CubinNY

I LOVE ME SOME MATT MURTON!

Or maybe he helps the Cubs more if he's on Milwaukee's mound?

Can the Cubs afford to let him start those 5 games? I'll take craps on that roll of the dice. The only way this won't bother me is if the Cubs actually manage to win when he starts or he never starts.

We ARE ND! They're the most over-hyped over-ranked team almost every year since Knut Rockney.

hahahaha! Lloyd Carr is finished. hahahaha!

Marquis could be a fairly good pitcher if he wouldn't overthrow his pitches.

Hey Chicago What do you say?

Charlie Marbles for closer!!!

Go Tech!

turns out that they did the right thing with DuBois No they didn't. How many times does this have to be gone over? Dubois didn't have to set the world on fire, all he had to do was play better than Todd Hollandsworth. The problem is that we don't know what would have happend becuase Dusty contiuned to trott out a crappy Hollandsworth. It's probably not just the Cubs, its all the MLB. In the NFL you don't see crappy vets given playing time over cheaper and probably just as productive younger players. Kendall is playing well but it's not a good bet that he will put up better numbers than Soto next year or the following. My prediciton if Hendry is still GM, Kendall 2 years @ 4mll/year. Dubois was terrible, he was terrible for the Cubs and for everybody else at the major league level. There just might be a reason he hasn't played in the major leagues since 2005, and it has nothing to do with the CUbs, Hendry, or Dusty. He wished he could have Hollandsworth's career. The Cubs did exactly the right thing by not playing him. It's not about a "career". It's about production, cost, and the future. Hollandswroth/Kendall are/were at the end of their carrer and not likely to get better and much likely to get worse. Nobody knows what the future holds for Soto and at the time for DuBois. But again, all of that is beside the point, somewhat. Hollandsworth was terrible in 2004, DuBois just had to be slightly better than terrible. But he got the Murton treatement (or has Murton got the DuBois treatment?) so we don't know what he would have done given a little consistent playing time. May you be talking about 2005 instead of 2004? Hollandsworth was not terrible in 2004-far from it. He put up a .318/.392/.547 line. In fact, Hollandsworth's 2004 was probably the reason he was taking time away from Dubois in 2005. No I'm talking about 2005. By the end of the year both were gone. I mistyped the date in the original post. Thanks for the catch.

turns out that they did the right thing with DuBois No they didn't. How many times does this have to be gone over? Dubois didn't have to set the world on fire, all he had to do was play better than Todd Hollandsworth. The problem is that we don't know what would have happend becuase Dusty contiuned to trott out a crappy Hollandsworth. It's probably not just the Cubs, its all the MLB. In the NFL you don't see crappy vets given playing time over cheaper and probably just as productive younger players. Kendall is playing well but it's not a good bet that he will put up better numbers than Soto next year or the following. My prediciton if Hendry is still GM, Kendall 2 years @ 4mll/year. Dubois was terrible, he was terrible for the Cubs and for everybody else at the major league level. There just might be a reason he hasn't played in the major leagues since 2005, and it has nothing to do with the CUbs, Hendry, or Dusty. He wished he could have Hollandsworth's career. The Cubs did exactly the right thing by not playing him. It's not about a "career". It's about production, cost, and the future. Hollandswroth/Kendall are/were at the end of their carrer and not likely to get better and much likely to get worse. Nobody knows what the future holds for Soto and at the time for DuBois. But again, all of that is beside the point, somewhat. Hollandsworth was terrible in 2005, DuBois just had to be slightly better than terrible. But he got the Murton treatement (or has Murton got the DuBois treatment?) so we don't know what he would have done given a little consistent playing time.

First Cedeno is 24. Second, he had a decent year at AA the year before. He also was the MVP of the Winter League he played in. Third, he was not a "top hitter" in the PCL. The Cubs seem to have no idea how to develop a player. The problem with Cubs is that their offense is so bad that they need every position to contribute substantially. In other words, Ronny's troubles at the plate are magnified by the overall badness of the Cubs.

turns out that they did the right thing with DuBois No they didn't. How many times does this have to be gone over? Dubois didn't have to set the world on fire, all he had to do was play better than Todd Hollandsworth. The problem is that we don't know what would have happend becuase Dusty contiuned to trott out a crappy Hollandsworth. It's probably not just the Cubs, its all the MLB. In the NFL you don't see crappy vets given playing time over cheaper and probably just as productive younger players. Kendall is playing well but it's not a good bet that he will put up better numbers than Soto next year or the following. My prediciton if Hendry is still GM, Kendall 2 years @ 4mll/year.

Steve hasn't seen mediocre for a couple of years. It's not about who the Cubs gave up, it's about who they got. I'd rather they gave Cherry and Moore to Baltimore and gotten back a signed autograph of Cal Ripken and Jim Palmer to put in the Diner in CF.

Who in the hell names their kid Wandy? Seriously, Wandy? All day long he throws the lazy curve ball over and they just watch. All day long. That thing had "bang me" written all over it. I hate them.

Hendry is doing a Costanza. He's doing the exact opposite of what he should do and it's coming up roses.

[Nancy Kerrigan voice] Why?! Why?! Why?!

Hendry was around perhaps, so was McDonnogh or however you spell it, and so was KW. That's it. Besides, wasn't that 7 years ago? If this organization puts its feelings ahead of sound baseball decisions, they don't deserve to make the playoffs. Ever. I think its feelings and its sound baseball decision are in alignment on this one.

You cannot be serious. I railed on Barrett's suck-i-ness behind the plate for years, others have too. However, everything is relative. IMO, he hit well enough that he wasn't a liabilty overall all.

Not to jinx anything, but I am about 90% confident the Cubs will win this division. The Cards are all smoke and mirrors and not serious contenders. The Brewers are it, and they cannot hold a lead. Their starting rotation sucks, their bullpen sucks. They will have to outslug every team they play. They are capeable of doing that but it's not likely to happen on a regular basis. As long nobody gets hurt I expect the Cubs to win this crappy division by two or three games.

It's the risk you take, whereas, Kendall at big money is not. I don't think 5M is big money, comparatively. But as has been stated, it would be nice if we had a better idea of Soto's capabilities offensively at this level. That's what pisses me off so much about this entire situation. Soto may never be as good as he has been this past couple of months. Why not bring him up and see what he can do. This is another case of Murton, DuBois, etc., etc. Just once I wish the Cubs would do the right thing.

I would be real surprized if the Cubs did this thing. Traschsel bad mouthed the Cubs the entire last season he was in Chicago. I think it was during the Ed Lynch years, so there was probably a lot to bash, but there still has to be people around from that time. Besides he kind of sucks.

Detroit is speculating that it's Rapada. "Leyland stopped short of disclosing the traded player, but speculation is centered on Clay Rapada, who is 6-2 with a 3.74 ERA at Triple-A Iowa." link Rapada is on the 40-man, which means he'd have to clear waivers to be traded. Pretty doubtful that a cheap lefty reliever with decent numbers makes it through waivers. Which is why they made it a PTBNL deal so that they could trade them Rapada after the year. Personally, if it's a Cubs left-hander currently on the 40 man roster like Leyland said, then I don't really care if it is Eyre, Ohman, Cotts, or Rapada. They each have a small bit of value, but none of them have particularly great value now or in the future. And Monroe has more value? I don't really see it. I'm not against this trade I just don't really see much value in Monroe. I know he's hit LHP well this year but he's a career .277 hitter against LHP. I guess he gives the Cubs some "versitility"*. They seem to really covit versital players. * Versitility- ability to play more than one position. His career OPS against left-handers is .821. Jones's career OPS against left-handers is .632. That will be most of Monroe's value right there with that 190 point difference. The rest of his value will be in a right-handed pinch-hitting option. Since the Cubs have so many OF's that do not hit left-handers well (Jones, Floyd, Pie, Ward), it is really nice to have two options off of the bench that can pinch-hit for one of those OF's in a key situation, which allows one of them to pinch-hit for Jones for example when the team goes to a left-hander late and the other one can pinch-hit for the pitcher during the game. So does Monroe provide a ton of value? Maybe not, but the addition of him in the lineup instead of Jones against LHP will help the team in its struggles against that side of the plate. I think looking at his carrer OPS is a little decieving. In addition, I don't see him replacing Jones at all. He had two seasons where his OPS against LHP was above .900, but for the most part he's been in the .700 range, still better than JJ, but really not that good at all. In fact, I'd would say the difference in improvement is so small that over the course of the next 6 weeks we're likely to see no difference at all. However, his SLG is certianly better than Jones. At the same time, I have to ask, who will he be replacing? You seem to think it's Jones. I suspect it's Murton. After all it doesn't really make much sense b/c Jones is a lefty and Monroe is a righty. I think when Soriano comes back we'll see an OF of Soriano, Jones, Monroe/Floyd. If you compare him to Murton v LHP His numbers just don't stack up. Murton has an AVE, OBP, and OPS atvantage. So, I don't really see what value Monroe brings to the Cubs. I suppose if he replaces Jones @ lefties that would be great, but I doubt that will happen. Looks like Monroe wasn't replacing Jones after all. Will wonders never cease?

The statistical model is trying to reflect reality, not the other way around. But what reality are we talking about? Players have different talent levels, which is obviously not a hard concept. If Matt Murton's true OBA talent is .360, there are going to be years that he under or overperforms, or that is changed due to variance outside his control, or both. This is what projection systems are getting at when they use 50th lines. It's theoretical, because we'll never know (there is even variance over an entire career) and by the time we have a really good amount of data a player is, at the very least, in a decline phase. But, a perfect 50th line would represent exactly how good that player is at every point in his career. The more data we have, the closer we can get to pinpointing how good that player is. There's no perfect projection, of course. It's just about taking everything that player cannot control out of the equation. We can put the context back in and talk about that "reality" but that's not relevant to the discussion here. E.g., there is a lot of context and things outside a pitcher's control involved in Earned Runs. Career ERA+ works well for judging Roger Clemens' career, but if it represents Ian Snell's true talent at this point then it's a coincidence to a certain extent. Wainwright and Looper have identical FIPs to their ERAs this year. Sometimes these things happen, but it doesn't make ERA a good way to judge a pitcher. I am not following you. I don't get a lot of what you have written but I don't get this the most, "If Matt Murton's true OBA talent is .360". How do you know what his true level of anything is? Truth lies is how he has preformed in the past. Eveything is else is a projection and every projection gets better with more data, that obvious. ERA, ERA+, and other descriptive statistics are rooted in reality. VORP, Pyth. record, etc. are inferential models whose main value lies in their predicitve utility. And that predictive utility lies in how much they actually reflect reality. This has gotten tangental. Anyway, I'm slightly worried about Big Z.

I don't know about statistical noise. ERA gives you exactly the target value that it purports to. That happens to be a poor estimation of true talent and how a pitcher has pitched. It gets better the larger the sample. define "true talent" He shouldn't have to define "true talent." You know damn well what he means. No I don't. how good they really are. see darrell may 2003. his true talent was a 5.00 pitcher but his era was below 4.00 How do you define how good they really are? There has to be some objective anchor. Words like "ture" are supposed to reflect reality not a statistical model of the way the world is supposed to work. In other words, it is not reality that is wrong. Reality is what really happend. The trick is getting a model that is relatively accurate in relation to the "true value" of something you are observing. ERA is a poor predictor and is loaded with "noise" but it can also be an objective anchor for how "good" a pitcher has been. Every statistic becomes a better predictor with more data.