UMFan83

Sweet, I was just thinking of all the things I wanted to say about Derek Jeter's contract negotiations and you my good sir have provided me said forum. Edit: New thread rule #1 1. If the first sentence of your new thread begins with "Not really of interest to us," it probably doesn't need to have a thread made for it.

I have no idea what your first sentence means. As for the rest, he isn't relatively consistent from year to year. He was very pedestrian in 2009. He is coming off a career year. The vast majority of these guys are not consistent every year, and that is the reason you don't sign him. Plus, the consistent ones don't walk a million people a year. If Marmol does what he did this year for the next two years, then go ahead and think about a longer term deal. But there is just no reason you sign him now unless he is offering an insance discount just for the security. It has nothing to do with taking line drives off the elbow, it's all about the inconsistency of relievers and his ridiculously injury inviting motion. Sorry about the first sentence. I meant how many years is Marmol away from FA right now. My head is in a daze thinking about how I'm gonna miss the Bears game tonight. While technically you were right, in 2009 Marmol was less than consistent vs. the other years of his career. But if a 1.5 WAR is pedestrian and thats his FLOOR, well then I'm fine with that. In the last 4 years only Marshall (10 - 1.9), Wood (08 - 1.8) and Marmol (07 - 2.8, 08 - 2.2, 09 - 1.5, 10 - 3.0) have had seasons out of the pen with a higher than 1.5 WAR. I'm perfectly fine with Marmol getting a 4 year, $20 mil deal to keep him on the team for the next 4 seasons.

How far as the Cubs from FA with him? I wouldn't suggest just letting him go at the end of his arb years, nor would I suggest signing him for 8 figures a year. But relievers with his stuff and are relatively consistent from year to year are hard to find. There are significant risks to a long term extension but while I am typically very against paying relievers a lot of money, I am ok with a big market team like the Cubs having one high paid reliever on the team (meaning up to 8 mil a year). Sure you could sign him to a 4 year deal and watch him take a line drive off his elbow tomorrow and his career is over. Or you could sign him and watch Marmol figure out his control issues and become the most dominant reliever in baseball for a good chunk of the deal.

Every single mainstream prediction I've seen has picked the Dolphins to win tonight. ESPN's "pickcenter" picks the Dolphins, but picks the Bears to cover, which I don't know how that's possible since the line is Dolphins -1. ESPN's expert predictions haven't been uploaded yet. Peter King picks Dolphins 20 Bears 16 and makes some comment about how Thigpen is going to show that he's more than a clipboard holder or something. All 6 of CBSsports.com writers pick the Dolphins straight up tonight, including Prisco who has Dolphins 24 Bears 20. Wait I did find someone picking the Bears. On Yahoo sports, 1 of the 2 posted predictions is for the Bears, but some guy named Jason Cole. The other dude, and the fan majority both pick Miami. Whatifsports.com uses a statistical model to predict their games, and has the Bears winning handily, 22-14 (which is handily for these types of predictions), with the Bears winning over 75% of the time it was simulated.

$#(%# My girlfriend just reminded me that tonight was the night she bought stupid Lion King musical tickets for us to go to. I told her to pick a night during the week so I didn't waste time on the weekends going to it. And of course she picks the night of the only Bears weekday game between September and December. So I'm gonna miss the entire game. The show starts at 7:30 (same as the Bears game) and ends sometime between 10:15-10:30 supposedly (roughly when the Bears game will end). I was considering DVRing it but I won't be home until 11, and I can't kill a Bears game in an hour. The worst thing is, my gf has the biggest pet peeve of me checking my phone during stuff like this. I am going to have a miserable night if I am checking my phone during the show. I guess I should set popup notifications on my phone for scoring plays. That way it pops up as a text message, so I can really quickly sneak my phone out and check the message instead of having to refresh a web page to see the score.

It's begining to be a problem (having that bad quarter). Obviously you can't expect a team to win every quarter, but 37-12 last night in the 3rd quarter, 30-14 to Houston 2 nights ago in the 3rd, 27-18 in the 3rd to Denver a few games ago, 30-15 to Boston in the 2nd quarter, 36-22 to the Knicks in the 2nd quarter, 39-23 to Detroit in the 2nd quarter, 24-13 to OKC in the 4th. In 7 their 10 games they've had a lopsided (at least -19 points) quarter.

i don't know if you guys agree, but I'd rather the bulk of our money be spent on an impact offensive player rather than starting pitching, and DEFINITELY rather than the pen. We were awful offensively last year and we come into this year worse off than how we came into last year (we don't have Lee coming off a 35 HR 100+ rbi season this year).

There are a lot of decent to good centers in the East right now. Howard, Horford, Noah, Lopez, Hibbert, and Bogut.

I feel really bad for him. I pretty much think the Blazers have moved on and are going on like Oden isn't going to be there. And he won't. Still sucks though, I would have liked to have seen how that promising Blazers team would have looked with a healthy Oden.

Please tell me that isn't true? Thank GOD we weren't able to sign him. Even if he feels that way, who says that out loud?

Also, this was in the Red Eye the other day. I thought it was funny and spot on. Read more: http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/redeye-homers/2010/11/post-5.html#ixzz15bSAak00 My favorite part is the thing about John Scott rushing in and does nothing. So true.

This is how we are supposed to look against the [expletive] Oilers. The Oilers are 2-9-3 in their last 14 games, and the 2 wins are against the Blackhawks in Chicago. I honestly cannot comprehend how we lost to them twice when I see stats like that. And they weren't close games for the most part. They lost 6-1 to San Jose, 7-1 to Carolina, 6-1 to Detroit, 8-2 to the Rangers. It would be like if the Bulls lost to last year's Nets team twice...oh wait. Better example, it would be like if the Cubs lost 2 straight series to the 100 loss Pirates. Damn that one doesn't work either. How about, that would be like the Bears losing twice to Carolina.

He honestly needs to get a couple technicals for bitching so the refs take notice. Rose and Thibs have both openly spoke out about the topic within the last week.

But, according to Stark, we don't have an interest anyway, because we have Castro at short and are unsettled at 2B and think we have to get a solid defender at 1B. Besides we don't need a lefty power bat anyways, we just signed Milton Bradley two yea-.....oh yeah whoops.

We're ten games in. ok combine that with last year's playoffs. And then factor in that Garnett was dealing with serious knee pain the prior year that probably slowed him down a lot. knees get better as you go deeper into your 30's? what about last year's playoffs? he really wasn't doing much different then than he did last season or the season before that... and this season he's just averaging a couple more rebounds a game... in more minutes... and we're only 10 games in. i'm not saying he isn't a decent starter at this point, and that what he's doing isn't very good given his circumstances (his age, his miles, the condition of his knees)... but the days in which he instills fear into opponents are long over (or they should be, at least). and he won't be dropping 30 ppg on anyone in any playoff series. I didn't say they get better as they get older just that if he mostly got his knees healthy at some point last year, you could assume his decline was greatly exagerated. Sure he's not the player he was 5-10 years ago. But I think he's been better than last regular season and is once again a player you fear going up against in the low post, albeit in a reduced role and with the opportunity for it all to unravel quickly with a reaggrivated injury.

I thought we were insanely healthy. Or is this not health related?

We're ten games in. ok combine that with last year's playoffs. And then factor in that Garnett was dealing with serious knee pain the prior year that probably slowed him down a lot.

Yeah but those people are all morons and their opinions don't deserve to be heard.

NSBB of 4 years ago would have exploded in anger at this news.

Asik especially has been effective defensively so far this year. I don't know if he'd have the same effectiveness against Boston, but its another option to throw out there 15 minutes of the game. I think when going up against a unit as good as Boston's the key is not to stop, but to slow down. Taj supposedly was really good defensively last year but has been mediocre to below average this year, but there's still promise. I think through mixing and matching we can be competitive against Boston. I definitely don't think we'd win a 7 game series, but that's not exactly slighting the Bulls. Boston is just really deep and really good.

I think that's exactly it. What is he going to do, threaten to move the team? Close down the Cubs? Are people going to stop visiting the "3rd biggest tourist attraction" if the state doesn't give them money? What are the #1 and #2 tourist attractions? Are they raking in as much profit as the Cubs? I think Ricketts has no leverage and also these people are feeling Ricketts out. They aren't going to just hand out money to some guy who just spent close to a billion dollars on the team because he asks nicely. He needs to play hardball with them, but how? By not investing in the community. By talking with Milwaukee about playing a season there so they can do a more cost effective and comprehensive overhaul of the ballpark (taking away a lot of money from the area for a year). By alligning himself with the right mayoral candidate. There's a few things he can do. Shows how much I thought my post out. All valid points. But if he doesn't invest in the community, I would guess Daley and the new mayor are going to make it really hard for him to do anything in Chicago. More night games? How bout less? Very valid point about playing in Milwaukee for a year. That will piss Cubs fans off enough to make a stink about it, to go on top of the money the city would lose, as you said. So it makes me feel like the initial rejection by Daley and to a lesser extent Quinn (who seemed legitimately offended that he wasn't contacted about the proposal) is just them playing hardball and seeing how the Ricketts family will respond. Like I said, they aren't just going to give out money because the Cubs ask and put together a fancy presentation.

The Colts put Jennings on Marshall most of the day last year. Marshall had 21 catches for 200 yards and 2 TD's. Yeah but Jennings also intercepted a ball intended for Marshall, so...yeah...totally evens it out.

I think that's exactly it. What is he going to do, threaten to move the team? Close down the Cubs? Are people going to stop visiting the "3rd biggest tourist attraction" if the state doesn't give them money? What are the #1 and #2 tourist attractions? Are they raking in as much profit as the Cubs? I think Ricketts has no leverage and also these people are feeling Ricketts out. They aren't going to just hand out money to some guy who just spent close to a billion dollars on the team because he asks nicely. He needs to play hardball with them, but how?

I think they can be. They haven't acted like it so far this year.

I worry about the Marshall thing too. Especially because Jennings seems to be the guy they are putting on the #1 WRs these days. Jennings is 5'8'' and Marshall I believe is 6'4''. That's 8 inches he has on Jennings. Any jump ball to Marshall is going to embarass us.