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I'm almost embarrassed to say how low he fell in my draft. Everyone was talking about how he wouldn't last more than a few weeks and avoided him like the plague. Every year Albert Pujols is suffering from some sort of nagging injury that might either put him on the DL or hinder his performance and it never does. Didn't he have plantar fasciitis 3 or 4 years ago? Isn't that would ended McGwires career? He ended up stealing 16 bases the next year after it was known that he had this foot injury I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but each year he has some sort of injury that's going to halt his production or slow him down a notch and it doesn't. Has anyone ever thought that maybe these are just fake reports released by the Cardinals so other teams think it's okay to pitch to him, otherwise he'd just get the Barry Bonds treatment? Does that sound ridiculous? Yes... but every time I hear about a potentially damaging offseason Albert Pujols injury, I call B.S., and sure enough each year, he's MVP caliber. Why is that? For the record, I know it's not true and this sounds remarkably stupid, but it ticks me off to hear people act like Pujols' reign of terror is coming to an end with an injury that no one could've ever noticed form the way he played and produced. Always in the offseason, and always referencing the season before when he was playing with the injury and the next one could be a huge down year. Really? An injured elbow in a season where he put up a .357 average and 37 home runs. Yeah, okay. Sure. I don't think people were ever afraid of the injury hurting Pujols' production. They were afraid of him getting hurt and missing time. TJS was widely speculated.

I wouldn't take Arod second even if he was healthy

I'll go with your responses to the lefthanded comments and the sarcastic overreactions to seemingly unalarming injury news. that's the first time i've heard him respond to one of those

they wouldn't move teixeira to 3rd, and even if they did.. they'd just use swisher at 1st.

storming the court was a lot of fun 8-[

Jon Heyman says all he has to do is play 75 games in 2009 to guarantee the entire 30 mil http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/jon_heyman/03/06/milton.bradley/index.html Not much of a clause....

Well yeah, their production is evenly spread out, but none of it is really that great. It seems like they have a bunch of complimentary type players, at least that's the way they performed last year. They don' really have a meat of the order.

I don't really see how they're the best in the NL. I'd put them 4th right now. Their lineup looks good enough, but I don't see "stacked" unless all of their young guys take a huge step forward. It's basically Manny and a bunch of .750-.800 OPS guys. Not much power at all outside of Manny. The rotation looks questionable.... at best. They look like about an 85 win team to me, maybe less. They won 84 last year and I don't even know if they're improved. They lost their best pitcher of 2007 (Lowe) and also Saito. They'll get a full season out of Manny and Furcal, but not the 1.232 OPS Manny and not the 1.012 Furcal.

So what teams realistically have a chance (moneywise) at TO?

good for the dodgers for not giving in and falling for boras' garbage

ugh harold reynolds. just stop. "stats are ridiculous" he says. then barry larkin says a .215 average is okay if it's "a quality .215". good breakdown of the idiocy here http://and-that-happened.blogspot.com/2009/02/why-mlb-network-is-failure.html

Hmm...I don't know how that's possible if you're a real Bulls fan. VDN needs to go. I'm pretty sure he's on a 2 year deal and not a 3 like someone said a few posts ago. i'm a real bulls fan. i just realize that every embarrassing loss is another nail in vdn's coffin. wins do no good at this point.

I would call hitting around .290, never striking out, committing 2 or 3 errors a year, and getting a lot of SB's at the top of the order right about average. There's no doubt he's overpaid but he's not one of the top 45 overpaid. He's not only top 45, but he's very high in that top 45.

oakland is having a great offseason

Oh man we better not end up paying Miles and Crosby the total salary DeRosa would have made this season

that's what i was going to say. phillips is a tool, but the "i've lost all respect for him" stuff was kind of dumb.

manny not only changes his own clubhouse, he changed everyone's. what an unbelievable player.

Did anyone else see Matt Vasgersian drop the f-bomb just now? They were doing an intro type thing and he said Fernando Vina instead of Fernando Valenzuela then said "Did I say Fernando Vina? What the f*** is that?" Then the screen went black for about 5 seconds and they did it over again.

havlat is unbelievable. what a player

it's sad that i get more satisfaction out of seeing this team embarrassed by crappy teams than i do seeing them win

so you're saying he should be a quitter? Not a quitter but a realist. He could take one more year off and test the waters of the private sector, continue to work out and then come into 2010 with a fresh approach Mark Prior is 28 years old. He has a whole lifetime to explore other things if baseball doesn't end up working out. It would be stupid to NOT continue trying to come back for as long as possible.

is this 1998? I don't get that reference. Grudz is better now than he was then.

If Grudz is past his prime then why haven't his numbers dropped off?

You're right. All the people I know in Miami who avoid games because of the weather must by lying. Glad that you could prove that. keyword is fans and we've established that the marlins don't have fans and probably never will. a lot of ticket sales come from non-fans, and non-fans aren't going to want to take in a game if it's miserable outside. is the weather keeping the marlins from packing the stadium every night? of course not, but don't say that weather doesn't affect ticket sales.

Wow, that's rookie stuff right there.