Atta Boy

Has this been confirmed by Rob Lowe yet?

What do you mean by sexy?

I can't believe this would be a surprise. You can walk up to the box office and get front row tickets right before gametime almost any day. The park is absolutely perfect, though. Its nice enough that I think it could field a AAA team. I know that won't happen but it might get some butts in the seats. I'm guessing that when they put all this money into building a park of this caliber they envisioned a bit more money coming in from the boxes that are empty half of the time. Top notch food too.

Fell asleep listening to the radio talking about he Cubs in late October. Awesome (kinda) news!

I'm almost positive I read something last year about how much Votto hates the Cubs and all of their fans. I would love to have the guy but he probably wouldn't extend with us.

I got his autograph on a hat when he was playing A ball. I put the hat in a glass case and bragged about it. Guess what I was wearing during my softball game Sunday?

So stoked to see this finally go down. Next GM has a great starting point.

I'll be there for at least the first two games. I've got to work on saturday so I'm not sure on thursdays game yet. Its going to be a long drive back to Peoria.

I'm going to guess the kind of weed he can afford would probably smell plenty strong without him even taking it out of the bag. Maybe he should introduce Geo to his guy with the non-munchies inducing stuff.

Does anyone know the rules for voiding a contract in the event of someone becoming violent and making for an unsafe work environment? This whole situation seems to have an easy fix. Here are the steps I think Hendry should have taken. Step 1: Spend the rest of the season anonymously torturing Bradley. Step 2: Drop subtle hints Aaron Miles is the Culprit. Step 3: Leave an abnormal amount of sharp jagged objects laying around.

Anyone saying that rebuilding is even an option before winning a WS must not have ever met any elderly Cubs fans. How many sixty/seventy/eighty year olds do you see sitting in their seats at the games who have been waiting for centuries to see a WS title? Three or four years of rebuilding this team (whether it could be done correctly or not with the contracts already in place) simply might be too little to late for some people.

Yea, there's no pressing reason to trade him -- but like I said, if some team comes along and makes an offer (like vazquez and escobar), do you take it, assuming he waives his ntc? The Braves are moving Vazquez or Hudson because of salary restrictions and a surplus of pitching. The deal you proposed is both ridiculously one-sided and ill-informed, but considering the other absurd Cub rip-offs you think up, I'm not too surprised. The actual trade proposal isn't the part of the question I believe he was intending to matter. If a trade comes along that's either even value or a complete fleecing doesn't matter. It's more about weather or not people are ready to move on from Big Z. I'm mixed. You see the potential that he has to be dominating, but most of the time he is more aggravating than anything. Do you trade a guy who potentially could put it all together and deliver a cy young year for less talented but more consistent players because his emotions could cause him to fall apart at any time?

I agree 100%. They also get to play the Padres 18 times this year and we have to play 36 games against the Reds and Pirates. How can we ever compete when Bud Selig is setting us up to fail???????????

Ricky Nolasco, Jose Ceda, Renyel Pinto....done.

poorly? I wouldn't want him back on my team or anything but he did put in a lot of effort. There was a point that it looked like he should be playing and wasn't. You didn't hear complaining from him about it. He just took his opportunities when he could and was quiet about it.

Ryan with the win.

I just saw this on mlbtraderumors. It sucks because he played the game the right way.

Peoria is basically right in the middle of Chi and stl. Its 50/50 Cubs/cards and I hear this crap all of the time. The cardinals could be playing Al Queda and I would still root for them to lose. I really dont care who wins if its not us, just please don't let it be the cardinals.

How could you think this year is a fluke? It's pretty much what you would expect. He spent some time injured, but when healthy he's pitched great. He did the same thing last year, and that's pretty much what he's done throughout his career. Even if you call his relative health and durability a fluke, it's not like he's on pace for 30 starts and 200 innings and it's not like he's outperforming past seasons either. Just to clarify, the fluke statement was 100 percent about his health. For the course of the year he may have missed some time but he has been pretty healthy besides the short dl stint he had earlier in the year. If you had told me before the year that he would make 25 starts I would have been thrilled. This will be only his third year making 25 starts and this will be his third most innings pitched. I don't think that it is unreasonable at all to expect less than that of him a few times in the next four years.

Buster Olney had a post on rumor central concerning Harden. It's just a paragraph but in it he says that every team is scared of signing him and that he wont get a deal over 20 million. He doesnt say anything about how many years for that 20 million but is responding to that article the other day saying 4/50 or 60. I love the guy but really think this year may end up being a fluke.

Because you're talking about things after the fact.(Same thing with the slumping offense you mentioned earlier. It's easy to look back and say, oh these guys weren't hitting, why didn't they do something to scratch out some runs? Guys can turn on a dime and break out of a slump no matter how pathetic his previous 20 ABs looked. It's extremely difficult to pinpoint when a player is going to suck. This isn't an after the fact situation for me. After reading some of these threads I'm starting to realize that my views on small ball differ from what makes sense statistically. Right or wrong, I've always had the opinion that we should play for one run every time there was an opportunity and that more would be a luxury. Most of the stats I read on here tell me I am completely wrong, but I still feel that way. I also feel that your management style should be situational. The team should be able to play small ball one day and hr derby the next. That's why I like Sandberg teaching these things in the minors. Personally, I don't really like the guy and don't want him as a major league manager in Chicago.

Here's a few numbers that may help clear this up a bit. We've scored 1-3 runs in a game 41 times and 4-6 runs in a game 40 times. We've scored 7+ 25 times and scored none 9 times. By contrast, the best offense in baseball this year (the Phillies) have scored 1-3 runs 38 times, 4-6 runs 37 times, 7+ runs 35 times and have been shutout 4 times. So, the Cubs and Phillies' differential between 1-3 run games and 4-6 run games is the same. The only difference between the offenses is that the Phillies score 7+ more often and get shutout less. In our shutouts, we've lost by 2 runs twice, 3 runs three times, 4 runs twice, 6 runs once and 10 runs once. It appears that the offense has been worse this year because they've scored a bunch of runs in a game less instead of going from 4-6 runs in a game to 1-3 runs. For instance, last year's Cubs team scored 7+ runs 57 times, 1-3 runs 58 times, 4-6 runs 38 times and were shutout 8 times. So, for the most part, a number of last year's 7+ run games have turned into 4-6 run games. Thanks for taking the time to put that together. Puts some perspective on where this team is different and it's not where I thought. This is basically the way I feel about it. When Soriano slumps he turns into Paul Bako. If he is going to get out anyway why not make sure that you get something out of it.

They are averaging 4.48 runs a game. You'd rather get 3 runs a game than average 4.48 a game, just because it might be more consistent? I'm by no means a stat head whatsoever, but how skewed is that statistic. Just because you average 4.8 runs a game does not mean that you usually get 4.8 per game. We have had a few really big games this year that bump that up considerably. Obviously this doesn't happen often but that 17 run game a few days ago plus three one run games avgs near that figure. I could be wrong here, but it seems like we have had an unusual amount of games that we just can't score a run to save a life. Instead of adjusting to that a few innings in and try to scrape for some runs, Lou seems to just cross his finger for that one big inning and we end up losing by one run. What teams consistently manufacture 3 runs every game? I don't have an answer for that. I rarely ever pay any attention to how another club scores its runs. From watching this team, day in and day out, I see a team that could benefit from playing smaller ball on occasions. This team seems to have slumps together and go on tears together. When everyone on the team is having a power outage, why not try a different approach until they start pulling it together.

They are averaging 4.48 runs a game. You'd rather get 3 runs a game than average 4.48 a game, just because it might be more consistent? I'm by no means a stat head whatsoever, but how skewed is that statistic. Just because you average 4.8 runs a game does not mean that you usually get 4.8 per game. We have had a few really big games this year that bump that up considerably. Obviously this doesn't happen often but that 17 run game a few days ago plus three one run games avgs near that figure. I could be wrong here, but it seems like we have had an unusual amount of games that we just can't score a run to save a life. Instead of adjusting to that a few innings in and try to scrape for some runs, Lou seems to just cross his finger for that one big inning and we end up losing by one run.

He isn't managing a major league team that the outcome of the games really matter all that much. I don't see why teaching small ball in the developmental stages is anything but productive. Maybe if someone had taught some of our players the importance of getting people over in the proper situations this team would have won more games than they have. I would much rather manufacture 3 runs a game with this pitching staff than the current 1 every other day then 6 the others.