3 posts before noon ? I have a 2-6 “window” for the repair guy so I am guessing 7Pm.

Bradley has an incentive laiden contract, soI am not too worried. And it is hard to know if he was staying healthy by not playing too much and knowing when to shut it down, or because or he lost some interest in playing with a team that far out of it.

My immediate reaction is simply this – if he jakes it on a particular game, then he doesn’t get paid for that day. Call in sick? Fine, stay home and eat your chicken soup. Oh, and don’t get paid for that day. Simple as that.

If he’s that kind of athlete that can turn it on and off like a switch, no problems here. I’d just make sure that switch is connected to Payroll as well…

His comments are pretty dumb and I don’t know why he would say those things. But to call his contract a bust already is kind of ridiculous. To say we will regret signing him is also ridiculous.

Because of a certain other bust (and thats a real bust of a contract no matter what excuses people want to make) Hendry had to go out and sign a lefty who could play the outfield and hit. Perhaps Bobby Abreu was the better option seeing what he signed for, but at the time Abreu wanted the same amount of money they Dunn and Bradley got. How many people on here would have freaked out if we didn’t have a RF solution until after Valentines Day? Hendry saw the problem, and he wanted to address it as quickly as possible. The best option of left handed $10 million outfielders was Bradley. Abreu would be awful midway through year 2, Dunn’s defense would absolutely destroy us.

If at the time of the Bradley signing it was possible to get Abreu for $5 million and only one season then the Cubs probably would have done it.

with Bradley’s durability, I gave him a pass on the mental stuff because people can change, fresh start, new contract, all that bull crap. Once he is here and reads the newspapers with these types of articles, he will lose it. Chicago’s media is more intense than any place he has played, I don’t see how this is going to work unless he starts out on fire, and stays relatively healthy.

Bobby Abreu 1 year deal anyone?

I’m not sure I’d risk it either.

Can someone PLEASE, for the love of god, explain to me why Luol Deng was included in this piece? What point was he trying to make with that? It was just such a stupid reach on Couch’s part, the whole thing just struck me as kind of odd.

The only thing worth reading is the few bits on Bradley not wanting to play. In that case, I’ll give the guy a pass, he’s obviously pretty emotionally volatile and he felt spurned by moving around so much and nobody wanting to invest in him long term. All he was doing is saying what most other players are thinking and I’m not gonna fault a guy for speaking his mind.

But I’m still willing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt. I wasn’t too excited about us signing him, but the fact remains he is my right fielder now. I’m giving him my support as a member of the Cubs until he does something personally to MY franchise for me to alter my perception

but I am hoping Lou knows how to handle the project. The question than are what are Lou’s options

If or when but if Fukudome gives Lou an option to play him in RF and RJohnson and Gathright in center if Milton doesn’t show up for a period.

the proof is in the pudding! Let’s not go putting the car before the horse, or we’ll be closing the barn door after the cow come home, and you know the chickens don’t like it when the fox is in the henhouse.

Just him on what he DOES, people.

…… if he pulls his typical shit on Piniella. I’d pay to see Lou rip him a new one.

This is reeks of manufactured outrage.

…if you are surprised by this. The only reason anybody would want to like Bradley is because he’s with our team. If he wasn’t, we wouldn’t be able to stand him. I am still horrified by his signing. I would have rather had Adam Dunn playing a miserable RF than Bradley’s game in our uniforms.

Also, another shame on you if you think there won’t be anymore problems with Bradley.

But I’m still in favor of the Bradley signing. I think most of the stories about him are much ado about nothing.

Slamming a plastic bottle at someoen’s feet – Don’t care
Pissing off Jeff Kent – Don’t care
Yelling back at an umpire that was clearly out of line – Don’t care
Wanting to confront Lefebvre – Don’t care, mostly because there’s no idea what he would have done. He may have just wanted to give his side of the story.

I agree with Wreckard here. People are just finding a reason to hate Bradley. Regardless if you like the guys personality or not, and you really have no way to tell whether Bradley is a good or bad person or not, the dude does produce the same if not more wins for this team playing 120 games than DeRosa would playing 150-160 games.

Oh I know stats are scary to many of you, but remember if you try to come back with some subjective argument try to give some qualifications. Like find some scouts that will say that they would prefer DeRosa over Bradely, not just you watching games on TV or seeing a guy in games some number of times. And no an ESPN, CBSSPORTSLINE, or beat writer does not count as a scout unless they actually have scouting experience. An online site where people claim to be scouts and have no reasonable qualification counts. Find a guy who understands scouting/has been a scout, like Keith Law maybe?

Anyways, Bradley is a good pick up for this team just by the fact that he is a great baseball player. He helps this team win, even if he plays less than people want him too. This is the same thing with Rich Harden.

Why have I chosen this stat? Well, while Al will likely point out, this surely doesn’t account for every possible detail in baseball and is not perfect, it accounts, to a great degree, a ton of different things and gets pretty damn close to approximating the wins a player adds to each team. It takes and differentiates replacement value based on league and position and takes the one of the most reliable defensive metric (UZR made by Mitchell Litchman), and the offensive side is done by Tom Tango finding how many runs each person is worth via linear weights. Tango synthesizes this into one formula to determine, approximately, how many runs a player is worth.

Its not perfect, but it is a very reliable tool of analysis.

based on the injuries, i think it is safe to say MB was not on roids