TCR Friday Notes
- Bruce Miles and the beat writers are back in business with the start of spring training. Miles says Geovany Soto has come to camp in great shape, Z is sporting a 'stache and will not pitch for Venezuela in the WBC. He also says that Z is holding off on laser eye surgery due to an infection and some odd eye geometry on his behalf. There appears to be some video at the Trib of Z and the Cubs in Arizona on the sidebar, but I can't get it to load.
- Fangraphs takes a look at the best outfield arms and comes to the shocking revelation that Alfonso Soriano is good and Juan Pierre is not.
- An interview with the Phils former GM, Pat Gillick, gives some insight on the Cubs corner outfielder pursuit this winter.
--On whether the Phillies may have overpaid for Ibanez (three years, $31.5 million), given the one-year, $6 million deal that Bobby Abreu
just signed with the Angels: "The Cubs were after [Ibanez] pretty
thick. Lou [Piniella] and he had a good relationship, so I think Lou
was plugging pretty hard for him. I don't think [the Phillies could've
waited]. The Cubs were searching for left-hand hitting. My opinion is I
would prefer Ibanez to Milton Bradley, just from an
injury standpoint. Milton Bradley to me is an American League player, a
DH/part-time outfielder. He's not a day-in, day-out player in the
National League."
- Former top Cubs prospect Billy Petrick has signed on with the Windy City Thunderbolts of the Frontier League to try and get his career back on track.
- The hits keep coming for the Brewers. Bill Hall is out 4-6 weeks with a partial tear of his left calf muscle and Tom Haudricourt goes over their - ahem - starting pitching depth (Cliff Notes version....not much).
- I've got the bulk of our archives from May 2005 to present day finally in (with February 2006 curiously missing) after a few false starts. I still have to finish up 2007 which should happen this weekend. I'm hopeful we can still locate and secure 2003, 2004 and the rest of 2005, but I'm not holding my breath either (thank you MVN.com). Unfortunately when they imported our archives from all-baseball.com to mvn.com, all the articles defaulted to different authors depending on when they did it. So a lot of the material is currently attributed to me or Arizona Phil for whatever reason, but eventually we'll get it fixed and cleaned up to the best of our abilities.
In the meantime, reading through the comments and articles of old has been quite fun the last few days for myself. A few examples (I'm linking to the month rather than the individual article so you can scroll through some other headlines if you wish):
- The Fun that was 2006 (the snark in the headlines is fantastic)
- The End of the Baker/McPhail Era
Enjoy the holiday weekend....
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#1 Re: TCR Friday Notes
We usually get to about a dozen Windy City games a year, living 5 miles north of the park. I look forward to watching Petrick. They've won the Frontier League championship the last 2 years running, so they run some pretty good talent out there. Steve Trout was pitching coach one season, 2006 I believe. When they were the Cook County Cheetahs, Ron LeFlore "managed" them but at that time had trouble managing his life and didn't last too long. The FL has sent more than its fair share of players back to affiliated baseball, as well as three or four who hit the big leagues.
#27 Re: TCR Friday Notes
I used to do radio for the T'Bolts. We had former Cub prospect great Bo Flowers at the time. In a related story, they sucked then.
That's all the info I have on that.
#2 Re: TCR Friday Notes
I would love to hear Gillick's opinion on Wes Helms and Geoff Jenkins.
I keep looking at it, and besides trading for Lidge, Gillick didn't really make any great moves in his time as Phillies GM. I guess GM'ing, like in most things in life, it's better to be lucky than good. You can't argue with the guys' success, though.
#3 Muskrat is working overtime
Gotta hand it to her, she's pumping out columns daily.
The latest (http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090213&c...) revolves around Lou Piniella.
teasers: One reason for the off-season moves was to create a team that will allow him to rest the starters during the season. (Which seems to imply that a spot on the 25-man is there for Micah Hoffpauir's taking if DLee is going to get regular rest.)
Dempster has taken Wood's locker.
#4 Re: TCR Friday Notes
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/p...
Appendix to the post...better pic of Z's stache.
#17 Re: TCR Friday Notes
Did you happen to see the first comment under the pics?
Steroid stash, which I assume is in reference to Zambrano. Too funny!
#5 Re: TCR Friday Notes
the Neifi double error game...
http://www.thecubreporter.com/2006/05/26/makings-d...
ah, the memories...
#6 Re: TCR Friday Notes
nice one.
that's the one i got tired of superj's crap.
got yelled at for not wanting fontenot playing SS, too. actually, got told i hate him even though i had a ton of posts for a year-ish of how i was a fan of him...just not at SS.
i love it when people tell me what i mean even when i fully explain it.
3 shitty dumpster closing outtings in a row, and it's all about some noofie and the shock he's doing the exact same thing people had been bitching about for 2 years.
at that point it's like being shocked soriano is a lead off hitter.
#7 Nobody Likes this guy, do they?
http://blogs.chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/rose...
#9 Re: Nobody Likes this guy, do they?
Ugh. Rosenbloom probably thinks he coined "A-Roid."
I heard Bill Melton on the Score this morning offer the same kind of easy 2008-based putdowns of BP. Unfortunately for him, he continued: "I guess what they're looking at is we don't really have a starting center fielder...or a second baseman, I mean a confirmed second baseman...and the back of the rotation has some question marks..." LOL
#15 Re: Nobody Likes this guy, do they?
That was just awful.
#20 Re: Nobody Likes this guy, do they?
The only possible explanation is that he's hung like a horse and schtupping someone important.
It sort of pisses me off, though, because most of us have to work for a living.
#30 Re: Nobody Likes this guy, do they?
I think every paper has to carry a couple paid assassins and Rosen-bore is one of the Trib's. Morrissey is the other one, a little less bombastic but always Boers-like in his crustiness. The Times had Mariotti, I don't read their columnists too much so I am not sure who picked up that torch. Maybe Telander is the college-guy's version. Imren at the Herald is not often a happy guy either.
#8 Re: TCR Friday Notes
that tribune link in the TCR friday notes (the part that links: some video at the Trib) has an article by Paul Sullivan quoting Piniella.
Something about Get It Done...
here's the correct link with more accurate quotes:
http://tinyurl.com/5n4ec
#10 Re: TCR Friday Notes
Bruce Levine weighs in on ARod:
"Chicks don't dig the long ball -- accountants dig the long ball."
http://stations.espn.go.com/stations/espnradio1000...
#11 Re: TCR Friday Notes
Lee Hacksaw Hamilton on XM just said something that sounded to me like Cubs outfielder "Kazoo" Fukudome will start in RF but Lou Piniella isn't happy with his play
huh?
was he reading a shredded Carrie Muskat article?
#12 Re: TCR Friday Notes
speaking of Fukudome, he won't join the team until mid-March most likely..
plenty of time for Joey Gathright to get on Lou's good graces and earn a starting job..
kill me now...
#13 Re: TCR Friday Notes
2006... Don't remind me. It was agonizing.
#14 Re: TCR Friday Notes
" On whether the Phillies may have overpaid for Ibanez (three years, $31.5 million), given the one-year, $6 million deal that Bobby Abreu just signed with the Angels: "The Cubs were after [Ibanez] pretty thick. Lou [Piniella] and he had a good relationship, so I think Lou was plugging pretty hard for him. I don't think [the Phillies could've waited]. The Cubs were searching for left-hand hitting. My opinion is I would prefer Ibanez to Milton Bradley, just from an injury standpoint. Milton Bradley to me is an American League player, a DH/part-time outfielder. He's not a day-in, day-out player in the National League."
This is pretty 3/44 Rob G. Why post this again, after it was pretty meaningless yesterday? Just a slow day, or was it particularly meaningful to you?
Again - of course Gillick is going to stick with his pick - duh...
#25 Re: TCR Friday Notes
I was more interested that the Cubs seemed to prefer Ibanez...
and a lot of readers don't read the comments....
#26 Re: TCR Friday Notes
reading is fucking stupid.
#29 Re: TCR Friday Notes
And by "the Cubs" you mean Piniella? Gillick's information from that is probably based on newspaper reports and what Ibanez's agent told him.
#32 Re: TCR Friday Notes
maybe so...
#16 Re: TCR Friday Notes
Rob G posted a link to an Onion baseball-related article in the previous thread. That lead me to to a pretty funny Onion video on the ONN (Onion News Network), entitled, "Use of 'N-work' May End Porn Star's Career".
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/use_of_n_wor...
Definitely NSFW, but damn funny. Watching it made me think of TCR, for some reason.
"It's filthy and disturbing, you know, in a bad way."
#18 Re: TCR Friday Notes
Love it. The Onion videos are effing outrageous.
My fav is the one about "should we close the money hole?"
#21 Re: TCR Friday Notes
Ryno, I know nothing about you, but if you are amused by the Onion. Shit. Okay, I'll start with Fawlty Towers. I mean, Onion writers? Funny? I could snare 3/4 of the dudes who comment here and create a better site.
Sorry, I'm old.
#22 Re: TCR Friday Notes
In fact, let's start it now.
I've made few comments and we all know I'm funny but let's do a best of TCR.
#23 Re: TCR Friday Notes
Lee Smith was nice, where's Dave?
#31 Re: TCR Friday Notes
The Onion was hilarious when it was still running out of Wisconsin. When they moved the operation to NY a few years back, it went down the tubes. You can get it for free now on the North Side and their paper boxes are rarely ever empty. They need T. Herman Zweibel back!
#56 Re: TCR Friday Notes
100% agreed. I think their atmosphere in WI probably contributed a lot to their orignal humor, whereas NY just contributes extra cynicism.
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