TruffleShuffle

Well it's good to know that when my fantasy teams need a good start from one of their pitchers (Derek Lowe), the Cubs are always happy to comply.

Well, maybe Mesa's box score will update next week sometime.

Last year was his best ever OPS by 60 points, and only his second OPS over 1.000. It's not all that surprising that a guy who has been fairly injury prone in the big leagues should start declining somewhat in his middle to late 30s. I would have expected maybe a 950 OPS from him this season, so perhaps he has been a very slight disappointment, but I don't think you can judge him as a disappointment simply by comparing him to a career year.

The other guy has more RBIs, and we all konw how much people love that stat. Plus it was noted that he plays on the team that apparently is running away with the regular season title. Patterson has been the best player in this league the year, but the other guy won the MVP... that kind of thing happens a lot in the big leagues too.

I don't really buy the "saving the nasty stuff" argument, because whatever stuff they're saving for the best hitters, it ain't working. Why not just throw Pujols the bad stuff, since he hits everything anyway, and save the good stuff for guys who aren't such good hitters? I do think the issue of protection has its merits; i.e., having a good hitter behind you means you will get more to hit. But I don't believe that General So has been hitting ahead of the mashers much this year... more often he's hitting somewhere #6-8.

Don't worry, I'm sure whatever no talent arse clown they call up from the minors will do just fine until he's healed.

I was looking at the Southern League stats and it looks like Sing is pretty much tied with Delmon Young and Jeremy Hermida for first in OPS. I also saw Hermida's stats... what a stud: 366 AB, 77 R, 18 HR, 63 RBI, 111 BB, 89 K, 23 SB, 2 CS, .293/.457/.518 I think I have a favorite non-Cub prospect. I like Felix Pie as much as the next guy, but I'd trade Pie and then some for Hermida. Actually, if I were the Cubs' GM I'd try to trade the Cubs' entire minor league system for Young, Hermida and Felix Hernandez. That would be awesome.

His OBP is soaring! He had better cut that crap out if he ever wants to be a Cub. 80 BB in 116 games?!?!? What a joke! It's called hitting not walking, moran!

It would be nice to see a guy suck as a Cardinal and then star as a Cub :)

Pardon me for being dense, but why does it matter? The DJaxx won the first half of the season, if I remember correctly... if they're already in the playoffs, what does the overall record matter? Is it for home-field advantage? And if so, considering that nobody goes to games in Jackson, does home-field really matter?

And his second AB too... there's no way he ever plays for the Cubs; 161 walks in his last 236 games of minor league ball is completely unacceptible to the current Wrigley regime. Dusty would make fun of him for walking too much. ha ha, "Swing the bat, dude!" I can totally envision how his major league career would play out if, by some miracle, Dusty ever gave him a chance to play regularly. He would start out walking a lot, and then Dusty would start poking fun at him for not being aggressive enough, or even tell him to be more aggressive or he'd get benched. So, being a young impressionable player trying to do anything to make his manager happy, Sing would start hacking at everything, his walks would go way down, his average would drop like a rock, and he'd turn back into the hitter he was during his first couple of seasons in the minors. Then the Cubs would deem him a flop and farm him out to Iowa. Man, that just makes me depressed.

And his second AB too... there's no way he ever plays for the Cubs; 161 walks in his last 236 games of minor league ball is completely unacceptible to the current Wrigley regime. Dusty would make fun of him for walking too much.

Cut out those three and you were very close...

Man, when the other team is walking Neifi Perez to face you, that's a pretty big sign that you are not a good hitter.

That may be true. Unfortunately, the fact that Bonds and Palmeiro used roids to stay productive toward the end of their careers casts a bad light on anyone who stays good into their late 30s or past... and in Clemens case, he's even gotten better at 42-43, which this day in age raises some eyebrows.

That still doesn't mean there won't be adverse effects from the workload. I remember back in 2003, Zambrano always seemed to get stronger as the game went on, but he was being worked hard. By September he was really worn down, and had a lingering back injury that seemed to throw off the location of his pitches. He was basically a non-factor in the 2 playoff series the Cubs played. Carpenter looks strong right now, but when he surpasses a career high in innings, pitches, etc., and still has at least one and possibly three playoff series to pitch in, that's when it could catch up with him. If the Cards end up going to the World Series, he could be pushing close to 300 innings by the time the season is up. I don't care how efficient he is with his pitches, that's a hell of a workload.

No. Lee at least was a good player before this season, albeit not a great one. Nunez was a terrible player and has been above-average this year. Nunez has seen a 185-point boost in OPS. Lee? 240. OK, so considering that Lee was actually a bit of a disappointment last season (114 OPS+ versus 131 and 135 the previous two seasons), it's about even. Either way, you're talking about one of two or three Cubs who have exceeded expectations... not exactly a club full of overachievers.

No. Lee at least was a good player before this season, albeit not a great one. Nunez was a terrible player and has been above-average this year. Check the threads with the word "luck" and the word "SCRUBS" in them. I'm not going to go through it again, but the Cards have far more guys who are outperforming expectations than do the Cubs. The Cubs have a grand total of three guys who it could be argued are doing better than they "should" be: Lee, Ramirez (which I don't agree with, by the way, since he's only 27 and should still be improving) and Jose Macias. You can throw Nomar, Patterson, Hollandsworth, Prior, Wood, and Remlinger in the "disappointment" bin, along with a few marginal bullpen arms like Wellemeyer, Leicester and Borowski. Burnitz is playing his way into the disappointment category as well.

I almost fell out of my chair... a Cardinal fan admitting some good fortune? :lol: I will also add that I have a bit of a double standard here, because I don't attribute what the Braves are doing to luck, and on paper they should not be nearly as good as they have been. Every minor leaguer that comes up for them seems to flourish, and every veteran they sign produces above and beyond what they're paying. But the reason I don't credit it to luck is because the Braves have been doing this for so long that logic says it can't be luck any more. A team can have good fortune shining on it for a couple of years, but more than a decade? They have to be doing something right, and I would give all the credit in Atlanta to John Schuerholtz, their scouting department, Bobby Cox and Leo Mazzone. That's not to say I don't think very highly of Jocketty, LaRussa and Duncan, because I do - but they simply don't have a track record of success that goes back 10-15 years.

Wow that Jim Leyland sure knows baseball then, to know that a guy with career numbers worse than Jose Macias would all of a sudden become an above-average hitter. No. He's 35 years old, I'm pretty sure he has received plenty of coaching. And I don't see how a 3.59 ERA and 1.28 WHIP in the minor leagues translates to a 2.45 ERA and 0.90 WHIP in the bigs. He did have potential, but did anyone really think he'd reach it? He didn't do it in Toronto, even during his healthy years. His K/9IP in Toronto was around 6.50, he never gave up less than a hit per inning in a single season, and he walked about 3.5 guys per 9 innings. When you look at his numbers now compared to even his best year in Toronto, it's like night and day. If so, then the Mulder trade looks even worse in hindsight than most people think. If Duncan can turn a journeyman like Al Reyes into a great reliever, and an oft-injured former first round draft pick into a Cy Young candidate, why trade a young, cheap and talented pitcher (Haren) plus an excellent minor league bat for a more expensive pitcher? Why not just perform the miracles with the younger, cheaper pitcher? Indifferent, your question about filling the Cards' 2B hole is a good one. I think Grudz will certainly want more than $1M next year, considering that he's now put together three solid years in a row. Nunez could have had a breakthrough this year, but there's also a good chance that this season is a fluke. If I were Jocketty, I would do what he usually does, and find an undervalued veteran (a la Grudz and Reggie Sanders) and sign him to a 1 or 2 year deal.

I checked out Mike Lincoln's numbers last year, and they really weren't anything to get excited about. He was OK with the Pirates, but really, any disappointment about his injury has been more than made up for with Al Reyes' extremely unexpected performance. I don't think anyone is saying that the Cardinals have been lucky in terms of injuries this year. The lucky part is that guys like Abraham Nunez, Chris Carpenter, and Julian Tavarez (among other) have been much better than anybody could have expected when they signed with the Cards. Anyone who thought Nunez could be this good in 2005 is either an optimistic family member or completely insane.

Using similar logic, Carpenter has pitched in games the Cards have won 10-3, 7-0, 6-0, 8-0 and 11-3. Since these games were blowouts, a decent AAA pitcher likely could have pitched the Cardinals to victory in all of these games, and therefore Carpenter's stats and 5 wins from those games don't really mean that much.

Call me crazy, but I'd take the Lamborghini any day of the week. If you happen to have a spare Lamborghini lying around that has no value to you because it has no gas, then I'll gladly take it off your hands. :wink: Right. Clemens' trade value is probably through the roof, but his value to his team hasn't been greater than Carpenter. I really don't follow that logic... the Stros have won a number of games that Clemens has pitched because he kept them in the game, even if he didn't necessarily get the win. They also won some of the games that their bullpen blew after Clemens left the game. If Tom Arnold had pitched, the game would have been over after the first inning. That's why, if a team scores 0 runs in 7 innings, it makes a big deal for your starter to at least keep them in it. There's a big difference between the starter giving up 5 runs and giving up 1 run in those 7 innings, because they have a much better chance of winning in the 8th or the 9th.

The AL is a mess, but as for the NL I think the Cards are easily the most complete team in the NL. Carpenter has pitched like a top of the rotation starter, and if Rolen is able to come back and even be a shadow of his former self, I think they win the NL.... as much as it pains me to say that.

Look up the numbers for 2004, when Clemens won the award. As long as we're using the same standard every year, I'm fine with it. You can't use the same standard every year because people pitch to different levels every year. If Clemens' ERA were 1.90 or something, then I'd probably give it to Carpenter, but we're talking about a guy whose ERA is among the best in baseball history with just a quarter of the season to go. The funny thing about all of this is that Carpenter would have been the easy winner last year if he had put up the numbers that he's putting up this year. As for the argument that Clemens needs to pitch farther into the game to get the win, it's not really valid. Carpenter, whether he pitches deep into the game or not, gets run support. When you give up zero runs in 7 innings, you should win the game over 90% of the time, but Clemens has gotten screwed more often than your average pitcher this year, and has also had the misfortune of pitching on many of the days when Brad Lidge or some member of the bullpen melted down. Clemens has been a victim of bad luck much more than of his own inability to pitch complete games.