TruffleShuffle

man if wood became a great closer, that would be so amazing

we'd be looking great with ray durham at 2b, jd drew in rf and jason schmidt in the starting rotation

dusty?

josh vitters for matt wieters

if theriot turns out to be adequte and ronny ends up getting traded and hitting .100 somewhere, these threads will approach the rich hill and mark derosa threads in my pantheon of awesomest threads. unfortunately i don't think theriot is near good enough to put egg on people's faces. though i'm still curious as to whether folks are still pining for ray durham's 2007 over mark derosa's 2007 plus $4 million. it's too bad that we didn't use the savings to sign j.d. drew, though. that contract is looking solid right about now. okay that's enough, i will stop (sort of) defending jim hendry. he still sucks.

again - home/road splits. he is a much, much better hitter away from petco.

ankiel hit his 2nd homer tonight. on the plus side, i'm probably going to be happy with my wild card pick this year. however, it's going to be really annoying when he ends the year with more homers than any single player on the cubs.

Do you believe you got me somehow? I was away from the computer pretty much until just now. I believe it was a single down the right field line. So, where are we now? Another 1/4 day. .222/.222/.278 on the year. Still in line to get the most ABs. BLAME THE MANAGER

despite john stevens' best efforts, the flyers are in the playoffs

well yeah if we are talking about soriano vs murton +$16M then it is a no brainer. but straight up, who is a better player, at this point in time that is a no brainer too.

Better than better than average? So really good? I would kill for average out of SS right now. Cedeno may never get there, but he's got a better chance than anybody affiliated with the Chicago Cubs. i agree with that, he does have a better chance to be average at SS than anybody affiliated with the chicago cubs.

yeah and when people saw rich hill with the cubs in 2005 and early 2006, they saw a guy with an average fastball he couldn't locate, and a plus curveball that he couldn't throw for strikes consistently. that adds up to not good in this league.

this team would not be better with murton in the lineup instead of soriano, please don't be insane.

i'm not sure if i'd blame hendry or piniella for this. remember, piniella is the guy who thought soriano would be a good fit in the 2-hole and then gave up on it after all of two losses. he manages like a guy who thinks the season has as many games as an nfl season. so i'm not so sure that if reed johnson starts playing most of the games, that piniella won't be the driving force behind the switch.

well the alternative is to say "i don't think cedeno will be average or above average, and i think he won't be as good as theriot either" and then be met with the predictable response of "PECOTA has ronny at ... and theriot at ..., therefore ronny should be in the lineup." so i actually try to back my opinion up with some evidence. if you'd pay attention to anything that i wrote, you'd note that i have not said that i am positive that ronny cedeno will absolutely not be a terrible player. it's my opinion that he will be. i hope i'm wrong and if theriot gets hurt or is completely useless (sub-.300 obp, for example), i hope that cedeno steps in and plays good baseball. but theriot, while a bad player in his own right, is at least not a complete black hole in the lineup, which cedeno was. theriot was about 1.5 wins better in 2007 than cedeno was in 2006, and at this point i would rather go with the known quantity of theriot than risk having cedeno be completely worthless.

That's out there. aramis' had a poor season when he was a full 365 days younger than cedeno. time to write ronny off aramis also cut his strikeout rate in half from his age 20 big league debut, and had a .700 OPS, not .610. i cant tell if you really don't think Cedeno could ever possibly be a decent option or if you just are sticking with an irrational point for the hell of it i like how it's an irrational point yet there have been very few examples provided of guys who completely sucked for a whole year at age 23 and turned into better than better than average big league players. it's also fun to bash points as being "irrational" without providing much evidence to support this. i don't think i'm the only person on this board who thinks cedeno will not be a good option, and i don't think that most of the people who are anti-cedeno feel that way because we are in love with ryan theriot's grit and hard work.

even if sosa used steroids, most of the league was also using them, and he also had a great deal of natural talent.

unless they're really afraid that rios would blow up this year, i'm not sure what the urgency was. wait and make sure he keeps improving or at least maintains his performance.

you forgot to update us on his fourth at bat.

That's out there. aramis' had a poor season when he was a full 365 days younger than cedeno. time to write ronny off aramis also cut his strikeout rate in half from his age 20 big league debut, and had a .700 OPS, not .610.

yeah but so was hitler.

that's what i'm saying. it's not like felix pie is jason dubois, a relatively polished player arriving in the big leagues who should already have a pretty good idea of how to hit big league pitching. pie is very talented, just like aramis was; aramis was clueless at the plate early on, but he had the natural ability and enough smarts to learn some plate discipline, and he ended up becoming a great player. unpolished players - and Lord knows that the cubs can churn these out, since the organization has no idea how to teach plate discipline - need more time to adjust at the big league level than guys who already have a good sense of pitch recognition and working the count. pie was pretty average in his first crack at iowa, then tore the league up in 2007. let's give him some time to see if he can make similar adjustments at this level. if not, then he's a bust, but there's no sense giving up on him right now. why don't you share the same patience with ronny cedeno? he's looked bad in his 1st 600 major league at bats, just like aramis, brandon phillips, jose reyes, and probably quite a bit more. but you've given up any hope of cedeno being good. cedeno had one full year of play at age 23; aramis' poor performances came at age 20 and 22. when he was 23, he hit .300 with 34 home runs. jose reyes was also beating up the big leagues by age 23. brandon phillips is probably your best example. i guess that guys like aramis, phillips and reyes were all regarded as elite-level prospects, guys who had outstanding tools, and their tools enabled them to overcome their early struggles and their poor approach at the plate. cedeno doesn't have top-level tools, and i don't think that he has the skill or the intuition to make the necessary adjustments at the big league level. pie might not either, but i hold out more hope for him.

patterson was rushed to the big leagues at 20 years old, didn't show a great deal of discipline at West Tennessee and did not dominate the league, and then was pointlessly skipped over Iowa. When he did get to play in Iowa the next year, he didn't play well at all, and the Cubs still brought him to Chicago. He was stupidly rushed. Nobody thinks Pie is being rushed; he has mastered AAA baseball and needs a chance at the big league level. This is part of the reason the Cubs fail so badly at player development. No, they don't teach some essentials in the minor leagues, but they also just mail it in on a prospect after he sucks for a month. this isn't how intelligent and rational organizations operate.

that's what i'm saying. it's not like felix pie is jason dubois, a relatively polished player arriving in the big leagues who should already have a pretty good idea of how to hit big league pitching. pie is very talented, just like aramis was; aramis was clueless at the plate early on, but he had the natural ability and enough smarts to learn some plate discipline, and he ended up becoming a great player. unpolished players - and Lord knows that the cubs can churn these out, since the organization has no idea how to teach plate discipline - need more time to adjust at the big league level than guys who already have a good sense of pitch recognition and working the count. pie was pretty average in his first crack at iowa, then tore the league up in 2007. let's give him some time to see if he can make similar adjustments at this level. if not, then he's a bust, but there's no sense giving up on him right now.

It would be an overreaction if Pie hadn't already had some significant MLB experience before this season. How many chances does he get? he received regular playing time for like two weeks last year, was farmed out, got regular playing time for another three weeks in june, then spent the rest of the year either in iowa or farting around on the bench with the cubs. if the red sox threw in the towel on pedroia after he sucked ass in april last year, he wouldn't have been the AL rookie of the year. pie may end up being patterson part II, but at least give the guy a couple of months to try to make adjustments against big league pitching. he's got a lot of talent and tore up iowa; he might have the talent to find what he's doing wrong at this level and work things out himself. unfortunately i suspect that the cubs and our A.D.D. manager will give up on him about a week from now.