Jehrico

If we were going to trade Maddux for a sucky all-glove, no hitting role playing middle infielder, at least we could have asked for one that wasn't injury prone. You'd think he'd have had enough with injury prone players on the roster. I'm beginning to think Hendry is going out of his way to load us up with guys who can't play every day, unless they fall into that category of players that you don't want healthy enough to go out there every day, like Neifi or JuanP.

I know the Yankees would like him to succeed Torre, but I don't think the timing is right just yet.

I think this will also be the key next week. Our newfound passing game will cause defenses to spread out more to cover it, as the Lions and the Pack were obviously planned to stop the run. Grossman won't lead the league in passer rating after this game, but the running backs should break out while facing a more honest defensive game plan against the run.

The Angels have expressed interest in A-Rod. The asking price is assumed to be Ervin Santana, Scot Shields, Chone Figgins and a top prospect. What can the Cubs offer that would closely resemble the talent the Angels would need to give up for A-Rod? The conversation would probably have to include Zambrano, which would immediately kill the deal for me. I could handle a package of Hill, Howry, Moore (or better yet, Izturis), and Pie for ARod, but I don't think that would be as enticing as the Angels package. On the other hand, I doubt the Angels would make that deal, so I don't know if we'd be competing against such a strong package.

I suppose I could live with Soriano at 2nd if that somehow affected us getting ARod at SS....otherwise, I want nothing to do with him. I'd rather take Marcus Giles coming off of a down year. Soriano is incredibly bad at 2b, and his offense this season is well out of line with his past few years when he played in a better hitters park.

I give him a D+, maybe a C-. A .310 OBP is horrible. He's still too much of a free swinger, he's still got most of the bad habits that he had before. I don't give him any extra credit just because he fell so far below the mendoza line last year. I consider Corey's 2005 a fluke (2003 was a fluke on the opposite end of the spectrum). He's not as bad as 2005 indicated, and shouldn't get credit for improving upon it. His numbers this year are more inline with 2004 and I think are more inline with what could reasonably be expected of him. The only area he seems to have improved upon this year are his strike outs, which are down to acceptable numbers. I think that's why his batting average is up as well. Since his walks are still atrocious, I don't think it's a matter of him using more patience. Either he's seeing the ball better than before and hence, making more contact, or it's a fluke. If his Ks go back up again next year, that will mean this year was a fluke. Time will tell.

I don't mind the mistakes, especially from a first year manager. If there's one thing I like about Girardi, is that he's always seemed to be the type to own up when he does make a mistake, and he typically seems to learn from them. That also, coincidentally, parallels my biggest beef with Baker. Plus, I've always thought that good ex-catchers made the best coaches and managers. You've got to think alot more about the game as a backstop, and they tend to have a better understanding what is going on. You would hope an ex-catcher would be more in tune with how the pitchers are doing, when to yank them, when to leave them in, etc. Dusty clearly does not grasp that concept.

Or maybe he's not good at sharing the knowledge. Having the ability doesn't mean you can get others to learn to do what you do. Or maybe some of the young guys don't have the physical tools to implement what they've learned from Maddux. Or maybe they've picked things up during the season, but they haven't had the chance to develop confidence in any new concepts yet and aren't using them. Or maybe it's just not that reasonable to expect a bunch of noobs to pitch like HOFers just because they spent 5 months around a legend. I say give it some time and see how some of these kids do. Most of the young guys have shown enough promise to indicate they can absolutely compete and succeed at this level. I view Marmol, Marshall, and Mateo as just needing to improve their consistancy, they've already shown the ability.

Have you seen Wells's stats? Fluke season alert. Cough, cough *Alphonso Soriano* cough cough.... Excuse me, I had to clear my throat.

Let's not give credit where it is not due. Kenny Williams was loathed prior to '05. That offseason was based on some huge gambles that paid off (who thought Jermaine Dye would have produced like he has for them?), but KW has had MANY more seasons where he was the laughingstock of the league. Yeah, they won the WS, but they haven't had enough good offseasons to say they have continually looked for ways to improve. They shot themselves in the foot repeatedly prior to last year. Up until last year, KW was a far worse GM than Jim Hendry.

Jaws and Salisbury will pick the Bears. All 6 of sportsline.com's guys have us not only winning, but beating the spread. http://www.sportsline.com/nfl/features/writers/expert/picks

Also on the front of: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/ That's not good... Hey now, it's the website, not the magazine... Besides, how many times was Michael Jordan on the cover of SI? :) Or basically anyone else that is/was great in pro sports... Michael Jordan was sooo great even SI couldn't stop him. :D Anyone can be great and lose in the postseason, only to see someone else covered after the championship is over (see Dee Brown and UNC). Anyone have any stats that say the curse is limited to their worthless magazine and not their website :wink:

Also on the front of: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/ That's not good...

How are the Redskins "a joke so far"? We're two flippin games in! They played a tight game with the Vikings at home and trailed the Cowboys by 7 heading to the 4th quarter at Dallas. That makes them a joke? gflore, Portis played against the Vikings and played most of the game so get that right. As far as the Panthers go, you're basically taking last year's offense substituting Steve Smith for Keyshawn Johnson and adding in DeAngelo Williams who is a stud. Yes they haven't looked good, but maybe the Falcons and Vikings have pretty good defenses? For crying out loud people, the Bears are the favorite and they should be. Leave it at that. It's just stupid when you try to spin that the Panthers and Redskins are on equal ground or not much better than the stinkin Lions and Packers. Use a little common sense. The Redskins looked horrible their first two games, and the Bears fans here (along with many others, including the media) think they've taken a huge step backwards this year and are just not that good. No point in getting defensive about a bunch of Bears fans agreeing with the mainstream that the Redskins suck. They have 14 games left to prove everyone wrong. Leave it at that.

Then they will need to replace both CF and RF. Doesn't matter, either way they needed to replace 2 guys out there, IMO. I always come back to my idea of platooning Murton with Jacque with the idea he'd hopefully be able to take over RF after a year or two. Get big bopper for LF a la Dunn, C-Lee, etc. and haul up Pie. That, or Jacque in CF. What about getting Matthews Jr for CF and Durham for 2B? that leaves quite a bit of money available for 2 pitchers, that I think are more needed. I'd favor Jones over Matthews in CF. I think he'd be serviceable in CF, maybe slightly below average at worst (no worse than speedy P). His offensive production would be pretty valuable from that position. We're saddled with him, I don't see anyone trading for him with 2 years left on his contract. Maybe if there were only one...If you keep Jones in RF, it's much more difficult and more expensive to get the big increase in the OF if you only have CF to replace. If you move Jacque to CF, then that position is upgraded significantly, and a big bat for RF is still a good possibility. Our overall potential for improving the OF is better if you move Jones to CF and look for a RFer, and can be done more cheaply. Of course, that's wishful thinking. I doubt Hendry would go for that. We would need that "prototypical leadoff man" that we'd be missing after the departure of Pierre, and there's not too many RF "prototypical leadoff men" out there.

Good article. It's got me leaning towards Beltran now for MVP (as much as I hate favoring any Met...).

I'll guess Bears 24, Vikings 9, we keep them out of the end zone.

How about this question...who would win between Dusty, and a computer whose running a program written by Dusty.... I see that game coming down as a 37 inning draw, both try to outsmart each other, both use all 25 men on the roster to pitch, and subsequently run out of players when the computer's Prior runs into Dusty's Lee on the basepaths, rendering both sides without enough players to continue the game.

I don't agree with that concept. Andy's regime has been in charge for well over half of those 20 years. Hendry has been a main cog for 10+ years. Stability is not the issue. This franchise has been one of the most stable in recent years, and it's achieved nothing. How many teams have had the same GM and manager combo the past 4 years? Everybody likes to talk about the number of managers, but that's really just because of all the interim guys they've had. The Cubs have basically had 3 managers over the past 12 years. That's not incredible turnover. The White Sox, Dodgers and Red Sox have seen similar, or more turnover. Heck, Boston's been one of the most dysfunctional franchises out there, and have had a great deal more success than the Cubs. Florida has had nothing but turnover and upheaval, from ownership all the way through the front office and the field. The Mets have lacked stability, but they've had some pretty solid success. Atlanta is everybody's model for stability, but they've won every year. It's easy to keep the same leaders when they do nothing but succeed. The Yankees have been stable, but they are all threatened with job loss without winning the world series. And STL has been pretty stable as well. But those are about the only franchises in baseball that have been more stable than the Cubs, since Andy took over. The late 80's and early 90's were pretty unstable times for the Cubs. But that has changed quite a bit. The team is pretty stable, and has been for quite a while. Aside from being in a position where they can recover from this failure if they make the right decisions. stability hasn't brought much in terms of results. The Cubs need a shakeup, whether that's the GM making massive changes, or ownership cleaning house from up top. For the record, I didn't mean to suggest that we stink because of a lack of stability. There are certain systemic ills in the organization that I would like to see stabilized, once they get competent people in. Andy has been here for awhile now, but it's been a merry-go-round of coaches down on the field the last 20 years prior to Dusty's reign of terror. That merry-go-round is something that I'd like to not see again (assuming we get new coaches who have a sound philosophy to preach while they're here). Andy doesn't teach, coach, hit, throw, or anything else, so I don't count him as part of any stability or lack thereof.

I would think that what we see as the #1 priority will never be what Angelo sees. Didn't he have a reputation of ignoring O line in Tampa? First priority is extending Briggs, Vasher, and Tommie Harris. The D is the identity of the team, the strength of the team. They have to keep these guys to stay at such a dominant level. Even a minor drop off in defense could kill this team because the offense while improved, isn't near strong enough. Priority #2 is the O-Line. Hopefully one of these young receivers can establish themself as a big time player so priority #3 won't have to be a WR. i get the feeling that angelo isnt going to re-sign briggs. he's arrogant enough to think that he can replace briggs like he replaced colvin. You and me both. I don't think he'll be back after this year. I don't want to overpay Briggs if it means we can't resign someone like Tommy Harris. Tommy Harris > Briggs The contract that Briggs is asking for is absurd. I don't know if I agree that Harris is better than Briggs or not. Briggs had a better season than I think alot of people realized last year as he's been playing in Urlachers shadow. When you tally up the tackles, assists, sacks, INTs, knockdowns, etc...Briggs was right there with the NFL Defensive POY. I'm not disagreeing, but I'm not agreeing either. I guess I'm on the fence.

Does anyone get the feeling that whichever club decides to "take one for the team" and volunteer to take the wildcard will get it? The NL wildcard is looking like the NL Central this year.

I'm in the camp that doesn't think Dunn is that huge of an upgrade over Murton. If I had a choice of trading Murton for Dunn, and those are the only things to consider, I take Dunn in a heartbeat. Dunn will command quite a bit on the trade market. We have several weak spots that need filling. I think trading Murton and another valuable player (like Howry?) for Dunn is taking a step backwards. We've added maybe 100 points OPS in one position that really wasn't screaming to be upgraded, and we still have all of our old weakness (plus maybe another, depending on who gets packaged with Murton). So basically, we'd be adding payroll, and we wouldn't be any better off than before. IMO, you trade Murton (plus others) for Dunn if the rest of the team is pretty solid, and you're looking for that move to put you over the top. You don't trade Murton (plus others) for Dunn if you have several holes to fill.

I would hope he'd be a platoon partner for Jones and not take any playing time away from Murton, as his splits are pretty good for both righties and lefties.

I think his main problem is confidence, not unlike Rich Hill earlier this year. Guzman has nasty stuff. Let's hope he can put it together next season. Could fatigue be a problem (one factor among a few anyways) for Angel? It's been a loooong time since he's been healthy enough to pitch this late in the season. The fact he's still healthy at this point (and that Dusty hasn't had him throw any 130+ pitch games yet, knock on wood) is encouraging.

I agree the situations are different; I just meant it was an example of a team showing a willingness to make drastic changes, something the Cubs aren't willing to do. The fact that the reasons necessitating the changes are different doesn't take away from the fact that one organization will make changes while one won't.This is a tricky one. I agree with the concept that one of our problems over the last 20 years has been the lack of stability in the organization. However, they're taking that to such an extreme now that they're overlooking the basic fundamentals accountability and responsibility. Tough line to balance in the Cubs case in particular. Considering all of the youth that we'll have locked up for awhile, I'd be all for making drastic changes this offseason, then shoot for stability.