Paging Dr. Green: Wood and Contreras Head To DL

Kerry Wood and Jose Contreras will be enjoying the pine for a while as both were sent to the disabled list retroactively. For Wood, a blister on his right index finger means his 12th trip in his career, and one that could be putting my prediction about him going on the DL once for the season in peril. I figured he would be bound to go on there at some point, and this isn't too bad of news for Cubs fans. He's had blisters on the same hand before and returned fine. Were it inflammation or something of that nature, then there would be cause for concern.

Such is the case for Jose Contreras, who is being shut down for Elbow tendenitis after sporting an 8.60 ERA over this last seven starts.

"I wasn't too pleased the way he handled the situation," Guillen said. "He didn't let (trainer) Herm Schneider know, myself or (pitching coach Don) Cooper know, and he continued to pitch that way. When you're hurt, you're not helping the ballclub. I don't want any of my players to go out with pain and try to be a hero.

"I was — I don't want to say upset — a little disappointed when one of my players is hiding stuff for no reason."

Ozzie should be pissed off. If you're fucking hurt, say something. If it's effecting your pitching, take a break. Look at Freddy Garcia when he started having issues. His velocity was way down, and he was getting jacked. Same can be said for Contreras.

The White Sox called up D.J. Carrasco over the weekend, and he pitched 3 scoreless innings yeseterday against Kansas City in the loss. I would tell you more about him, but I was asleep the entire afternoon trying to sleep off the terrible hangover I had from Saturday night. And after that game, I glad I didn't watch because I would have felt shittier.

Deng puts in his 2-weeks

If you were planning on buying a brand new Luol Deng #9 Bulls jersey before this season starts, you might want to hold off for a bit.

Yahoo! NBA writer Adrian Wojnarowski reports today that Bulls forward Luol Deng says he will end contract talks with the Bulls in two weeks if nothing is agreed to before Deng leaves to play in the Olympics.

Deng is determined to come to terms on a long-term contract, but he has set an Aug. 4 deadline to reach an agreement. Once Deng, 23, leaves the country for the European Championship qualifying tournament, he will [sic] sign a one-year qualifying offer for $4.5 million and become an unrestricted free agent in 2009.

The message to the Bulls promises to be implicit: Unless the two sides come to terms soon, Deng will never again negotiate with them. He will not let the uncertainty over his future hang over another basketball season, and unless a sign-and-trade is worked out, Deng will play out his final season in 2008-09 and sign elsewhere next summer.

When reached on Sunday, Deng’s agent, Jason Levien, would only say, “We continue to talk to the Bulls and remain hopeful that something can be accomplished.”

From what I've seen and heard from Luol in the past, he is not the type of guy to just casually threaten his employer. He has been very up front with Bulls management last season despite the lack of an extension and remains one of the core players from their original youth movement.

To lose Deng in a year for nothing in return would be one of John Paxson's worst failures as GM of the Bulls, and basically a terminable offense. Unless Jerry Reinsdorf is in full control of the situation, and it appears he is not, the Bulls need to come up with a contract that satisfies Deng and keeps the Bulls in the hunt for the 2010 free agency bonanza.

I think Deng is much more valuable than Ben Gordon, who also is in his own fight for the $$, and may very well be crafting his own 2-week ultimatum as I'm typing this. Deng has shown he can ball with the best, even during the playoffs (17.7/ 7.3/ 1.7), and shouldn't be regarded as just another hired hand that the Bulls can bully into agreeing to a less than fair deal.

We'll see today if the Bulls come back with a statement on Deng's posturing but they are officially on the clock and in a situation where Deng has the majority of the leverage.

Parents Outsourcing Their Babysitters

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas

Chicago Bull Word of the Day

We here at Chicago Bull like to be progressive with our posts. We don't just sit around all day with a bag of weed and some Cheetos throwing darts at a wall with ideas on it, as awesome as that may sound.

So today, I was talking with one of my female co-workers and we were discussing her attraction to older men. This girl is pretty decent looking, but apparently she enjoys the company of men in their mid-30s.

Why? It could be the security that most older men have, or maybe she just enjoys talking about what it was really like in the 1980's without having to watch that awful show in VH1.

Anyway, today I was chatting on our little company version of instant messenger and I inquired about her date last night when I thought of the greatest name for her older gentlemen callers: Manfriend.

Yep, manfriend is officially the inaugural Chicago Bull word of the day. Now if you think we're just going to put up a funny word every Friday and call it a day, you've got another thing coming.

No, we're going to Google that word and post the 1st picture that comes up for all of you to laugh and laugh and laugh. So yes, this horribly gay reenactment of a great Halloween costume inspired by the movie Karate Kid is the first thing that came up when I searched for today's word of the day.

We're going to try to do this every Friday so start sending in some words but DO NOT Google them first because that will take out all the humor of posting them on here.

Let's See How Those Cubs-Sox 08' Predictions Are Going

At the end of March as you may or may not recall, I figured I would make some stupid predictions in which I hoped would come true so I could call myself a genius. With the season entering the second half, let's take a look back at my jackassery (which will probably be changed to a different word because Noce is a word nazi. You worked at the Daily Illni, I get it. Stop giving me your high and mighty bullshit because you use proper nouns.)

WHITE SOX:

Jose Contreras will win 15 games: at 7-6 it's a possibility, but highly unlikely. He should end up pretty close though. Contreras had a better second half last year, but given how shitty he was, that's not hard. You'll recall in 05' he had an absolutely stellar first half, and then cooled off. He's on pace for around 238 IP, and that's not a good thing.

Joe Crede will be on the Sox after the trading deadline: I doubt they would package Crede with the way he's played, and especially with Fields not exactly ripping the cover off the ball in Charlotte. To play Devil's advocate, he's the best trading piece the Sox have right now. I'm not sure where they would need to improve thanks to Alexei Ramirez and the best league ERA for a bullpen.

AJ Pierzynski and Paul Konerko will not be in Sox uniforms by the deadline: Did you hear that? I just punched myself in the nuts. And it was well deserved to think the Sox would trade A.J. Win some, lose some. Fucking awful. Anyways, Konerko is a 10/5 guy (10 years MLB experience, 5 years with the same team) and has the right to veto any trade he doesn't like. Who could use him? How about the Rays? Carlos Pena has spent most of the year on the DL (like Konerko hasn't? just saying though). While they be reluctant to take on that much of a financial commitment, he'd sure as shit be an improvement over Ben Zobrist for the surprising Rays.

CUBS:

Fukudome will struggle for the first half, and turn in a stellar second half to win Rookie of the Year. He came out of the gates hitting every thing, but is now down .279 which isn't too bad. He was project to be in the .280 to .300 range, so he's right there. He also leads all NL rookies with a .383 OBP. However, Geovanny Soto would have to be the front runner for the title.

The Cubs will have the division wrapped up on September 4th: I still think this is the right date. The Cardinals are 4 back, Brewers 5. CC Sabathia is not enough to make up the distance, and the Brew Crew will need to win most of their 10 games upcoming against the Cubs in the second half. While 7 of those will be in Milwaukee including the final 3 of the season, it may not matter by that point.

Finally, the boldest call of them all: Kerry Wood will only go on the 15 day DL once. So far, so good. Same can be said for Wood's performance in the closer's role this year. He's had a couple blown saves, but overall has been very effective.

The Doctor Returns

Yes kids, I'm back from Michigan. Glad to see you all played nice with Noce. I had a feeling he would throw up least a post..but a couple? Well done sir. I'll try to to have something up for you a little later on today as I play read-the-worthless-email-from-the-past-three-days ago even though I wouldn't have read it anyways.

Rose named to USA Select Team

I knew there was a reason I signed up for the MyBulls newsletters - they always give me good posting topics. Today's most recent topic - Bulls' rookie PG Derrick Rose has been named to the USA Men's Basketball Select Team. Rose will join nine other top young NBA players to help the 2008 USA Senior National team that will compete in the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing.

Team USA Managing Director, and former Illini, Jerry Colangelo named Oklahoma City head coach and last year's Select Team head coach P.J. Carlisimo as the head coach for this year's team. Colangelo explains the thought process behind having what is virtually a JV team.

“We also brought into the senior team’s training camp last summer a select team of young NBA superstars and it proved to be valuable preparation for our Senior Team. Again in 2008 the Select Team features some of the league’s most promising young and upcoming players – including Kevin Durant who is a member of our Senior National Team and was the 2008 NBA Rookie of the Year.

We’re looking for this select group to really compete and help prepare our senior team for Beijing,” said Colangelo.

I'm happy for Rose to earn such honors without even playing one minute of NBA basketball but at the same time, I worry after his recent MRI results showing tendonitis, more basketball will only hurt his chances of being 100% going into the 2008-09 NBA season.

I think I can speak for everyone at ChicagoBull, which is basically only myself and Dr. C (Sorry EA), and refer back to our last post that said Rose needs some serious rest if he's ever going to be able to heal.

I'm no doctor, let me just get that outta the way. In fact, I have made it through 24 years of life pretty much ignoring what would generally be considered sound medical advice, but I decided to read up on tendonitis and here's what I found, particularly about tendonitis in the knee.

From to About.com's Orthopedics section,

What causes patellar tendonitis?
Patellar tendonitis is the condition that arises when the tendon and the tissues that surround it, become inflamed and irritated. This is usually due to overuse, especially from jumping activities. This is the reason patellar tendonitis is often called "jumper's knee."

When overuse is the cause of patellar tendonitis, patients are usually active participants of jumping-types of sports such as basketball or volleyball. Patellar tendonitis may also be seen with sports such as running and soccer. Also, some patients develop patellar tendonitis after sustaining an acute injury to the tendon, and not allowing adequate healing. This type of traumatic patellar tendonitis is much less common than overuse syndromes.

What is the treatment for patellar tendonitis?

Rest
The most important first step in treatment is to avoid activities that aggravate the problem. Your body is the best guide to know how much to rest the injured knee--if an activity hurts in the area of the injured patellar tendon, then you should rest from that activity.

The good news about this is that according to the same site, surgery is extremely rare and almost never an option unless chronic patellar tendonitis develops. So he's got that going for him, for now, which is nice.

I guess Rose will have to be the person in charge of how he feels but from his reputation as a gym rat who had dozens of MRI's on his knee during his one year at Memphis, I wouldn't doubt that he'll just play through the pain. Whether or not that affects his performance is yet to be determined.

I hope for the kid's sake and for the Bulls' sake that this is strictly a learning opportunity for him to gain knowledge of the position he'll be playing from some of the game's current greats in Deron Williams and Jason Kidd.