neely crenshaw

here's the thing...we are awful not just bad. jones is here for 2 more years- period. why not just sit him down and play pie. we know what jones brings...let's see if pie has anything. decide if you want to resign pierre, which since we didn't deal him for anything, we must want him. if we want him we need to play him or he walks. the only bad thing is we lose our prospects for a year of work. play a combo of izturis,cedeno and theriot. neifi is signed for another season..no on wanted him last year for 2.5 mil. so no one will want him this year for 2.5mil. he is our utility guy for next year. we know what he has, so let him sit on the bench the rest of this season...if he gets pissed were is he going to go? it does not make sense to keep all 3 if they prove ready. if we want to deal one(which we should) to get the most value we can not tip our hand. not play one of them. play murton and pagan as much as possible...put one at first if necessary. the defense can not be much worse. i like nevin and we pay him 0 but we should see youngsters. dlee is the futurs at first so, i would just as soon see outfielders play there knowing come spring training there is no spot there for anyone. we are piching our kids simply because we must but i certainly would give hendry a little more leeway if he went young. right now this mess because of him. every problem we have is due to a poor move by him. the more i see his team on the field, the less i forgive him. to me his best bet is to go young and maybe we forget that he brought on a outfield of pierre,murton and jones, and an infield of izturis,cedeno and nevin with neifi as a back up. he is also the guy who told us we didn't need any starting pitching, we were fine.....good call jim

and if you looking for groundbreaking analysis from the home teams commentators, you are loking up the wrong tree. they are homers, they are pr guys and the are very vanilla. at least ron gets pissed when we stink. harry caray is in the hall of fame and there were times with him that you would have no idea a game was actually being played....

another problem with this thought of dogging it is that he pitches terrible it lessens the chance of anyone wanting him, while if he threw great it would greatly appeciate the chance he gets dealt. the cubs weren't contending if he were 15-0. if he truly wanted to be dealt there would be no reason to tank. two facts of maddux' 2nd career with the cubs. 1. he threw better after the all star break every year. 2. he pitched for a pretty bad team and really did not get a win his entire tenure were he did not throw very well. i doubt that there is more than 1-2 wins of his that the offense bailed him out. if he was bad, he was really bad...if he was good the cubs usually won or were in the game. i always thought that if he went to a pitcher friendly park like san diego, seattle or la he would be a bonus to that team. if he pitches like this the rest of the year, i will be very happy for him and even as probably his biggest fan, i will say we still needed to deal him. both for his sakes and for thefactthat the kids need to throw, and it simply would not be right to put greg maddux in the bullpen . i have to say that as of today, maddux seems to be the best deadline pickup so far.

i would say that perhaps the greatest lead off hitter of our generation, rickey henderson, had a juan pierre like arm. and he was also a butcher in the outfield. he just brought a little more to the table. you can see right now that when our pitchers throw well we play well. we do not have the type offense that can save pitchers from bad outings. the problem is that most of the year we play in a park that is not very pitcher friendly. our pitchers can throw well and still give up hr's when the wind is terrible. look at how maddux throws at chavez ravine! exactly how he threw in april when the wind blew in....coincidence? we need better starters but we simply have to have some pop in the lineup. we can not have a limeup that hits fewer than 45hrs in the of. i think the decision that must be made is do we try to win immediately or do we go young and try to win in a few years. we are a very long way from contending right now

leave him there...if you are looking for all your baseball info from a game broadcast you need to get in 21st century. ron is especially great whne the cubs blow...gives you something to laugh about when there isn't much to lasugh about. i love the fact that he gets really pissed when the cubs suck or someone plays terrible...he is about the only one in the cubs organization that does.

everyone that pitches for any length of time gets tendonitis. it usually does not diminsh your velocity long term. perhaps a start or two. prior has something wrong with him and once again the cubs are not being honest about it. perhaps it's the same tear that he supposedly didn't have in the spring. the problem with arm injuries that unless you have a measurable problem like a torn cuff there is absolutely no way to know how bad it is. we will never know if prior is soft for not pitching more or really tough for pitching as much as he has. i hope it works out. i really like him but just as i said with wood if they can deal him for anything and not pay any of his salary, they need to do it. as long as they spend the money (and wood-maddux') on pitchers to take their place. if we are going to go you, then why not see what happens with him. we won't win for years with that movement so ride it out.

moves working out to not make them correct, just as moves that fail do not make them wrong. if you leave in a lefty who is hitting.100 off lefties to hit off a lefty pitcher they still have a 1 in 10 chance of getting a hit.... it might work but it's still stupid.

Thats not possible to know given we aren't 100% sure who's starting tomorrow or whether Prior is going to make his next start. I realize we can't be 100%, I was just curious as to the projections considering I will be there. I am going to be there anyway, I was just curious if Fred had a spreadsheet on that as well. well i think i have got it narrowed down for those 3 days...depending on prior and his status, my guess is either z, marmol,guzman, prior or hill with mateo and marshall as outside possibilities- does that help? sorry my dry sense of humor plays better at the end of a 7-1 loss than here....

listen it's not about a 4 man or 5 man rotation. it's about skipping a start and staying with the normal 5day rotation. at this point it is stupid on many levels...namely z has thrown a ton, he has had a couple of bad outings and we are going nowhere, his last 2 outings probably drop him out of cy young status. we have many young guys who should get as many starts as they can. why skip one of them? we have nothing to gain and a lot to lose. so now our brilliant leaders have: not given a much needed rest to the one last remaining stud we have, despite the fact that we have blown out 2 such studs. we have skipped a start of a young kid that we need to evaluate and season for th near future... this is stupid along the lines of playing hollandsworth everyday when sammy went down instead of dubois, when you had a very,very good idea that he would get a shot at left with alou leaving....sure would have been nice to know that dubois was a bust in the winter when we could have signed someone instead of in may...der,der,der

Check the edit it didn't come out as written...it left out the spaces!

what's jerome walton doing these days? he has got to something left in the tank! seriously, wouldn't you be much more happy if next year we just let everyone we can go and played murton,cedeno,pie,theriot...and all the young pitchers. how much different would are record be from this year? i mean right now our 1,2,3 hitters usually are pierre, izturis and barrett! can pie,cedeno(or murton, or barrett or theriot),lee be worse? judge these: pierre .. PIE izturis .. THERIOT barrett .. DLEE aram ..VS. ARAM jones .. BARRETT nevin .. JONES murton .. MURTON cedeno .. CEDENO p .. P

why bad mouth walker? he played hard. he gave us exactly what he was expected. he hit pretty well, he got on base, he had some pop, he told it like it was, he did not run well and he was suspect on d... if you do not like him or that he played blame the guy that brought him in..because that is exactly what he has always done, it should not have been a surprise to anyone.

Why Blanco? He's a backup catcher. A good defensive one at that. What were you looking for? What is wrong with giving someone like Restovich a shot? The Cubs have never really given him that shot, but he was a cheap pick up and worthy of a look, imo. there is nothing wrong with any of them but when they are constantly the biggest moves made and we pay many an unslightly amount of money it is poor...and whether you like the guy or not when you cruise the scrap heap signing guys that is dumpster diving... just a quick example while we were dumpster diving for neifi, and womack..and paying an absurd amount for nefster, the sox scooped a rather useful alex cintron for next to nothing.. many teams seem to like to fill these spots with young players..perhaps theriot could have played more of nefster and womack's innings at a fraction of the cost... we gave away corey patterson...so that we could grab bynum? why? if corey's done then let him be a bench player...obviously he wasn't done which adds to the frustration. it would have been one thing if we traded for some value but we got a class A player...

HR's in the first 3 innings matter just as much as HR's in the last 3. What matters more is the situation they were hit in. Is a solo shot in the 1st to give a 1-0 lead worth relatively less than a Grand Slam in the 9th when you're losing 15-2? seriously, how many games have we been in after the 6th inning?

let's see...he is hitting 88 on the gun, he used to 93-94 for the whole game. this has been happening for a while. his pitch counts are astronomical because he has no command...that's been going on since last june. i haven't done the research yet but i know his era is over 5.00 since last june...this is a large sample size and he shows absolutely no signs of anything changing! much like i said with wood last offfseason..we need to find someone to take him at cost for anything...a dozen balls.and indy player...assistant trainer..anything- cut our losses and use the 5-6 mil to add to the savings from wood/maddux and sign at least 2 starters! i like prior..i hope he does great BUT if we want to win next year we can not sit back and hope he becomes prior again. if we wait to find out if he won't , no one will ever take him unless we pay his salary, which does us no good.

i like todd walker. however he does seem to get sent packing quite a bit from his many teams despite solid numbers... also you can not forget the likes of macias, hollandsworth, simon, blanco, restovich,grimm, womack,mabry,bynum, miller,gerrult....

i'm sorry i might have missed something this year..when did the cubs have any meaningful times?

If we sign a good pitcher this offseason, does this Mark deserve a rotation spot? i have been saying this for most of the year. mark has been a rather average(actually below average) pitcher since june of last year. he has shown no signs of getting anything back. right now, other than his name, he is not as good as any of the young pitchers. my hope is he shows some signs of life and then we must deal him! can you believe that hendry tried to get bedard and tejada for him? truly if he ruin that deal by not taking tejada straight up...he should be fired immediately. right now i would have been happy with bedard straight up... just think we couldn't even get hairston back for prior right now!

geez, we have spent 3 seasons complaining that we need a lead off guy, we destryoed a players cubs career because of making him hit lead off, we finally get one and he does pretty well and now we want try to make pagan or pie a centerfielder and possible lead off guy..or worse have izturis, with his .280 obp. hit lead off...not very smart. we either sign pierre or look for a 2b that has proven he can hit lead off. if pie is too come up then murton or cedeno has to go (or izturis) that doesn't make sense to me. we should leave pagan in a semi platoon with murton..it has certainly worked. our problem is we are stuck with jones for 2 more years. he has played well but he blocks pie from coming up..unless we drop murton, move cedeno back to short(and drop izturis) or drop cedeno and grab a lead off guy. sorry guys but the all mighty hendry has put us in a corner. i think our starting line up will be.. pierre cf izturis ss lee 1b aram 3b barrett c jones rf murton lf cedeno 2b p the easiest fix is to sign two starting pitchers and have this pretty good defensive team play behind them. we will score a little better with lee there. unless we eat a lot of contracts or move our kids that actually are coming around, we don't have much room to move. we also don't have a good enough lineup to depend on a bunch of kids in the rotation or a bunch of injury plagued bums either.

oh my god! let me get this straight...a professional athlete, who happens to be a millionaire, had an extra marital affair...say it isn't so! so a guy who is seperated and basically waiting for divorce papers, meets a hot, legally aged 18 year old and has a fling....and the problem is... of course as a father my first thoughts were at least now he knows someone to call to babysit the 21 month old...

this probably only happened because 80% of the people did not even realize they were at a cubs game. i'm sure most thought they were at a tavern with an outdoor beer garden and mindlessly followed the status quo....

he would look pretty good in cubby blue, hitting 2nd!

we can not finish third. we are more likely to finsh last. this reminds of the .500 by such and such date threads. we are a very bad team with very young pitchers. there are no pieces to shift around, this jim that you speak has built a 95 million dollar crap can...how can you even hope that he has any idea of what to shift around? have you noticed that florida with all our young pitchers is 4 games out? while we spent big money to compete this year and we are 20 games under

let's do it this way for arguments sake(that's all we left this season, anyway) bay >jones..yes burnitz>murton..probably bautista>pierre..probably .264 with 355obp vs .280 and 325obp sanchez>aram...close but not quite yet wilson>izturis..yep castillo>cedeno..yep add in that neifi plays too much also nady>nevin/mabry.. i really like phil but he ain't what he useto be barrett..yes zambrano..yes bullpen yes the rest of the starters are a hard call because we make them look sooo good against us, and that's the only time i see them i guess the sad part is that we can even make the argument that we are worse than pittsburgh....if they hadn't just given away casey and wilson then 1st and center would be shoo-ins for them. and even sadder is that the man who built this debacle is the guy we have to believe will fix it! yikes

He is neither the worst pitcher on the staff (Rusch), nor has he been since last June. Prior in the second half of 2005 was better than any other Cubs pitchers since that time, aside from Zambrano. i meant starters(yes, i have to say that rusch is the worst) and prior had a 5+ era from june on. he also threw too many pitches and usually stressed the bullpen becuase he had to come out too early because of high pitch counts his record since then is something like 6-10. right now, with very few signs of anything changing, i have to say that marmol,guzman,and marshall all have more upside than prior. i can't quite go there on hill or mateo yet but we have to seriously consider that this is what prior will always be... also there is a good chance that sanchez(nl's leading hitter) is actually better than aram too.