soccer10k

Time to vote Liriano.

I agree, but I'd probably go a little more than that. I would be willing to bring back Wood as well for a 1 year incentive laden deal but I think he'll get more than 1-2 mil per year from some other team. As for Prior, absolutely no on trading him unless we get an excellent deal in return.

If pigs had wings, they could fly. Ostriches have wings but they can't fly? Movie Quote: "I have nipples Greg. Can you milk me?" Cubs getting back to 0.500 is more realistic, slightly more. Touche Scott. Touche.

If you're going to clean house, do it and fire everybody. I don't buy into the Baker overruling Rothchild theory. The decisions to leave pitchers in is just as much Rothchild's as it is Baker's.

Has anybody else ever been banned twice? If so, what's the record? Why do you ask? Are you hiding something? Looks as if we have another wiseguy here boys....whatya think we should do? I'm actually srbin84 on yet another IP address. I figured I should have two at the same time so if I was banned from one, I would still have the other. And yes, it is fun to argue with myself. :) Any answer to the question though?

If pigs had wings, they could fly.

Didn't he know about that though before signing with the Surf Dawgs? I have a hard time believing this is something that just came up out of the blue... the original article i saw seemed to say that he didn't know until the day he requested the trade. He needs to start taking brain steriods.

No, there really isn't. Our outfield (overall) is pathetic, our infield is average at best, and our pitching is absolutely atrocious. A handful are having down years, but most of what's happened is because we do not have enough talent in those positions. On paper, don't you think we have talent? We never really had a true #5 hitter going into the year, and we knew the team was lacking in power - but we came into the year with a strong closer, bullpen, and pretty good defense. The hitting was improved for the most part (on paper), and the starting pitching, as far as we knew, was going to be above average (Zambrano, Maddux, Wood, Prior, and a few promising rookies contending with Rusch/Williams for the #5 spot). Pierre/Walker/DLee/Ramirez/Jones/Barrett/Murton/Cedeno wasn't the WORST looking lineup pre-season. There is some talent in there. And therein lies part of the problem: relying on Wood and Prior. The odds that both Wood and Prior would be completely healthy and make 30+ starts each this year was infinitely small. You have one ace, one average aging pitcher, two often injured pitchers, Gopher Ball, and a bunch of unproven rookies. That isn't an above average pitching staff.

Has anybody else ever been banned twice? If so, what's the record?

The original expletive is edited but the posts where IMB was quoted aren't edited.

Bill Simmons is an NBA guru? Nah. Bill Simmons isn't a guru of anything other than writing Boston-centric, poorly researched articles filled with boring pop culture references and analogies. You are right about the third year thing though. I wouldn't necessarily call Bill Simmons a guru but he is fairly knowledgeable when it comes to basketball.

I wouldn't argue with that. But LSU has way too many injury questions to be considered number one. In fact, a lot of prognosticators are picking Flordia or Auburn ahead of LSU in the SEC. I like LSU's chances, but they will have a lot of doubters early in the season. That's how I see it as well which I believe I stated earlier in this thread. My reasoning was the schedule and LSU has to play at both Florida and Auburn.

Soon. When I first looked at this it said 'you should come out with one'. Now it says soon and it wasn't edited. Am I going crazy? I am not sure when they will be out, but all the ones I have seen in magazines have OSU at #1. Notre Dame is getting some also, and Athlon's has Oklahoma. They all have their flaws and there's no one that's a clear cut leader, but I like both of those two more than Ohio State. As an ND fan it pains me to say this, but they are not a #1 team. No way at all. I don't think they are either, but who really is this year? Certainly once we get into the season there will be some teams who step up and are deserving of being #1. There just aren't any teams that look convincing at all as preseason #1. I like Notre Dame better than Ohio State, but I would be shocked if either went undefeated. Ohio State's offense will be damn good, but I think people are overestimating how good it will be because of the Fiesta Bowl. Most importantly they're going to have to replace a stacked back 7 on their defense AND play at Texas and at Iowa before October. By the end of the year they'll be tough, but I don't think they have enough time to gel in order to win two extremely tough road games in the first month. Agreed. I'm not really sold on any team this year as a National Champion or #1 team. Last year it was USC and Texas. But this year every team has some serious question marks. ND's defense. OSU replacing defense. Oklahoma's QB. USC replacing offense. Texas replacing Vince Young. Will somebody stand out in the SEC rather than teams all beating up on each other? Every team has bigtime question marks. The key game, just like last year, will be the Texas-OSU matchup in the beginning of the year. But I wouldn't be surprised if no team went undefeated this year. As for early on, I would give ND the nod for #1 because they have a majority of their players returning. The defense wasn't that good last year, but at least Weis knows what he's going to get out of them in a game situation. If you have first year starters in the game, you don't know how they are going to react once the game starts. I like it this way because you don't know who is going to win as opposed to last year when virtually everybody had Texas-USC in the title game.

Maybe, but only if Portugal plays like the game means something to them. You know Germany is going to come out firing because they're playing at home and will get ripped if they don't play hard. But we don't know which Portugal team will show up. I really like the France-Italy final. I think it's going to be an excellent game.

Weaver will post a good ERA for the Cards. Book it.

Is it bad that when I saw Mark Prior's Calves had started this game thread I thought "the Cubs didn't win today did they?" before remembering that the Cubs did win? My first instinct is that the Cubs lost. I should add that I watched todays game as well.

I like Cabrera's more because the pitcher didn't even throw the ball. Both were awesome though.

And if you take out his home runs, that will surely do a number on his SLG percentage. As Pedro said, you can't just take out some of his hits to prove your point.

Though he did speak up enough to say he thought he was a "#6 type hitter"...and oh, how we and the local press mocked. Curses! He's a No. 2 hitter now. When did they move him into that slot? I could swear he started doing well for Baltimore hitting down in the lineup. He bats seventh in the line up. Corey has 11 AB's batting #1, 6 AB's batting #5, 101 AB's batting #6, 75 AB's batting #7, 44 AB's batting #8 and 21 AB's batting #9. Here are his splits for each spot in the order.

I think Hendry only has next year to turn it around whether he hires a new manager or gives Baker an extension. Either way, I think he has one year for the reason you stated of having three bad years in a row.

=D> Agreed. Excellent post.

It's just going to be a whole "Clutch" movement in general. If you don't come through in the clutch, whether hitting or pitching, you aren't going to win games. Note: Cubs philosophy not mine.

Two straight complete game losses for Oswalt. That can't be fun.

CUBS WIN!!!

I want Dempster to save this because Marshall deserves a W for his performance today.