Soul

Yeah, but you aren't part of the group of "teachers" that pushed hard to reach for him in the draft. I would be surprised if they didn't give Wolfe a spot this year. Oh to hell with it just snap the ball directly to Hester. All problems solved :mrgreen: They did once yesterday at OTA's. The players had all swapped jerseys, and Grossman and Hester swapped...so for one play, Hester played QB. LOL, and I was really just trying to be funny.

Yeah, but you aren't part of the group of "teachers" that pushed hard to reach for him in the draft. I would be surprised if they didn't give Wolfe a spot this year. Oh to hell with it just snap the ball directly to Hester. All problems solved :mrgreen:

If he's really out for a significant amount of time, we could look into a trade. The problem being, of course, everyone else will know we're desperate. I would love it if Hill and/or Marshall could come back to the big leagues strong. If either could just give us a couple of strong months it would be massively helpful. I'm still not clear on what the hell happened to Hill. He should still be a serviceable middle-of-the-rotation pitcher. He needs to get back to what he was projected to be and get it done. Don't really care how.

Jones apparently really wants to be here (judging by his comment in the article). I don't see a reason not to at least bring him to camp. Personally I'm not impressed with Wolfe. He wasn't nearly as quick as I thought he would be. I have severe doubts he's going to provide that "change of pace" that the Bears want him for. I definitely wouldn't automatically give him a roster spot on this football team without any competition.

There's a blurb about him in today's Sun-Times: http://www.suntimes.com/sports/baseball/cubs/1013552,CST-SPT-cubnt19.article

Good question. We might need him sooner rather than later. Here's a recent article that says he's doing pretty good with the hamstring: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-16-cubs-bits-chicagojun16,0,3869065.story

Yeah -- Yost is using Torres as both the 8th inning guy AND closer. Can't do that forever -- that's robbing from Peter to pay Paul, eventually it'll come home to roost.

Yes, I'm certainly not complaining about the Cards dropping 2 at home at the perfect time.

I love how Yost brings Torres in to pitch the 8th AND 9th nearly every time because he has no other bullpen. Baseball Gods gonna make you pay for that one eventually, Ned.

How many players did we get hurt today too? CRAP MAN FTH.

This is starting to really suck. We might get swept down here. Good Lord. :x :banghead:

What's so special about Percival? His FB looks straight as an arrow, right down the middle, and not terribly fast. Yet we swing and miss. WTF?

What a terrible night. Every team I want to win is losing, and vice versa. Sheesh.

Oh don't be a poopy face. Ride the wave of optimizm until you are crushed by reality a few weeks later. Rollercoasters are fun!

Baseball strategy in general is mythologized way beyond its usefulness. It's pitch ball, hit ball, field ball much more than anything else. Obviously the NL uses pinch hitters more frequently, but the average NL team has had only 98 of their 2445 ABs come from pinch hitters this year, while the AL has had 27 out of 2431. The difference in number of RBI is 12-5, while R is 10-3. Some argue that it's actually a little more difficult for an AL manager to know when to pull his pitcher, because he doesn't have the incentive of getting him out of offensive purposes to save him from letting the guy go to long. I think that's all a bunch of hooey really. I know our resident coaches take offense to such notions, but it's not about strategy, it's about performance on the field by the players playing the game. And even then, the AL can still use SB, sacrifices and all the rest if they want to try and strategize to a victory. The only real difference is they don't pinch hit for pitchers. But they will switch up pitchers and hitters for the purpose of matchups and all that good stuff. So that's essentially 3.5 times the strategic situations (98 vs 27) in the NL vs. the AL. I'll take that. I don't think it's a myth. We all watch a lot of baseball. Obviously it's about opinion. I like NL baseball better, and I enjoy the increased need for strategic switching. I like seeing what the manager will do now that the pitcher's spot has come up and he needs to make a move, or whatever. What I don't understand is why some people can't accept that others like it that way (not you specifically, but in general).

There looked to be twice the Cub fans in attendance. There can't be more than 30,000 actual Rays fans in existence, how did you become friends with one? :mrgreen:

Neh, he'll stay. Cavs will have to make the sacrifices or else they'll go down in history with the worst gaff ever. It would be like the Bulls trading Jordan in the late '80s because they couldn't afford him. No way that happens. Find the money, and pay the man. You don't ever give up a LeBron, period.

http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/pga/news?slug=ap-woodsfuture&prov=ap&type=lgns This wasn't a smart move from Tiger. I mean, what did he really gain from winning this? Only a 14th major as far as I can tell. I could understand if he was going for a milestone that he might not have a chance to do again. Like if he had won the Masters, the U.S. Open and the British already in a year and had this injury going into the PGA Championship. In that case, go for it because you might not have another shot at the Grand Slam. But this seems kind of pointless to me. Sure, you won this major, but now you guaranteed to miss the next two. Not to mention that it wasn't a guarantee that he was going to win this one. What if he didn't win? Then he would have done all this for nothing. Maybe he figured Elin would lose all the pregnancy weight by now and it was a good time to go on a 8-month hiatus. He probably wanted to play at the course close to his home for a major title more than he wanted to play the British/PGA later in the year. He'll be back for the Masters next year anyway, presumably.

And it will drive Cedeno's value higher. hmmmmmmmmmmm :-k Hendry's strategies revealed, only on NSBB folks 8-)

Whinebrenner. Hehe, I like it.

Haha. "The poor play isn't his fault. But uh, I'm firing him anyway at 3am." This is the guy that was once called one of the 5 best GMs in baseball. I'm guessing that this wasn't Omar's call. Bad execution but for the right reasons though. I thought Omar said it was his call all the way, and ownership said the same. This was from blurbs I heard on the radio though, and I'm too lazy to look it up. I don't know, soul. Hard to believe it's Minaya's call to have done it this way. I mean...would you voluntarily fly clear across the country at the drop of a hat at the start of the road trip, meet with your manager after a game in the middle of the night to fire him, then take a nap in then fly back to NY the next day? This is dysfunctional thinking. It has Wilpon written all over it. I'm just going by what the man said. I don't really know what actually went on behind the scenes. I know it's gullible, but I generally try to take people at their word until they show me that they can't be trusted to tell the truth. Then.........things change ;)

Sure ya can! It's just really hard to do quickly, and probably much more painful. I was never all that impressed with Randolph either.

The Cubs played a little sloppy last night, they didn't deserve to win. However, if I had to blame one person it would be Reed. He had his head up his own ass three times 1) trying to stretch the single (worked) 3) stealing third (didn't work) 4) bunting on that turf (didn't work). There's a reason why Tampa has the fewest sac bunts in baseball and it ain't b/c they're managed by an Earl Weaver clone with a lot of big hitters. I don't understand why you're complaining about him stretching that single into a double considering that it worked, but whatever. As for the bunt in the 9th, it was a great idea. If Longoria doesn't make a perfect play on that ball, the game would've been tied. Unfortunately, he did make a perfect play. Nothing wrong with dropping down a bunt there. Yesterday I drove backwards down the highway, it worked so I'm going to try it today too. Whatever works man'. I love Len but he's dead wrong. It wasn't a perfect play it was a routine play and Johnson was thrown out by 15 feet. Johnson should know better than to bunt on a billiard green. Like I said, there's a reason why Tampa doesn't bunt. 15 feet? Boy that's not much of an exaggeration or anything. I'm watching the replay right now on ESPN and as the 1B is gathering the ball, Johnson's left foot is planted and he's making his final step to the bag with his right. So unless Reed has a 15 foot stride, you're off by about 10-12 feet. The firstbaseman was standing on the bag with the ball in his hand well before Reed reached 1st. Probably 3-5 paces. Not only was he out by a very wide margin, but they clearly didn't have to make a perfect play to get the out. it was a horrible throw and he was still out by several steps. Defending that bunt is absurd. It was a horrible decision whose execution was made all the more difficult by the playing surface. People blindly applaud being aggressive, "pressuring the defense" or trying to make things happen, but that was a straight up idiotic move by Reed Johnson. Then maybe we need a "Reed Johnson, what the hell are you doing?" thread.

Haha. "The poor play isn't his fault. But uh, I'm firing him anyway at 3am." This is the guy that was once called one of the 5 best GMs in baseball. I'm guessing that this wasn't Omar's call. Bad execution but for the right reasons though. I thought Omar said it was his call all the way, and ownership said the same. This was from blurbs I heard on the radio though, and I'm too lazy to look it up.

Agreed. I believe the Cubs will leave TB with 2 wins. I believe so as well, the Cubs took their best shot-love the approach to Kazmir made him work, I can only imagine how ugly it would have been had he been facing one of Dusty' Cub teams-and they barely scraped out a win. Might've been a no hitter under Dusty.