UMFan83

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/6165/fukudomejk2.jpg I'll take 3!! 2 children and 1 adult!! That looks so awesome, I might buy one even though there is only rumors that the Cubs are interested in him

At least Winn has a .345 career OBP But as a starting OF, horrible idea

http://tampabay.rays.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=tb Look at the header logo, it appears to be rays of sun

As a true Yankee fan, I have been through losing and accept that while developing some younger players that we will have mediocre seasons! I will take it to lower the payroll and get some hunger back in this team. I think Girardi and O'neill can bring some of that back. I have missed the intensity of teams past. You come to a Cubs board and you reason by saying that you've been through losing? (only kidding). Either way, if the Yankees are really going to do it this way, it can only be good for baseball. Now its obviously that there is only one real "evil empire" and its about 4 hours NE of NYC

There is nothing wrong with what the Yankee fan is suggesting. He just has to understand that with this change in philosophy, they might have to accept a couple of years of rebuilding.

I agree, but I've been saying that for 2-3 years now. First with the Gomes/Baldelli/Kazmir/Crawford incarnation and now the Young/Dukes/Longoria one.

Actually to be completely honest, I've always felt it was A-Rod's fault the Cubs lost game 6 in 2003...

I can't wait until its revealed that DeRosa will be moving to RF, Kaz at 2B and Theriot at SS. This place is going to be nuts

Wait you can't? I bet you were saying the same thing when we resigned Neifi, signed Burnitz, signed Jacque, etc etc etc.

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2007/11/11_free_agents.html No names named, but it claims 11 current FAs are named in the report, with one being Jose Guillen. Anyone want to play a game and guess the remaining 10? Here is my guess: Barry Bonds* Mike Cameron* Jose Guillen* Luis Gonzalez Alex Rodriguez Sammy Sosa Jerry Hairston Jr.* Mike Piazza Kenny Rogers Octavio Dotel Shawn Green *= implicated at one time to either buying or using steroids. Here is a list of FAs to choose from: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/features/freeagents

Is there anyway we could get a deal done if we included Z? Z, Pie, Hill... Would we even want to do that?

Now that there is only 1 year left on his contract, I wouldn't be pissed if he was back

I doubt the Cubs could come up with a package to match some of those other teams.

You can't look at it that way. It sucks to say this but, Hendry overpaid Soriano to save his job.

Interesting article in today's Sun Times: http://www.suntimes.com/sports/baseball/cubs/591759,CST-SPT-cubnews07.article Interesting...

Exactly, how can you say that the Cubs pulled him as a pre-emptive move. The kid has been in the bigs for over 300 innings now, teams should have figured out how to hit him much earlier then last August. How the kid will ever get a chance to prove himself when, at the first sign of danger he is yanked from the rotation is beyond me.

Terrible move...the only reasoning is that they want to keep Vizquel for defense behind their young pitchers, but even that is not as great as it used to be. A raise? I guess they are spending that Bonds money wisely..

WTH? Derrek Lee barely hit 22 home runs this year. How the hell did he win? But seriously, big shocker for me A) His defense definitely wasn't the same as years past B) I just assumed that after Albert won the GG last year, he would take over and win for the next 6-7 years because of all the sportswriters who gush over him.

I think it would be a boneheaded move for the Cubs to let Prior rehab for most of 4 seasons, finally find enough wrong with him to have a surgery and then let a player with his talent go before we figure out what he has got.

That is just silly. The proof of the process is in the product. Process is never more important than outcome. Never, not in a million years, and not in any way, shape, or form for any aspect of life. I think this is a horribly misguided and wrong way of thinking that will never lead to any long-term success in any avenue of life. EDIT - and it's the exact same type of thinking that leads to Jim Hendry trying to somehow copy the latest lightning in a bottle team every year. No the Cubs are a bona fide example of process over product, unless I am reading your "they should've won" supposition incorrectly. Forget the Cubs. That's a separate argument. Process is more meaningful than outcome. Period. Variance can impact a single outcome. Sound process is the only way to ensure long term success in anything. I'll use a poker (Hold 'em) analogy. If you have pocket aces, and somebody acting before you goes all in, you call. 100 times out of 100, the correct play is to call. Now, say the other guy flips over 6 3 offsuit. The board winds up being 4 5 7 9 Q and he wins this hand with 6 3 offsuit. This doesn't mean that calling with AA was the incorrect play. It means that the best hand didn't hold up. Long term, you will win far more often than not when you make this same play. The outcome of the hand (a loss) means nothing (other than the fact that you lost some money in the short run). The math says that you made the correct play, and that is all that matters. Now apply that to baseball. If team A is better constructed than team B but, due to variance, winds up winning fewer games than team B in a given season, that does not mean that team B was the better team. In terms of GMing a team, what matters is how the team is put together, not necessarily how that team winds up performing. If my team were looking at two candidates for GM, one who has sound baseball philosophies but, for whatever reason, has an under .500 record, and one who has a .600 record, but has flawed philosophies, I would take the former every single time. I liken this to a bad pitcher with a good W-L record vs. a good pitcher with a bad W-L record. There's a far better chance that the good philosophies will lead to future success than the naked bottom-line success. Obviously, I'm talking extreme ends of the spectrum here, but it does a good job of illustrating the point. Thank you. I was trying to think of a good analogy and you came up with several good ones. Except the last one, everyone knows that the pitcher with the most wins is the best choice. :wink:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/baseball/mlb/11/02/billjames.rankings/index.html Not really surprising for a team that doesn't spend a lot of time developing their own talent.

No, it was a reply to the post above, I just took your last comment as well. My bad

This is ridiculous. You can't make these determinations in hindsight. Even if you want to go the hindsight route, then how was the 2003 (mediocre as it was) team not a contender? It was 5 freaking outs from the big dance. You can't have it both ways. Personally, I look at the 2003 team as a non-serious contender that got lucky. The 2004 team was a serious contender that was unlucky with injuries and poorly managed. What is ridiculous is to judge a team by the names on the back of the Jersey and statistics that have little usefulness outside of a theoritical model used to predict wins. I judge a team by their actual wins over the course of a season. Not one of the teams the Cubs have fielded in recent history has won 90 games. None of those teams were in the World Series and only the 2003 teams managed to get past the Wild Card round in a crapshoot playoffs. Sooooo... at what point is a team deemed a contender? What are you suggesting we do instead of judging the team by their names? Sure if you are throwing out 25 arbitrary players with unknown abilities and skills, the best way to judge their talent would be wins and losses after a season has been played. But since these players had played in the majors before and had been extensively evaluated on their talents and abilities, you could make several conclusions before 2004. The 2004 Cubs were talented, and they had enough talent to win 92-95 games. Obviously they didn't, so either they were evaluated incorrectly, or other factors came into play during the season. But that doesn't change the fact that with the talent they had, they should have made the playoffs. Not that this furthers my argument at all, I personally think that if they played that season 10 times, they would have made the playoffs in 8 of them.

But the numbers show that it was a shock that they finished with 89 wins. Their pythag shows that they should have won 94 games that year. Who knows how differently it would have been if they didn't go 1-5 in their last 6 games. Not to say that you can't count that, but if someone had told you after game 156 that the Cubs wouldnt win 90 games with 6 more against the bad Reds and the already clinched Braves, you would believe them? I think it was very surprising that they didnt win 93-94 wins. Obviously they had some major fundamental problems, but I don't think many expected them to win under 90 games after getting Lee, Walker, Maddux, and later Nomar and Dempster to add to a team that won 88 games the year before. It doesn't matter what people expected to happen, or what their pyth. record was. They finished 3rd. Winning is what matters. The only constant besides a handful of players is Jim Hendry. And he is the very definition of mediocre, as are the Cubs. But if it makes you happy to believe that the Cubs were victims of bad luck or what have you, go right ahead. I will say this, no amount of luck explains why the Cubs haven't fielded one or two championship calibur teams in most of our lifetimes. But thats what my whole argument was, that the Cubs on paper were a championship caliber club. The pitching alone should have allowed us to contend if they all played up to their expected level. Add the fact that we did have an offense of sorts, however lacking it was it was not the worst in the league (in terms of runs scored it was 7th in the league), and we should have won 92-95 games and contended for the World Series. I agree there were major issues that many homeristic Cubs fans didn't foresee (bad bullpen, OBP, management issues, injuries), but the fact is the Cubs had the talent, it just didnt translate into wins.

But the numbers show that it was a shock that they finished with 89 wins. Their pythag shows that they should have won 94 games that year. Who knows how differently it would have been if they didn't go 1-5 in their last 6 games. Not to say that you can't count that, but if someone had told you after game 156 that the Cubs wouldnt win 90 games with 6 more against the bad Reds and the already clinched Braves, you would believe them? I think it was very surprising that they didnt win 93-94 wins. Obviously they had some major fundamental problems, but I don't think many expected them to win under 90 games after getting Lee, Walker, Maddux, and later Nomar and Dempster to add to a team that won 88 games the year before.