champaignchris

I think he played through a wrist injury in ‘16 that he probably shouldn’t have, and never really got his swing back.

With the postponement of the Yankees-Red Sox game due to weather, Cubs-Brewers will be the first baseball game of the new season.

Sure, but he shouldn’t even be sniffing the rotation on a large market team. ZiPS sees basically no difference between Steele's expected production and guys like Tony Gonsolin, Nestor Cortes, and Taijuan Walker, all of whom have rotation spots on Top 3 payrolls at the moment. I'm not particularly bullish on Steele and the back of the rotation is one of the weakest spots on the roster, but is it too much to ask to avoid the misleading histrionics? He's the 6th starter on paper and the worst case scenario is he quickly gets dropped for a different placeholder until Miley and Alzolay are back. Other than the Dodgers, are any MLB teams going to have something other than a Steele equivalent starting when their 3rd (Miley) and 4th (Alzolay) starters are hurt? I mean, they might have more potential as a prospect, but in terms of ability right now, if they were much better than Steele, they wouldn't be the 6th guy in the rotation.

I’m not as up on the analytics as many here, but the Hendricks pessimism seems like a lot of recency bias to me. He was trucking along having a very typical Kyle Hendricks year through Aug 11 - 13-4 with 3.65 ERA - and then was putrid over his last 9 starts of the year. How heavy should those last 9 starts weigh in predicting what Hendricks does going forward? I can’t answer that question. I can say that the predictive analytics have never liked Hendricks. So I take them with a bigger grain of salt than I do most any other player.

horsefeathering Dodgers press all the right buttons all the time. Great trade for both teams. Agree. But I like it more for the Sox than Dodgers. Put aside that position players are better than relievers, I think it’s more likely they get about 120 good games from Pollock than the Dodgers get about 65 good innings from Kimbrel. Besides, anything that gets Eloy out of left field is good for Eloy, the Sox, the fans in left field who might be in the way, the structure of the ballpark, and any other bystanders or witnesses to Eloy’s attempts to field.

Is there any chance - despite their public remarks to the contrary - that the new Bears brass aren't sold on* Fields and are positioning themselves to get their chosen QB of the future in the 2023 draft? Because if that were the case, they'd be behaving exactly as they have thus far. * And by "aren't sold on" Fields, I mean don't believe that he's good enough to be able to take advantage of the best team they'd be able to surround him with over the course of his rookie contract.

Is Conforto gong to do the Kimbrel thing and wait to sign until the QO penalty expires?

In the last 38 years, Arizona has made the Tourney 33 times and Illinois has made it 24. If seeding is completely random, they’re going to be in the same quadrant 1 out of every 4 years.

Right. There’s no particular reason why the Cubs couldn’t have signed a couple more players like maybe Canha and Synergaard, still have a payroll in the $170s, while not materially affecting their future ability to rebuild. Instead, they’re going to lose a winnable division by 7 games while carrying a league average payroll $100 million below the luxury tax threshold.

Charlie Moore on Miami is the same JCL has one more year because he had a medical redshirt while at DePaul. He was a big time recruit at Illinois. The first player signed out of Indiana in ages and something of a palate cleanser after the whole Eric Gordon fiasco. It was really disappointing when he transferred out, but not a huge surprise because of the coaching change. These things happen. Moore was the same class as Mark Smith who just finished season 6 at Kansas State. I don’t remember the timing, but Moore was also an Illinois recruit that didn’t sign with Illinois, which left a roster spot for Smith. Smith played one unremarkable year at Illinois and then was one of at least three former Illini signees to go play at Missouri after Cuonzo Martin got hired there. Martin just got fired at Mizzou while Underwood has about as much job security as a college coach can ever expect.

Curbelo was supposed to be an All Big 10 level point guard this season. A complete lost season for him. In the 2 Tourney games, he played 40 minutes, shot 1 for 11 and turned the ball over 8 times. Nothing to do but get healthy and regroup for next year.

I hope you’re right, but this feels more like stockpiling trade deadline fodder to me. It seems to me to be what you do when you are trying to mask a weak overall roster and try and make them a .500 team that stays in the race. If I’m reading the new draft order rules correctly, the team with the best record that misses the playoffs is guaranteed the 7th pick of the draft at worst, with a chance for better in the lottery. So gunning for 80 wins isn’t the worst rebuilding strategy. When Epstein was hired he said (paraphrasing), “Baseball gives you nothing for winning 75 games instead of 65 games.” It doesn’t look like the Cubs front office believes that anymore.

Chavez is in there, too.

As it currently stands, the Cubs have the 17th highest payroll in MLB. They’d never been below 15th in opening day payroll (2001) for as far back as I looked (2000). Without taking inflation into account, this would be the lowest opening day payroll since 2014. Taking inflation into account, this would be the lowest opening day payroll since 2003. The Ricketts bought the team for just shy of $850 million in 2009 and most sources now value the franchise at about $4 billion, the 4th most valuable franchise in MLB. Not saying anything anyone here doesn’t already know. Just venting.

They’re just not consistent enough to string together four wins against good teams. Unfortunately, I don’t see them getting to the second weekend. As fantastic as Underwood has been in turning this program around, he’s eventually going to have to go on a tournament run. He’s 0-5 in getting to the second weekend of the tournament for his career. If he doesn’t alter that trajectory, discontent is going to start creeping in. Do you really think it’s instructive to hold his time at Stephen F Austin against him not having a sweet 16? His tourney performance 2nd round as a 12 1st round as 12 2nd round as 14 1st round as 10 2nd round as 1 It’s literally last years flameout you can hold against him Not holding anything against him. Just saying that if they fail to make it to the 2nd weekend this year, and then next year is a step back, people will start a narrative about how Underwood hasn’t had any success in the Tournament. It won’t be fair, but it will happen because college sports fans and college sports media are stupid and insane.

They’re just not consistent enough to string together four wins against good teams. Unfortunately, I don’t see them getting to the second weekend. As fantastic as Underwood has been in turning this program around, he’s eventually going to have to go on a tournament run. He’s 0-5 in getting to the second weekend of the tournament for his career. If he doesn’t alter that trajectory, discontent is going to start creeping in.

Ugh. Just cannot catch a break. Looking forward to next year… Frazier, Williams and Plummer are the only guys out of eligibility. Grandison and Hutcherson both have their COVID year left. I’d assume Grandison will be back if he wants to be. Hutcherson has played a grand total of 4 games in the last three seasons, and I’d assume his basketball career is over. I hope he proves me wrong. Kofi actually has two years of eligibility left - his senior year and COVID year. The consensus opinion is that he’s gone after this year. But given the lack of draft buzz for him, I’d never say never. I doubt anyone relevant transfers, but there could always be a surprise. Miller last year and Griffin the year before were both guys that the coaching staff wanted back. They’re bringing in Dainja, a big man transfer from Baylor who was highly recruited out of high school and three freshman for a nice top-25-ish recruiting class. A late transfer in is never out of the question in this day and age - see Plummer. Assuming Kofi isn’t back, you probably have Curbelo starting at point, with Pods backing him up, Goode at the 2, Melendez and Grandison splitting time at the 3, Hawkins as a stretch 4 or small-ball 5, and Dainja and Payne splitting time at the 5. Verdonk provides front court depth and the freshmen are your backcourt backups. That’s an inexperienced, really athletic team that will get up and down the court quickly. They’ll likely play much more like Underwood’s S.F. Austin teams. They’ll probably be very fun to watch but not very good unless Hawkins, Melendez and Curbelo all make quantum leaps in their play. (Which could totally happen.) If Kofi comes back, the calculation would completely change, and they’d be a pre-season top 10.

With the new NIL rules and Kofi still not showing up high on the draft boards, it might make financial sense for him to come back to Illinois for his senior year. But with the officiating the way it is, I don’t see that making any sense from a basketball perspective. “Come back to school and get beat on by three guys every time you touch the ball.” It’s just not basketball. You’d think that would be something the Big 10 would want to address in terms of keeping big names in the League. And side note, as a child of the 70s, it’s so weird to me that so many NBA scouts seem to think there’s no place in the League for a guy with Kofi’s size and athleticism. 30 years ago he would have been a top 5 pick. I know, the game’s changed, etc. It’s still weird.

I think that’s AD Whitman’s area, and I am absolutely sure he’s doing everything he can to advocate for his program. Check out this thread: Kofi has only fouled out 3 times in his career. Brian Dorsey was the official for all three of those games. He called 9 of the 15 fouls Kofi incurred in those games and 11 of the 19 fouls Kofi’s incurred in the 5 games he’s officiated Kofi overall.

This has been a frustrating season for me as an Illini fan. All the injuries and lost games, it just seems like they can’t quite get all the pieces together. Not to mention the incredibly inconsistent officiating on Kofi. (More so what opponents are allowed to do to him than what the officials allow Kofi to do.) Despite what looks like a 2nd place finish in the Big 10, a likely #3-ish seed, and all the metrics pointing to this being a top 15 team in the county, I can’t help but feeling this team inconsistency is going to limit them from going on a nice NCAA run. Go on one of those 10-minute lulls they always seem to go through and they won’t make it out of the round of 32 again.

Illinois’ loss to them keeps looking worse. Every team team that beats Illinois doesn’t immediately go into a slide after their win. It just seems that way.

My barber has daughters at Murray St. She says Morant is still very active at the school, including occasionally taking a bus full of kids down to Grizzlies games. He is, of course, absolutely revered there.

It's been like 3 different coaches, completely different teams, but like clockwork they lose all February long which always include a couple blown 2nd half leads, a Wisconsin loss, and somehow always a loss to a bad Northwestern, Rutgers or Nebraska team. Rutgers is a good squad and honestly I'm pretty nervous with them facing Illinois. No argument on the other two, but Northwestern does seem to at least keep it close the majority of the time. Pikiell doesn’t get enough credit for the job he’s done at Rutgers.

The notion that companies formed to play baseball would make more money not playing baseball is completely ludicrous.

Bears owners are incompetent. But I don’t think they’re slime and I don’t question their desire to win. (Just their ability.) I’d be shocked if something came out about them like this.