UMFan83

Damn, I thought we somehow acquired John Maine. Probably would be getting the same results but at least it would be interesting.

I almost feel like the team USA people try to increase the level of difficulty by purposely lacking in certain areas. Either that or they decided that they'd rather have someone like Andre Iguodala than Kyle Korver.

I remember the good old days on NSBB when you could start a thread saying "Adam Dunn went 1-4 with a HR, BB and 3K" and the thread would have 40 pages of 99.95% pro-Adam Dunn talk within 2 hours.

Cubs will sign Dunn, NSBB will have an orgasm, casual Cubs fans will eventually rail on him for his striking out and horrible defense. Of course we've been predicting that would happen if we signed Dunn for about 5 years.

This was an Onion article right? Right?

The overreaction is justified even though it is an overreaction. I may just be rephrasing what others have said, but Williams is one of the biggest X factors, if not the biggest, for the Bears success this season. If he is the player we hoped he would be and we were told he would be in the offseason, then the Bears line looks a lot better as a whole and if Cutler is protected and the run blocking is better then Martz's offense might actually work out and be successful. But if he's as bad as he was Saturday then we're in big trouble. It is only the preseason so I have to tell myself to not take anything from it (maybe Williams was trying a new technique and struggled in game action with it). Either way, giving up 3.5 sacks to a mediocre pass rusher in one half is absolutely terrible. And then when you consider that the Tribune claimed that 2 of those (I think) were when only 3 guys were rushing, that's just unbelievably bad. But there's still time and I'm not making any major judgements until the curtains go up.

lol Harden left the game with a no-no, presumably due to pitch count. It's still going in 7th.

No You'd be surprised. I know there was always at least a small anti-Dusty group on this board, but most of the meh-Dusty or pro-Dusty people (and this board was littered with them..myself included in the meh-Dusty category) had that sentiment. Then again a lot of us were not as jaded as we are now.

Agreed. I just spend 20 minutes on Baseball Reference trying to figure out how we did not win the WC that year. It came down to 2 things: LaTroy Hawkins and bad luck. We played 5 games below our pythag and Houston played 3 above theirs. Prior had 16 freaking Ks against the Reds and lost and the obvious Victor Diaz game. Those 2 games just took the wind out of their sails and lost a ton. On September 24th, the Cubs were 87-66 and the Astros were 85-69. The Cubs went 2-7 to finish the season and the Astros went 7-1. The Cubs lost games 3-4, 2-3, 3-4, 1-2, and 4-5 - that's five of the seven losses by one run, where they never scored more than 4. You could also see it coming though. Immediately before that 2-7 stretch, we had a 13-3 stretch...the type of consistent winning where everyone thought "see this is a Dusty team, just like last year this team is catching fire in September". The thing was...at the start of that stretch our offense was booming....scored 11,5,7,3,13,5,12,5. And then at the end of that streak our offense started tp struggle mightly. That series against the Pirates we scored 12 runs and swept them. The first game of the Mets series was really a struggle...it took us 10 innings to score our 2nd run of the night against the hapless Mets pitching staff. But still we won and were 21 games over .500 for the first time since like 1989 or something. At that point I thought I understood the cycle of our feast and famine offense and thought 'this is great, we are in our famine cycle and still winning, now our offense will break out and lead us into the playoffs'. But the famine cycle did not let up and Victor Diaz happened. I don't want to review what happened after that because we all know.

I remember Sammy coming within inches of hitting a grand slam in one of those losses to the Reds at Wrigley the last game of the season. Instead of a 4-1 lead, I believe we lost 4-3 in extras.

Pittsburgh but yeah. The final score of that game was 1-0 The Cubs were an incredibly streaky offensive team that had a crapload of power but not enough patience. If they had more patience, there's no doubt they would have hit more consistently and probably made the playoffs. Heck if the season went 170 games instead of 162 they probably make the playoffs seeing as the Cubs were due to go on an offensive surge, and Houston as a whole had to start cooling off eventually. The 2004 Cubs had so many quality hitters but their batting line was .268/.328/.458. A .328 OBP for a near 90 win team is pathetic. To compare the 2008 Cubs had a line of .278/.354/.443. Lower SLG but much much better OBP. They scored 100 more runs than 2004 roughly. And the offense was much more consistent than 2004, even though the finally memory of the 08 team will be the offense no showing in the playoffs.

I have to agree. His .328/.437/.737/1.174 line in 2001 screams "I only care about HRs"

The entire article is up now. It's a long but good read: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/September-2010/Sammy-Sosa-Cubs-Threw-Me-into-the-FIre/index.php?cparticle=1&siarticle=0#artanc

I found this to be an excellent resource to rate your team: http://subscribers.footballguys.com/rate-my-team/form.php Basically you enter in your team, enter in the specifics of your league (#of teams, scoring, #starters per pos) and then submit it and instantly it comes up with a detailed analysis of your team. It breaks down each position and how you drafted relative to projections, tells you where you are weak and strong, gives you suggestions for how to improve team, breaks down your schedule and byes, and calculates the odds of making the playoffs. Great stuff. For example here is the first part of mine that I just did: Crazy, it does not at all read like it's computer generated.

Rose scores the last 4 points in a 1 point Team USA win :)

You know I'd always heard how bad Braves fans are, but I've seen more Braves fans around Chicago this weekend than any other opposing team's fans besides the Cardinals and Brewers.

WTF did Trammell do? Wow

Apparently Sammy Sosa had an exclusive interview with Chicago Magazine and had some critical things to say about the Cubs organization. All I can find is an excerpt of the article on the magazine's website, but the full interview is in this month's magazine, on newsstands right now. Here is the excerpt: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/September-2010/Sammy-Sosa-Speaks-Out-Against-the-Chicago-Cubs/ Interesting stuff. I figured enough time had passed where the inevitable reconciliation between Sosa and the Cubs would start to materialize, but I guess that's not gonna happen anytime soon.

Guys, I'm starting to think that we might not win it all this year.

At least our former star didn't embarrass us!

I believe I read that maximum sentence is 5 years in jail. So if the prosecutors were looking to send a message that's more or less where they would go. I exaggerated on the 30 year number. If the prosecutors are more concerned with just getting a conviction, I think its much more likely to see Clemens accept a plea bargin and settle for 6-12 months of jail plus a big fine. I have a hard time seeing a scenario where Clemens pleads not guilty, especially if that 98% conviction rate posted above is accurate. That tells me that the prosecution has significant evidence that will get Clemens convicted.

Fine, but what a thread like this tells me more than anything is that there's a growing feeling out there that Ricketts isn't particularly engaged, when we hoped he would be. I'll still withhold final judgement, but I agree a raised eyebrow or two is appropriate at this juncture. Maybe not engaged, but certainly not the hands-on type of owners they presented themselves to be when they first bought the team. I think on a scale of Moreno to Loria, they're not distinguishing themselves as anything but middle of the road so far. True, but you could probably still make the argument that they are in the evaluation stage until this offseason. If their plan was to have a mostly hands off approach for one season to observe and evaluate where the Cubs are at and what needs to be improved, then it would make sense that they've been so out of the spotlight. But yeah I did expect to see more involvement at this point, although I personally can't think of many instances where their involvement would have changed things all that much.

I'm willing to bet the exact opposite. The government is not going to lay down in such a high-profile case. Maybe your right. My thought was that they aren't going to lay down in terms of getting a conviction, but I just can't see Clemens getting like 30 years in jail. I don't think the sentence length is as important as getting a guilty plea from Clemens. For a celebrity/athlete, I feel like any jail time sends a stern message to them that lying under oath is not going to go unpunished.

For his sake, I hope someone knocks some sense into him. If he continues this "I did nothing wrong I will prove that all these allegations are lies" rampage that is equal parts denial and ego, he's gonna be in jail for awhile. Unless for some reason Clemens wasn't lying which is highly highly doubtful, no one believes him, no one is willing to wait for him to be proven not guilty to judge his career, and he's not gonna beat the government. There is no reason why he shouldn't take a plea bargin and just get this over with. I'm willing to bet his status will provide him with pretty leinient plea bargin terms.

I dunno our first round pick was somewhere around the 200th best prospect on most people's draft boards. Maybe Wilken really loves him, but he probably could have gotten him a round or two later. So why was he picked in the 1st round? I'm not knowledgeable enough about those things to say definitively but on the surface it looks like they were trying to limit their spending in the draft.