David

What in the world. i was giving him the benefit of the doubt and thinking he meant to say maldonado

"significant"

please let one of these good things happen for us for once

Steve Smith and Riley Ridley https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/video/rookie-spotlight-nfl-networks-steve-smith-sr-gives-chicago-bears-rookie-wide-receiver-riley-ridley-route-running-advice/vi-AAF2q0y

i know pineiro, in particular, was supposed to have a very strong leg sidenote: patrick scales hasn't been around to long snap the last couple days. :-k

is this really a thing you're going to do? why do you want to do this?

You can make a good case for Chris Archer back in 2011. After that, it's luminaries like Mark Pawelek, Angel Guzman, and Donnie Veal. Ah, yeah. Totally forgot about Archer.

Completely agree. Hasn't Maddon even done the cutesy "have the lefty go play a position for a hitter in between lefties" thing the Rays did the other day? I'm thinking Travis Wood? This is something that was pretty iconic to the “Maddon is crazy/eccentric” mythos. Something that should have been recalled without question marks. This what Solid state drive degradation looks like. Time for a backup, buddy. meh. to me that whole thing is more about wacky costume trips and animals in the clubhouse and crap like that. he rarely does anything all that eccentric in terms of managing games. he also did that 867-5309 lineup thing, i guess.

i always forget about the crazy horsefeathers that happened in this game because i was in vegas and i started watching it while getting ready to go out. stopped paying attention when it got out of hand and then was shocked when i came back to the room at 4 am and turned on sportscenter.

I feel like if anything, he would use a non-LOOGY as a LOOGY, rather than use a LOOGY in a role that LOOGY can't handle. He settles into the obvious, this lefty should be able to get out a lefty because he's a lefty mindset, and in this case, it could work. Completely agree. Hasn't Maddon even done the cutesy "have the lefty go play a position for a hitter in between lefties" thing the Rays did the other day? I'm thinking Travis Wood?

Been very good against lefties. Just can't ever let him face a righty. Ever.

He said best since Prior. That's not really comparing him to Prior. It's not really that high of praise, either, unless I'm forgetting someone really obvious. Best Cubs pitching "prospect" I can think of from 2002-now is like...Rich Hill? Cashner? Samardzija? Hendricks obviously turned out really well but wasn't a highly regarded prospect.

1) This might be the most meaningless split I've ever seen 2) If you really want to use it...you're making the case that Russell's individual success is negatively correlated with the team success. So... :good: ? No... It's a dumb argument either way, but I'm pretty sure what he's saying is that even though people want to keep pointing to the Cubs bad W-L record when Russell plays, Russell has hit just fine in those losses, so how is he really to blame for those? It's all nonsense either way and mostly coincidence. Either way, I'm glad this dip horsefeathers is off the team.

How do you guys remember these old weirdos? how the hell do you forget sontensei?

yeah, i think, on top of being an horsefeathers, russell is really really dumb. like, among baseball players.

This isn't a thing.

Wasn't Candelario under this FO? By the time this FO took over, he played his first games in Boise.

is "moderate" being said tongue in cheek here?

Did they, though? I wouldn't be surprised if they did, but I don't recall that being one of their big talking points early on.

That video kind of summarizes my thoughts on Mitch. I have no faith in him but a lot of hope. Agree with you. He's a baffling player. Who is better under pressure than they are with a clean pocket? I wonder how much of this is all the newness around him (receivers, scheme, etc). Kollman basically said he's best when he just lets it rip with confidence. My hope is that given this guy is by all accounts a very hard worker - as he gains confidence/comfort with his receivers and the system he'll do less thinking and more just playing. He couldn't do anything in that playoff game but when all the pressure was on him and he needed to put a perfect ball on Robinson to put them in position to win, he makes the throw of his life. Yet he's standing in a completely clean pocket in Miami and airmails a wide open Miller by 10 yards. Later that game he hits him in stride to put them ahead by a score with 3 minutes left. Just a baffling player, as I said. I'm really hoping that early in the season we'll see that he made a clear next step, otherwise, it's going to be a stressful season. This is pretty logical to me and I think it's exactly what it is. Clean pocket situations - he's in a brand new offense with brand new players and he's still learning. He should be much more sure of what's going on now, after a full season and a real full off-season with the offense. On the other hand, when horsefeathers breaks down and he's under pressure he is forced to freelance, he just lets his talent take over and lets it rip.

he know something we don't?

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I don't really like him as a catcher and our pitching has degraded each year hes been our fulltime catcher. So, yes. He's had the keys. But they have an opportunity to hand those keys to a better defender. So I'll rephrase and say that I'll be disappointed if he retains those keys. by pretty much every account I've ever read, the guy works his ass off to get better and is very open to instruction. I'd be interested in where you are getting your info that he has no "desire" to improve. Or admit that's [expletive] and what you really mean to say is that he simply hasn't gotten better at that aspect of the game. i mean that's not exactly true. i'm a huge fan of willson and don't really care about stuff like this but he flat out admitted he got comfortable last year, blew off his training, and figured he could just show up and play well. like i said, i don't really care about it. he's a human being and human beings do horsefeathers like that. god knows i do. i just felt like that was over the top praise for his prep given what he himself said.

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They have had a basically unprecedented hit rate(which absolutely includes Schwarber, Happ, and Almora) with first round picks, if you're expecting better you're expecting fantasy. Draft picks fail, as a rule. Even those at the very top of the draft. To draft 4 consecutive major leaguers who have had some level of sustained success there is incredible. Those 4 drafts also turned out Bote, Godley, and Cease. Especially in a world with draft pools, you aren't going to see aggregate results any better, it's a matter now of seeing if their last few drafts will pan out to lower ceiling/more depth once they lost a bunch of pool money/1st round position in 2016+. And even though they were IFAs, Eloy and Gleyber are only further a testament to their ability to identify and develop position players. You'd think the people complaining here didn't watch the Cubs go like 25 years without producing a decent position player while also frequently being bad and drafting high. Their biggest success story in that span was when CPatt was kinda good for 2 years. Yeah, a lot of that was just incompetence by previous FOs, but it also kinda attests to how you can't really do what this FO did in that 4 year span by accident.