UMFan83

Soriano and Pierre play and bat and play the same position, id glady take the HUGE and yes i MEAN HUGE offensive improvement Soriano is Pierre had 16 win shares, Soriano had 30. The difference is 14 win shares, which is 4.3 wins over a 162 game season. Izturis is batting 8th, he by default will not bat as much as Pierre did last year and his spot isint as important seeing there is still distance between him and the power hitters The difference is like 40 PA, and with Soriano batting leadoff, the distance between him and Soriano and Pierre and Lee/Ramirez is the same. Lee and 79 wins, thus proving my point that he alone is worth more than the 12 games you think this team is capable of winning, now add Soriano, Derosa ect Now add 27 starts of Prior 10 starts from Wood, Half a season of Nomar, Todd Walker mostly full season...etc Imagine Ramirez numbers if the guy infront of him had a 400obp like lee I did...in 2005 Wait till miller and marquis suck, Prior is healthy, Guzman can go, we can always make trades at the trading deadline. With the trib for sale and a $120 mil payroll already we won't be doing much. No more Neifi batting first and second everyday while other players sit on the bench because they dont have experience

its almost like you want the cubs to lose just so you can say you were right about thinking they would suck. No I just am still bitter about the last 2 seasons, really hurt by watchin the White Sox and Cardinals win world series, and I basically refused to buy into Spring Training optimism like almost everyone else on the board did. I knew it would take more then one season to turn that sorry 2006 team around, but Hendry decided to throw tons of money at mediocre players, leaving the team in a horrible position financially for the next 4-5 years. Don't get me wrong, I want the Cubs to win every game...but they won't. They'll only win around 78 of them. yep we will only win 12 more games than last year with this team. Why is that so hard to believe? Our team OBP was completely not addressed in the offseason. I don't care what you saw in the spring, players don't just randomly get more patient, especially veteran hitters like most of this team is. Our starting pitching is a bunch of spare pieces who can only succeed if they all have career years. Bullpens, our only strength, are a crapshoot at best, which is way only the best relievers don't have up and down careers. Taking all of that into account... You think replacing the crap we had at 1B last year with a full season of Derrek Lee, Juan Pierre with Alfonso Soriano, along with significant improvements in the rotation (as bad as you think it may be this year, last year it was worse), only equals 12 more wins? obviously he does I do, I'm pretty sure the win shares equal something around there. I could be wrong though. Stats are like a girl in a bikini, they show a lot but not everything Well good thing I'm only using stats to back up my opinion that they will only win 78 games

its almost like you want the cubs to lose just so you can say you were right about thinking they would suck. No I just am still bitter about the last 2 seasons, really hurt by watchin the White Sox and Cardinals win world series, and I basically refused to buy into Spring Training optimism like almost everyone else on the board did. I knew it would take more then one season to turn that sorry 2006 team around, but Hendry decided to throw tons of money at mediocre players, leaving the team in a horrible position financially for the next 4-5 years. Don't get me wrong, I want the Cubs to win every game...but they won't. They'll only win around 78 of them. yep we will only win 12 more games than last year with this team. Why is that so hard to believe? Our team OBP was completely not addressed in the offseason. I don't care what you saw in the spring, players don't just randomly get more patient, especially veteran hitters like most of this team is. Our starting pitching is a bunch of spare pieces who can only succeed if they all have career years. Bullpens, our only strength, are a crapshoot at best, which is way only the best relievers don't have up and down careers. Taking all of that into account... You think replacing the crap we had at 1B last year with a full season of Derrek Lee, Juan Pierre with Alfonso Soriano, along with significant improvements in the rotation (as bad as you think it may be this year, last year it was worse), only equals 12 more wins? obviously he does I do, I'm pretty sure the win shares equal something around there. I could be wrong though.

its almost like you want the cubs to lose just so you can say you were right about thinking they would suck. No I just am still bitter about the last 2 seasons, really hurt by watchin the White Sox and Cardinals win world series, and I basically refused to buy into Spring Training optimism like almost everyone else on the board did. I knew it would take more then one season to turn that sorry 2006 team around, but Hendry decided to throw tons of money at mediocre players, leaving the team in a horrible position financially for the next 4-5 years. Don't get me wrong, I want the Cubs to win every game...but they won't. They'll only win around 78 of them. yep we will only win 12 more games than last year with this team. Why is that so hard to believe? Our team OBP was completely not addressed in the offseason. I don't care what you saw in the spring, players don't just randomly get more patient, especially veteran hitters like most of this team is. Our starting pitching is a bunch of spare pieces who can only succeed if they all have career years. Bullpens, our only strength, are a crapshoot at best, which is way only the best relievers don't have up and down careers. Soriano - Career OPS of .835. Pat Burrell's is .841 and is much cheaper and plays a similarly deep position No piere grounding out constantly to second - Replaced by Izzy grounding out constantly to second Full season of Lee - Puts us closer to the 2005 team which had 79 wins Protection for Ramirez - Ramirez's numbers were best in his career without Lee's protection last year no revolving door of no name pitchers - Wait until Marquis and Miller suck no dusty baker - Yeah true. no neifi perez throwing balls into the ground and bunting. - Ronny Cedeno throwing alls into the ground and bunting

its almost like you want the cubs to lose just so you can say you were right about thinking they would suck. No I just am still bitter about the last 2 seasons, really hurt by watchin the White Sox and Cardinals win world series, and I basically refused to buy into Spring Training optimism like almost everyone else on the board did. I knew it would take more then one season to turn that sorry 2006 team around, but Hendry decided to throw tons of money at mediocre players, leaving the team in a horrible position financially for the next 4-5 years. Don't get me wrong, I want the Cubs to win every game...but they won't. They'll only win around 78 of them. yep we will only win 12 more games than last year with this team. Why is that so hard to believe? Our team OBP was completely not addressed in the offseason. I don't care what you saw in the spring, players don't just randomly get more patient, especially veteran hitters like most of this team is. Our starting pitching is a bunch of spare pieces who can only succeed if they all have career years. Bullpens, our only strength, are a crapshoot at best, which is way only the best relievers don't have up and down careers. At the VERY BEST our offense is slightly worse then the 2004 offense, an offense that finished 7th in the league in runs that year. Our starters are also much downgraded from that season.

its almost like you want the cubs to lose just so you can say you were right about thinking they would suck. No I just am still bitter about the last 2 seasons, really hurt by watchin the White Sox and Cardinals win world series, and I basically refused to buy into Spring Training optimism like almost everyone else on the board did. I knew it would take more then one season to turn that sorry 2006 team around, but Hendry decided to throw tons of money at mediocre players, leaving the team in a horrible position financially for the next 4-5 years. Don't get me wrong, I want the Cubs to win every game...but they won't. They'll only win around 78 of them.

7 runs in just about the first 3 games for this awesome offense that everyone was predicting... But of course its early

This pen sucks so far this year.

because for no real reason, lou pinch ran theriot for murton, leaving ronny as the only rh off the bench. the cubs' bench has too many guys who serve the same purpose -- cedeno and theriot, ward and floyd. for no real reason? theriot stole second. he served his purpose, even though he screwed up and made a dumb out. So I guess he didn't. Why burn out your bench that early in the game?

Genius move Lou

Umm...Ward?

It's not that we lose, but how we lose. That never changes. Oh and it's never too early to freak... This is ridiculous. All teams lose like this. Even great teams lose ~60 games. And among those 60 there are plenty of games that were blown by boneheaded plays and bad luck. Are you kidding? Reminds me of one of my favorite baseball quotes: No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference. ~Tommy Lasorda Tell the 2003 Tigers that

wow What? A ridiculous statement, typical game thread hyperbole. What did I say that was ridiculous? I predicted 78 wins before the season starts. And I remember the Cubs giving up games in crazy ways. Nothing I said there was hyperbole.

When Devin Hester says it starts

wow What?

These are the Cubs I remember, bloop single, WP, WP, go ahead run scores 78 wins

Truth. Yesterday I realized that for the first time in a long time we weren't totally screwed if we got to the bottom of the lineup. What about when Murton would bat 7th because he was unproven and Barrett would hit 8th because 'dude catchers bat 8th'?

I have a bad feeling about this game...prove me wrong

Please post the code on there when someone gets it.

Presale was today at 10am. I picked up 4 cheap seats to game B, 2 to game C, and 2 $45 tickets to game A

Last 5 games (minutes) PJ: 23 8 20 21 16 Avg: 17.6 Tyrus: 26 39 27 22 15 Avg: 25.8

Skiles: We'll see if he goes on his word, but I still see Tyrus losing minutes over PJ. I doubt it. PJ has been slowly losing more and more minutes to Tyrus over the past week or two

Much better then last years retchid start

Don't make fun of Skip, he'd be the man if he wasn't a Cardinal. Since no one will know why I'm talking like that, I drunkenly met him in the bleachers at the home opener last year and he was entertaining as hell.

I just noticed that...you know he used to be a pretty swift guy :) Edit: And he did have 3 last year