neely crenshaw

we need a stud

msybe, just maybe sammy finds a seat on the bench. he certainly is the poorest performer in the starting lineup!

this gives us a 3 year window to get something done. wood makes 12, prior may well be offered 18-20 if he is healthy for the next few years. if the yankees continue their pitching problems(with the guys the have signed for the next 2, they will) they will be all over prior. if the cubs do not start putting a team behind our pitchers..including a bullpen-they will walk! i mean how many games has prior lost victories in because of offense or blown saves...it can only go on so long. he and z may want to be the ones to help the cubs finally win but if they do not believe that management is doing all it can to win it-(see the last 2 years) i can not believe that they stay!

they that nomar has been running(even bases) and hitting/fielding. they are hoping for a mid august comeback. he could provide the type of lift this team will need, both offensively and spirit-wise. i am less sure of williamson's impatc, we should all know the downfall of believing in pitchers coming back from arm surgery. i have no doubt he can help it just maybe a little while longer until he is 100%. i also hold out hope that cory could return and be the corey of last year. that would not be bad as long as hairston and walker are left 1-2. he certainly helps on d.i am certainly intrigued by a lineup of hairston lf walker 2b dlee 1b aram 3b burnitz rf nomar ss patterson cf barrett c this would allow hendry to grab some bullpen help.

couple things on farns: first he benefits from pitching in detroit. the yard is huge and you do not give up cheap homeruns like at wrigley. as hard as he throws if someone gets a ball up off him it will carry... second: he has been overused.i agree with that post completely. dusty/rothschild would get in a pattern and go with it no matter what. remingler in the 7th, farns in the 8th and hawkins 9 (or whoever played closer) it didn't matter how many days in row they had thrown or if the guy was absolutely on fire..he threw his inning and then made a change. just once i would have liked to see dusty stay with the pitcher that went 1-2-3 the inning before at least to start an inning. no pitcher will be on every single day so this strategy seemed to ask for someone to blow up. finally i always felt that farns would be better somewhere else. i mean he throws 98-99 but after the hitters see woody,prior,z and (at the time clement) go 94-98 all day it's not that big a deal to see farns come in a couple of mph's higher. it would be interesting to see how farns did when maddux and rusch started..that's where i think he would be really tough to handle!

bayless says things simply to get a rise out of his audience. whether in print,on the radio or tv. his opinion usually is the one that will get the biggest reaction...good or bad. ralph is a hall of famer. his stats alone get him in. the biggest factor is that he should be one of the best players at his postion during his time. he was. look at mcguire...he is a shoo in right? he in no way compares to ralph as an all around player or hitter. he hit hrs and a got a ton of noterity because of maris and also the bash brothers. he also had seasons where he hovered around .200.

why is this maddux' fault? he pitched great and we couldn't score. 2 earned runs in 8 should net a pitcher a win! plain and simple this is not a great line up if you think it is, you are crazy. minus the starting pitching we are bad. our outfield is the worst in the nl save for colorado. our ss is at least bottom half. we have a decent 2b, we have very good corners and a decent catcher. a weak bench. we are an above .500 team simply because of starters and playing in the central.

the pirates fans may hate us but their front office loves us. we did take 3 players from them for little in return, but we also took 3 pretty big contracts away from a team who was never going to be close with or without this high priced talent! unfortunately for pitt fans they seem to be more interested in the bottom line than winning...i'm pretty sure they will want to dump lawton and wilson...and probably mesa. getting anything for for wilson before they have to pay him 5-6 mil a year would be a huge bonus in their eyes!

williams and maybe mitre would certainly help the lets with pitching and payroll. it's not out of the question that they take corey and a pitcher for looper and floyd.

i guess this will be a real good test of wheteher the trib makes a good chunk of change on the cubs or not. i think with the self owned tv and radio deals they make too much to think about selling...others do not agree

my thoughts are these: the cubs have 17 of the next 21 vs losing teams they need to go 15-6 at worst and preferably 16-5. that would put us 10 games over. if we go 10-8 for the next 18 and are 1 over at the deadline then we are finished for the year. this is where we need a run. i am not saying it will happen but to compete it really has to. we need to play about 20 games over for the second half to have a shot(90 wins) if we play around .500 for the first 20(vs our weakest schedule) how would we be able play 20 games over the last 50?

or what team nomar will be on!

he is in. 300 clinches it. did bert blyleven ever win a cy? he also pitched for about 35 years!lol

he hasn't thrown in 7 days..we need him sharp when we "have" to use him. 1 work day is exactly what he needs. hopefully we will have some other days of large leads in the next 18

he'll be heading somewhere. if mike stanton got picked up, al leiter will for sure!

i am judging sosa last year vs burnitz this year because we had sosa(and alous) numbers last year and missed the playoffs. the idea is to improve your team. so if we are going to judge how the replacement is doing, you have to factor in what he replaced. i think the age questions is very possible. it is very common practice among foriegn players to cheat up and down in age, depending on which is best for their prospect status. remember fernando valenzuela was 19 when he came up, even though he looked like he had kids in high school~!

first, why compare neifi and corey? neifi is a bench filling in for nomar. anything we get from him is bonus. corey was supposed to be our stud outfielder after losing alou and sosa. this was supposed to be about whose to blame. there is plenty to go around. 1. corey. his approach is plain bad for his skills. he has power but he should not be a "power hitter". 25 hrs is a nice number but no where near enough to change your entire approach to get there. he would be much-much more valuable if he hit 20 and hit .270 2. dusty. he has forced corey into a situation he really isn't equipped to have success at. 3. hendry-did we all not know that the cubs really needed someone to leadoff? it has been 2 seasons since lofton helped get us to the playoffs(funny isn't) still hendry has not addressed this need at all. he also left our outfield very weak, perhaps putting even more pressure on corey to help replace sosa'a and alou's power numbers. we need corey to be corey. yes he will have some k's and bad at bats. but if we can find someone to be a real-life lead off man and get a serious out field threat, corey would be fine. we certainly could live with him hitting even .250 out of the 7 hole, while hitting some homers,stealing some bases and playing good defense.

our pitching coming back helps, hopefully it pitches to it's potential. we still need to pick up some position help. with nomar out and probably not coming back, our lineup is probably the worst in the national league except for colorado. our outfield is definitely the worst (again save for colorado) we can not afford to let dlee and aram be our only consistent threats. we simply do not have the margin for error. we have 43 wins, as most people have stated, barring a collapse from the east, 90 wins are probably needed. with this lineup going 47-28 will be nearly impossible.

one thing to add to corey's assesment of when fans can boo... if you have a player with seemingly unmatched skill- does not seem to want or be able to make an adjustment to a problem that is holding him back and hurting the team(like corey and sammy last year)they should boo! add in that if a vet player(alou) continues to make rookie baseball mistakes(like running the bases or missing cut off men) they should be booed.

imo-rusch will go looking for a place to be a full time starter and want full time starter money. he really needs to capitolize on this success...it may be his last shot a decent pay day. remember clement rolled less success into 24 mil! neifi will be looking for a place to be a starter hairston will want to be a starter- somewhere. if dempster continues to the job as closer...it's his-no reason to sign anyone but if he falters-we must get a proven closer no more bandaids! let every bench player go..we can't over pay for macias,perez,wilson...there are too many options to overpay bench talent if we sign nomar--it must be even cheaper, it must not be our only big bat signing and we then better sign a serious back up knowing he may have to play half the season. i love maddux. i feel we must allow his option to vest. he is valuable on many levels...however, in a perfect world we would be able to trade him to contender.9 mil for #4 is a lot when you have so many other holes. it would also allows us to take a run at burnett.i can't see us being able to sign him with maddux on board unless we trade kerry. it's also pretty tough to pay wood 12 mil for what he has brought the last 2 seasons. if we deal maddux then we also avoid any fall out from his option. if we get a big time slugger then we could deal with patterson in center, and or dubois/murton in left or cedeno at short and sign another proven of'er. i think what/who we sign for how long should show hendry what prospects to deal...if we do sign burnett then it makes no sense to hang on to all of our pitching prospects...we would have wood,williams,burnett,prior and z all in the ml rotation(all very young) use a few arms to get OF help. we sign furcal to a 4 year deal then why keep cedeno? we sign or trade for 1-2 OFers then why keep all of dubois, murton, patterson, kelton, greenberg...etc

if he can play good defense and cover some ground out there, then we are better off with him playing as long as he is not overmatched. like it or not this team will win or lose with our pitching. defense goes a long way toward helping that. it does not help much to have 2 corner OFers that are sound but do not have much range out there with a centerfielder who is really learning the position. we have no one who is hitting so well that a very good defender that hit even .240 couldn't replace. if murton can hit hit even .235-.240 and take walks(or at least pitches) he would do more for this particular team. now if we could trade for some outfield help that might change but no one out there is putting up the type of stats that "have" to be in the lineup everyday!

we can probably do better than kearns for our pitching. i don't see cincy taking patterson or any other outfielder. they are trying to dump one of their 4 outfielders. we need to deal some of this young talent. before we ruin it's value. how much damage have we done to the value of dubois, patterson, wellmeyer, mitre, wuertz, guzman and brownlie? a year ago we could have gotten a proven(and not a neifi type) vet for anyone of them. now we have very little value in any of them.

you forced me to research this. yes 8-6 with a 4.67 era sounds pretty lucky but maddux has not won a single game this year that he he did not pitch outstanding in. in his 8 wins he has not allowed more than 3 runs and a total of 14 earned runs. less than 2 per win. his era is below 2.00. he also has 3 other starts that he gave up 3 or less but got no decisions. if he were lucky he would he have wins there. he has not won a single "slugfest" where the cubs offense won the game and he got a win. if he were truly lucky or pitched for some offensive juggernaut he might be a lucky pitcher with a 12-13 wins and 4 losses. then you could call him lucky.

please explain how we can win 51 games in our next 75 to get to 94 wins? our best, and maybe only bet is that the teams in the east beat each other up with one of them pulling away for the division allowing 86ish wins to sneak into the wildcard. that would put us at 43-32 for the second half, that might be a little stretch for this team without some moves

beware of his batting average! he will most certainly beat sammy's rbi total...mostly due to sammy's missed time..if burnitz misses anytime he may miss that one also. 250ish is a very burnitz like number