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be good at baseball?

why am i not shocked that a person who uses ERA to determine how good a reliever is would also use playoff appearances to measure how good a gm has been?

VDN when asked if he's worried about being fired we're fighting with what we have? why don't you man up and take some responsibilty and not blame it on the players

40 games over .500 is great in one season. It is not good over the course of 7 seasons. It is mediocre at best, and should be considered disappointing for a team that dominates in payroll. It's barely better than an 83 win season. That is bad. on average that's a little worse than 84-78 each season. when you consider the cubs have been among the leaders in payroll over that span, that's not an accomplishment

hey, it's not my fault that you're seemingly the only one on this board who doesn't understand how to properly look at stats. seriously, how many times do we have to explain to you that ERA for a reliever is a completely crap stat? it's stuff like this that makes it obvious you're going to blindly defend hendry no matter what. you just refuse to acknowledge it even though multiple people have explained to you in a million different ways why you're not understanding grabow's stats. as for the "he had to do something about the pen" nonsense.... you don't overpay for average players just because you need to bolster an area of the team. you know what that's called" that's called a desperation move. "hey out bullpen sucks. how do we fix it? by overpaying for mediocrity, of course." the division has sucked in 3 of the last 4 seasons, and one of those crappy seasons directly resulted in a division title for the cubs... a division title you're trying to pump up hendry's resume with.

Bunch of excues, because if made in 2007 due to weak competition, then I can say they didn't make it in 04 due to tough competition. Plus I assume your trying to say that a team that was five outs away from going to the World Series wasn't a playoff worthly team? pretty funny to hear you talk about making excuses, considering your main argument for defending hendry is "well he made the playoffs a couple times". remember last offseason when we were criticizing all the moves and you kept screaming at us to give them a chance and that you'd admit hendry did a bad job if those moves ended up being bad? well those moves ended up being bad, and all you did was continue to make excuses for all of his bad moves. then if you DO admit a move wasn't a good one, you're always quick to make sure you make an excuse for him. gave aaron miles 2/5? "hey, that's what the going rate is for backup middle infielders" gave up a good prospect for jevin gregg? "hey, he has closer experience" gave a league average reliever 2/7.5? "who cares about the real stats, he has kept his era low for a couple years in a row, so it's no longer a fluke" i understand that this board can have it out for hendry at times, but you're just as bad...worse actually... with your blind defense of him.

When deciding if something is a horrible move you have to factor in the teams money situation. If you don't realize that then you are clueless. Yes it's Hendry fault that the Cubs are in the postion they are in. He gets blame for the shape of the payroll and he's done a bad job with the last few years. But allowing Harden to accept arb, and using all of his free money so they couldn't add anybody else would be a bad move, not doing it is a good move. Get it? So say this sucks we couldn't do it because what Hendry did to our payroll. Not that the move itself in our situation is a bad move. I know people get hard ones here for bashing Hendry, but there's no doubt that this board goes WAY overboard with it. sorry, but i find it hard to cut hendry slack on being on a tight budget when he gives stiffs like john grabow 2 years and 7.5 [expletive] million. there's the ultimate copout excuse. hendry has a massive payroll, has gotten the benefit of playing in what is often a crap division, and i'm supposed to be congratulating him on building a team that got to the playoffs 3 out of 7 times? not to mention, the 2007 team only made the playoffs because of the crap division. 85 wins in a division where the rest of the teams were a combined 62 games under .500? WAY TO GO JIM with the resources hendry is given and the division we play in, the expectations should be a lot higher than "we made the playoffs 3 times in 7 years".

i kind of wish he did

2011- get "ball players" for ryno

He would have taken it and made more through that than what he's making at 7.5.......All this says to me is we are truly hamstrung financially this offseason and we prioritized an OFer more than we did a SP......Personally, I'd have kept Harden and made a concession in RF with a Hermida type guy, if we absolutely HAD to get rid of Bradley...... hendry also prioritized league average relief pithcing seriously, the cubs will pay 4.75 million next year to grabow and miles, and we can't afford 7.5 to harden

but that would be a good thing it sucks knowing that hendry's main goal right now is making the team worse, and then making small moves to try and make up for the bad move he had to make. man, i can't believe that "75 games played to make the 3rd year vest" thing didn't protect us.

if you ever want to see how the majority of cubs fans think, just head over to cubs.com it's a sad reality.

you can go ahead and keep telling yourself that, but don't expect the rest of us to hop on the "defend hendry at all costs" bandwagon. not offering harden arbitration was a horrible baseball move, and even if you want to blame it on the money situation, it's still hendry's fault. he's the one that has put this team in this position with his bad contracts. but hey, he swung that aramis trade back in 03 and got derosa and stuff

i hate the internet

man, if we suck next year then i hope we tank hard. i want [expletive] to get ugly but then all they'll do is hire another crap GM and promote sandberg. 2007-2008 was the window

im sick of tis "mystery team" garbage. i think it's just lazy and overaggressive reporting

i [expletive] hate this team so [expletive] much [expletive] [expletive] [expletive]

why are they upset with him?

stupid question, but does UZR factor in an outfielders arm?

I'm not convinced that after a string of decidedly average-mediocre seasons Hawkins has regained his dominance at age 36. I'm not high on Grabow at all, but I don't think the Hawkins signing is any better than his. it isn't, really.

Cubs projected win total in 2010 just went up by 2. And in 2011. 2yr/7.5 million. what's better than overpaying for one pitcher? overpaying for 2 pitchers!

Cubs projected win total in 2010 just went up by 2. hawkins has been pretty badass over the past 85 or so innings.

it's pretty funny that you assume you were right about these guys already i always knew that ian kennedy guy was a buster. i mean, what 23 year old gets lit up in the al east? only a buster

Just that gut feeling. I had the same feeling when everyone was hyping samardijza, i felt he wasn't that good of a prospect and a reliever at best which i still feel. I felt that way about Hughes, Kennedy, Bucholz, etc. I think if you watch baseball, normally you can see someone and just know they'll be something good. Its just my own opinion, not saying its right. Before you applaud yourself too hard, there was never a time when everyone was hyping Samardzija. And your ability to judge a player based on how he carries himself is dubious at best. and samardzija's minor league numbers weren't good anyways