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Soul

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Everything posted by Soul

  1. Soul
    We are dead last in baseball in OPS. It doesn't take much to be better than us right now. It's not just the offense man. Their bullpen is so much better than ours. Their bench is better than ours. Their manager is better than ours. Their team defense is better than ours. And before someone says I'm being overly negative - what really irks me, and I assume everyone else as well, is how much we've fallen from last year. This is just the epitome of frustration. I dont get it. We should be better. Losing Ramirez really hurt. It hurt but we didnt lose Albert Pujols. Noway should losing Aram hurt like it has. Not on a team with a 130 million payroll I think our offense was due for a fall back to Earth anyway, but it seems pretty clear that for whatever reason, the loss of Ramirez has hurt beyond just taking his numbers out of the lineup.
  2. Soul
    It's a suckfest du jour. suckity suck suck.
  3. Soul
    It was like clockwork: handful of singles to load em up, then shut off the spicket. Singles, load em up, then nothing. Singles, load em up......nothing. It made me feel like I was having one of those bad dreams where you know what you have to do, and you try to do it over & over, but somehow you just can't ever actually do it.
  4. Soul
    I'm actually hoping we can start working Davis off the team. But I think we're going to need him to be better at not dropping the ball for next season.
  5. Soul
    We're the mental midgets. For not being able to turn away from this team, which delivers misery and pain every year, on schedule.
  6. Soul
    He ruins my evening too often. Throw out all the other stats. Ruining my evening trumps all that.
  7. Soul
    Then you'd have to say wearing contacts should be cheating too. Only players with natural 20/20 vision could play. Unless they could figure out how to be successful with less-than stellar vision. It would definitely get Kevin Gregg off our team BTW.
  8. Soul
    Do we really have any idea how much more widespread greenies were/are than steroids/HGH? We have the steroid survey from 2003, I know, but to my knowledge we really only have subjective observation as far as the usage of greenies. To my knowledge, we don't. It has been speculated that the use of amphetamines in baseball has always been widespread. I think Tony Gwynn said once he guessed 50% of the players were using it to pep up for games. An 81 game road schedule is indeed tiring. It's cheating, no doubt. I just can't equate it with steroid use, the difference in effect is too great. Especially these regimen-supported programs some of these guys engaged in, where they have some kind of roid czar planning out hourly pill taking with different flavors of roids for different days, etc. The gulf between that and greenies? Grand Canyon. Yeah see that's where I question it. Seems like complete speculation. They're like concentrated NoDoze, man. They aren't even meth-level amphetamines. It's not speculation at all. There's a massive gulf.
  9. Soul
    Good luck to him. I understand why the Bears didn't keep him, but it's still tough to let Mike Brown go. I didn't think he was coming back last year, so I don't view it as all that tough. But I still think it's a little weird that they just let him walk away when they had a need at the position. I still wonder what the full motivation is. Maybe it was just a roster management thing. It's gotta be hard when your starter keeps going down to injury every season. At least planning on Payne/Steltz being in there, you don't have the uncertainty. You buying that? :) I'm buying that Brown's yearly injuries played into it. To what degree, I'm not sure. How much did Mike sign for? We're probably running light salary-wise at the Safety position right now -- Angelo probably likes it that way, at least for the moment.
  10. Soul
    Do we really have any idea how much more widespread greenies were/are than steroids/HGH? We have the steroid survey from 2003, I know, but to my knowledge we really only have subjective observation as far as the usage of greenies. To my knowledge, we don't. It has been speculated that the use of amphetamines in baseball has always been widespread. I think Tony Gwynn said once he guessed 50% of the players were using it to pep up for games. An 81 game road schedule is indeed tiring. It's cheating, no doubt. I just can't equate it with steroid use, the difference in effect is too great. Especially these regimen-supported programs some of these guys engaged in, where they have some kind of roid czar planning out hourly pill taking with different flavors of roids for different days, etc. The gulf between that and greenies? Grand Canyon.
  11. Soul
    The last I heard he was participating in OTAs. I assume the answer is yes. He's still listed on the roster.
  12. Soul
    First 6 games: @Packers -- always tough to go up there and win, even though we've had success doing so recently. Steelers -- defending champs, tough draw. Hopefully we catch them recovering from their celebrations a bit :) @Seahawks -- Hawks are due for a rebound season. Playing them in their home stadium is rough. Lions -- on the surface, looks like an easy win @Falcons -- oh God not this crap again. Hopefully Ryan comes to earth a little bit from where he was when we saw him last year. @Bengals -- we should be able to go down there and take care of business. 4 of 6 look like challenging games. I'm hoping to go 3-3 to start, at the very least. It'll keep us in the hunt, and I'm counting on our offense showing big improvement after they have had a few games to gel.
  13. Soul
    This argument I can respect. This argument goes right back to what everyone is saying. Doctoring a ball with such regularity that it's your calling card isn't cheating in a blatant way? The whole "goes against everything I was taught growing up" is shlocky crap. You were probably taught not to fool around behind your wife's back growing up too. Better clear a few 100 plaques out of the HOF for that. If we only honored players who do the right thing, the HOF would be left with Dale Murphy and maybe a couple deadball guys that weren't virulent racists. I really don't care what anyone else thinks. Hank Aaron taking greenies doesn't bother me that much, and Barry Bonds using the latest science to turn himself into a gorilla does. End of the story for me. That's my line. Anyone else is free to draw their own. BTW, I don't care about the Hall of Fame, either. I've never been there and don't plan to go. My baseball consciousness is consumed with one thing: the Cubs winning a World Series this year. What Ryno did 25 years ago is nice & all, but I barely even think about it anymore. Vote Bonds in if you want to. I care not. I'm talking about my personal opinion of these guys.
  14. Soul
    He's just a guy. I don't know that anything on our current staff would be better, but I suspect it wouldn't be much worse either. I'm expecting these games to be shut down. I'm not looking for a .500 ballclub. If Gregg is blowing these 1 run games, I don't care what the league average is. I'm expecting much, much better than that.
  15. Soul
    No offense to Olemisscub who posted the article, but what a load of crap. Totally disregarding the fact that at least one of the scant examples used by the author would hardly be considered performance enhancing ( I don't think many would champion being drunk as a performance enhancer), the author goes on to name a few players who " once took an amphetamine", or were using pain medication for an injury, in a span covering 100+ years, and tries to compare it to over 100 people who were proven to have used performance and body altering drugs in a single season. Not at all convincing in my opinion. He could have at least brought up Dock Ellis pitching while tripping on LSD or something. It's not a direct comparison. The piece is pointing out how the cheating "line" is still so blurry. Even if you're going to declare modern steroids and PED's to be the end-all-be-all, then where on the scale does cheating become OK? The article tries to make it a direct comparison, IMO. It's eloquently stated nonsense. I have no problem drawing a line between systematic, concentrated steroid use and a few uppers.
  16. Soul
    What's the timeline of those blown saves? Piecing it together: 04/10-Gregg 04/16-Heilman 04/18-Marmol 04/30-Marmol 05/08-Heilman 05/16-Heilman 05/25-Cotts 06/02-Gregg 06/07-Heilman 06/20-Marmol 06-23-Gregg The Cubs are 4-7 in games where there has been a blown save. Good relievers or not, the Cubs are going to have several blown saves if they're asked to protect a 1 run lead most nights. They are playing way too many close games to not have a few trickle away from them. Don't have the O to make up for it this year.
  17. Soul
    The offense was ok today. At least they have the excuse that they were facing mostly good pitching. I've never heard of the guy that homered off Gregg. And how many Tigers fans have heard of Micah Hoffpauir? yeah, I was just thinking that. Screw it. The only reason we even had the lead is because Zumaya inexplicably decided to throw a crappy offspeed pitch to Micah, when it was clear he couldn't catch up to his fastball.
  18. Soul
    No thoughts. You have read my mind. He fell in love with his crappy breaking stuff. It proved to be a wonderful strategy.......for Tigers fans. The only thing that should make you feel better is the fact that Hoffpauir had exactly 0 chance against Zumaya's fastball, but he inexplicably chose to throw his crappy changeup or whatever the hell that pitch was. So we only had the lead because of a stupid pitch the inning before.
  19. Soul
    He's not an elite closer, but he's not paid like one either. He's a decent closer who will get the job done, but he'll make it tougher than you'd like sometimes. Inevitably, that type of closer will blow a few. He's better than a random middle relief pitcher, though. I guess. He doesn't really have closer stuff, he gets behind a lot of hitters and is good for a couple of meatballs in most appearances. Sounds like a middle reliever to me but I could be wrong. I'm going out on a limb here and could be wrong, but would much really be different this year if Aaron Heilman was our closer all year instead of Gregg? No difference, IMO. I think you're right. He's a middle reliever that someone in Florida decided should close long ago.
  20. Soul
    Stop making excuses for Gregg. That was a meatball crappy curve, like the 10th in a row, to a no-name hitter even the Tigers announcers were bemoaning had to hit. Gregg was total and complete crap tonight. And he's been that way too often this season. He's junk. Period.
  21. Soul
    Yeah but Wood was pitching in the National League his whole career, he is adjusting to a new, and more superior league this year. Ignore the games against the Cubs, there was emotional stuff going on right there. Imagine if the Cubs didn't come back in those 3 games last week, we'd be looking at having lost 10 of our last 12 games. Woody's been bad pretty much the whole time. Not every AL team is good you know. I asked an Indians fan what he thought about Wood after watching him blow those two games against us. He said "same thing we've thought about him since he's gotten here." It's not all explainable by the league change. Woody's having a bad year, it's not something that can simply be excused.
  22. Soul
    That's the 11th blown save by our bullpen and it's mid/late June? I don't think we're going anywhere unless we figure out our bullpen problems, to say nothing of the sluggish offense which reared its ugly head again these past 2 days.
  23. Soul
    Dont' worry, they'll be back to full strength just in time to play us.
  24. Soul
    Thing is, Woody's been just as horrible. I guess we were destined to experience a crapfest at closer this year, no matter what.
  25. Soul
    Some guy that even the Tigers announcers would never have believed could win a game with a homer, unless they saw it.
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