champaignchris

Considering Harden - three years younger, actually pitched last year, more of an upside when healthy - only got one year and $7.5m, I have a hard time seeing Sheets getting anywhere close to two years and $6m from anyone. For that kind of money, the Cubs could have just offered Harden arbitration.

The other thing that bothers me about steroids and the Hall of Fame is that the gate-keepers acting as morality police indignant at the usage of steroids are the same people that completely dropped the ball on the steroid problem in the first place... the baseball reporters. If steroids were so damning, why weren't these guys paying more attention back in the 90's? The one guy who said anything back in 1998 - Steve Wilstein - was basically told to "shut up" by the rest of the press. Instead of doing their jobs - investigative reporting - the sports media bought the whole dog and pony show hook, line, and sinker. Now, a significant number of these people who didn't do their jobs back then want to retroactively vilify the guys they let get away with cheating.

I distinctly remember a high school football teammate of mine in 1990 being traumatized because some other student accused him of doing steroids. I recall another football teammate and I doing a presentation on steroids in Speech class as sophomores in about 1988. If high school athletes in small-town Illinois knew about steroids in the late 80's/early 90's, you can sure bet that professional athletes and professional team knew about steroids then as well. If I recall, the first major news stories involving steroids in American team sports (there'd been jokes about the East German "women's" swim team for years) was when Lyle Alzado admitted using shortly before dying of cancer in the early 90's. In the famous Sports Illustrated article, he admitted using steroids as early as 1969. It's widely accepted now that the Steelers teams of the 70's had rampant usage, and there's no real reason to think that it was confined solely to that one franchise. Mark Gastineau was another prominent admitted user from about the same era as Alzado. It was widely and quite vocally suspected at the time (now confirmed) that Tony Mandarich was juicing in college; in fact, one of the things Mandarich attributes to his failure in the NFL to was that he stopped doing steroids due to the drug testing and started taking pain killers to help him through once he got to the NFL. One of the big reasons why the NFL gets a lot more of a pass in the media than MLB on steroids is that the NFL instituted a testing policy for roids in 1989. Baseball didn't institute their policy until 2004. That's 15 years later, if you're counting. We can argue the effectiveness of the individual policies, but you can't deny the NFL at least started paying lip service to the problem way, way, way before baseball even admitted it had a problem. Baseball, after all, didn't even do the anonymous test to determine the extent of steroid usage until the infamous 2003 test.

Larry Walker is a guy who people should look closely at his numbers. He had some real, real good seasons with the bat and was a great fielder. The Colorado factor may work against him. I think it did against Andres Galarraga. I didn't think Galarraga would ever sniff the Hall, but I thought he'd at least get 5% and hang around for a year or two. Walker put up a very similar career to Duke Snyder. Palmeiro would be a shoe-in first ballot, no questions asked without the roids. If you think Frank Thomas is a HoFer, you should think Bagwell is too. Basically the same rate stats, but Bagwell played his entire career as a fielder (a decent one, too) and didn't get to prolong his career as a DH and get the same accumulation stats. I don't see Brown getting much support. He's sort of like Curt Schilling without the reputation for post-season heroics.

Yeah, after reading that article, I'll be rooting for Veal. I can't imagine going through all that at 25 years old. Despite Cedeno's problems, he'd still have been better for us than Miles last year. In fact, the whole sequence of trading Wuertz for nothing, effectively trading Cedeno and Pie for an older, worse, more expensive version of Wuertz (Heilman), and then signing older, worse, more expensive versions of Cedeno and Pie (Miles and Gaithwright) continues to leave me scratching my head. The DeRosa trade and the Bradley signing I can wrap my head around. This other thing... not so much.

Assuming Byrd posts something close to his career averages, he should be a bit better offensively than Bradley was last year, but not radically so. Looking at his defensive numbers (I know, I know...) he appears to be a competent CF, about on the level of Kosuke. This allows Kosuke to go back to right, where he's a very good right fielder. I think we're going into the season hoping that the offense will improve based on the belief that Soriano, Soto, and the 2B black-hole could not possibly be able to have worse years than last year and the belief that Ramirez won't miss half the season again. Bradley wasn't the reason the offense was awful last year, and Byrd won't be the reason the offense succeeds or fails this season. The outfield should be a bit better defensively, though, and team chemistry blah-blah nicey-nice kissy-face whatever.

Unless nobody else could afford to trade for an expensive pitcher in 2010. then they should have just kept him. did they HAVE to dump salary this offseason? either way, i find it hard to believe nobody else was willing to take on that 13 mil for vazquez. The only explanation I can come up with is Atlanta's owner is broke, and the Yanks are the only team that can afford that contract. I've got nothing else. Well, considering his age and career numbers, there's a pretty strong chance he'll have a significantly worse year this year than last. That said, I'd hardly call this "selling high."

Considering that Zambrano is 5 years younger, under contract for four (?) more years, and has put up much better numbers over the course of his career, I'd say so. Although, in reality, the Yankees probably had a basic package they were willing to give up and were looking for the best pitcher they could get for it. Zambrano was closer to the top of their shopping list than Vazquez was. When the Cubs' price was (justifiably) out of their range, they moved down the list.

there is just about a zero percent chance that carlos silva would strike out 6 men per 9 innings. as for the other numbers, he'd have to be better than he's been in at least 4 years, so good luck with that. he's probably going to be awful because he always had mediocre stuff and now has started getting hurt and fat. it will be surprising if he can even perform as a league-average 5th starter, so if that's not going to happen, the best thing will be for him to be horrendous in spring training and get released. Over the last couple years to get a 1.3 WHIP, he would have had to walk negative people. That's awesome!!!

He's telling us we're idiots for being Cubs fans.

The dude's hits/innings pitched over the last two years is 1.38. Not his WHIP, his HIP!!! That's so bad, it's laughable. Dude doesn't miss too many bats. Chronic phantom spring training injury, anyone? Sprained earlobe? Or does anyone expect this guy to actually step onto the mound for the Cubs next year?

Maddux was a better pitcher than Ruth was, so that should go out the window. :D

Possible "new endeavors": Touring with his band Writing about the Red Sox Talking about the Red Sox Watching the Red Sox Writing about his band Starting a blog about the Red Sox Working for the Red Sox Writing about the Red Sox You forgot writing songs for his band about the Red Sox. :D Seriously though, I've always respected Gammons. He might just get me to watch MLB network at some point.

I'll pitch for the Cubs for 1/10th of what they'd pay Looper. I'm probably a better pitcher for the money, too.

We all know that Torre and Larussa are eventually going to the HoF as managers. That means, except for interim coaches, the Cardinals have only had three managers since 1981 and all of them have been HoFers. Since 1981, again not counting interim managers, the Cubs have had 11. Piniella might be a HoFer. Everyone else... not so much. Of the 10 managers before Piniella, only Riggleman and Baker got another non-interim head coaching job.

We trade Fox for a four year younger version of himself. We dump Miles and only have to pay $1 million of the $2.7 he's owed. We get what appears to be a relatively decent relief pitcher and a 21 year old pitching prospect for our effort. What's not to like?

Roberto Alomar Bert Blyleven Andre Dawson Barry Larkin Mark McGwire Tim Raines Alan Trammell Those would be my votes. Larkin and Trammell are borderline for me. Someone would have to explain to me why they'd vote for one, but not the other. If you put Dawson in a Red Sox or Yankees uniform for any significant amount of time, he's not only a first ballot Hall of Famer, he'd be talked of as one of the great legends of the game. Despite playing his best seasons in Montreal, Rookie of the Year, MVP, runner up twice, another top 10 finish, 8 all-stars, 8 GG's. 438 pre-steroid home runs. A reputation for being, not only a great competitor and team mate, but also an all-around nice guy... The list of eligible players with more hits than Andre Dawson who are not in the HoF are as follows: Harold Baines. Of course Dawson was, in addition to being a comparable offensive player to Baines, a very good base-stealer and an elite outfielder, two things that Baines was definitely not. If someone wanted to argue with me that Morris should be in, I could probably be convinced. As much of a homer as I am for him, I just can't quite pull the trigger on Lee Smith. Compare his numbers to Hoffman, Rivera, or Wagner, and he just doesn't measure up.

Cubs Nation, if you want to be reminded of how utterly insane the 2004 season was. That season had to have actually happened because no one would actually dream it up. I've had Lords of the Realm recommended to me, but I haven't read it yet.

At this point, I'd rather Ricketts take the seven figures it would take to buy out Hendry and/or Piniella and put that into the roster. The realities of the Cubs' contract situation is that it would be difficult to impossible to blow up the roster and start over even if that's what the owner wanted. Ricketts seems to have made it pretty clear that he thinks the Cubs can win next year and that Hendry's job is on the line. Not sure what anyone can expect beyond that. I'm also not sure why anyone thinks Crane's job is safe. I doubt he makes it to opening day. As soon as the Ricketts get their offices in place and running, he pretty much becomes superfluous. Not that it should have any bearing on the on-the-field product.

That's certainly the gist that I took from it.

Nice video. They look happy and excited, can't keep from smiling, just like any of us would look if we'd just managed to buy our favorite team. I loved this quote, "For us, hope is just not a strategy anymore." Said winning a championship was the #1 priority and the Red Sox was a good franchise model. I think if you read between the lines, they have some pretty big plans for Wrigley. Sounds like Lou will be back as manager if Lou wants to be back as manager.

If you'd have given me 20 guesses, I don't think I'd have come up with this one.

I got the same score.

I liked Steve Buechele, too. He couldn't hit a lick, but was a pretty slick fielder.

I got 141/180. Guys I'm surprised I missed: Steve Buechele Brian McRae Jeff Blauser Eric Young Mark Bellhorn Jeromy Burnitz Juan Pierre Guys I still don't remember: Scott Bullett