriano. Soriano is 37th in all of MLB OF with a OPS of .748 and tied for 13th with 25 HR. Certainly not numbers that justify his salary but I wouldn't say there will there will be a decent amount of FA available that will be able to duplicate or do better than those numbers. The only FA OF this offseason is pretty bad, the only OF who had higher OPS' than Soriano this year are Beltran (.920) Swisher (.821) Yankees have a club option Willingham (.814) Francoeur (.805) Cuddyer (.803) Then there is a group that includes Fukudome, Juan Rivera, David Dejesus (wouldn't be a bad platoon option with Soriano actually), Ibanez, and Ludwick who all have OPS' .030 points or more lower than Soriano's. I still think Soriano is a useful player, salary aside, he just needs to be used smarter. Fewer starts against RHP (at least those he has bad splits against), maybe a little more rest (day games after night games not playing too many games in a row), late game defense replacement, etc.

Ravens?? Nope. Damn, I looked it up and saw it was the Raiders. I had it down to them and the Ravens and went with the Ravens.

Ravens??

Don't think this needs a new thread, but Kila Ka'aihue was DFA'd today by the Royals. He'd be interesting to bring on if Pujoles/Fielder aren't signed for whatever reason.

I don't know if it's stupid sports radio talk up here in Wisconsin, but they were saying today that the Packers are thinking about shifting Woodson to safety to replace Collins. I would think much of that move would be contingent on Williams playing this week. The Packers use Woodson a lot as a hybrid CB/S/LB so idk how big of a change this would be for the defense.

Castro got his 199th hit today. Safe to say he will get to 200. Overall a very good year for him as he has shown power and consistency (hasn't had any prolonged cold streaks or times where he has looked consistently bad/over matched at the plate) the only thing offensively that would have made it better would be to have seen a few more walks which has been addressed on here already. Hopefully the defense improves as it isn't a lack of skill or talent but more tuning his mechanics and maybe improving a bit mentally. :good:

With Williams (who should be back soon it sounds like) and Collins both hurt are there any remaining FA or potential trade targets for the Packers to shore up the secondary?

Is the Falcon's O-line usually this bad? They can't project Ryan at all right now, he's getting the [expletive] kicked out of him

And that was before last night...now LaHair is at .500/.565/.950. All kidding aside though, if the Cubs like his bat I think they have the luxury of keeping him on their bench next year. With Barney starting at 2nd, that makes keeping another backup SS unnecessary. Baker and DeWitt can backup pretty much every position besides SS, C, and CF. So you have a backup C, a backup CF (that could be Colvin, Campana, or a free agent), Baker, DeWitt, and that still leaves one bench spot. There's no real need for that to be another defensive backup so the Cubs can afford to put a bat in that spot, and if they think LaHair can put up a .750+ OPS he could be it. Cubs lineup next year if @thekapman created it: Castro SS Barney 2B LaHair 1B Byrd CF Colvin RF LeMahieu 3B Jackson LF Soto C I'm pretty sure that team would lose 100 games. Only about 85 losses with the Phillies pitching staff. That everyday lineup, with roughly the same pitching staff as this year, would honestly struggle to win 50-55 games. That team would be reaching historically bad levels. The scary thing is an everyday lineup involving most, if not all of, those players next year is not that far fetched IMO.

What was going on with Dez towards the end of the game? He literally couldn't move/run. He probably shouldn't have even been out there.

There are some really shitty QB's starting week 1.

Is GM the only position open in the FO right now for us? If there is interest in Lamar could it be for a different position? And yes it would be an awful move hiring him as GM, IMO

The Chicaco Cubs are not in any kind of financial mess. Yeah, what the [expletive] is he talking about? The sale? A few bad contracts? How is he possibly lumping the Cubs in with the Mets and Dodgers? Yeah the Mets and Dodgers are in serious financial trouble, like owners not being able to make payroll/expense payments on time trouble. The end result likely being the owners in both cases have to sell the team completely or give up decent portions of ownership. The Cubs have debt with new owners in place, a couple hundred million dollars by most accounts, but it appears they structured it well and will be able to manage the debt it took to buy the team without issues. The Cubs are far from being a financial mess. The Ricketts are smart business people, they wouldn't have proposed/agreed to a deal to buy the team that involved them taking out a large amount of debt without having a way to manage it in their business plan with the Cubs. The Mets/Dodgers owners did tons of shady things that put them in a financial mess. The debt they had to take on to buy the teams wasn't what put them where they are. It was years of mismanagement, getting involved in shady investments (Wilpons have been involved in at least two Ponzi Schemes), and borrowing money against the team to us that money towards things in the owners personal lives and not using it for business/baseball related operations amongst other things.

Any idea if Carpenter will be used as a reliever or starter? I think he ultimately ends up as a pen arm in the majors, but I'd like to see him remain as a starter in his minor league career.

Drop Cruz add Kemp

Maybe just still feeling the effects of the hand injury? Sounds like he's feeling the effects of being sucky mcksuckstein @klaw

Is that the same price as it is for Direct TV subscribers? As a PS3 owner I would be very interested if it was about $100 less ($210-230), but I don't think it's worth it for that much for the reasons those have mentioned amongst others.

I didn't realize he was only 22, seems like he has been in the system forever. 21 actually, he doesn't turn 22 til Christmastime. I really would have guessed he was at least 24-25 without looking up his info. What's his ceiling? #2/3 starter? His age/numbers at AA are intriguing.

I didn't realize he was only 22, seems like he has been in the system forever.

That game was magical