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Everyone in our division except maybe the Reds are having a terrible offseason. In fact everyone outside the AL East is having a terrible offseason. The Indians and Mets are doing alright Not sure the Indians are having a great offseason but they have improved over last year. Wood and DeRosa won't make too much of a difference though. My point is they're improving instead of butchering the team like Jim Hendry is doing right now.

Not that I disagree or anything, but for what it is worth. Ryan Dempster has had two ASG appearances, which is two more than AJ Burnett and only one fewer than CC Sabathia. stop

Everyone in our division except maybe the Reds are having a terrible offseason. In fact everyone outside the AL East is having a terrible offseason. The Indians and Mets are doing alright

Wow I'm so glad I've never listened to the Score. So let me get this straight - The Cubs can't win a title with an .800-.850 OPS 2B - Aaron Miles is a good leadoff hitter Yeah, that's perfectly reasonable.

ya think. when it seems so obvious that this is all leading up to a Peavy deal... No it doesn't. It's obvious with the stuff that's been coming out lately that this is just to clear payroll so Hendry can add Bradley, which is awful. I was kinda "meh" on including DeRosa in a trade for Peavy if we were signing Bradley, but now we're trading DeRosa and we're not even getting Peavy? Awful.

Man, this is turning out to be the worst offseason ever. Now what happens when Bradley gets injured? Instead of more at-bats for Fontenot we're looking at more at-bats for Miles, Johnson vs RHP, or Fukudome vs LHP. Maybe instead of giving Dempster a ridiculous contract we should have just kept DeRosa and re-signed Wood. Dempster was a huge waste of money. Really this team is looking very mediocre for next season when you take into account all the fulkey seasons we got last year. Bullpen looks mediocre, offensive looks slightly above average, and the rotation will look pretty average when Dempster regresses and Harden is out. Good thing the Brewers are having an even worse offseason.

the only thing i would change is every player in that lineup

If DeRosa is traded I'd try this Soriano Fontenot Aramis Bradley Soto Lee Johnson/Fukudome Theriot

Well Marquis hasn't been traded yet and the only person saying Bradley is close is Levine. I've learned by now that none of this really means anything

I can't disagree with you about keeping DeRosa, but one of the biggest complaints I've heard about Hendry is that he often sells low on players, ie Patterson, Sosa, Barrett. This might be a case of Hendry selling high on a player. I agree with you that keeping DeRosa and adding Bradley improves the Cubs offense and makes it deeper, but I can see why Hendry would trade DeRosa. I'd have no problem dealing DeRosa if he wasn't going to sign a guy who is pretty much a lock to miss half the season. If he wants to trade DeRosa then he shouldn't be looking at Bradley IMO

The better Bruce says the deal is "possible but not yet close" http://blogs.dailyherald.com/node/1163

Hmm. Will this be archived later or something? I want to hear it for myself

nomar garciaparra and rich harden the harden trade was certainly not leaked. there were like a couple of small rumors about the cubs possibly be interested in him a couple weeks before that but that's all It was talked about a pretty good deal leading up to it, but *nobody* expected it to get done as soon as it did. well a rumored trade happening and a trade being leaked are 2 different things. remember there was the article about how the trade happened, and they didn't actually do it until the night before it was announced, when jim called billy and said he'd include gallagher.

nomar garciaparra and rich harden the harden trade was certainly not leaked. there were like a couple of small rumors about the cubs possibly be interested in him a couple weeks before that but that's all

If they do sign Bradley it would be pretty stupid to trade DeRosa. The only reason I'd find signing Bradley acceptable would be because of the ability to put Fontenot in the lineup when he's injured

SOmebody on another board said Levine said the deal "might be announced next week", which is pretty funny. so it's a done deal but we'll hear about it next week maybe sounds about right.

lol i know, it's not like he doesn't strike out over a third of the batters he faces while the rest of them pop out or ground out. against guys who on average are worse than fukudome

Well it's so nice that you let us all know hiow much you don't care about my posts. That was very necessary. Do you realize you average nearly 20 posts a day? My parent's vodka when I was a teenager was less watered down. and that has nothing to do with anything. i just thought it was funny that you made a post to say how much you don't read my posts

Chargers Ravens Falcons Eagles

I'm gonna laugh my ass off when the Jets bring back Favre for another year

and what good does it do to move a guy to a position in the lineup where he has repeatedly failed and has shown a dramatic decrease in production?

and there's the final copout. that's twice now that i've seen you use the "i have a wife and kids" thing when you have nowhere else to go in the argument. then you always come back a few weeks later and have at it again. i guess the kids must be away or something when that happens

Well it's so nice that you let us all know hiow much you don't care about my posts. That was very necessary.

there you go again using the "well, baseball people say this is true s they're right" copout again. did you not read what i said? don't you always complain aobut hendry as a gm? don't you complain about soriano leading off? well if you spew garbage like that then you can never complain about any decisions any baseball exec ever makes. you can't question giving soriano 136 mil. you can't question dusty baker batting leadoff. you can't question giving juan pierre 50 million. you can't question giving barry zito 126 million. i mean, these are baseball execs that are paid millions! we're just internet message board posters! the truth is you're using that as a crutch because you've been getting destroyed every time you actually try to reason and explain your warped opinions. people keep proving you wrong over and over again and you just ignore them and then circle back to your old weak ass arguments that were proven wrong long ago. it's really old pitchers often make the last outs of innings so it's good to have theriot leading off the next inning? i always here that argument and it never makes sense. why are pitchers supposedly always making the last outs in an inning? do they suck so bad that every out they make counts as 2 or 3 outs? i don't think an out by a pitcher is the 3rd out of an inning any more often than any other hitter. really weak argument umm, because it's the media? are you seriously using the media as your argument? really? the phillies won the world series last year. guess what rollins (leadoff hitter) did in the playoffs? .237/.286/.407 yup, that's right. he had a .286 OBP in the playoffs year and they won the world series. huh? that's actually the complete opposite of what makes sense. where would you rather have a strikeout? with nobody on base (where a strikout is no different than a groundout of flyout), or with a guy at 3rd with less than 2 outs, or just guys on base in general? i think it's obvious what the answer is there. why? you're just making things up. theriot pitches per plate appearance last 3 seasons- 3.69 3.54 3.77 soriano- 3.91 3.67 3.73 did that just blow your mind? soriano has taken more pitches than theriot 2 out of the last 3 seasons and even in theriot's never-going-to-happen-again career year, he was just barely ahead of soriano. anyways, why is it more important for the leadoff guy to make the pitcher work more than any other hitter? after the first inning the leadoff guy leads off an inning no more often than any other position in the lineup. the "give the other hitters a better read on the pitcher" argument is really weak too, since after the first couple batters they'll have already done that. if getting to know the pitcher a few pitches earlier in the first inning seriously going to make a difference? right no, it's crystal clear to the people you choose to listen to...the same people who are stuck in earlier decades and haven't adjusted to how baseball is viewed and played today. the truth s that all the stuff you're talking about is old convential baseball wisdom that really is a bunch of trash. thios has been demonsrated and even proven over and over again, you just choose not to listen. you just can't fathom the idea that "leadoff hitter!" ISN'T REALLY A BIG DEAL. lineup construction is not that important. you just keep chirping about how these old school hard headed guys tell you it's true so we have to believe it. you need to think for yourself and start looking at things logically, because you're coming across as a 70 year old man who refuses to adjust and open his mind. this is evident by the way you keep ignoring everybody who explains to you how you're wrong. it's like you're afraid of the truth or something. we just led the effing league in runs despite soriano leading off, and you STILL can't except the fact that you're wrong. that literally proves your theory wrong, yet you completely ignore it because you're so stubborn. i'm all for getting on-base guys in front of your best hitters, but to make sucha big deal about a guy who leads off the first inning of a 9 inning game is completely ridiculous. there are 9 guys in a lineup who are equally important and you think the positioning of a single specific one of those guys is going to make some huge difference. it's dumb. oh, but some scouts and baseball people agree with you, so it's true. forget all the other people who agree that it's irrelevant. they don't know what they're talking about.... even if they do have proof. it's obviously doctored. also, when you keep bringing up soriano-related stuff that's irrelevant to this conversation like his late inning defense and coddling, it makes it obvious that you just hate soriano and you're going to say whatever you havew to say to make him look bad. i'm not a soriano fan at all but it's obvious you're really biased and it makes your arguments look even weaker. we're talking about the value of a leadoff hitter and you're rambling about soriano being coddled and other nonsense. give it up. it's an unhealthy obsession oh, and i'm still waiting for an explanation as to how we led the league in runs last year despite our "lack of a leadoff hitter". please explain that before you even try to say anything else. i'm not even going to read anymore of your cliche urban legend garbage until you explain that to me, and i mean explain that to me without the "they feasted on weak pitching" argument, which we've already established isn't true. first in the NL in runs scored with soriano leading off.

It's pretty disingenuous to say 9 games in a row, the only hitter from 2003 on either of the 2007 or 2008 teams is Ramirez. And yes, I'd say that it's entirely possible to have 6 poor offensive games in a row, especially when you face good pitching. I don't think speed and athleticism is really the missing piece here, considering the Cubs have good speed and good athletes for the position around most of the diamond(Soto, Fontenot, and Ramirez are the exceptions that come to mind). Plus, the Rockies and Phillies aren't exactly loaded with speed and athletes all around the diamond, and the Rockies should be the textbook example that yes, it is possible to get flukishly hot or cold for a couple series at a time. If you want to say that a big left handed bat would make a nice difference in the playoffs as most (good) pitchers are right handed and the good ones can get our RH heavy lineup out, that's not a terrible argument(I'd also buy that failing to get out to a good start with the expectations of the home crowd in a short series is another factor). However, that's much easier said than done and comes with tradeoffs of health(Bradley) and/or defense(Dunn, Abreu). And most importantly, it's not indicative of some wildly flawed approach at building an offense. For years we've had crummy offenses, and now that we have a very good one we shouldn't go about making wholesale philosophical changes because we didn't do well in two playoff series. Related to the point, where's the call for a different philosophical approach to building the rotation and pen? The Cubs have only averaged 2 runs per game the last 6 playoff games, but they're also giving up 6 runs per game over that timeframe. Good point! Why aren't we cornering the market on "Big Game" pitchers and not these regular season studs? Our focus should be on Oliver Perez or Livan Hernandez! jeff weaver and david eckstein should be priorities