SouthSideRyan

I want everyone to take a look at Cincinatti's active roster. This is the team that we (still) are supposed to fear in a couple years. They might not win 70.

Assume Harden goes down for a significant amount of time and we are forced to add Shark to the rotation. Name one team in the Central that will have a better rotation than the Cubs. Also, name one Central team with a better starting lineup than the Cubs. Go ahead. I'll be waiting patiently for your reply. Using PECOTA, if we give Harden's 155 innings to Shark, the Cubs starting rotation (Z, Lilly, Dempster, Shark, and Marshall) is projected to have a composite ERA of 4.76 over 845 innings, while the Brewers starting rotation (Gallardo, Suppan, Bush, Parra, Looper) is projected to have composite ERA of 4.45 over 800 innings. So, according to PECOTA, the Brewers would have a better rotation. Clearly, there is no NL Central team with a better lineup than the Cubs, but that wasn't the argument. The fact is that inserting Shark instead of Harden gives back every bit of advantage the Cubs have in the rotation and, according to PECOTA, gives the Brewers the better rotation. I'll be waiting patiently for your patronizing reply. ugh, the Shark is a pitcher Pecota just has no idea how to properly forecast. and i hope i don't have to explain the utter impossibility that Lou would have patience enough to give 150 innings to a guy with a 6 ERA The correct response. Dempster is kind of a strange case for them too.

I don't know. Isn't Kauffman's renovation almost a total gut rehab that will end up costing more than Busch Stadium III? EDIT: almost. Kauffman's renovations will cost around $265 million while a whole new cheaply built Busch stadium cost around $300 million. My guess is that after a couple of years the Red Sox will get a bad case of stadium envy and build a new place. And Kauffman doesn't even have a softball field next door.

We're starting this Cardinals [expletive] already? Remember last year how THEY'RE NOT GOING AWAY. WHY WON'T YOU ADMIT THAT THEY'RE GOOD??? And then they took 4th place.

Jacque was my favorite player on the '07 team.

What does he work there or something?

GO GREEN

Wrigley's footprint is too small to make tearing it down and building a new one in the same place a viable solution.

that's an amazingly charitable description of their rotation. That's amazingly charitable for mostt every topic. Their "2 MVP candidates" are DHs who couldn't crack 900 OPSs last year. Their "deeper bullpen" consists of trading out Salomon Torres and Brian Shouse(their 2 best pen guys last year) for full seasons of Todd Coffey and the awful Jorge Julio. Oh, and the ancient Trevor Hoffman.(DL right now) The deep bench has the Gathright like Chris Duffy, and the despicable Casey McGehee. Their 2nd bat off the bench is a 38 year old Craig Counsell. Manny Parra's servicable, I think it's a bit premature to call him pretty good. Jeff Suppan hasn't been any good since leaving St. Louis, and I don't think it's a stretch to think the same about Braden Looper. The Brewers have not upgraded anywhere from a team last year that won the wild card on the last day of the season and was 11 games worse than the Cubs in pythag. They've since lost their 2 best starting pitchers, their 2 best bullpen pitchers, and their 2 best bench bats.

Players become free agents after using up 6 full years of major league service. They become arbitration eligible after 3 full seasons or if they're a super 2(at least 2 years, 86 days of service and in the top 17% of players reaching that status. Up until a player reaches arbitration, the team can pay you whatever they want at or above the league minimum. After a player reaches arbitration, they will go through it every offseason until they have the full 6 years of service. Teams can buy out those arbitration years with a multi-year deal, but they can also choose to go year to year with them every offseason.

All 4 of UNC's losses are to teams that are worse than MSU. They beat Penn by 15, based on your logic, do you believe that Penn could beat UNC but not MSU? I think UNC is gonna win, but to write off MSU because of a game from 4 months ago is pretty nuts.

We can send Patton away after he stinks for the first month and a half.

Joe Morgan sounds disgusted having to share air time with Phillips. Something awesome is going to come out of this pairing before the year's over, I just know it.

Why would the backloading go to 2010 alone? When people talk deferred money, it's usually longer down the road than one year.

Theriot is far from a guarantee for a 300+ hitter with an OPS in the 700s.

What's going on here?

I don't get why coaches want to take the jobs around Duke and UNC. You're never going to be able to recruit with the big boys. I get the money, but I am sure he made pretty good money at Nevada. Fox was making 500K at Nevada, 1.3M at Georgia. Ideally, he'd wait out til he could grab a Pac-10 job, but I think it's tough to pass that up unless he sees another Fazekas on the horizon who could make him a hot commodity again. Guy's a solid coach, but he hasn't seemed that in demand the past couple years.(Missed the last 2 NCAAs.) On the flip side, he had a really young team this year, and with Utah St. losing Wilkinson, they'll be the favorite in the WAC next year, and probably the year after that. Though if you say he should wait another 2 years til he's in demand and during that time, he missed out on 1.6M. I think if I'm him, I take the job, but as an objective observer it's easy to not take ego into account, and look at being smart enough to take the big payday before something goes wrong at the mid-major job that'll bury you forever. You screw up at Georgia at his age, you could be fired go back to a mid-major for 5 years and be ready for a new Big 6 job by the age of 50. ETA: Course, none of this took into account his comfort level in Reno.

Fox of Nevada to UGA.

As far as recapping games, I don't think this is too much of an issue, but how easy is it gonna be to get quotes from a guy over the phone, I can't imagine too many people of importance are willing to do phone calls after the game.

Seriously though, what the [expletive] happened to Jacque Jones?

for what purpose? I don't know the # just went from 36 to 52 buses. 16 on tuesday night, 36 on thursday night shhhhhhhhhut it

for what purpose? I don't know the # just went from 36 to 52 buses.

Apparently 16 more buses showed up to MSG in the last hour.

Yeah, admitting ignorance about PSU's incoming class, I've got em 8th-9th next year.

I think most of us here considered UI and PSU to be similar teams heading into the season. I know a lot of casual Illinois fans were way down on the team this year. I think you're overestimating our expectations heading into the season. I predicted NIT berths for both.