soccer10k

I figured I would give this thread a bump to update to say that with four of the seven games complete, the Cubs have scored 5 runs this week. Average three a game for the next three games and they'll only have 14 runs for the week. I have faith that the Cubs can pull through.

I have Jim Brown, Barry Sanders, Walter Payton. Don't forget that not only did Jim Brown only play 9 seasons, but four of those were 12 game seasons and the other five were 14 game seasons. Compare career yards/attempt averages: Brown: 5.2 Sanders: 5.0 Payton: 4.4 Smith 4.2 Obviously this isn't the only way to measure how good a running back is, but it's a very good measure nonetheless. EDIT: Note: I did come up with my top three before looking up any stats though. Just a coincidence that they match up.

Sucks that the Bulls aren't in the Atlantic Division. But they'll still do well regardless. BOOOOO to steve smith! I can see every team in the Central making the playoffs for several years in a row. I could see 4 making it, but there is no way all 5 make the post season next year. All you need is a key injury to Indiana or Milwaukee and they'll miss the playoffs. Same goes for Cleveland if LeBron gets hurt and misses an extended period of time. Too many things have to go right for this to happen.

Give Neifi enough ABs and Walker's numbers will look like Big Popi's. As was stated above, Neifi hits lefties just fine but it's the righties that he can't hit which drops his average. If you only let him hit against lefties, his numbers would look decent rather than horrible.

Oh, but ESPN managed to get me with that anyway a couple days ago. I'm driving home to my parents house on Tuesday night and tune in to sports talk radio. I turn on the SF Giants station - they were on a rain delay at the time - and there was one of their guys talking. That got boring so I turned on ESPN radio. Apparently they were doing the Braves-Cards game (which I found out later) but that was rain delayed as well. So the first words I hear are 'Mark Prior' and I think they are doing a recap of Tuesday's Cubs game because Prior started that day. Then I hear 'Castillo' and I instantly know it's Game 6. ESPN was replaying Game 6 - just the eighth inning mind you - on the radio during the rain delay. The worst part was I couldn't turn it off. I kept hoping that Alou makes the catch or Gonzalez doesn't make the error. I almost cried.

Yeah, Wojo didn't really make a good argument there. It will sound good to the casual fan but to the people that actually watch the games, we know he's wrong.

I have noticed a lot of instances this year where Len and Bob have been critical of moves that Dusty has made or plays on the field. I still like Chip and Stone better, but not by much.

And once the end of spring training comes and you realize he can't play anywhere but first base anymore, what do you do until June 15 when you're allowed to trade him? He hadn't played more than half a season since 2003, and if he was healthy he probably would only be able to play where we had an MVP caliber player. There was plenty good reason not to pursue him after last season, and it's still valid considering the Cubs' injury troubles last year and considering Nomar hasn't shown an ability to play anywhere other than first(despite LA going to multiple options at 3B and LF). The playing just first base and often injured arguments were my main reasons why I didn't think Nomar should have been resigned. Obviously nobody knew DLee would miss 2 months considering he's never injured. I just didn't want the Cubs to sign Nomar and have him go down with an injury again and end up wasting the money on a guy that only plays half the season at most. Nomar's play has proven me wrong on the injury part but like TT said, we haven't seen him play anywhere other than first. If Nomar was putting up numbers like these in RF, then you could have easily made the 'we should have resigned him' argument. But Nomar has only played 1B where DLee plays. It still ends up looking like a bad move to not resign him because Nomar is hitting .360 and DLee got hurt. For a team that didn't have a 1B like the Dodgers, signing Nomar was a good gamble to take. All that being said, I am happy for him that he is finally healthy and putting up great numbers again.

Or you could just make it easier and just have Nomar play 1B, leave Walker at 2B and put Hairston in RF. After all, Nomar is playing 1B for the Dodgers right now and Walker's natural position is 2B.

And it didn't really matter much in Capuano's third start.

I'm too lazy to go back and read, but was that seriously his argument? If you remove his bunt singles his SLG% isn't impressive? That's like Dave Wannsdedt saying "If 5 or 6 plays go our way, we win the game." I'd imagine anyone's SLG% would go down if you removed one type of hit from the equation. And that is what he somehow failed to grasp.

Not surprising in the least.

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.