Hairyducked Idiot

Or he had an unusually long slump due to the knee issues and now he's back to his usual streaky self. Leg issues in a guy with a ton of middle-infield miles on his legs, who got a lot of his value in the past from speed, is not a good sign.

Can we play the Pirates in the NLDS, please?

How can Sam Fuld be bad? He made "the Catch." Oh wait, that was Willie Mays. Never mind, common mistake.

I think it's pretty rational to hate Samardzija as a ballplayer.

Jeff Kent was a much, much, much better fielder than Fox. Why not just have Fox pitch? Then you wouldn't need to have a bad hitter in the No. 9 slot?

That thread is awesome to go back and read.

92 wins (projected to have the best record in the NL), winning the division by 7 games over the Brewers. My mistake. I looked back a couple weeks ago and saw 85 and assumed that was preseason, but apparently it's updated regularly.

Didn't PECOTA project this team to like 85 wins?

Aging, unfortunately, is a factor.

If Peavy netted that haul, Zambrano can be dealt without eating money.

It's easy to poke fun. But take a look at this list: Big Z, Harden, Bradley, Soriano, Miles, Fontenot, Fukudome, Gregg, Heilman If you could dump all those contracts, would the Cubs be better or worse off in the long run? Harden, Gregg and Heilman are gone at the end of the year regardless. So now we are looking at losing Bradley, Zambrano, Soriano, Miles, Fontenot and Fukudome. Fontenot is more or less a non-entity at this point, you can go ahead and not lose any sleep over losing him. So now we are looking at losing Bradley, Zambrano, Soriano, Miles and Fukudome. The Cubs would unquestionably be in a better situation if they could dump Miles and lose the Soriano contract, which we all agree now is horrible. I'd put Zambrano on the list of contracts I wouldn't mind losing. His option has little chance of vesting, so he's basically got 3 years, $53.7 million left on his deal. That is a ton of money for a guy I wouldn't consider in the very top tier of starting pitchers. Bradley is looking at two years, $21 million left on his deal. He's been decent enough this season that I'd probably keep that. Fukudome has been awesome for the Cubs, but he's got two years, $26.5 million on his contract. That's about a wash. I'd like to keep it, but I wouldn't cry over losing it. All in all, I'd lean toward the Cubs being better off in the long run if all of those players were waived and picked up by someone else. I'm not a big fan of trying to buy a bunch of players in one or even two offseasons, but with that kind of money you should be able to get some real impact players. Edit: Reading this back over, it seemed like a good idea to start with and just got weaker and weaker. Never mind.

Edit: Never mind, it doesn't make sense now.

At least we don't have to wonder why Marshall would have been better.

The 2004 team was in almost certain playoff position with two weeks to go.

BP and nate silver said that stats didn't work on a player like that. False modesty? Lucky? I dunno. Samardzija's still awful.

Remember when PECOTA was all like "Samardzija sucks and is worthless" and others were like "Nuh-uh, stats don't work on a player like this, he's a scouting project." PECOTA was right.

This is probably the right result for the level of play from both sides.

They just did.

No. 7 for Mexico reache down, grabbed the head of the injured U.S. player and twisted. I'm not sure why.

Bradley secretly hates America.

That didn't take long.

http://atdhe.net/8392/watch-mexico-vs-usa That's the best so far for me.

I was thinking the same thing myself. I thought the usual sign is a drop in velocity and he was hitting 94 last night. I wonder if his shoulder is giving him trouble. Loss of velocity points to shoulder problems, loss of control points to elbow.

You guess correctly.

And instant replay calls are never controversial.