I hate to rain on parades, but Tony is best in small doses. He is a great spark plug, but still shouldn't start more than 2-3 times a week. He is dangerous as an unknown, but if pitchers see him too much becomes ineffective. Plus his D is scary...
The "old" days they didn't throw the way they do now in between starts, and they didn't have the variety of off speed stuff that they do now. Pitchers are putting way more strain on their elbows and shoulders than they ever used to do.
Gee do you think this comes from the fact that he, Wood and Zambrano are all in the top 5 or so in pitches per start in the NL?
http://espn.go.com/mlb/news/2003/0720/1583188.html
Portland and Dallas could only offer the minimum. If he was going to take the $5 mil from the Bulls they could only offer $1.8 mil. They tried to convince him to come, but there is no point in making an offer if there is that Pippen was pretty sure about Chicago.
The overall level of play hasn't changed that much, IMO. Heck they just had first round draft picks in back to back years with Jeffries and Zack Randolph. Plus they have turned out guys like Bonzi Wells and others who have been contributing.
How could you help but notice? They went from having 35-40 K at some state finals to not even filling the building at Conseco for the A/AA games and some years just making it for AAA/AAAA.