Time for Eldest Sherlag to hire an Experienced GM

Illinois Times Editorial--

Illinois rose to respectability last season posting 87 wins and their first over .500 record. However, it was another last place finish for the Chows. There is almost no margin for error in the Tastes Great League -- and particularly in the East. Maybe in the Less Filling, a franchise could survive the learning curves of a GM with no experience, but Illinois is in the Big Boy League and every move must be executed to perfection in order to succeed.

Illinois fans have had to put up with a lot of losing on the filed, now thanks to Sherlag's blunder the Chows are losing in the draft. By missing the postseason, Illinois had positioned themselves ot pick seventh in this years draft. The Chows had talked to us off the record about their draft thoughts and how critical it was to be picking 7th. The list of players that would definitely be there made Sherlag comfortable trading a bit of the future to get Huff.

Last week Commissioner Beard informed the Chows that they will be drafting 8th due to overusage penalties. A stunned Brad Sherlag could not talk to Beard soon enough claiming "This must be a mistake - we were (and always have been extremely careful about our usage." It seems that Sherlag simply didn't understand rule 6-3 which reads:

"Overusage penalties for pitchers are the same as for batters, with the additional provision that teams will not incur overuse penalties for pitchers carded as starters only who do not exceed the number of starts on their cards, if they pitch no relief."

Although this rule is patently clear -- Sherlag claimed he did not realize that Micah Owings was limited in innings pitch regardless of how many starts the Chows gave him. Because Owings had appeared in two games as a reliever for Arizona in the MLB the previous season he was not carded as a starter only. Therefore, Owings usage was limited to 152 2/3 innings. The Chows pitched Owings 182 2/3 innings.

"We thought as long as we limited Micah to 27 starts and never used him in relief, he could throw as many innings as game situations dictated. We just simply misunderstood the rule. We had plenty of starts and innings left for Capuano. We were out of the race and could easily have given Capuano more starts in the final block. We will chalk this up as a painful lesson - at least the penalty didn't cost us a play-off birth."

Misunderstood the rule? A real GM knows the constitution backward and foreword to make sure he makes the best decisions for his club. A real GM also knows the difference between Dimitri and Delmon. The honeymoon in Illinois is over. Chows fans are tired of waiting, both for a play-off birth and for the Chows turn in each round of the draft. Chows fans will be waiting one pick longer now -- hopefully they will not be waiting another season for success.