frostwyrm

Well, they have fantastic looking naked chics. I swear, today's been awesome. Hogs get petrino. Cubs get the F Bomb. I had the perfect combination of crown royal and sex. BRILLIANT DAY!!!!! I did a Google image search for "Kosuke Fukudome" and this showed up on the first page. He's a good-looking man. I love him. http://withmalice.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/sexy-in-black.jpg

On opening day we'll have Jason Marquis and Ryan Dempster in the rotation.

Krivsky is impressing me lately. He hired Dusty Baker, who was the worst possible choice for a team loaded with young talent, then he went 4/46 for a relief pitcher. Awesome.

One kinda crappy thing about this is that Soriano is now permanently locked into LF. That'll make it almost impossible for him to live up to his contract.

Good deal under the circumstances, though I would rather have moved Soriano to RF and given LF to Murton, then spent Kosuke's money on a SS upgrade. Unfortunately that was not to be, since Lou regards Murton as nothing but a bench player.

Some GM will probably give Eckstein the 4/36 that he wants, so it won't be on top for long. Pierre still has 4/36.5 remaining on his contract, so it's about the same what Eckstein is asking. Pierre is an aging basestealer who plays LF, while Eckstein plays SS. IMO Pierre's contract still has a higher reading on the crap-o-meter.

It's up there. I've always believed the dumbest contracts are not the ones where the player underachieves. The really dumb contracts are the ones that give you exactly the player you paid for, and it still looks like a terrible deal right from the get-go. Pierre's contract might actually be worse than that because he had a very good year as a basestealer, so it could reasonably be argued that he was better than what the Dodgers paid for, and the contract still looks awful.

Ned apparently would have us believe he doesn't regret the contract but I don't think he's fooling anybody. His own words ooze regret from every syllable. I especially like the bolded quote. Nobody says stuff like that about a big contract they're happy with. Poor Ned. He's as bad a spin doctor as he is a GM. http://www.latimes.com/sports/printedition/la-sp-dodgers7dec07,0,140622.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-sports

If Hendry is dead set on getting a speedy lefty I'm sure Pierre could be had now. If they'd take Marquis and send Kemp it might actually be worth doing a deal.

I like how he says his reputation took an "unnecessary hit." It was hardly unnecessary. In stock market terminology it's what's known as a "correction."

As far as the Hill/Roberts comparisons, I don't think this is a case of us overvaluing our own players. The membership here sensibly values stolen bases far less than the average fan. I'm sure the typical poster at the Orioles board looks at Roberts' 50 SB from 2007 and thinks that makes him a superstar. Roberts is no different from any other basestealer. We're simply not going to covet him like the average fan.

I don't see how Roberts is worth losing Hill. 2B is not a hard position to fill. Roberts wouldn't come close to being more helpful than Hill and DeRosa if those two were just left in their 2007 roles.

This is as clear an example I've ever seen of "damning with faint praise."

I have no problem with him saying this, but I do have a problem with him believing this. Fuld offers nothing except the ability to swing a bat left-handed and run fast, which is all Kaz Matsui had to offer. Murton is neither fast nor left-handed, so he will be traded for peanuts. I think Hendry sincerely believes Fuld is an extremely valuable prospect.

That's my guess too. The Cubs are most likely making a phoney show of faith in Dempster's ability to start in the hope that it will inflate his trade value enough to make him movable without having to eat any salary. Purely from a business standpoint it's not a bad idea, though it's kinda sleazy to mislead Dempster with false promises.

CF defense is important but a CF doesn't have to turn a double play.

People are only apathetic if it's someone else's problem. You can be sure that Cubs fans will start caring about the Mitchell report if Aflonso Soriano is named in it, then subsequently shows up to spring training minus a whole lot of muscle mass and bat speed. Kinda like how Dodgers and Angels fans care, since they have to watch Beltre and Matthews play.

If you hop a helicopter to the Alamo and sing "Deep in the Heart of Texas" with passersby then you have been to Texas, even if you leave immediately afterwards.

Lou sees Murton as nothing more than a bench player. At this point I don't think that's even debatable.

Todd Hollandsworth! We better get him before the Reds do.

I'd give him one year with a low base but I'd need a team option. No option = no deal.

None of us know the contract clauses regarding the bonuses yet, but I get the feeling I'm the only one here who suspects that the terms won't demand a particularly impressive season. I strongly suspect that the terms, in a nutshell, will require that Kerry A) serves as closer B) stays healthy C) doesn't suck I think we could get this from Marmol.

$45/3 for Mariano, or $44/4 or whatever for Cordero, that is "big money". $4.2, that's not big money. When you have a $115 roster, and around ten guys who will be <$1 each, that leaves you with around $105 for 15 salaried guys. So the average salary for the salaried guys is around $7. $4 for a free agent is well below average. It's not "big money". It's the cost of doing business. Sure, I wish we'd have gotten him at $1 base, with a club option on year two that would cost $2.5 or $0.2 to buyout. But that's not the market. 45/3 and and 44/4 aren't big money. That's insane money. Kerry will get $7.65M if he's able to close for the whole 2008 season. That's still a lot of money for about 70 innings of work, much of it in undemanding situations. I also don't think it's realistic to expect him not to get lit up every now and then. He's not Mariano Rivera.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3128280&campaign=rss&source=MLBHeadlines If I'm reading this correctly he has a $4.2M base salary and $3.45M in potential bonuses? Doesn't that seem kinda steep for a reliever who's a really bad health risk? Assuming the bonuses are for saves and games finished he should get $7.65M if he can grab the closer slot and stay healthy. Still seems pricy to me. I know he had a nice finish last year but there seems to be a pervasive excess of optimism regarding Kerry's health situation. you think it's too much to spend on a guy with health risks even though i'm sure his incentives are related to him staying healthy. then you say if he stays healthy and closes games effectively it's too much to spend for a guy who isn't healthy. even though in your hypothetical, he's healthy. i don't get it. His base salary is too high for my taste. He could end up not pitching an inning and still get $4.2M. Also, just a hunch, but I really doubt the terms of the contract will make the performance bonuses hard to achieve if he can stay healthy. I'm guessing he'll just need to pitch enough to get like 25 saves. Thing is, I'm expecting him to have his share of bad games too. He could easily end up getting the whole $7.65M and still not be much of an upgrade over what Dempster, Marmol, or Howry would have been in the closer slot.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3128280&campaign=rss&source=MLBHeadlines If I'm reading this correctly he has a $4.2M base salary and $3.45M in potential bonuses? Doesn't that seem kinda steep for a reliever who's a really bad health risk? Assuming the bonuses are for saves and games finished he should get $7.65M if he can grab the closer slot and stay healthy. Still seems pricy to me. I know he had a nice finish last year but there seems to be a pervasive excess of optimism regarding Kerry's health situation. If he earns the bonuses them it probably means that he was healhty for the most part in 2008. I don't much like to see big money spent on a closer, even the "proven" ones. Kerry is not proven.