Magnetic Curses

i still don't understand how that's ironic.

it's ok, we understand

I hope like hell that Colvin becomes what Wells was in his prime. And I hope like hell that the Cubs don't make the mistake of the insane contract. wells is not good and he's not old.

positively captivating

i looked it up, rios's OPS+ this year is 56 in 496 plate appearances. compare that to his salary of 12 mil and you have, maybe, the least efficient player year that ever was. that is, until vernon wells' 2011, 81 OPS+ in 445 plate appearances, 23 million in salary this year. i really really hope that colvin doesn't become like either of them.

then what did wilken draft him on, his size? a straight fastball? the guy's a genius to know that some coach at A ball was able to catch that after he had been demoted and was almost out of baseball and completely changed him into something that no one could have predicted. carpenter's era+ with the blue jays? 89, 106, 113, 81 (led AL in earned runs while pitching 175 innings), 113, 88. i don't consider that "mostly above average". he was a bad pitcher and a reclamtion project. but more of a clamation project because he wasn't ever any good until he hit st louis. 2 of the worst contracts in baseball due to their absolute fluctuation from year to year? i hope not. in rios's case he's just a guy and has been since the age of 28. it hasn't changed anything. the only thing different is that we aren't producing pitching prospects that get hurt before reaching the bigs and never play for us. now we're producing positional prospects that aren't very good. what foresight by the guys in charge. give em raises! this is neither here nor there and completely beside the point. the team won less because they were high-paid, bad players and haven't produced much talent on the farm. tell them that. ricciardi came from a tree that has been and continues to be praised for their ability to evaluate and produce major leaguers on the cheap. beane would fire him right away, epstein would fire him right away. friedman would most likely fire him right away. none of these guys want old scouts running their drafts. thank you for that, whatever it was.

Briggs has no leverage. If he doesn't want to play, he sits and doesn't make any money and his career is basically over at 31.

Yes, Halladay and Carpenter did need coaching, as any and all young players do to hit their ceiling. He took Halladay 17th overall in the '95 draft and Carpenter with the 15th pick in '93, so he must have seen something, and look where they are now. What does "what he saw in them wasn't what made them great pitchers" even mean? Both were very touted prospects who like many young players didn't come right in and set the baseball world on fire. Big deal. He saw the talent, he picked them in the first, they go on his resume. it means whatever you want it to mean, man. listen, halladay was a piece of junk, he was finished in the league, saying that he "didn't come right in and set the baseball world on fire" is an understatement. he was on his way out of baseball when someone got ahold of him and changed everything about him, everything except his height and youth, maybe. isn't his 2000 season one of the single worst seasons in history? in any respect, he was the worst pitcher in the game at that point. carpenter maybe, i'm not familiar with his story pre-cards except for him being a relatively middling 5th starter. but the book on Halladay was that he could throw hard, but his fastball didn't move, and curveball didn't curve. and he got bombed. we're talking a complete overhaul. afterwards, he had a breaking ball and a moving fastball. colvin is like rios or wells: talented, but bad peripherals that can only predict inconsistency. our organization is bad. we spend more per win than any organization in the league. most of the prospective GMs that are desireable are also very involved with drafting and scouting players, meaning they'll be working very closely with the scouting director. wilken has already essentially been dismissed by one stat-guy, assumingly because he wanted to draft on looks and not substance. ricciardi seems like a pansy compared to beane, friedman, or epstein. if we are lucky enough to get one of those three despite ricketts taking it upon himself to retain fleita and wilken, it will be a miracle, and neither of those guys will be arounf very long.

i don't understand what wilken has done that would qualify him as "talent" i keep hearing how great he is but i don't see any great players at all. i see a few players who have had some decent years here and there, but are totally up and down because their peripherals are terrible. That sucks. Maybe you don't know enough about Senor Wilken: Those are some pretty awesome players. Just because his drafts here haven't born fully ripe fruit yet doesn't mean all that much. halladay and carpenter were nothing special until someone actually taught them how to pitch, and those are the two biggest feathers in his cap. he may have drafted them, but what he saw in them wasn't what made them great pitchers. you'd think there'd be more over 27 years if he such a great evaluator of talent. what he's done for the cubs is next to nothing, and that's the key point here.

http://blogs.nfl.com/2011/09/05/giants-de-umenyiora-to-miss-first-two-games/ Quit stealing my ideas, Jason! i think we're already pretty good up front. melton looks awesome as a 3rd DE, and maybe 2nd at the end of the year. We need Briggs, which is the tragedy, here.

i like the meriweather signing, i like his miami pedigree, i like that it plugs a hole at the very least. he's a starter that shores up the defensive backfield and makes us better. i think he'll be competent if not a pro-bowler. i'm starting to buy into the offensive line, which actually kind of scares me. whenever i think the line is going to be good, they are bad. i'm starting to come around on webb, he's looked so far in the pre-season. the bear jew looks like the guy we thought he was, a guy you plug in at one of the tackle spots and then forget about that spot for 10 years.

i don't understand what wilken has done that would qualify him as "talent" i keep hearing how great he is but i don't see any great players at all. i see a few players who have had some decent years here and there, but are totally up and down because their peripherals are terrible.

i heard stone on the boers and bernstein show talking about the cubs GM search and he, of course, managed to work in a shot at "sabr-guys". he wasn't even really asked about it, he just offered it up, and then went on to talk about how amazing sabean is and how theo epstein isn't really a numbers guy and that he had to be told what he was looking at. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v519/suleyman21/Burns_on_the_19th_century_woodcut.jpg

i swear i thought rob boldin left school. He requested a transfer but Paterno denied it nice guy, that one Getting in on this late, but Rob Bolden and his father requested a transfer after the bowl game and before the Spring semester started. Since scholarships are binding for 1 full year and he was only in school for 1 semester, a transfer request because of playing time is absurd. Why would Joe be a "nice guy" and allow it, giving him 1 usable QB for all of Spring, Summer, and into the 2011 season? The Bolden's were trying to transfer based on emotion, Joe knew that, and everything worked out. For now. joe paterno is an incontinent old man, but i'm super-glad he knew what a young black man really wanted, even if the kid was saying the exact opposite. he's really in touch.

it's too bad ricketts doesn't know who that is.

can i at least be ragin' anus?

i think jason ford is picked in the first 3 rounds of the draft.

I didn't get why they decided to have a delay of game if they were going to run the fake. That was just bizarre. i think that was the disguise. you take a delay of game penalty, no one is expecting a fake.

the first step would be focus on being able to get someone else in a rowboat with you.

that's a catch

i swear i thought rob boldin left school. He requested a transfer but Paterno denied it nice guy, that one

that utah state d-back lost all of his smallclothes there

i swear i thought rob boldin left school.

the defense is still dominant, they manhandled the packers offense in the NFC championship and i expect nothing less this year. the defense will still be vicious, and i think the d-line will be improved.

i forgot how painfully long college halftimes are. what are they, like an hour?