The Bears get their new coach in Marc Trestman, his last gig was with the CFL Montreal Alouettes...who knew Moises Alou was so popular in Canada. Trestman has been out of the NFL for 8 years, coaching in the CFL and college, but has plenty of NFL experience. He's considered some sort of QB guru starting his career coaching Bernie Kosar at the University of Miami and then successful runs with Steve Young, Rich Gannon, Jake Plummer and Scott Mitchell, although I don't recall anything successful about Scott Mitchell in the NFL.
And if that's not enough good news, he's going to hire Aaron Kromer as his offensive coordinator/offensive line coach ending the Mike Tice era. Kromer comes way of the New Orleans Saints where he's been there the last 5 years including filling in as interim head coach for the first 6 games of last season while Sean Payton and Joe Vitt served suspensions.
Word is that they would like to keep Rod Marinelli as defensive coordinator which I doubt anyone will complain about. Special teams coach Dave Toub left to take a job with Kansas City so there's a vacancy there.
Anyway, only time will tell if this is a good move. The Bears are obviously moving to an offensive mindset and while the change is welcome, they're way behind the curve and it's always hard to lead when you're following. But I appreciate the out-of-the-box thinking in hiring a guy from the CFL, hopefully he'll bring some fresh ideas, something the Bears have been sorely short on for a long time.
Great update Phil. It is appreciated. Great to see the hitting over the last ten games. Looks like some of these guys are coming around.
I see Feldman and DeJesus as the most tradeable assets, with Shierholtz somewhere behind them, and the asking price for Garza being more than teams want to give up by a pretty good margin. Garza would still be likely to bring back the best haul, though. I mean, even in a good year, what are you really willing to give up for a Feldman or DeJesus?
It appears that Albert Almora is on his way to Kane County.
r.vogelsong (SF) broke the hell out of his pitching hand getting HBP on a swing tonight. the trainer threw a towel over his hand as soon as he saw it...already scheduled for surgery tomorrow...expected to miss 6 weeks.
True.
just when you think the Cubs are starting to look like a major league team, they go and lose 2 of 3 at home to the Mets.
Scott Feldman though looking good as trade bait.
RIP St Rita alum and great musician
http://www.tmz.com/2013/05/20/ray-manzarek-dead-th...
grant balfour + live TV...what the hell was the MLB Network thinking?
he only let 1 swear fly (not bleeped)...that's about 3-4 times less than i expected.
as an aside...the worst SS i've ever seen in my life is/was bj upton.
words cannot describe how awful he was...it blows my mind he actually made it to AAA playing the position...and that he wasn't moved earlier in his minor league or AAA career. even when he wasn't making plays that would count as errors he was playing really bad SS.
they gave him an enormous amount of leeway trying to get him to stick at the position.
True, but if he's at least decent defensively, and could put up a .270/.350/.390
he'd be worth at least a utility spot.
Come on Soler, Almora and Baez!!!
That is kind of damming with faint praise. :)
That may be true. But is he any less of a prospect than Darwin Barney was?
Barney: .288/.337/.378 in the minors, 35/45 steals 1724 PA's
Watkins:.281/.372/.389, 88/124 steals, 2205 PA's
http://espn.go.com/blog/chicago/cubs/post/_/id/170...
It seems unlikely to me that Watkins will be able to keep up his walk totals in the majors, which kind of makes him a non-prospect.
Per the Baseball Cube (http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/profile.asp...), Derek played the part of two seasons in A ball. He had 56 erros in 128 games in 1993, and 9 errors in 11 games in 1992.
I remember a conversation at TCR years ago with reference to Starlin's propensity for errors, and it was brought up that Jeter once committed 59 in A ball. It was a mini-point of discussion because different sources were reporting the number as either 59 or 159, but it was determined to be 59. Edit: I guess it was 56, funny we both thought of the same thing.
Not sure if it is a record, but in 1993 at Greenboro Derek Jeter had 56 errors.