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What you need to realize is that we don't even need all those injuries to make the loss of DeRosa. The only one that has to happen is Bradley, and it's pretty much a sure thing with him. That's when losing DeRosa will hurt. You would have essentially been replacing Bradley with Fontenot in the lineup (with DeRosa moving to right) when Bradley was out. Now you're giving those at-bats to Johnson against RHP, Fukudome against LHP, Gathright, Miles, or maybe Hoffpauir. That's a pretty big downgrade

Bruce Miles http://blogs.dailyherald.com/node/1203

Only a .450 IsoP...meh that's not everything. he had a .609 OBP that season and had the highest OPS of his career. 232 walks is insane to me. i was obviously kidding...we retired green font i still should have caught that

Only a .450 IsoP...meh that's not everything. he had a .609 OBP that season and had the highest OPS of his career. 232 walks is insane to me.

This. Normally, I'd agree with this line of thinking, but if you add Sheets, that's 3 potential injuries waiting to happen in the rotation (Harden and sadly Zambrano are the others). Also you have to consider the amount of innings Dempster threw last year vs. the previous 3. While it seems great to say we have Marshall if one goes down if 2-3 of them go down, we are all the sudden looking much less formidable. Also, you'd have to think that if hes coming on a somewhat cheap deal, he'd just stay with the Brewers. They are still in on him and would probably match anything we'd offer. Brewers fans seem to think bridges have been burned between Sheets and the Brewers

Hampton is a Houston Astro. and sucks i'm not sure how you can determine a guy sucks from his pitching 12 games in 3 years. i guess it sucks to get hurt all the time though. well he sucked last year when he was "healthy", and 36 year old pitchers who have been injured for the majority of the previous 4 seasons (and were never really very good to begin with anyways) don't usually end up being very good

i still think 2004 was his best and most astonishing season. he walked 242 times and still hit 45 bombs. will any player ever get the treatment to walk 242 times again in one season? albert pujols is as close as it gets to bonds right now and he still isn't even close to getting that kind of treatment.

Hampton is a Houston Astro. and sucks

this thread would have been a lot more conclusive if the choices were just a,b,c,d, and f

Too bad the unit signed with the giants. When we first heard about the Cubs having interest in him during the Peavy stuff, we were all amped out about Peavy so he didn't sound that great. He seems like he would have been a pretty good option now

Sean Gallagher is a table scrap? Considering what you usually have to give up to get an ace caliber pitcher via trade, yes. You mean considering what you have to give up to get an ace caliber pitcher who is constantly hurt. It's notl ike we traded for Sabathia. Anyways, it doesn't matter. The player you're trading for doesn't change what a player is. Gallagher is a not a "table scrap" in any situation. Just to be clea,r I liked the trade. I'm just saying Gallagher is not a table scrap. So you're just arguing for the sake of arguing. I like Gallagher, too, but the fact of the matter is that he didn't have a future with the Cubs so by giving him up we didn't give up any value. He was, for all intents and purposes, one of three spare parts we gave up for an outstanding young pitcher. With all due respect to his Dad or whatever, I reiterate, table scraps. Wait, so Gallagher didn't have any value when we traded him? There's one very big flaw of what you're saying. Just because Gallagher doesn't fit into our future in your mind, that doesn't mean we "didn't give up any value". Think aobut it. That really makes no sense. Of course he has value, and the fact that we got Harden with him is pretty much proof of that. He has value through trades. If we didn't trade him for Harden, we could have traded him for somebody else. That's his value. Plus he'd be a decent option as our number 5 starter right now, so I don't know how you can say he didn't have a future with the Cubs. It's not like he was a catcher being blocked by Soto. He was a starting pitcher. You always have a future with a any team. Again, I liked the trade, but it's obvious we had to give up something good to get Harden. This is expected. Gallagher was our best pitching prospect at the time and basically the noyl good one we had left. How can you say that he had no value?

Sean Gallagher is a table scrap? Considering what you usually have to give up to get an ace caliber pitcher via trade, yes. You mean considering what you have to give up to get an ace caliber pitcher who is constantly hurt. It's notl ike we traded for Sabathia. Anyways, it doesn't matter. The player you're trading for doesn't change what a player is. Gallagher is a not a "table scrap" in any situation. Just to be clea,r I liked the trade. I'm just saying Gallagher is not a table scrap. So you're just arguing for the sake of arguing. I like Gallagher, too, but the fact of the matter is that he didn't have a future with the Cubs so by giving him up we didn't give up any value. He was, for all intents and purposes, one of three spare parts we gave up for an outstanding young pitcher. With all due respect to his Dad or whatever, I reiterate, table scraps. You shouldn't worry. Everyone with a IQ higher than a argumentative 6th grader looking for attention understood what you meant. Either that or you're just trying t start problems again. So let me get this strait, I'm taking things out of context and just trying to start a fight based on semantics? Gere is what he said How can you even say that's an accurate statement? Obviously he is saying Hendry got Harden without giving uo anything of value. Is that not what "table scraps" means? Hendry got a good deal, but he also gave up a good starting pitching prospect. To imply that he got him for "table scraps" when Gallagher was a well above average pospect just doesn't make sense. Yet I'm doing it to start a fight? okay.

I don't think we can expect him to put up the numbers he did as a Ranger. I'd be really happy if he could put up like a high .800's OPS. I think the best case scenario owuld be a low to mid .900's, but I'd be really surprised if that happened.

So if "people get hurt by twisting (their) legs up all the time," then what the heck is the problem here? That proves what happened to Bradley could've happened to any athlete: fragile, normal, durable, or Ripkenesque. The problem is that there is a pattern of injuries with Bradley. This is just one of many.

Yes but who has ever heard of somebody hurting themself be sneezing? People get hurt by twisting your legs up all the time. If you want to get technical about it, you're right, maybe it wasn't a freak injury when Sosa hurt himself sneezing (and I think I mentioned that it could go either way) that's kind of borderline, depending on which way you interpret it. What did he actually hurt? A ribcage muscle? If it's something that could have been hurting lifting weights or something like that, maybe not. He I think in the context of this discussion, which is talking about a player being fragile, you're right. I shouldn't have said said that was a freak injury, because that injury could have happened while doing something else, and ultimately, his body made that happen. he could suffer that same injury doing something normal like lifting weights, just like Bradley could easily have twisted his legs doing something normal/ We're talking about whether or not a certain injury should go against a player in his "is he fragile or not" debate. Bradley's torn ACL could easily be because he's fragile, just like all his other injuries. Same could be said for Sosa at the time. Prior getting hit by a line drive had nothing to do with his fragile body. It was a freak occurance that will never happen again.

so he destroyed him? i wasn't watching but I'll check hockeyfights.com for it later

If payroll is really "frozen", they simply don't have the $$$ for that kind of signing Based on everything I've heard from Bruce Miles and other people, it sounds like we'll be able add a little more payroll if necessary once the new owner is chosen.

The sneeze analogy perfectly illustrates what I've been trying to explain. People sneeze all the darn time, and nothing comes of it. Just like as dextermorgan has explained, professional baseball players step awkwardly on their leg all the darn time, and nothing comes of it. So if throwing your back out sneezing is a freak injury (since you've sneezed countless times with no injury occurring), then by the same logic, tearing your ACL stepping awkwardly is also a freak injury (since you've stepped awkwardly countless times with no injury occurring). Except people almost never get hurt sneezing. That's why it's a freak injury. People get hurt by twisting their legs. You're leaving out that very huge difference. Also, I'd say that there's a pretty big difference between a sneeze and a twisting of your leg. One is a natural thing that the body does by itself. The other is something that your body is put through due to a mistake. Your definition of a freak injury is: something people almost never get hurt doing (reference the bolded statement above). You've told us over and over and over again how baseball players step awkwardly on their leg all the time without getting hurt. Therefore by your own definition of the term, when a baseball player gets hurt stepping awkwardly, it's a freak injury. That's not my definiton at all. I don't know where you're getting that. My definition of a freak injury is: an injury sustained in a freak situation that you can not reasonably expect to occur/happen again. You can reasonably expect that an athlete might eventually twist his leg or step on it funny. You can't reasonably expect a player to get hit with a line drive in the elbow again You could slip and twist your legs (enough to force some kind of injury) mutiple times in a season and it wouldn't really be a surprise. It wouldn't be expected, but it wouldn't be shocking that it happened. If someone broke their elbow by getting hit with a baseball going over 100 MPH twice in the same lifetime, it would be shocking... or a "freak" occurrence.

Sean Gallagher is a table scrap? Considering what you usually have to give up to get an ace caliber pitcher via trade, yes. You mean considering what you have to give up to get an ace caliber pitcher who is constantly hurt. It's notl ike we traded for Sabathia. Anyways, it doesn't matter. The player you're trading for doesn't change what a player is. Gallagher is a not a "table scrap" in any situation. Just to be clea,r I liked the trade. I'm just saying Gallagher is not a table scrap.

Sean Gallagher is a table scrap?

i didn't realize he had flipped out this recently http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?mid=200809133469162&c_id=tex i like when he starts giving the finger to the fans

Just to be fair, Fukudome went .241/.340/.355 after April. From May 15th on, he went .231/.334/.344, etc. Of course these are arbitrary starting points, but the point is that he was bad for more than the last 3 months. His OBP just hung around for the first 3 months because it took pitchers awhile to realize they could just attack him and he wouldn't really hurt them

Huh? That makes no sense. Rick Wilkins was never going to be the Mike Piazza and was never even close being the prospect that Prior was. Stop comparing Prior as a prospect to Rick Wilkins. That's just dumb. Wilkins just had a good season. Nobody expected him to have it. People expected things from Prior. Is Evan Longoria just like Rick Wilkins too? Last offseason did you say Cole Hamels was just like Rick Wilkins? Ryan Braun? I don't care about who is likeable. That gets you nowhere. I care about who is good. Mark Prior was very very good. His monster 2003 wasn't a fluke. Not only was it not a fluke, but he did it at an extremely young age. I like that. I don't care if he is mean to old people or kicks dogs. I want to win. We're supposed to be okay watching a young superstar starting pitcher uinder our control fall apart because he might not have seemed nice sometimes? Give me a break. This isn't the Disney Channel, these are athletes. If you don't like athletes with attitudes then you probably shouldn't be watching sports. Oh, and bringing up steroids is pretty ridiculous, and is an example of maybe the most tragic result of the steroid era. Now we have to conastantly deal with baseless accusations because maybe one or two signs point to a guy possible having juiced. Every out of nowhere season is "oh...steroids". Every time a player starts getting hurt... "he was a juice". Everytime a guy develops power... "he's a roider". Let me ask you, are you a Geovany Soto fan? If you're saying you didn't like Prior because he might have juiced, then you can't really like Soto. I'm not saying Soto is juicing(because I don't think he is), but there are just as many signs that Soto roided up if you want to go there. Really you don't have any remotely legit evidence to even suggest that Prior was ons teroids. What do yuou have? He started getting injured, and that he had big calves? You'd better be careful for condemning people for tony thingsl ike that. It's a slippery slope. Really neither of us have any idea if Prior was on steroids and there is certainly no evidence whatsoever. To suggest that we should be okay with the way he turned out because you THINK he MIGHT have POSSIBLY taken steroids is crazy.

yeah it's not like he would have been a perennial cy young candidate or anything if he stayed healthy. dude only had one good season! it's not like he was a high draft pick who dominated everywhere and had a monster season at an extremely young age. who cares though. he was surly to the media

same reaction here. fangraphs has burrell's last two seasons valued at $20.4M just 5 million more than willie harris