Bull

I think its pretty obvious this is what the poster meant by refreshing. The tendency of some folks here to jump down a guys throat is becoming crazy. That's so crazy. The Cubs haven't acquired or signed a longterm contract in quite some time. This isn't new. This isn't refreshing. It's been this way for quite a while. It will be refreshing once they actually are good again. they haven't signed a long term contract in a while, because they've been weighed down with bad along term contracts. Did you want Pujols at 10 years? The Cubs are in a better place going forward right now than they have been in a long time. That won't translate into a WS this year, but it should translate into a perennial winner and soon. Right now, riding out and trading off some big contracts was the right thing to do. I just don't see how you can argue with Kyle said even if you didn't understand what TheLogan meant.

I think its pretty obvious this is what the poster meant by refreshing. The tendency of some folks here to jump down a guys throat is becoming crazy.

As long as the maroon ones say Epstein, I don't care what color they are. BTW, anyone notice everything is a little later this year. I always remember joking to my wife about looking forward to Feb 14th (because pitchers and catchers report.)

I thought it was decided long ago that everything was CT's fault.

Yeah you are. I think I speak for all of us that this off season has been crap. Anyone disagree? So, bad at reading, then. Fair enough. Enlighten us. young, cheap and bad with the chance of getting better > old, expensive and going nowhere without catching lightning in a bottle. People here have been calling for this approach since 2002 CC is clearly a nowacrat.

different. deserves two threads. one is about pieces being added, the other is about what to do with existing pieces.

Yeah you are. I think I speak for all of us that this off season has been crap. Anyone disagree? You speak for no one. ban plz.

300 pages of awesome.

In his case, does that mean that he'd be a free agent in 4 years or like Samardzjia where he'd still be under team control after it's up? It would kind of suck if we were paying him 7mil/year or whatever and he became a FA around the time he's ready for the big leagues. It's like Samardzija. But the problem is, that sets a fairly high baseline. We won't be able to pay him $500k or whatever in his pre-arb years. Which sucks. I'm not really sure I like this deal all that much. Unless Epstein and crew thought they saw something in the scouting process that made them think he's a lot better than the conventional wisdom. Samardzija is different in that he was drafted from college (and not even focusing full time on baseball) raw at age 21. This guy is already in A, A+, or AA level competition at age 19. Not as much money, not as much risk. Better situation in every way.

someone make him stop, plz. also, 82 wins. above .500.

Just wanted to add that brinoch is a pretty decent guy in his own right.

So he'd only be here for a cup of Coffey?????????????????????????????????????????????? God, I miss NCCub Woah. What happened to that guy? I hadn't realized he was gone until just now. met him and Brionch (rodan) for a game in Washington in 2006ish. seemed like a great guy. Anyone know when, why he left?

A whole thread for this?

It pretty clearly involves more skill. You can get your foot in the door (so to speak) with raw athleticism in sports like football and basketball, but baseball requires a strong skill base that has to be built up over age (with rare exception). What's the saying? The hardest thing in sports is to hit a 95 MPH fastball or something? Don't know if it's true, but wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if it was. Hitting a round ball with a round bat solidly I think is absolutely the hardest "basic element" of any major pro sport. People across the world can make the same shot Kobe makes using the same size ball and the same size hoop.* But how many can hit an 85mph pitch? Very few. *I get why the comparison to what Kobe does on an NBA court and what we do in pickup games is faulty... "The hardest thing to do in all of sports is to hit a round ball with a round bat, squarely." - Ted Williams

Would a Szczur move likely be the corresponding move to Jackson being called up? IOW he'd see one or the other.

Winner. And depth. don't underestimate the starting rotation depth.

go re-read the last page carefully. it was fairly obvious; he meant exactly what he said. (he said, "since Billy Williams")

Moving a pretty good market from the NL to the AL isn't going to help balance against the AL having more good markets. yes, but they're moving the Astros.

This part isn't really true. The NL has better #7 and #8 hitters than the AL #8 and #9 hitters. Even when you compare it 7 and 8 to 7 and 8 it's close. The worst hitter besides an NL #9 hitter is an AL #9 hitter, and it's not particularly close. The NL does seem to put poor hitters in the #2 spot though. Here's last year OPS advantages: #1 spot- NL by 11 points #2-AL by 62 #3-NL by 12 #4-NL by 33 #5-AL by 22 #6-NL by 3 #7-AL by 9 #8-AL by 5 #9-AL by 164 Total: AL by 20 I was surprised to see from how much we talk about sluggers going to the AL that the NL led in both the 3 and 4 spot last year, and by a decently large margin in the 4 spot. Oh well. I'd still rather have the DH. And does this track back consistently? I looked at the last 3 spots in the lineup for the last 6 years and with some normal statistical variation, yeah (sometimes the AL had a larger advantage in one spot, but for example in at least 2 of those years the NL 8 spot was better than the AL 8 spot). I wonder if the AL advantage is truly to the DH or because AL teams are in better markets/have more money than the NL. If there was the same amount of money available, then the AL spending big money on DH's should be able to be counteracted with the NL having more money for other positions. I don't think adding the DH will help the NL's imbalance much at all. I wonder how much the bolded will be offset by the Astros moving to the AL.

The point is, the same players would be an improvement, so long as they didn't underperform again. On paper, they haven't really gotten better. You mean they haven't really gotten better than the projections...which were better than the actual performance. So they've improved from the actual performance of last year. they project to be improved from the actual performance. :) And they kind of are immune to the injuries to the back of the rotation. That's the whole point of going 7 deep.

Tony Pena First person to pop into my mind when I saw the video. I caught like that in high school. It helped throwing out runners. Or at least that was the idea.

Damn. That's gonna happen all the time isn't it. I got the over under set at 46 1/2. Why the heck is Campana hitting instead pinch running for whoever walked?

It's been mentioned. But there isn't much information to go on. I think if there is no reliable testing in place, then you just have to assume someone putting up big numbers is juicing. Just like MLB in 2003. And it would clearly affect his value. Bigtime. I suggested it 10 pages ago and was basically ignored. I wasn't sure if that's because people didn't know what to say, or they thought I was stupid. Maybe everyone just has me on ignore? My interest is diminished in him after seeing the comment about increasing home runs in that league. I agree it diminishes his value.

Kevin Goldstein @Kevin_Goldstein So they NEED OFers. RT @SplittinAdam: @Kevin_Goldstein They have DeJesus, Johnson, Jackson, Sappelt, Campana and more I love Kevin Goldstein. If I were a twitterer, I would happily follow him. I like how he didn't list Soriano

why does that make the purchase weird? Sullivan is apparently desperate for something to write about. And you are clearly pathetically desperate for news since you posted it. I am obviously ridiculously pathetically desperate for action on this board, as I commented on it.