Tim

Huston nearly blew the save earlier today, too. I end the championship campaign with a 3-14 percentage of quality starts, I believe I racked up 11 losses in those starts, too. I could really use some at bats for Barry. :( BTW - I'm really looking forward to seeing what Wright will do in his age 23 season. :D

I'm personally going to guess 3/$18.

Well put article. My sentiments exactly. What's weird is that all the energy in previous years has been focused on ownership opening up the pocket books. These last few years, ownership has given them all the wiggle room necessary to make the necessary improvements, and now management is the one feeling the most pressure. It scares me to know that with 25 million more dollars made available to improve this club that they really aren't any better than the team they assembled for 25m less just 3 short years ago. It scares me to think that if the team can't do any better than they were with all that extra money spent, why should they fork out all that extra money? The seats get filled. I can certainly agree with them that they shouldn't go all Steinbrenner on everyone to try to win a World Series. It hasn't worked for him either. I'm afraid that Tribune will tighten the reigns very soon if the product on the field doesn't start playing like a 100m team. Prior & Wood were 100% 3 years ago. They pitched 40% of the games in 2003. They were 100% for what 5-10% of the games this year?? Yes, the Cubs could have done better w/ more obp and a better organized lineup, but they still wouldn't have made the playoffs. Take away Smoltz and Hudson from ATL or Carpenter and Mulder from St. Louis or Clemens and Oswalt from Houston and they're probably sitting out the playoffs too. You might want to rethink including Atlanta in your theory. They had Smoltz as a closer last year and they didn't have Hudson. They won the division with Russ Ortiz, Mike Hampton, John Thomson, Horacio Ramirez, Jaret Wright and Paul Byrd. I wouldn't want any of those guys pitching in the Cub rotation. Those guys helped Atlanta to 96 wins. I dream about 96 wins with our rotation. My point is how many years will the Tribune continue to open the pocket books for a team that fails to win anymore games than they won when they were paying like a midmarket team? Forget the excuses. They won't want to hear excuses. I'm not saying it's going to happen. I'm just saying I'm worried it will happen if they don't start showing some results. Results, in their eyes, should be expected if you boost the payroll. As long as the Cubs are turning a profit, I expect the Trib to maintain the payroll where it is.

Hey Tim, pretty cool! CPat20 here has done all the heavy lifting. I've just put the interface & such together. He's gathered all the information and input it. I still owe him a way of inputing trades so that we can ship Hawkins to SF. :D

Contracts function (beta)

you're complaining when you still have me outscored by 39 and out-start me the rest of the week by 3-1? I need your guys to throw disaster starts and I need a huge outing from Patterson to narrow this gap down the 21 point deficit I need. Interesting...I just looked at the scheduled starters to confirm that and you seem to have lost a start, if I'm not mistaken. Or did you have six already? Did the outing from Perez give you six on the week?

Feel free to start another thread to do it that way.

Well, there are plenty of threads where people are laying out entire scenarios already. This is a different approach and should be looked at as if you're looking at the best possible option at each position. Then you can go back and see how to pull it all together and balance everything out.

I got a win and a QS!!!! Hooray for rookies. :D

And with Livan's fine outing, I'm now 2-11 in QS.

Murton. He's earned it.

Tim, I don't know if I agree that Hendry has a "lack of creativity." I think it is a difference in philosophy. Let me make one thing clear, first of all: Adding Vlad or Giles when they were free agents would have been a good move. At the same time, I think Hendry is gun-shy about signing guys to large/long term contracts. Would CHC have suddenly been a division winner in 04 or 05 if he had made those deals? I think the team was more fundamentally flawed than that. Giles and Guerrero are the kind of players to sign when you are trying to "maintain" a spot at the top of the "success cycle." For instance, Giles was acquired by the Padres at the end of 03 too late to have much effect. The following year they finished 87-75 and 3rd in their division. This year they may win their division, but that is more by "default" than anything else. While CHC is a better team than the Padres, I don't know that Giles would make that much difference. The main thing that went right for CHC in 03 was that they stayed relatively healthy (Wood, Prior, Zambrano, Clement all had 200+ IP/ Lofton played well in CF, Karros was inexplicably effective...) The last two years CHC has struggled with injuries to significant players with them missing great lengths of time. I certainly don't want to pardon Hendry for re-signing Perez (unless he believed that Perez would only be used to give Nomar a break every couple of months and as a "late innings defensive replacement"), or the re-signing of Jose Macias. Again, I feel the claim of being "uncreative" is unfair. He got Nomar and Murton from BOS for Justin Jones, Frank Beltran, KGonz, Brendan Harris. He was creative enough to get 2 young pitchers for LaTroy Hawkins. While Guerrero and Giles would be wonderful members of the team, I don't know that they would have been worth the extra money it would have taken to acquire either of them. I notice you avoided my other example of Tejaa. ;) But let's just look at the difference Giles would have made this year. I did this a while ago, so I'm sure the numbers have changed since then. However, at the beginning of September, the Cubs with Giles would have had the third best team OBP in the NL. Instead they were next to last. That's how much of a difference Giles alone would make to this team. Would it have been enough to overcome the injuries & so forth? I'm not sure. But it might have been. And Giles last year certainly would have made enough difference to make up the two games in the standings. The Cubs are not that far off from being a playoff caliber team. It is really 1-2 of the right players and then a bit more health. Adding Giles in place of Burnitz and standing pat at the other positions (while re-doing the bench and adding pitching) would have me very excited going into 2006. People talk about the weak FA class this year. Giles is a bigger offensive difference maker, even at this point of his career, than anyone that was available last year.

I added it to the site footer code on a trial basis. If any premium members have objections, please feel free to IM me since I recognize that part of what you're paying for is to be ad-free. I'm not certain I feel completely right about this. Perhaps an option would be to set things up for premium members to select whether or not they are willing to see the ads? Or perhaps limit the scope of the ad to just the index page or some such thing? Thanks!

I think at least ends next year in AA if not starts there. If he ends there in 2006, then he is in position to start 2007 in AAA or at least be there by the break and then get a Sep call-up. so yeah I do think he makes his debut in 2007. Especially with all the injuries, look at how many pitchers were shuffled up and down from AA to AAA to Chicago in 2005. The problem with that scenario is the number of quality pitchers ahead of Sean in the system. Before he gets a shot, the Cubs would have to run through Hill, Guzman, Nolasco, Pinto, Marshall, Ryu, Marmol, etc. And that's not even including several of the guys who are quasi-regulars already like Mitre, Wellemeyer, Leicester. Hopefully, we'll see a return of Chadd Blasko in 2006 at full strength, too. Unless Gallagher is completely lights out, I think it is safe to say he'll be waiting until 2008 to get a shot.

Meanwhile, I'm 2-10 in the championship in QS. I don't need to go any further for reasons of why I'm behind.

I am in the "Lofton's affect was a bit overrated, or overstated, by many" camp. He did well, but that didn't make the team any better. I don't blame him for that though. I'm also not a big Lofton fan. He's not a good CF anymore. He was a part of that whole mess in Yankeeland last year. He's a parttime CF this year, and his numbers have been helped by a favorable home park. But, I wouldn't mind him being a stop gap, I just wouldn't rely on him as the sole CF, and I wouldn't rely on anything special in terms of numbers. I think he'll be back to a .340-.350 OBP, at best. And that is only if you limit him to about 400 PA or fewer. Dusty would have to use him the way he claims to use the young guys, letting him bat against favorable matchups. In this case, I'd defintely keep Hairston around to play a good 50-60 of the games in center. And if Lofton does start to fade, you cannot just let him play out the string and hope for a rejuvenation. They would have to be willing to cut bait at anytime, and we all know that with Dusty, that's not likely. My fear is that they'll recruit Lofton away from Philly by promising a full-time job in CF, where he only gets platoon duty there.

how do those 3 compare to the cub's hill, pinto & nolasco? James is clearly the best prospect of the six. I don't know as much about Lerew and Davies strikes me more as a #3-4 starter ceiling. Hill is still something of a wildcard. He could be outstanding, but is more likely to end up as a back of the rotation guy or reliever. Pinto has the stuff to be an outstanding starter, but lacks the necessary command. Nolasco made strides this year and is still young, but doesn't project to be a front line starter, either.

It only makes sense if you ignore some pretty strong evidence indicating he can't maintain this performance, though. See front page for graphical summary of Diffusion's research.

Atlanta has Chuck James, Anthony Lerew & Kyle Davies to step into the rotation. James is especially promising and should be one of the top rated minor league pitchers this offseason. He's just about MLB-ready, too, as he made his debut a couple days ago.

What about one text google ad all the way at the bottom of the page so it doesn't get in the way and never even has to be seen unless someone goes looking for it?

You're up 70. I don't think it's going to matter!

NC Women's soccer.

Crap. Now they're talking about shutting Bonds down for the year with the Giants being eliminated yesterday. I just don't think it was meant to be this time around.

I believe this is an excellent point. This offseason will be very telling. For the first time, the Cubs have obvious openings in the same positions that could be filled by top free agents. The only time this has occurred in the past could have been Pudge and the Cubs opening at catcher. My belief and fear is that Hendry will target and sign Furcal. I'm hoping he moves in another direction, however. I'm okay with a Furcal signing (definitely not my preference, but I'm okay with it) as long as it's the second move he makes after signing Giles. Giles alone makes this offense top 5 in the NL.

I think a big part of why Hendry hasn't targeted the top free agents so far is that he never had an opening at the position played by the top FA. And he wasn't creative enough to move an Alou and sign a Vlad. Or move an AGon to sign a Tejada.