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Theriot SS Floyd/Murton/Jones RF Lee 1B Soriano LF Ramirez 3B Barrett C DeRosa 2B Pie CF Since Soriano is a free swinger, I'd want him protected.

You're going to have to explain that one to me. There are some situations where they are late and able to get the lighter bat into the zone at the last second and foul it off as well as the improved bat control can also foul off a pitch. So a switch to wood means the hitter changes the weight of the bat he swings? That seems counter-intuitive to me. Not really. When I played, I liked the outer half of the plate, so I used a longer bat. Now if I wanted to use a 35" bat and an aluminum one was, say, 30 ounces compared to 33 or 34 ounces for a comparable wood bat, I'm going use the aluminum one. This is going to allow me to get the bat to the ball much more quickly on inside pitches that I wouldn't be able to with a wooden bat of the same length.

That would be great until a line drive homer killed a spectator. :shock:

If Soriano is really an adequate CF then by all means Pie should be traded while his value is high. LF is an easy position to fill and Soriano's offense is far more valuable coming from CF. People who say positions are unimportant don't understand the economics involved. How valuable would Pujols be if he played CF? Certainly more valuable than at 1B or LF. Define "valuable". Like as in trade value? Soriano's not getting traded. And his value on the FA market is obviously irrelevant now. Soriano does not have more value to the Cubs as a CF, if they're sold on Pie. Similarly, Pujols is not getting traded, and he doesn't have value to the Cards as a CF (or at least hasn't in the past), because of Edmonds. For Soriano to have value as a CF to the Cubs, you'd need to find a trade involving Pie that nets a LF that's better than Pie, both offensively and defensively. Only then would the Cubs be better off as a team with Soriano in CF. Value is production (and salary) relative to average for the position. There are a lot of LF'ers who hit at near the level Soriano does, but there are few CF'ers, and even fewer 2B. So when he is in LF the Cubs are paying him an enormous sum to be not that far above average for the position. Offensively, Alsonso would be an elite CF, but not so with LF.

This is a good thing. As a pitcher, I can remember getting buzzed by liners that I had little or no chance to react to (and I have very good reflexes), and being grateful they weren't a little more on target. I remember being on the mound once when a liner was hit so hard at our 3B that he barely was able to deflect from hitting him in the face. And he was playing well back. Conversely, just about every homer I hit (and there weren't that many), were only homers because of the aluminum. But for scouts, going to wood bats would remove much of the ambiguity from analyzing power numbers.

The government made digital broadcasting a huge priority by forcing stations across the country to upgrade facilities at considerable expense. DBS and cable proividers have also had their worlds turned upside down in a rush to accomodate HD broadcasts. Beancounters across the country wish it was a "strong consideration." Well the Comcast here doesn't even offer HD programming, as well as a number of other places. And even with DirecTV, the number of HD channels is relatively low compared to the number of regular stations. And I hate to disappoint you, but I am not a "beancounter". I sincerely wish it HD was a priority, but its not. I have a very expensive HD behemoth in my living room that is woefully underutilized because HD is not a priority. If it were a priority, most channels would be HD, but they're not. And it's not like HD is so new no one has had time to implement changes yet. The demand is just not enough yet to justify wholesale changes. I live in a mountain town, but it is hardly the boonies, and there is a lot of big money here who can't get dish because of the terrain. When I got my HDTV and asked the boss man at my local Comcast office why I couldn't get HD progrmming, he told me that the higher ups told him that they believed the demand for HD was not enough to justify the cost of upgrading the old equipment/lines. I am currently try to persuade my landlord to allow me to put a dish on the house, but as I said, DirecTV's HD lineup is pretty limited relative to the total number of stations. I wish HD was more than a strong consideration, but it's not.

It's been a priority for most stations of significance for a very long time. I would say it is more of a strong consideration than a priority. There are still a lot of places you can't get an HD signal w/o DirecTV, and even then the list of HD channels is far from expansive. It is true that the majority of people still don't have HDTV, so it's a a stretch to say HDTV is a priority when the market is largely SDTV. If no networks broadcasted in HD tomorrow, only a small segment of TV viewers would be upset about it. As soon as the price of equipment drops and the HD market increases, then you will see it become a real priority.

I hate Scott Hatteberg.

He got lifted for Theriot, because Cubs used Theriot to steal 2nd base for the go-ahead run. It was a good move in my opinion. This is the same guy that ran into an out at 3rd, right? Maybe it was a good move, but Murton's a pretty good hitter and not exactly Cecil Fielder when it comes to speed. Did we really need to burn through another hitter on our already rather short bench for that? I vote no. Murton would have clogged up the basepaths. these dusty quotes will never die Dusty gave us enough message board fodder for multiple lifetimes.

Doing what any true Cubs fan is doing right now -- getting drunk. If this is enough to get drunk over, he's got bigger problems than the Cubs.

Didn't he just rob Jones of an XBH this inning? Blind squirrel moment.

Adam will make a fine DH one day.

It could be worse, we could be the Cards or Astros right now.

And that Soriano guy too, what has he done lately? Might as well throw Z in there as well. Yeah, that bum stunk Monday, send him packing as well.

wow What? A ridiculous statement, typical game thread hyperbole.

And Soriano, too. I'd forgotten how ridiculous these game threads can get.

Dunn is 1-16 lifetime against Ohman... JINX

Well now you are going to have to see the WHITE (not blue, not "cubs) with tiny little barely noticeable blue (which is supposed to be the cubs color) every single home game. You will never see another home color ever again. It's gonna get old. I liked the blue jerseys at first, but they got really tired. White jerseys have been the standard forever. Before the Cubs started using the blue jerseys, I never thought the pinstripes were worn out or boring. They're not gonna get old. I think the blue jerseys would have been better used as a once every few weeks type thing. They just got over used.

If he doesn't batting between Soriano and Lee, he never will.

Any specifics? OF is horrible Pie should have stayed with the Cubs even though he had a bad 2006 (not true) Prior is bitter and sounded like he might want to be traded--then he claimed Prior joked about the demotion (being in the Futures Game) so which is it?? He said some other things I can't recall. The tenor of the discussion was sarcastic; he spent more time making fun of the Cubs than talking about anything substantial. The man clearly hates the Cubs, and needs to go away.

Ugh. Sucks that he's still only hitting upper 80's, but he was definitely pitching much better yesterday. Hopefully with more repitition he can gain back those 6-7 mph on his fastball. Well, if he's not finishing his pitches like he and Larry say, that's probably where that velocity is hiding. As he regains (hopefully) the confidence to let it fly, his velocity will return.

Even the Padres radio guys said it looked like he was reaching the low-90's.

It's perfectly fine to be more outraged at a higher level. What's disgusting and ignorant is the dismissive attitude toward the light end. "That used to be legal." Nonsense like that is absurd. "That used to be legal" is not absurd nonsense. It's a fact. DUI is a legal definition, and one that has changed over time. By your absolute "DUI is DUI" logic, your reaction to the situation should change from whatever you'd label it now to basically no reaction at all if LaRussa had blown a 0.93 a couple of years ago instead of now. There are very few things I believe should be absolute, but DUI laws are one of them. The problem is that people try and turn drunk driving into a subjective thing: "I'm fine at .08," or other ways of trying to mitigate it. They have been lowering the limits for a reason, that they were too high. Just because a .93 wouldn't have garnered a reaction a few years ago doesn't make it remotely acceptable. And the level of drunkenness should not dictate the punishment. While people at lower levels may not be as dangerous, they still pose a real threat. And someone who is at .09 should be able to exercise more judgment than someone at .20 and not get in the driver's seat. And someone at .08 is just as capable of killing people on the road as some one at .20. If you drink and drive, you are definitively in the wrong.

I've said it before, so I'll summarize: Of the people I know that have or have had 360s, about 50% of them have had to replace them, a few of those had to replace the replacements.

There's ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with short girls, so long as they're not stubby. I'd take a 4'10" girl with a hot body over a 5'10" girl with a hot body anyday, and I've dated both. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out why. No way in hell, and it's not difficult to figure out why. Plus, I only date models and they're no shorter than 5'7-5'8 anyway. :D Models? Why not break into your local high school and have your way with the skeleton in the lab? You get the same build, and probably the same amount of energy. Waif chicks are the absolute worst. someone is a chubby chaser :wink: Chubby? Not really. But if a girl is over 5'5" and weighs less than 110, that's gross. If you can see any ribs and hip bones, that's really, really gross. Someone like Beyonce is just about perfect weight-wise.