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It's entirely possible that he would cost too much and, if that's the case, then like any other trade, you don't make it. However, my point is that I'd rather give up a decent amount for Gonzalez than simply sign Dunn because Gonzo is the superior player, and by quite a bit according to WAR.

The reasoning behind trading him now would be that there would likely be more interest for him now, with a full year left on his deal, than there would be at the deadline. It's probably unlikely that they look to deal him now, but that wasn't the question – the question was do you trade for Gonzalez or sign Dunn. My answer to that question was that I'd much rather have Gonzalez and lose some prospects than to pay a lot for a possibly declining Dunn. And a reasonable deal for a guy like Gonzalez can still be quite a lot. I would't give up Castro, Cashner or Brett Jackson for him, but you could build a deal around 1-2 of Marmol/Vitters/J Jackson/Colvin (probably one of the first two and one of the second two) and have a reasonable offer that could make some sense for the Padres – depending on their opinion of each of those players.

It depends on what the Padres demand. I would assume they'll want quite a bit, but Gonzalez has been quite a bit better than Dunn for a while now, that gap has gotten bigger the past two years and he's almost 3 years younger than Dunn. If he's available right now, then the Cubs should look very hard into trading for him. If he's not available, then this whole discussion is kind of moot. If Gonzalez can be had in a trade now you have to consider him since he's by far the better player than Dunn – especially when you take into account that Gonzo is still in his prime years while Dunn is near the age of regression. If it's going to cost an arm and a couple of legs, however, I'd lean more toward Dunn. Given a reasonable trade, however, I'd favor Gonzalez over Dunn.

georgia is favored by 11 points, so if you think tennessee should win the game, i suggest betting a large amount on it. That's crazy. Even in Georgia, I don't see them beating us by nearly two touchdowns. Florida won by 14 points and LSU won by 2 points on luck (and us being dumb). Oregon destroyed us, but there's no comparison between them and Georgia this year. Georgia can win, but an 11-point spread seems really silly.

WAR the past two seasons: Gonzalez: 6.6, 5.3 – career average: 3.15 Dunn: 1.2, 3.9 – career average: 2.7 If we go back a third year, it's 1.0 WAR for Dunn vs 3.9 for Gonzo. Even factoring in Dunn's move to first this year, he's still a couple of wins worse than Gonzalez. Add in that Dunn is 31 in November and will still cost quite a bit over 3-4 years, trading for Gonzalez looks like a pretty good option. Keep in mind also that Gonzo is still in his prime years, whereas Dunn is getting near that age that decline is very reasonable to expect. I wouldn't trade the farm for Gonzalez, but I'd give a decent amount for him.

Tennessee can beat Georgia. The Bulldogs looked pretty awful losing to Colorado, so this should be a win for the Vols. The key is going to be putting at least 2, if not 3, players on AJ Green at all times. Nobody else on that team can beat anybody.

What a horrid sports weekend for me. First the Vols lose after it appeared they won and then the Titans don't have a chance to drive down the field with 1:33 to go and two timeouts because they forgot how to catch a kickoff. I hate sports. The Titans just can't run the football right now. Teams are stacking 8-9 in the box all day, CJ doesn't have any running room and the coaching staff won't make adjustments to throw the football more – even though Vince posted this line Sunday: 17/28 for 173 yards, 6.2 y/c, 1TD:0INT and a 90.3 rating (also consider he had 3 hail marys fall incomplete on the last drive). Not awesome numbers, but good enough to throw it a little bit more to get the defense to loosen up. CJ is great, but even he can't run with teams loading the box completely. The Titans are going to have to open the playbook up a bit or we're just going to keep losing games.

That ending to the Tennessee game was just flat out heartbreaking (for a football game). To see Dooley and the players celebrating like that and then to have it wiped away really, really sucks. Tennessee completely outplayed LSU and Miles' clock management was truly atrocious on that 3rd down play. Tennessee deserved to win that game. That said, however, the penalty was completely legit and the correct call. It's yet another sign of a young team that guys got mixed up on the substitutions, but that's the way it goes. Good call by the refs and I like how they went and checked with the booth to make sure it was the correct call. Good officiating job there. This was one of the games I felt we had a chance in and to come that close really hurts. However, Georgia looks very beatable at this point, there's still Vandy and Memphis on the schedule and Ole Miss and Kentucky don't look particularly intimidating (especially getting both at home). This team still has a chance at 6-7 wins this year if they don't completely lose it after this game. Also, it's a good sign that Dooley's running a disciplined program when we go two straight games with no turnovers (five straight halves, I believe) and only commit 2 penalties for 6 yards in this game. I'm anxious to see what Dooley and the staff can do with some talent.

With Sori getting older and Fuku playing CF in that scenario, that'd be a horrific defensive OF.

You're right, they could contribute, but it's pretty unlikely given their track records. And Kosuke almost certainly will contribute, which is a much, much better scenario.

High quality stuff right there.

I'm the same way with Rice in one league, Shonn Greene in a couple and Calvin and Larry Fitzgerald in just about all of mine. My early round picks have really sucked this year.

They were talking extension not too long ago.

Soriano-esque streaky hitter, except his last a month at a time. I guess that's the best way to explain it.

I wonder how much it would take to get Sizemore from the Indians? It'd be hard to fit him into the current OF, but he could be a nice buy-low option and we could follow that up by dealing Byrd or something.

Fukudome lost his job to Colvin, but really shouldn't have. We've seen enough of Fukudome to be reasonably confident he'd finish the year with a .360+ OBP, decent slugging and good defense – even though he struggled at times, he should have gotten more PAs. And I would trade Fukudome for a good package of prospects plus his entire salary paid, no less. I don't know whether that offer will come, however, and if not I wouldn't trade him. He's simply better than any of our other options. After having 19.4% of his flyballs leave the yard (8th highest ratio in the NL and more than ever in his career), Colvin still didn't finish the year with better numbers than Fukudome. Colvin: .254/.316/.500/.816 .352 wOBA 1.8 WAR Kosuke: .263/.371/.439/.810 .352 wOBA 1.6 WAR Kosuke is a much better bet to replicate those numbers next year than is Colvin to replicate his. As for the minor leaguers you listed, all have potential as bench bats for the Cubs, but: – Guyer is in his second tour of AA and isn't likely to produce an .800+ OPS in the majors next year considering he's only OPSd .800+ once previously in his MiL career. – Snyder, as you noted, is 30 years old and is also seeing AAA pitching for the second time. He's been good for a couple of seasons now, but was struggling to reach an .800 OPS in the minors prior to that. I don't think he's as good a bet to OPS .800+ as Kosuke is. – This is the 5th time LaHair has seen PCL pitching. He ought to be hitting them well. You're right that he could be a decent bat in a platoon role, but I'd much prefer Kosuke to him. – Campana could be a nice 4th or (preferably) 5th OF, but there's no way that SLG (.384 this year in AA is his highest) would be useful as a starting OF. Kosuke has a very similar major league OBP to Campana's AA OBP while out-SLGing him in the majors vs AA. I just don't see any of those guys likely being better than Kosuke. They could potentially all make Soto-esque breakouts, but it's simply not likely at all.

2011 offseason FA OFs:

You can find almost anything on Baseball-Reference. Here's a sampling of pitchers: (I took his career numbers over a minimum of 25 PAs, since his highest number of PAs against a pitcher was 72. Random number, but works for me) v Sabathia: 1.247 OPS (best OPS against any pitcher) v Glavine: 1.208 OPS (second highest) v Carpenter: .878 OPS v Wakefield: 1.060 OPS v Mulder: 1.169 OPS (this would be against A's good Mulder) There are a lot of bad/mediocre pitchers in there, but that's not a bad group for his top 25. Going by 10 PAs: v Kevin Brown: 1.758 OPS v Al Leiter: 1.750 OPS v Pettite: 1.750 OPS v Ted Lilly: 1.300 OPS

Pick 1: - Ronnie Brown v NE - Shonn Greene @ Buf - Hightower @ SD - Snelling v San Fran Snelling isn't starting but still scored higher than Hightower, Greene and Brown last week. Pick 3 (different league): - Colston v Carolina - Fitzgerald @ SD - Calvin @ GB - Knox @ NYG This should be obvious (first three) but Knox has been as good or better than 2 of those three this year and the Giants looked pretty bad against the Titans. Pick 1: - Matt Ryan v SF - Carson Palmer @ Cle

Yeah, Bush probably wouldn't be my first choice either. I was just commenting that, from the Raiders' perspective, trading Bush for a really good deal would be a good idea even though McFadden hasn't had prolonged success.

I completely forgot about Smith and Miller - you're absolutely right on both of those. I really like the ability of Montori too, if Dooley/Chuck Smith can get him to be less Haynesworth and more John Henderson, he could be the best on the line. Jackson and Ben Martin I think are nice players, but haven't shown to be more than solid ends. And my concern is more 2-3 years from now - since it'll take that long to get good again - and by that time both will have graduated. Martin, I think, has NFL talent, though, and could be a mid-late round pick if he comes back strong next year. My biggest problem with the D-Line is there's not enough talent there currently. For it to be a truly dominant line, we'll have to recruit very well there - as opposed to spots like WR and OL that already have a lot of talent (though not much depth). On a side note, I really like Dooley's recruiting so far. Guys like Pat Martin, Kyler Kerbyson, AJ Johnson, Justin Worley and others have me pretty excited and we're significant players in a number of other top-end players (such as Wright). Early on I was a bit concerned that Dooley would focus too much on good character, system guys and not enough on the top-end talent a BCS conference team needs to win. Most of the recent news, however, makes me feel a whole lot better about him.

I'd be surprised if Bush was available...McFadden's had 3 good games. I'd guess they at least want to feel out this season with him. If the Packers are willing to overpay by a decent amount, I think it'd be a good idea to deal Bush. If they don't get a really good deal for him, though, you're probably right.

That seems reasonable. In all honesty, without adding any players, we should have a great line, good to very good receivers and (hopefully) a good to very good QB in the next couple of years. I like the secondary's future, especially if we get Eddrick Loften in the next year or two, and there are some nice LBs on the roster. However, the defensive line just has nobody on it. Hughes can be really good, but other than him it's just roster filler. Despite the bright spots, however, we simply need talent. As I said before, adding depth alone will really help this team but we need some star power too. And not just at the skill positions. I'm ok with it, but only because it'd be unreasonable to expect better at this point. You can't have the attrition the UT program has had, 2 coaching changes and have no recruiting base and expect to make the kind of leap Alabama made in Saban's first couple of years. It's more accepting reality than accepting mediocrity.

So is the Colts' defensive line, though, with Mathis and Freeney.

The Broncos left seven to eight guys in to block on basically every down, hence the lack of a pass rush (the Colts still rarely blitz, though they did successfully on the second fourth down play). I can't for the life of me understand how (i) the secondary failed so thoroughly to contain so few receiving threats and (ii) how adjustments weren't made to counter this. The Broncos are likely to pass the ball better this year than most suspect, but I'm not sure how much predictive value the Colts game has. I didn't realize there were that many Broncos in to block. It does really make me wonder what happened to the Colt secondary. I think the Titans have a better secondary this year (by a little) so hopefully we'll handle the Broncos better this week.