Transmogrified Tiger

The Cubs made the playoffs in '03. Once you make the playoffs, it's pretty much a crapshoot of who's hot. There's no reason to think that Thome alone would propel us to the World Series, and there's reason to think that without Lofton and Ramirez with Thome in his place, that we don't get the playoff position we get, if at all. Furthermore, there's no reason to think that Thome's production over Lee(forgetting that the salary constraints would keep us from adding other players to fill holes) would have propelled us into the playoffs in '04. And again, Thome has a horrible contract. Remember the Sosa fiasco? It'd be like that with Thome, only the contract is longer, more expensive, and he has injury questions. Not signing Thome was the right decision before, during, and after the fact.

Welcome! I want Baker fired. Here's a short list of what he does wrong: - Leaves starting pitchers in for too long, with regards to pitch counts and visible signs of tiring. -Mismanagement of the bullpen. Dogged persistence to R/L matchups even when vast evidence proves other courses of action would be better(e.g. Taking Farnsworth out for Remlinger to face a left handed batter). Also, overworking arms and ignoring others. Examples of this include Fox blowing out his arm, Farnsworth and Wuertz in the first half of the past few years, while Wellemeyer, Hill, Mitre, etc. go weeks without an appearance. -Maddening love for veteran players. Despite players proving their crappiness time and time again, Baker continues to dole out playing time to crummy veterans in lieu of rookies who are very likely to be as good or better. Macias, Harris, Hollandsworth, Karros, Neifi are all living proof of this. - Poor Lineup construction, which reflects on abhorrent philosophical views. Refusal to acknowledge that OBP is important, especially at the top of the order("it's called hitting, not walking"). - Failure to take responsibility for his own actions. Baker has never taken responsibility for the failures of the team, yet whenever things go right(i.e. a Dubois or Murton succeeding in limited playing time), it is according to his grand design. There's probably a couple others that I'm missing, but that's a good start.

Abreu is much much better offensively, it's not close.

Yeah, but they changed the rules after that year so that cornerbacks can't cheat, tackle, bite, mug, etc., WRs coming off the line of scrimmage. So Manning will not be that effective. And when did Gamble and Lucas become known as some of the best corners in this league? Gamble is on his 2nd year. http://www.sportsline.com/nfl/playerrankings/regularseason/DB Gamble is ranked 20th...14 places behind Tillman, 2 ahead of Vasher. Lucas is 30th. FWIW, when it comes to baseball Sportsline's rankings are absolutely worthless. It's the same system for football, but I don't know how they came to the rankings.

he wouldn't have been bad at all. He's going to need to get back the power he lost last year. Without knowing if the power will return, especially at age 34, I'd rather have Jones. Now if the choice is Millar for one year vs. Jones for three, then it's a tighter decision.

No need unless the discussions are getting bounced off the page that are still active, which isn't the case.

What state were you educated in? :wink:

Is this true, honestly...where have you read this? There were rumors posted by someone here, JeffH I believe. Even he said to take it with a grain of salt, but Prior being upset with the trade talks would be consistent with that. Take it FWIW I guess.

To my knowledge, Giles only had other offers to play CF in the Bronx, or to go to Canada. Chicago offers him both the position he wants at a locale that's not 3 timezones away from home. Maybe he wouldn't have come, I'm not going to pretend like there was a magic price that he could be bought for. But the fact that Hendry didn't pursue him at all given how well he fit their needs, and the dearth of other options that met those needs, is where he is in the wrong.

Average for a CF.

When you name your arena after a snotty rich chick who cheated in college, that's the name you get forever. We can reassign it, our students voted in the newspaper to make the new classroom building the Paige Laurie Morals & Ethics Center. Did we really? I didn't see that. Dammit. Not really, but I think in the poll it narrowly beat out some option involving the Hulk or something.

When you name your arena after a snotty rich chick who cheated in college, that's the name you get forever. We can reassign it, our students voted in the newspaper to make the new classroom building the Paige Laurie Morals & Ethics Center.

Until you make your way into the ZOU. :-D How does Colorado look? They come to Columbia Saturday, and I haven't seen them play at all this year. I didn't see any of the game. Theyy only have three losses, but they haven't played anyone. Roby is a very good player, and they're experienced, but if you can beat OU in Norman, you should beat CU in CoMo. And if I were a betting man, I'd predict a loss for KU at Mizzou, too. We haven't faced a true hostile environment yet, and Lord knows the Paige will be a madhouse. I can't wait. I was surprised to see we had our best attendance by 4k for the OSU game while everyone is still on break, I'm pumped for the environment with the student body back and coming off these two wins. Fun Fact: Aside from the Gymnastics team dropping a meet against highly ranked opponents, every Mizzou sport is undefeated since the bowl game.

Welcome! The Nomar trade was far from a bust. Beltran and Jones have both fallen to injuries, Murton looks to have a brighter future than Harris, and we got rid of the abysmal Alex Gonzalez. Jim Thome signed a ridiculous contract in years and in dollars. The Phillies got 2 good season and a poor injury riddled one, then had to trade him for pennies on the dollar. Also, there was no reason for "urgency" prior to the '03 season. We were a remarkably young team with only RF and LF guaranteeing good production. Looking at the team prior to the season, there's no reason to think that Thome would put us over the top, and in hindsight there's no reason to think that Thome's presence would have won us the extra game needed to make the WS.

I got it a couple times yesterday as well as today. Like you though, it came back after a couple refreshes.

Thank you for not sending my hopes for you spiraling into despair, MSU.

Why is it obvious Pierre should bat leadoff? If I were a Cub fan I would want him to get as few as AB's as possible. As I stated before, I'd bat Walker and Murton in the top 2 spots because of increased OBP and extra base hits. I almost wanted to drop Pierre in the order, but I can't see Murton or Cedeno being likely to give you better production.

The stripe that goes down the sleeve looks terrible IMO, which means I like the sleeveless jerseys much better. Something about the design seems like a clash of several designs, a lack of continuity. Maybe it'll look different in actuality on the players.

i 'd like to see hill get a shot. but i'm resigned to the idea of the cubs never ever giving him one. hell, dontrelle willis would either be at AAA, or a rule 5 casualty by now. his cummulative numbers are good, i don't see why he doesn't at least get 10 starts in a row to see what he can do. This is a good point, and further illustrates the weird rush to keep, er, Rusch. I still like Williams, though. He was very good in '03, was pretty good as a Cub last year, and is younger than Hill. it's not that i dislike williams at all, i think he's been given a shot and has shown that he's okay. i just think that hill can be very good. Williams's ERA, WHIP, and K/BB as a Cub place him as a 2 starter in the NL. Also, despite his MLB experience he's younger than Hill. I think he's better than okay. last year his era was at 4.26, giving him an era+ of 100, right at "okay". he's not a bad pitcher. That's inflated by his terrible stint as a Giant. Like I said in the last post, his numbers as a Cub(109 ERA+ as a Cub if you wanted to know) are on par with #2 starters in the NL. Add in the fact he'll be only 24 for all of next season and he improved as the year went along(12 of his 46 ER were in 2 starts totalling 7 IP) and there's plenty to like.

Do you think the Bears defense has an ability to get turnovers closer to the opponent's end zone? I think getting turnovers deep in their territory is a coincidence in the way that if you force turnovers, some are bound to be like that.

Big men tend to have foot problems. I think DJ will be OK. I actually think this works in the team's favor. Look for Strickland to become as aggressive as he was at the beginning of the season. As for tonight, I love the matchups on the outside. Wilmont and Vaden vs. Ager and Brown should be classics. The 2 best defenders in the conference not named Dee Brown, against maybe the top 2 offensive wing players in the BigTen. Don't know what we are gonna do with Davis, other than Killer getting him in foul trouble. But I like the way IU matches up against MSU. Of course, the homecourt and desperation advantage are gonna make it tough for IU to escape with a win. I would like it very much for MSU to just come out guns a blazin'. Ager needs to make some shots, Davis needs to be a presence offensively(which means calling sets that put him closer than 20 feet to the basket), and Trannon/Gray need to continue to help out. Please win Spartans, preferably by a lot.

i 'd like to see hill get a shot. but i'm resigned to the idea of the cubs never ever giving him one. hell, dontrelle willis would either be at AAA, or a rule 5 casualty by now. his cummulative numbers are good, i don't see why he doesn't at least get 10 starts in a row to see what he can do. This is a good point, and further illustrates the weird rush to keep, er, Rusch. I still like Williams, though. He was very good in '03, was pretty good as a Cub last year, and is younger than Hill. it's not that i dislike williams at all, i think he's been given a shot and has shown that he's okay. i just think that hill can be very good. Williams's ERA, WHIP, and K/BB as a Cub place him as a 2 starter in the NL. Also, despite his MLB experience he's younger than Hill. I think he's better than okay.

Even if you take away McGwire's STL career(and therefore most if not all of the steroid scandal), he's hall worthy.

Are we back in last offseason? Hendry signs mediocre right fielder, then justifies signing with a frightening misuse of statistical analysis. New right fielder then promises production that he will likely not reach.

Rice was a better hitter than Dawson. Dawson was better on defense. I can't see how anyone would vote for Dawson, yet pass on Rice. I wouldn't be so quick to judge Rice the better offensive player. Rice's career OPS was 128, Andre's 119. if Andre hadn't hung on four years too long, he'd be right there with Rice. Rice benefitted greatly from playing at Fenway, whereas most of Hawk's career was spent in Montreal. Rice also spent his years in very good to incredible lineups. the Hawk played with Raines, Carter, Sandberg...and that's about it. finally, not the most beloved metric around here, but Dawson also stole 300+ bases. Rice also has 30 points in OBP on Dawson, which combined with his better overall OPS means that he's the better offensive player. first, let me correct what I wrote above. the 128/119 comparison was OPS+, not just OPS. so again, account for the four years Dawson hung on too long, and they are probably about dead nuts even through 16 years in OPS+. and I forget that OBP is the end all / be all of offensive stats. Andre didn't take walks. this is true. but up until the age of 36 he was equal to or better in just about every other team independant offensive catagory. I knew you were talking about OPS+, and the point is that OBP is more valuable than SLG in OPS(and therefore OPS+), which makes his advantage in that category larger. It's not just walks in OBP though, Rice also hit for 24 more points of AVG in his career, and had a similar declining period as Dawson. 1230 PA's of 95 OPS+ performance for Rice, 1111 PA's of 88 OPS+ for Dawson.