neely crenshaw

i still like the hawkins signings. remingler at the time was good also...the problem is hendry made a nice signing for set up men but left the team no choice but to use them out of that role because he never-EVER addressed closer. he(hendry) set up hawkins to fail. he was the only one to even do that role and who else was baker going to use? it would make no sense to keep the set up men in their role to turn the 9th over to someone who couldn't get the job done. hawkins was the best candidate(and only) simply because hendry did not do his job!

yes, dubois was our top prospect heading into this season. i believe hendry said "someone has to win rookie of the year, why not dubois?"...hendry did not sign anyone because dubois was going to replace our departed corners. who could have forseen wood's injury? i don't know anyone who saw him just come back from one arm injury? this isn't a new dilema? remember 1999? we took a chance on nomar anyone see that coming- here is a list of ss's that changed teams...tejada,arod,renteria,cabbrera,eckstein... we took a chance on barrett over pudge closers? the phils got wagner for freakin' brandon duckworth! could we have topped that? we passed on dotel,benetiz-twice, mesa, kolb,percival,urbina,foulke, and banked on jobo coming off an injury, fox coming off an injury,williamson coming off an injury and hawkins coming off being hawkins...yea, it's a bad year for closers but PLEASE do not tell me hendry knew that everyone would get hurt! except for percival-who leg and hip problems- none of them had been hurt, or had any history of being hurt.

not even close to reality. he got a starter and cash for the guy who was our hottest prospect starting the season DUBOIS///remember we traded dubois for gerut! hendry screwed this team up by not getting help the last 2 years. he has mortgaged our last 2 seasons on hope that prepetually injured players get healthy and return to form. he has not signed one sure fire fix in his tenure. we were dangerously close to being the best team in the nl after 2003 and now? we are barely in the top 10....yeah kudos to jim =we got lawton but for me it is much too little much too late!

since we basically gave up dubois for lawton..i am guessing he is coming here to play everyday. my guess is left field with hairston and burnitz. there is no way we can make the playoffs with burnitz in center. he is an average corner outfielder!

let me get this right. the reds are a team that have one of the best offenses and one of the worst staffs. they have 4 major league quality outfielders but they trade their 3rd baseman and are to keep all the outfielders. they also are to keep there high priced flyball pitcher in a bandbox.... i'm know rocket scientist but seems to me you trade an outfielder for pitching, trade your spare infielder(auriila) for anything and beg someone to take milton and his contract so you can start over this offseason. it seems to me that they would not be far off if they dumped griffey and milton's salary and signed about 4(or more) pitchers for the 30 mil they pay those 2!

my feeling is that we won't make the playoffs. we would be far better off making a deal with next year in mind rather than helping this year.we should stick with hill and williams in the rotation and have a half year try out. we would then have a very good idea about them for next season. same for murton and even hairston. i think we would know exactly what we needed to have for next season if we just play/pitch them. we hsould have done that last year with dubois when sosa was out instead iof having macias play everyday. we certainly would have had a better idea on dubois for this season...then we might have signed someone to play left. right now it seems to be a sellers market and the players available simply aren't good enough to empty the farm system over. soriano would be nice but is he really an answer in the outfield? if not he then takes over 2nd from walker which would be an upgrade but at one of your stronger positions, that doesn't make sense on a team with so many holes.

this team has dug a hole that they have little time to come out of. the margin for error is very slight. we need help or we will continue to drop well pitched games because of offense. we are 12-6 in our last 18 but should have won 4-5 of those losses! we have talked about what the record needs to be in the 2nd half to get to 90 wins and waiting for nomar's bat to click might be to late!

there is no way hendry wanted dempster as closer. he was banking on jobo. if dempster was his guy he would have gotten the shot from the begiining. we had hundreds of options to replavce a starter but few for closer but dempster still went to the rotation "all spring training". dempster was given a shot by default.

i just left st lou yesterday and for a week a had to listen to cards talk radio. i can tell you that the fans and the media are gripping! they are down on this team and want a move made worse than any of us on here! it was hilarious to think a team has a double digit lead and they(the fans) are ready to sell the farm to get help! the loss of the cubs series really got to them.

man ram is not lazy. he has a rep of one of the ahrdest working players on the red sox. he works very hard on his defense, he just isn't very good. also keep in mind that his blunders seem to find there way on to espn every time so you see most of his mistakes. he has one error in 2005.his career high is 7. i realize there are more ways to play bad defense besides plays that are classified as errors but i would certainly take a guy who hits over .300 has 35-45hrs and 130 rbi every year since 1995. our guy sammy has 3 errors this year and had a career high of 10 in 2000...i think most cub fans could find a place in their heart for manny!

pitchers 1.prior 2.santana 3.halladay 4.buerhle 5.carpenter lots of contrasting styles closers rh krod lh wagner rh rivera set up lidge guardado smoltz-anything c-pudge c-molina(from laa for defense) 1b-dlee 2b-giles ss-arod 3b-chipper jones lf-man ram cf-andruw jones rf-ichiro 4th OF- abreu ut-pujols bench chone figgins- can play any postiton and lead off derek jeter ralfy palmeiro- not bad having a guy with 3,000 hits and almost 600 hr bombs to pinch hit

the think i don't likr about novoa is that at times i swear i am looking at latroy and others he moves a bit like 6 fingers....bad thoughts

he has a no trade clause but i would think being in a pennent race with the yanks would work. burnett would likely be cheaper than 12 mil. he has been injured but he has only had 1 arm problem they rest were elsewhere(broken thumb and foot, i believe) while kerry's problems seem to be with his arm. you have to believe a guy will not continue to break bones, while we are pretty sure that kerry will continue to have arm troubles. also i just threw out burnett because he is a free agent and a hot topic...the main thought isn't who to get but do we think about this route?

i never really wanted to get rid of wood. i always hope he would be healthy and reach his potential. i just don't know that the cubs can wait any longer, especially with 12 mil due next year. that is 12 mil that could really go a llooong way to filling some holes. obviously he has very little trade value. no one will give up too much to pay that kind of money on a gamble! but i do think their are some temas that might take the risk of taking him on because of his potential. my main thought is the new york yankees. money doesn't matter. they need pitching.they could take a gamble that wood could do something down the stretch(he did throw a couple good games before the inflamation) and come back next year. he is still potentially better than pavano,mussina,wright or wang. they also have a big contract pitcher in kevin brown, who is going to do very little BUT his contract is up this year while kerry has at least 1 more. we are pretty much done..in 2 weeks we probably will be for sure. trade wood for brown at the deadline. we pay off brown last 8 weeks of salary, get whatever he gives us for the last 2 months and be free of 12 mil in salary to sign another starter or help elsewhere. if by chance maddux was traded we would have 21 mil back to sign starters. prior and Z look to be back at full strength, williams can be a very servicable 4 or 5, sign a big time no.3(burnett?) and still have rusch or a youngin' to be no. 5. we would have a very strong staff and still have serious cash left to sign an outfielder(or 2) and ss. especially when you add nomar and burnitz' salary to the mix(13mil)!

also remember walker is relatively cheap for his production. tough to trade someone who is actually helping, under contract and not overpaid.if he was a free agent then maybe just to get something.

one other thing, everyone stop with the clement talk. nearly everyone was done with him last year. he is a .500 pitcher-period. he has a nice w-l right now but it is fading and his era is awful 4.30 and rising! his whip 1.32 which means it will continue to rise he has won 1 game 1-0, the next fewest runs was a 5-2 win. his other 8 wins the red sox have scored at least 6 and average around 9-10. you can put together a nice w-l record getting that support. with this team(cubs) his record would be closer to 4-10 not 10-4. innings eater? please. as someone said if you watch the games then you would see the real pitcher. he might average 6 innings a start but he would throw 8 one game and 4 the next, and that kills your bullpen. how many starts did he throw 100 pitches in 5 innings? williams is every bit as good as clement and cheaper. clement in 19 starts this year has 6 (or 1/3) that are 5 innings or less!

the problem with that thinking is that despite what hendry said, dempster was not going to get a shot at being closer.yes, he was put in the rotation but we had literally 10 options to replace a starter. hendry was hoping that jobo,fox,hawkins,williamson,any of the youing kids would fill the hole. dempster only got a shot after jobo got hurt, hawkins failed,wuertz failed,fox got hurt,wellmeyer failed, remingler failed...does not sound like he was very high up on the plans! so please do not give credit to hendry for finding dempster(as a closer) hawkins not signed as a closer. exactly but when you do not address closer and your main set up guy is really the only guy who has done the job at all (be closer) then who do you expect to take over?hawkins failed because he was never really given a chance tod the job he was signed to do. dusty fault? a little but in 2 years you are given no one else to do the job, you have to go with what you have! it hurt the team, it hurt hawkins and the blame goes to the guy who put together the team. this is not a situation like leftfield where dusty had an option to play other than holla, he had no one who could do it. i'm sorry for 100mil you should have a better team. and for more money(over last year) you should not end up with more and larger holes than the year before.

1. dempster has been good as the closer, yes. however depsite all that hendry said in the offseason, dempster was not going to get a hsot until everyone else failed. we had every arm in the pen get a shot before dempster, it was not a good move by hendry, it was that he had no other choice but to try him, finally! and if jobo had been healthy at the beginning we would have had to go through 3 weeks of him syucking before we tried hawkins 2.bullpen- tinkering from within the bullpen does jack, putting all your hopes that injured arms save us is worse. we were depending on jobo,fox,williamson and dempster to all stay healthy and be themselves! so far only dempster has worked.trading farnsworth while getting no ready to use help was just stupid. i can understand moving a guy but you have to replace him with something!you can't take an already weak bullpen,take away a main cog and then hope someone will step up. if they could step up they would have been helping the situation last year! 3.everyone that has watched knows we needed a leadoff man. they knew corey was not it. hendry did nothing. again hairston was not even considered an option. he was not even given a chance to start until walker got hurt and never looked at on left. he got the job simply because corey was so bad. if corey was hitting .250...hairston would be rotting on the bench. funny that the only playoff season the cubs have had they had lofton. and the only offensive push the cubs have had this season came with hairston/walker at the top.....doesn't sound like rocket science 4. hendry has completely left this team dependent on starting pitching.if we had nomar our o would be slightly better but postition wise we would have serious issues. we win if the starters have great seasons, if not we are .500.

the red sox are scoring 100 runs a game..they need a closer and other bullpen help.

the red sox are scoring 100 runs a game..they need a closer and other bullpen help.

how about hairston/gerult for pierre? hairstin fills in cf for them, he is cheaper and also gives them another cheap ofer to replace mr marlin jeff conine at the end of this season. although i am sure the fish will want pitching to replace the arms they keep giving away to save cash

yeah, just beat it by 25 pages!

the astros made a deal...that also helps with your mental aspect. the astros fired their manager the astros had a whole bunch of very good hitters who were hitting terribly all season that started to hit like they were capable. to ask for more production from perez, lee, aram, burnitz and walker is nearly impossible

i agree! my current selection has got to be the padres gold colored road unis! here are a couple all timers: the indians all red gear from the 70's complete. the cubbies light blue with white pinstripes road unis from the 70's the sox all black(or navy) pajama unis with or with out the shorts especially with oscar gamble super fro tucked under the cap!

just wondering what we could have gotten for dubois last year or in the offseason? i'm sure it would have been a lot more than someone else's retread outfielder. we have all these great prospects that we continue to hang on too until we(and everyone else) know they aren't that good, then trade them to get soemthing...well exactly what could we have gotten for corey,dubois,kelton or mitre the last year and a half? pretty much anything we wanted or needed! now we are happy to get a bucket of balls and a few jockstraps