Magnetic Curses

Largely agree. Group think and over reaction reign on here currently. Jones has one glaring attribute over Burntiz. He should be able to handle play much better during the summer months. (has little smerk on face....looks at shoes) Plus, with a the whinning and crying around here I'm not seeing any alturnatives to Jones except Burntiz. Like someone said crap vs. crap. Which to me is not fair to either. Burntiz was decent just not the usual RF production for a "gladiator" type person. One more point. Just because you're a GM running a fantasy baseball team doesn't mean you know what's going on and you're better then JH. well, you just indicted hendry without knowing it. "I'm not seeing any alternatives to Jones except Burnitz" could have been averted earlier in the offseason. hendry chose to ignore giles, that's his fault, not mine or any of the other fantasy Gm's around here. hendry sucks, period.

no, don't say that. miggy's staying in baltimore and the cubbies are keeping their ace. there's only one miggy that i'd trade prior for, and it ain't tejada.

you try going through 97 years of baseball purgatory and tell me how rational you get. the only reason some people look lrational around here is because they'vre come full circle. in short, they're so crazy that they're sane.

I would not do this deal. I agree, however Tejada/Bedard for Prior would make the Cubs a lot better in 06. i fully expect a Cy Young season from prior next year, and if he's traded, that's a lock. Why do you fully expect that? because i believe that prior is the best pitcher in the national league when healthy. if he's healthy next year, book it, you can mark this post. if he's traded, he'll definitely win because we have no luck.

mckinney leaves mizzou without a braggin' rights victory, boy, am i glad he didn't commit to the illini. anyway, augie and dee looked amazing, randle was all over but made some odd decisions at times, mcbride showed some handles, finally, and smith impressed everyone with his range. arnold played well, too. great win for the illini. pruitt played horribly, though. did anyone catch raftery's IB shoutout? "Brumby diggin' it in Champaign"? maybe Tim can get a daily NSBB shoutout from Len.

I would not do this deal. I agree, however Tejada/Bedard for Prior would make the Cubs a lot better in 06. i fully expect a Cy Young season from prior next year, and if he's traded, that's a lock.

i wouldn't trade prior for anything less than cabrera or pujols. and probably not even pujols, unless he's willing to go back to the outfield.

I would hardly call tank and ian scott weak links. Tank has 4 sacks this year while only playing 20-25% of the snaps. Also keep in mind that it is only his second year and he has had to work his way into playing time. Boone also has 1.5 sacks. The amount of production we have gotten from our 4 DTs this year is really good. if you look hard, i wasn't calling them weak link, either. good players, but probably the only non-pro-bowl caliber players on that defense. i could be wrong, though.

wow. congrats to those guys. Kruetz shouldn't be listed and Wale should be. kreutz is the best center in the NFL, and there's not even a question about it anymore. Personally, I think the OL Pro Bowl selections are based entirely on reputation. I was probably overreaching with my statement but I'd still take Kevin Mawae over Kruetz. Olin had a terrible season in '04 and definitely didn't deserve to make it. This year, I think its as much lack of other pro bowl caliber C in the NFC than Kruetz's great season. notice that i said "anymore". mawae was kreutz's only competition for a long time, and now, there's no one close. mawae is no longer in the same class as kreutz. kreutz's "terrible" season in 04 was primarily the result of having to cover for a terrible line. there were times last year when he knew that qasim couldn't handle someone, so he would pull, run over to the LT position and block the DE himself. there were several times last year when mitchell got beat, only to be saved by a pulling kreutz. kreutz had to play 5 positions last season, this year, he only has to play 1.

wow. congrats to those guys. Kruetz shouldn't be listed and Wale should be. kreutz is the best center in the NFL, and there's not even a question about it anymore.

5 defensive pro-bowlers, 3 other defensive players that could have easily been there (tillman, brown, wale), a rookie who looks like he could be there in the future, and a solid OLB that won't get the recognition, but is a good player in his own right. i guess the only weak link is scott/tank, and those guys aren't really weak links.

I don't see why its nauseating. People aren't just making up stats. They are using stats that have been shown to be far more reliable describers and predictors of production than tired old cliches. And it's not true that people are relying exclusively on them. People have seen Jones play. He's a known commodity. I don't think it's "nauseating." But the team that won the World Series this year supposedly had shaky stats up & down the roster. At least, that's what plenty of people on this board tried to sell us. Yet, they still took home the prize. So then, perhaps naked statistics don't tell the whole story of a ballplayer or a team. I do agree they are an excellent tool for evaluation and there's a good reason why people rely on them. Sometimes though, teams & players come along that just defy logic. the white sox offense ranked 9th out of 14 AL teams, they were terrible. please do not invoke the offense of the sox when lauding conventional wisdom. if you like conventional wisdom, you probably also sit up on christmas eve waiting for santa claus, too.

-Edward K, indianapolis, Ind.

http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/insider/columns/story?columnist=neyer_rob&id=2267243 Sums up exactly what is wrong with this boneheaded backasswards management group. They are so bullheaded dead set against anything resembling objective analysis that they still live in the fantasy world that a 31 year old player can have upside, or that prolonged repeated lackluster results are due to something other than the simple fact that this is exactly what this player is. stop being so negative goony. and neyer should stop being so negative, too. let's not let the truth get in the way of irrational optimism. what a joke of a GM.

What did you want in CF and RF instead? Lets be realistic too and not throw out sign Giles for 3 years or get Abreu for a few prospects and Williams. let's stop pretending that giles was unrealistic. you keep saying this but you fail every time to produce any sort of reasoning behind your logic other than "his family lives in san diego".

his first priority should have been to sign giles. after giles, it doesn't really matter. the rest takes care of itself. trade for pierre, whatever, sign a couple bullpen guys, alright, lose out on furcal, i don't care. a lineup of 1. pierre 2. walker 3. lee 4. giles 5. ramirez 6. barrett 7. murton 8. cedeno looks pretty good to me.

Mike Kiley wrote that Walker is behind Neifi on the depth chart right now. I really think people have to come to terms with the idea of Neifi getting 500 plate appearances, or more. This lineup will not be good. It might not be terrible, but it's certainly capable of it. i won't believe it until i see it.

nobody has given up hope, but TC3 Hinrich gave us really lousy reasons to be optimistic. here are better ones since you didn't read my earlier post: 1. Jones' improving IsoD and pitches seen per PA. 2. pierre, walker, lee, ramirez, murton, cedeno, barrett 3. the bullpen. 4. the fact that we have enough money to sign millwood, hopefully.

damn straight. i bet my wife's boss that the bears would have a better record when the season began. if i won, she'd have to wear a big bears shirt for the duration of one of her shifts at the bar where they work. if she won, i'd wear a packers jersey for an entire day. everyone around at the time started making fun of me for being foolish. i told them that they would soon see why i made the bet. and they have. nobody's talking so much about how foolish i am anymore. nobody's saying much of anything at all.

Yeah, but one member said the thread should be locked b/c of its optimisim and another called it "idiotic". I don't think eitherof those reactions fall within the spirit of this bd. the post WAS idiotic. not for it's optimism, though. and i don't reacll willis actually saying that it should be locked due to it's optimism. Ryno, i want to you to read this real good, i like you, but actually try to understand what i'm saying: willis was saying it should be locked because it was so plainly incendiary. i was saying that the post was idiotic because it WAS IDIOTIC. not because it was optimistic, not at all. my response offered reasons to be optimistic without being idiotic but obviously you didn't read it all the way through. it's being criticized because it was a stupid, incendiary, and BASELESS (most importantly) argument. it was called out because it was a post with an insulting agenda. if he can insult the intelligence of many on this board, i reserve the right to insult his post.

it better be millwood.

like i said, if his IsoD stays the same and his average returns to the .300 neighborhood, he could be a pretty good addition. now, that's too many ifs to sign a guy to a 3 year deal, though.

This is the exact opposite of what I would write. - Edward K., Inianapolis, Ind.

it seems like people who subscribe to the conventional wisdom of baseball often see the new guys as smug. if anything, it's the unwillingness to change or see something as an improvement that maddens me. who cares if they're smug if they're right? does it matter? is it reasonable to go on believing myths because the guys who've busted those myths are sort of jerks?

i don't think he's being ripped for being optimistic, he's being criticized for posting something idiotic. 1. the word "clutch", when concerning anything baseball, is a myth. a clutch hitter is a unicorn. generally what you find when someone says they've found a "clutch hitter" is a horse with a horn duct-taped to their head. while they may look pretty, the horn will fall off and have to be re-taped at some point. eventually, the drunken circus owner will get tired of re-taping the dang thing and ship the old, flatulent swayback off to the glue factory. the horse will be booed for it's troubles. 2. "biasness" is not a word. 3. burnitz is better than jones in every facet of the game. he's not as fast, but he's better defensively. burnitz was the best defensive RFer in the national league last year, so proposing that jones offers any sort of defensive upgrade is wrong. he may be offer stasis, but not an upgrade. he consistently says that burntiz to jones comparisons are crap, and angrily at that. he doesn't realize that jones is the far inferior player when looking at stats. people who tell you to throw stats out the window KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BASEBALL, nothing. you can never throw stats out the window in such a statistical game. every bit of info we have screams that burnitz is superior. saying he's better is NOT being pessimistic, it's being realistic, and intellectually honest. 4. in order to get an accurate K rate, you have to factor in all Plate Appearnces, not just AB's. the guy must have forgotten that AB's do not include walks or HBPs. giving people more of a reason to lay into him. 5. language like "getting the big hit" or "pumping up the team" is just as useless as the unicorn or...the original post. everyone is now dumber for having read it. i can give you reasons to be optimistic: 1. Jones had an IsoD around .070 last season, which is pretty good. if his IsoD continues to be in that neighborhood and his BA comes up to 2002/2003-type numbers, we could see a .300/.375 year from him, which would make me very happy, regardless of his SLG. 2. We still have room for another pitcher, and the money to sign millwood. the sox won with a pitching model last season, it can be done. 3. murton, pierre, and cedeno are all upgrades at their respective positions to what we had last year. barrett, lee, ramirez, walker, pierre, cedeno and murton have all shown the ability to get on base. that's 7 guys who can possibly put up +.350 OBPs. if they can all come close, we'll win a lot of games, regardless of what jones does or doesn't do. 4. even though he grossly overpaid, hendry still improved the bullpen drastically. it's foolish to make up reasons to be optimistic when there are some good reasons right in front of you. the original post in this thread is maybe the dumbest thing i've ever seen, it's irrational and based in old language that's hardly useful to the modern baseball fan. that's why he got criticized, not because he's optimistic, hell, he wasn't being optimistic anyway, he was angrily grinding an axe with people he doesn't agree with, and using outdated and incoherent figures to do it.