David

That is just silly. The proof of the process is in the product. Process is never more important than outcome. Never, not in a million years, and not in any way, shape, or form for any aspect of life. I think this is a horribly misguided and wrong way of thinking that will never lead to any long-term success in any avenue of life. EDIT - and it's the exact same type of thinking that leads to Jim Hendry trying to somehow copy the latest lightning in a bottle team every year. And yes, obviously the proof of good process is in the outcome, or product. 100+ years of baseball history prove what the good and bad ways of building a baseball team are. One year proves nothing. If a team is well constructed and underachieves, there is no information to be drawn from that going forward. The same goes for the inverse (poorly constructed team overachieves). If the team was well-built and didn't ultimately achieve what it would have 9 times out of 10, it doesn't mean that the team was poorly constructed.

Here is what I think, the playoffs are a crapshoot. However, a team that wins close to 100 games a year has a better shot at winning the playoffs than a team that wins close to 90 games. I think the statistics bear that out. Sighting Pyth. records in this case is really, really, really, not very smart for the simple fact that to the extent that a team like the D-Backs exceed their pyth. record, the model is not a good predictor. People who don't really know much about science or statistics say that the results are due to luck, but when the model is off by that large of an amount the chances that it was luck are reduced significantly. Remember one fits the model to reality and not the other way around. Reality is never wrong and the usefulness of the model is its convergence wtih what actually happens. For example when a hurricane goes off in a directon that is not predicted by a model, the model is discarded as not usefull. Most of the time the pyth. model is a good predictor, but sometimes it is not. The answer to your question about the Mets is quite obvious, no the Mets weren't becuase they didn't make the playoffs and only won 88 games. Do you realize just how rare of an occurrence it is when a team outperforms their pythag to the extent that the D'Backs did? IIRC, I read that it was only the 2nd or 3rd time in history. That might not be entirely accurate. That aside, the fact that the Mets won only 88 games and didn't make the playoffs is something that wasn't determined until the games were played and the season was over. I'm really curious as to what you feel defines a contender. It seems as it's simply some arbitrary number of wins (90?) and that if a team doesn't make it there in the end (even if they should), they're somehow not contenders. Am I misunderstanding you? Basically it seems like you are saying that a team needs to A - win at least 90 games & B - make the playoffs in order to be a contender. Am I right? Neither one of these things can be determined until the season is played, at which point, there really isn't anymore contention. There are playoff teams and there are teams who are sitting at home.

I judge teams based on how they are built and how they SHOULD do far more so than I do on how they actually ultimately perform. Process is more important than outcome. I'll leave the luck to decide itself. If the Cubs had won 95 games this year and had some success in the playoffs, I wouldn't overlook the flaws in the way they were constructed or changed my overall judgment of them just because they overachieved. Sure, I would've been happy as hell and rooting for them, but wins wouldn't have changed the fact that they were a poorly constructed team. And teams CAN luck into a lot more wins than they should get, believe that.

UMFan, you didn't mean to reply to me, did you?

This is ridiculous. You can't make these determinations in hindsight. Even if you want to go the hindsight route, then how was the 2003 (mediocre as it was) team not a contender? It was 5 freaking outs from the big dance. You can't have it both ways. Personally, I look at the 2003 team as a non-serious contender that got lucky. The 2004 team was a serious contender that was unlucky with injuries and poorly managed. What is ridiculous is to judge a team by the names on the back of the Jersey and statistics that have little usefulness outside of a theoritical model used to predict wins. I judge a team by their actual wins over the course of a season. Not one of the teams the Cubs have fielded in recent history has won 90 games. None of those teams were in the World Series and only the 2003 teams managed to get past the Wild Card round in a crapshoot playoffs. Sooooo... at what point is a team deemed a contender? Is a team that has a lead in the 7th inning of game 6 of the league championship series not a contender? You can't have it both ways.

I realize my argument might sound confusing, so I'll try and boil it down to this... Were the 2007 Mets not serious contenders? They weren't even in the playoffs. The funny thing is, even they outperformed their pythag. But that's not the point. If contention is something you determine in hindsight (the very notion of which seems to be completely oxymoronic to me), who the hell are the contenders? The four LCS teams? The two WS teams? Just the winner?

Well, yes. The poor management and injuries were definitely tied into eachother. And Hendry is definitely responsible for hiring Dusty and for putting together all of these crap teams. I'm not trying to defend him at all. I'm just saying that it's ridiculous to say that none of these recent (last 5 seasons) Cubs teams were legit contenders.

This is ridiculous. You can't make these determinations in hindsight. Even if you want to go the hindsight route, then how was the 2003 (mediocre as it was) team not a contender? It was 5 freaking outs from the big dance. You can't have it both ways. Personally, I look at the 2003 team as a non-serious contender that got lucky. The 2004 team was a serious contender that was unlucky with injuries and poorly managed. Oh, as for the bolded, it DOES matter. Winning is the result of scoring more runs than the opposition. You build a team to essentially do two things: score runs and prevent runs. Your ability to do these things is what ultimately determines how many wins you wind up with. That 2004 team did a pretty good job of scoring and preventing runs. It didn't add up to as many wins as it should have. That's bad luck. Were the 2007 D'Backs a better team than the 2004 Cubs? If, in hindsight, a worse team somehow managed to win more games than a better team, the worse team wouldn't be better than the better team just by virtue of having won more games. The standings may work this way, but it means little in predictive terms, which is what you should always be thinking about when putting a team together.

The 2004 team was a serious contender. Should've won near 95 games and would've been a very scary playoff team. They just blew it at the end. That was by far our best shot. Injuries and a late season collapse took it away from us.

Why's that? I don't think he does that in Japan. Did he say otherwise?

Give them Hinrich please. He is overrated as hell. Tunovers, cant shoot, and cant stay out of foul trouble. Please take him LA He's Pax and Skile's boy. Skiles might be losing a little patience with him. He semi-called him out in today's papers.

I'm starting to really hope we can keep TT in any potential Kobe deal.

No. They're saying that fans were flipping out because the Cavs getting Bibby in that deal would make them scary. It was being talked about on the show yesterday.

It's not as though the Mavericks aren't also refusing to give in. Cuban came out and made a much more definitive statement of the Mavericks non-interest than Paxson did.

A lot of people would disagree with this. BTW, the Bulls were one victory away from being the East's #2 seed last year. Also, if they don't cough up game 3, the Detroit series probably goes a lot differently. If that's not a contender in the East, I don't know what is. As for the improvement from last year to this year, the majority of that would come from the continued development of what is still a very young core of primary players.

The Bulls have been willing to include Deng. Kobe is the one who has been vetoing any deals involving Lu. He needs to stop playing GM. I think Lou is a stud, but the fact is that if he was traded the Bulls do have a SF that could fill in...Nocioni. Thabo I believe can play the 3 too. And afterall, Labron James + the local Cleveland YMCA was enough to win the East last year. I'd rather Kobe continue to play hardball. As much as the LA front office wants to get rid of their headache, they'll ultimately give in and we'll wind up with a better team for it. Do you want to contend to win the east (which we already are doing, mind you), or do you want to contend to win multiple championships?

The Bulls have been willing to include Deng. Kobe is the one who has been vetoing any deals involving Lu.

They made the point that, obviously, if the Bulls were as committed to Luol and Ben as Pax tried to make it seem yesterday, they would've made them better offers than the take it or leave it deals they did.

Tell me if anything of substance is said please Deal is not dead. Yesterday was a smokescreen to quell the rumors. Pax obviously does not like that so much of this is so public. In the last 20 hours, lots of agents have been calling the Berto to get in touch with Pax, I think to try to work their players into potential 3 way stuff (I'm not positive on this part, I didn't hear a second of it). It's still people higher than John Paxson that want Kobe here. Yesterday = GM-speak. There's a belief that there is a deal on the table and we're waiting on Kobe's approval and that hold up is what Paxson is really referring to when he's saying that the situation is unfair to our players.

They're talking about it right now.

You honestly think we'd make the playoffs again with the exact same team? Is that what he (Silver) said? He said they'd be an 85 win team. Whether 85 wins in this division = playoffs or not next year is debatable.

Schuster will be on WSCR with a Kobe update at 2

I especially love how the second quote somehow warrants a, "haha."

One of the few (but not insanely rare) times I agree with a Mariotti column. http://www.suntimes.com/sports/mariotti/632176,mariotti110207.article I think he's spot on.

I think Silver was pretty spot on. The biggest offensive hole is at SS. If you can upgrade that significantly, you can certainly live with an outfield of Soriano, Pie/Jones, Murton. And Pie is ready. He has nothing left to prove or learn at AAA. He needs to get consistent ML at bats now. EDIT - I didn't mean a Pie/Jones platoon. Just meant either/or. If Pie has success, we can hopefully dump off Jacque on somebody.