SouthSideRyan

The big thing that would worry me if I was an IU fan is you have a one year window with this team. Gordon and White are gone after this, plus I think you are going to get some more penalties from Sampson's calls. You have a lot of bad games. You have one of these in the tournament at all and you are done. Illinois and Minnesota shouldn't be allowed in the same gym with you because of your talent, but you are letting those type teams hang around you. It's a one-year window which is disappointing, but that's the zeitgeist now. I doubt Ohio State is terribly unhappy about their one-year window last year. Wish there was at least a two-year window, oh well. I have no idea how the penalties will work, though I don't think they'll be debilitating. IU needs to add a JUCO big man as they're going to struggle inside next year, but their perimeter attack will be very, very good. On Minnesota, any game involving IU and the barn will be tough. Seriously, most IU fans are more than happy to get out of there with any possible win. That place has been a house of horrors. Illinois-Indiana is a strange situation, as well. I wish IU had played better in both, but hope they can continue to improve -- their ceiling is still very high. I'm happy with the win, but IU had turnovers in about 40% of their possessions, and shot 60% for all but a 6 minute stretch. Turn the ball over a season average 14 times, and shoot 50% in those other posessions. That's an 18-20 point win and nearly 80 points scored. Let's turn Minnesota's badness into goodness too!!

It's a nice deal for the Rays, but Pena and Marquis aren't comparable service time wise. Pena was Rays property as long as they tendered him an offer.

Too much and for the wrong team.

As a person, I'm pretty sure he's reprehensible. He's oversaw pretty much the greatest growth in baseball's history though, whether he did anything besides not stand in the way is the question.

His medical report was so bad that it scared off a bunch of teams and he was only able to get a 1-year deal with a $1 million base. This kind of garbage can probably be put to rest now. He plagarized it and only told San Diego the real story.

AHHHHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHHA BAAAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHA =D> =D> =D>

It's better than anything they've ever done. There's several Brewers games and a White Sox game in addition to decent games vs. Dodgers, Padres, and others. I think the way they did it was fair to everyone who has added their name to the list. They are going to probably sell out all of those early April/May games now and, in turn, they let people have the chance to buy a Sox game and some decent night games. They aren't just going to offer up the 9 best games on the schedule to make you happy. Frankly, it's not even needed to offer anything to keep the 15,000+ people on the waiting list. Some people can complain about anything... Was I really complaining?? I can't afford to use up all my vacation time on Cubs games, therefore I'm abstaining. Last year, I had no tickets to open the season and wound up going to 8 or 9 games and the playoff game. On my limited budget/limited vacation time that was about perfect for me. I see no need to lock myself into certain (less than ideal) dates now, and force myself to pass on tickets when they come up later. You touched on it briefly, but then kinda went away from it, let's not pretend this is some altruistic move by the Cubs to reward fan loyalty. It's a (very intelligent) move to sell out those April/May day games that are the toughest sells. They don't care if they're selling that Sox game now, or selling the Mets/Dodgers games now, or if they're doing it in 3 weeks. They'll still make the same amount of money either way, and the only side of the scalper argument they likely took under consideration is that it will limit the amount of tickets their competition in the resell market will have. And I never demanded anything from the organization(except competent management). There's a limited amount of supply with an insane amoutn of demand, I'm not expecting them to offer me 9 games from July on against top opponents, but I also wasn't expecting 6 games in the first month and a half when I saw the email heading.

Road unis are supposed to be gray. We're not the Devil Rays and we're not Arena Football, a simple pattern is just gravy with me.

That's stupid. So's your face!

I was excited to get the email, but those choices suck. I can probably get tickets to most of those games at the standard sell date. I don't want to committ to 6 games before May 15th, half of them on workday afternoons.

Mike North is a massive tool.

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org

It was posted in the thread about the Cubs signing him, I'm pretty sure Dan adjusted the numbers to the Cubs already.

ZIPS on Lieber 2008 ZiPS Projection - Jon Lieber ------------------------------------------------------------------ W L G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA ERA+ ------------------------------------------------------------------ Projection 9 12 27 27 166 181 87 26 35 106 4.72 98 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Opt. (15%) 13 10 32 32 197 193 82 23 32 128 4.11 112 Pes. (15%) 5 9 18 18 111 129 66 19 26 67 5.37 89

I hate to do this, but a guy on BTF said ESPN 1000 said the Cubs traded for Roberts.

Ok, I'm really confused why we're only including their 1st years in the minors.

I was the jackass that said Lieber.

Deja Vu. Hey Illinois won a game!! YAY!!! And I don't think DeChelis gets fired after this season.

This deal: Moves Dempster from the rotation to the bullpen Does not block one our young major league ready arms for years to come Does not cost a lot. Allows us to go 7 deep in our rotation. These are all good things. On a base 1/3.5 committment I don't see how this is a bad thing. Personally I'd prefer our rotation have Marshall and Gallagher as our 4/5, but even in that scenario I'd like to have a Lieber type as a long man who can step in and start rather than relying on Kevin Hart(And I like Hart more than most.) The market has changed, and 3.5M for 1/3 of a season of league average is probably about right. 7.5M for a full season of league average is a huge bargain. It would be nice to have somebody of Burnett's capabilities in the rotation, but a league average pitcher is a valuable commodity. This isn't frittering away 2.5M on a backup catcher. This is gambling a (relatively) small amount on the hope a guy(without a terrible injury history despite what many are claiming) stays healthy for a season as he enters the twilight of his career.

I don't know why anybody would assume that. He's a big fat 38 year old coming off surgery. seriously. if he wasn't an ex-cub, fan favorite, people would be freaking out right now. Seriously, it seems people are freaking out because he's an ex-cub.

As previously stated, Maddux was definitely worth a damn in his 2nd go-round. He was probably even worth his contract. Lieber hasn't been worse than league averageish since 1995. As Ender pointed out, his peripherals have held up over the past few years, plus he'll be moving to a better defense.

3.5M w/ $4M in incentives. So if hes healthy all year you get a league average pitcher for $7.5M for 1 year, while the going rate is about 4 years $12M per. That greatly depends on exactly what his incentives are. No performance incentives so it'd have to be innings pitched or games started right? I think msot are in agreement that if Lieber's healthy he'll be league averageish right?