Cheech Tremendous

They lost?! I literally turned off the game at the point you mentioned (108-100 with a minute to go). That's horrendous.

EDIT: Hey, why aren't we using the new Winter Meetings thread? Say no to mega-threads, people!

-4 years/$47M (2008-11), plus 2012 club option -signed extension with Minnesota 3/24/08, replacing option year of previous deal 08:$11.25M 09:$11.25M 10:$11.25M 11:$11.25M 12:$12.5M club option ($2M buyout) -price of 2012 option increases by $0.5M each for 55 GF in 2010, 55 GF in 2011, and 110 GF in 2010-11 combined -limited no-trade clause -award bonus: $25,000 for All Star selection

It's not. I'm sure that Cedeno and Pie are included at the least. It'll probably take Vitters and Marshall as well to get anything done.

Holy shit... did you suck or what?

They're selling everything that's not bolted to the ground in San Diego. Payroll has to be cut by like 50% and Peavy eats up $17 million a year. He has a limited no trade clause, and therefore very limited value*. *He may also be hurt. He has a really fishy injury history and Kevin Towers is no dolt.

I wouldn't be interested in Jon Garland either. He's a lock to give you 200 innings, but it's going to probably be a below-average 200 innings. I'd rather pay Burnett or Sheets for 100 great innings and the upside of a Cy Young performance than the sure thing that's going to suck for 200. You can always get guys off the scrap heap to eat up some starts with a slightly below average performance. No sense in paying Garland $10 or $12 million a year to do nothing but show up every five days. That's how you end up with an albatross contract like those given to Carlos Silva and Kevin Millwood.

He's a top-10 closer, no doubt, but he's not as good as Billy Wagner and Mets fans hated him. I don't see this ending all that well.

Just imagine the pop Porter will get when he returns in March to crush Psycho Penguin in an argument over the NCAA tournament.

Czech has theorized in the past that the reason we have so many gimmicks and board personas is because we all grew up as wrestling fans. We all understood and reveled in the idea of playing up a character that was just an extension of ourselves. I've never really bought into this theory, but thinking about all the board "retirements" and "returns" makes me think that he was on to something. I can't think of any other place where the posters think of themselves as the stars and draw of the board over the actual content.

Edge and William Regal had a feud in early 2001 over the IC title that went nowhere. Bad matches, no heat and nothing memorable angle wise. Given the talent of the two workers and the amount of time they were programmed together, you'd think they'd have done something interesting. Nope.

If so, that is the first real evidence that this bad economy is going to have an effect on free agent signings. That's a significant discount over every other significant closer signing in the past two of three years. Rumor out of the Winter Meetings is that there isn't much of a market for Manny either. Some think that he may even accept arbitration and play on a one-year deal.

That's funny, I didn't realize that I was making an argument. I just listed great wrestlers who never held a world title. If you feel differently about ECW, TNA or AWA, that's fine. Just take them off the list. It's not like I care that much.

How did Alabama stay so high in the rankings? Looking back through their schedule, they had a nice win over Georgia, but the rest of their schedule was mostly crap. Granted, I'm not much of a college football guy so maybe I'm missing something. Did they really have a tougher schedule than the teams like USC, Penn State and Texas Tech? It even looks like Utah played a tougher schedule.

Sabathia wants to be a Dodger?

I "retired." It lasted four months. He'll be back.

I would only support this idea if Jeff started wearing a tuxedo with the sleeves cut off.

The NWA hasn't been a major organization since the the WCW split back in 1991. It's a glorified indy title.

At least my nightmare scenario of swapping Lugo for Willis is over. Everett should still be terrific in the field and will help the pitching in Detroit. He's not much of a offensive downgrade from the group they were considering (Lugo, Wilson) and the price was right. Not a deal that will blow your socks off, but a good one nonetheless.

No one will ever deny that the Red Sox have a monetary advantage that few franchises can match, but it doesn't mean that there is an endless supply of money. You don't break your model for player valuation because a guy has been on the team for a long time. That's just bad business. Varitek has been shown a great deal of respect from ownership, but at some point costs outweigh benefits. Many of the big market teams are looking to cut payroll because of the bad economy. It's not like John Henry has been isolated from this recession. The notion that money will be pouring in to the end of the time is ludicrous. This team has spent money, but they've also been about mitigating risk. How many $100 million deals has this ownership group given out? Zero. There's a reason for that. It's not as if they are low-balling these guys to hell and running them out of town. They offered arbitration to Varitek and he declined. Look back at negotiations with Pedro, Damon, and Nomar. Each guy was offered a large sum of money to return, but other teams went higher and the Sox decided it just wasn't worth it. They've been right in every case. For every Damon or Manny that rips the Sox FO you have an Ortiz, Pedroia, or Arroyo who takes a below market deal just to stay around. Even Derek Lowe is asking back into the organization. Making the tough calls on vets allows you the freedom to spread the money around to the other 25.

Let me ask my MSN contact.

T'Wolves fire Wittman; McHale to take over The article also indicates that McHale is relinquishing his job at Vice President of Basketball Operations.

The Rose Bowl matchup is the most interesting game to me. Seems like both of those teams have been forgotten in a bit the madness surrounding the Florida-Alabama-Texas-Oklahoma logjam. Not a lot of respect given to a couple of one-loss teams who won BCS conferences. Granted, the resume might not look as good as those other teams at the top, but they won the games when they counted. Whatever, no sense in beating a dead horse.

It's not that we want to see him unceremoniously dumped. The fact is Varitek doesn't have much value left and he wants to be paid like an elite starting catcher. He's too old and too poor at the plate and in the field to justify a $10 million contract. The intangibles that Varitek brings have some value, but how much? There were times last year that he seemed to be on a completely different page from younger guys like Lester, Buchholz and Masterson. We know of complaints about calling too many fastballs from guys like Beckett, Paps and Gagne. Is he really the master game caller that everyone makes him out to be, or are people just respecting the captain of the squad? Is he the benefactor of catching for some good pitchers behind a great defense? There reaches a point with every player where price exceeds value. We may be there with Tek.

I don't consider ECW or TNA to be a world title, but your mileage may vary. Thought of a few others: Owen Hart Rick Rude* Nikita Koloff British Bulldog Magnum TA Christian Barry Windham* Jerry Lawler** *Depending on how you view the NWA title post-WCW split **Depending on how you feel about latter-day AWA