Optimism vs. Pessimism (Hendry's Moves and The 2007 Cubs)

[EastonBlues22]

Question:

 

If I were to completely reverse course and predict that Hill, Lilly, and Marquis would post sub 4 ERAs over 80 starts between them, but that this would be the year that Z's arm blows up Livan Hernandez style from all the abuse and he posts a high 5 ERA over his 32 starts, would that be optimistic or pessimistic?

It would be the apocalypse.

[Wheelimus]

Question:

 

If I were to completely reverse course and predict that Hill, Lilly, and Marquis would post sub 4 ERAs over 80 starts between them, but that this would be the year that Z's arm blows up Livan Hernandez style from all the abuse and he posts a high 5 ERA over his 32 starts, would that be optimistic or pessimistic?

 

It's not realistic though, we know that if Z ever does blow up, he's going to REALLY blow up. Like, his arm will come flying at some batter with the ball in hand. Blood spewing from the stump they'll drag him off the field kicking and screaming as he grabs for the ball with his one remaining arm. He'll be screaming "WAIT...I STILL FUNCTION" as the longman watches him pass laughing "WANNA BET?" :D

[neely crenshaw]

i give hendry an A for effort. seriously, we were arguably the worst team in baseball last year. we had huge holes to fill! really we had z and dlee, barrett and jones. everything else could or should be fixed. it certainly looks like the timetable was 1 year to fix this and the market was not a very good one to fix a lot of holes!

we signed aram..hendry's own screw up but had to get done!

did not change short yet but we'll see if we are ok. i think we are not bad if izturis and cedeno hit 8th.

2nd base got derosa...helps with depth i don't know that it is a huge upgrade over theriot

we get dlee back at first. this could be the biggest "deal" for improving next season.

lf-so far still murton or soriano

cf-soriano or anotherpick up..soriano is anothetrbig bat we needed.

rf still jones so far. could be moved but if he can hit 6th or 7th not a bad spot.

barrett=

staff

lilly=i like

marquis..i hold out hope. i worry that with his deal he is not here to compete for a spot but will be given a spot. i would be ok if he earns it. with prior,miller and the young guys around he would be insurance but we paid alot for that. i certainly hope we have one more move for a solid starter. right now we have z and lilly..with high hopes for hill(but still not a sure thing) then huge ? on prior,miller,marquis and the kids)

we can't play fantasy "let's make a deal" because you just don't know who really is available and what they are actually asking. with the market that was available..we ahd to overpay. my only negative is that we didn't get schmidt or meche. we still need one starter. i hope we can pull one off as well as find a CF.

[wastra]

Don't forget about Cotts in competition for that 5th spot also.

 

 

I really don't think Marquis is a positive addition exept in that he is fairly durable- which I do not discount, to be honest, given how 2006 went.

 

I think our team is an 80-85 win ballclub UNLESS a couple breaks go our way...mainly the offense stays healthy and Soriano of 2006 is the real Soriano. Perhaps more importantly, a healthy and effective Mark Prior and/or Wade Miller potentially takes the rotation from middle-of-the-pack to one of the NL's best.

 

But we're still not locks to win a lot of games. The two offensive players we added played well above their career norms last year, so there is a significant chance they regress, and we're just an average offensive team. If the pitching can't stay healthy and we have to rely on Marquis all year, we have an average (at-best) rotation. again.

 

There's reason for optimism AND pessimism with this offseason. We've spent a ton of money, but some of the dollars spent are highly questionable (Marquis)

[Ender]

Unless some major signings happen there is no team favored to win the division in my opinion. The Pirates won't win it. I don't think the Reds will be as good as last year, I think they made some bad moves that is going to make their 2nd half more likely than their 1st half.

 

The Brewers are very capable of taking the division if their young players take steps in the right direction. The Cardinals and Astros both look worse than last year to me. The Cubs improved a lot but not so much that I think they are a lock for high 80's wins. Some team will get hot and pull out 85-87 wins and take it.

[BigbadB]

The Pirates won't win it.

 

I wouldn't discount them too quickly. I think they might be better than Cincinnati right now, and if a lot of things go right for them, they could be pretty good. That is assuming they get someone decent to play 1b.

[TruffleShuffle]

It's virtually the same roster with Lilly replacing Maddux, Marquis replacing Marshall and Soriano replacing Pierre. The only guaranteed improvement is with Soriano. And 10 games is a lot for any one man to make up.

 

The Cubs were 4 wins below their pythagorean W-L record, so this suggests they were fairly unlucky last year (along with being bad).

 

A season of Izturis/DeRosa with some spot starts by Theriot will probably outperform a half season of Walker/Cedeno and then Cedeno/Izturis and Cedeno/Theriot. Cedeno was a black hole and Walker was really pretty mediocre with the Cubs last year.

 

Lee played only 50 games last season. The Cubs could easily get 100 more games out of him, meaning 100 less games of Walker/Mabry/Nevin troika.

 

Cedeno had an OPS+ of 53 last year. Mabry and Perez each had over 200 ABs and each had an OPS+ of 53. Now you're looking at a bench with Theriot and Ward, who will easily be better than the trash last season.

 

Barrett played less than 2/3 of the games in 2006. Murton can be expected to improve a little bit from last season.

 

Pitching:

 

You hopefully replace Rich Hill's crappy early season games with average to good games. He pitched only 16 games last year; this year if he's healthy, he'll double that total. Marmol and Guzman were flat-out bad; no Cub starter is likely to be that bad this year. Marshall was also bad; Marquis probably won't be that bad this year, and if he is, he'll be replaced in the rotation.

 

Dempster might be better this year. No Glendon Rusch, less Novoa, no Williamson, more Wuertz. Wood will probably be good in whatever innings you get out of him from the pen. Prior might not give you much, but he'll do better than 9 atrocious starts. At the worst, I'd expect him to not pitch, in which case he'd still be better than last year.

 

I don't think the Cubs are going to be great, but it's easy to see a lot of ways in which they can improve over last year. Mostly, I think, the Cubs have taken most of the worthless pieces from last year (Cedeno, Mabry, Neifi, Guzman, Marmol, Rusch) and replaced them with players who will likely do significantly better (with the exception of shortstop, where Izturis will probably be only marginally better than Cedeno was). That, along with hopefully a full year from Lee and the large increase in production from Pierre to Soriano, is a reason that an improvement of 15-20 games is not unreasonable.