CubinNY

I totally agree Vance. Pierre would be an ideal 8 hitter. Slap an infield hit, steal second, let the pitcher bunt you over to 3rd and let the run producers drive you in.

i don't think we should give up hill to get dunn, we need every good pitcher we can. a very good starting staff is worth much more than a team with a good OBP--that said, dunn's butchery in the field makes little difference to his value. He costs you round about 15-20 runs in 150 games. It's not negligible. http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/dialed_in/discussion/defensive_rankings_by_position_and_league_200_innings/ Subtract that from his power numbers and he is way, way on the plus side. BTW> I wouldn't put much stock in those numbers at all.

I concur. He's the best player any of us wil ever seen in our lifetime.

I love the red head. I want the red head in a Cubs uniform next year. However, the Cubs are in somewhat of a quandry in regard to power and LF is a power position. I would love if this thread could refrain from the pro and cons of trading Murton, there are many for sure. Let's, for the sake of conversation, put Murton on the block. What would he be worth, either in a package or by himself. Could the Cubs package Murton with some young pitching for M. Cabrerra or Michael Young? What would you propose that could make the Cubs better. BTW> I could very well see Hendry trading him this off-season.

I don't know the answer; however football has a lot less history to overcome compared to baseball. Another thing. In big time football almost every player is graded each game. Coaches have stats for everyone related to their position. In the "business" of football they've embraced quantitave analysis much more so that baseball.

You decide. http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/cs-060917cubsbaker,1,5126978.story?coll=cs-cubs-headlines I hate Paul Sullivan's writing.

Not well enough. Couldn't have dropped the ball if he tried last year, not so much this year. bad enough to drop to the 4th round or so? :D He made a pretty nice TD catch thouhg. IMO, after this season there is no way he plays baseball. He has the size, the speed, and the hands to be a first round pick.

I would have no problem with Alph at 2nd next year and beyond. How many runs would he cost the Cubs at second for an entire season? Maybe 10 or 12? I don't really know. His defense is not that bad to warrent losing any sleep if he puts up similar numbers for the length of his contract. What I worry about is his age, the length of contract, and the dollar amount. BTW, I put zero stock in this rumor.

We'll never know. However, I would have let him pitch in the rotation pretty consistently after he demonstrated mastery in AAA for much of last year and the early part of this season. At the same time, we don't know if the demotion did him some good too. There is no way to prove it one way or the other.

Hail to the victors valliant Hail to the conquering heros Hail! Hail! to Michaigan

Bold prediciton, ND comes back and wins this game. Michigan football has the equivalent of Dusty Baker coaching thier team.

Back when I was at Ohio State Herbstreit had a radio show on the local ESPN affilate (he might still have it) and he was just as good on the radio. The OSU knukleheads would call in all the time and harass him for not being a homer. He was espcially critical of John Cooper. He really is very good.

If the same sort of things happens once it's an accident/bad luck, if it happens twice you have to start to wonder, if it happens three times there is a correlation. More than three times and each "sample' shows a trend. Hendry has got to get rid of Rothschild, O'Neil and anyone else associated with the pitching staff when he gets rid of Dusty.

Why can't Murton play RF? However, if it the Dunn trade invoved Murton I'd volunteer to help him pack his bags. I'd trade Hill + Patterson for him. I think the Reds would be looking of inexpensive pitching help. Would anyone trade Gallagher plus some other young pitching for hime? I would. Would Hendry?

Bases allowed, SLG, OPS against, and OBP against are more than the sum of their parts. In other words, their probably isn't a direct correlation between the those data and runs allowed. However, if we just look at OBP against I think one could make a case for the runs allowed to be right where it should be. We also have to look a the differences between the bottom 1/3 of the teams. I would be willing to bet that the difference in the numbers between whomever is in 10th and the Cubs is pretty small.

I think you are misunderstanding. BAA, OBP, and SLG with RISP is an extremely important statistic in scoring runs. The problem with using the statistic to evaluate players is that its not repeatable. That is, most players who hit great with RISP one year, won't repeat that performance the next year. Thus, there is no sense trying to find players who do well with RISP. When you get your hits is very important in how many runs you score. Because this element involves so much luck, the importance of having more runners on base is even more exaggerated. Teams with fewer baserunners have few opportunities to get lucky - score on errors, etc. Right on. It's not that BA/RISP is unimportant it is that it has little predictive value when judging future performance. The value of any stat is how stable the stat is over time.

Yeah, I sort of hijacked the thread. However, I don't think you'll find factual evidence that AVG with RISP is the reason teams score more runs than other teams. While some players on a team may do better in those situations, there will likely be guys who do worse in those situations on that same team. The way to truly improve runs scored is to increase your OBP, which gives guys (good or bad at AVG with RISP) more opportunities to drive in runs. The same can be said for the info TheDude is requesting. Just in reverse. A team that has the better WHIP will likely give up less runs than teams that have a much higher WHIP. It's tough to gather the information he requests. The Cubs have been very good as a team in not giving up hits. But, walks can be just as damaging and they are horrible when it comes to allowing baserunners. I don't really think it correlates to AVG with RISP as much as it correlates to OBP in relation to runs scored. WHIP ia a hugely important stat for a pitcher. So is wins, and BAA Wins are almost meaningless unless a pitcher completes the vast majority of his starts. BAA will show up in WHIP, although if a pitcher doesn't walk very many batters he could have a high BAA and respectable WHIP.

Yeah, I sort of hijacked the thread. However, I don't think you'll find factual evidence that AVG with RISP is the reason teams score more runs than other teams. While some players on a team may do better in those situations, there will likely be guys who do worse in those situations on that same team. The way to truly improve runs scored is to increase your OBP, which gives guys (good or bad at AVG with RISP) more opportunities to drive in runs. The same can be said for the info TheDude is requesting. Just in reverse. A team that has the better WHIP will likely give up less runs than teams that have a much higher WHIP. It's tough to gather the information he requests. The Cubs have been very good as a team in not giving up hits. But, walks can be just as damaging and they are horrible when it comes to allowing baserunners. I don't really think it correlates to AVG with RISP as much as it correlates to OBP in relation to runs scored. WHIP ia a hugely important stat for a pitcher.

I think his main problem is confidence, not unlike Rich Hill earlier this year. Guzman has nasty stuff. Let's hope he can put it together next season. Confidence is not a problem, throwing strikes is the problem; or rather not throwing them. Confidence is an outcome, not a cause. Guzman has struggled not becuase of what is between his ears, same with Hill. If you talk to any coach, they will tell you that a player's performance is directly impacted by how confident they are in what they are doing. Can confidence be impacted by good execution and good performance? Of course. But confidence can also be created, generated in a player's mind and it can enable a player to perform at their peak. Michael Jordan was a supremely confident performer at the end of a game. He wanted the ball. Yet he still had several failures at converting a game winning shot. The thing that he did was mentally relive the times when he was successful during the timeout before taking the court to hit the game winning shot. He believes, and I agree with him, that he was more successful because of his mental preparation. I agree that Guzman's struggles are probably mostly due to the fact that it takes an extended period of pitching without interruption to have the control necessary to succeed at the higher levels and he hasn't had that because of recent injuries. But the same is not true for Hill. Hill has had extended periods of healthy and success and the higher levels. But he wasn't performing well at the major league level. The mere fact that he went from sucking to performing at a Cy Young level is evidence that his problem was mental in origin. According to everyone who has first hand knowledge of Hill success, the origin of his major league struggles was completely mental. His lack of confidence in the majors affected his ability to execute pitches. He simply had to give himself the freedom to be himself and do what he was doing with such regularity at the AAA level. His extended period of success there made it easy for his muscles to remember what they were doing at Iowa and do the same thing with Chicago. It also made it easier for Rich to generate the confidence necessary to go from a terrible first outing in July against the Cardinals to a great one his next time out. And any coach that said that would be full of rah, rah, BS.

I don't care if he is a control freak. I do care if in the 5th inning he bunts with the 7th place hitter in the line up and a guy on 1st though. I do care if he doesn't pay attention to things like walks taken and walks given. I do care if he uses convential wisdom to guide his judgment when the conventional wisdom is wrong. I don't know enough about Giradi to form a conclusion yet, but the information I do have suggests to me that he may not be what I want. The Marlins are winning on talent. I think most teams win on talent. I don't think the manager has much of an effect over the course of the season, but as we have learned even a handfull of games can be important.

And they both could be true.

Evan Bayh, Democrat from Indiana. He's smart, he's a moderate, he's young and goodlooking. I really, really, really hope Hilary Clinton doesn't win the Democratic nomination.

I think his main problem is confidence, not unlike Rich Hill earlier this year. Guzman has nasty stuff. Let's hope he can put it together next season. Confidence is not a problem, throwing strikes is the problem; or rather not throwing them. Confidence is an outcome, not a cause. Guzman has struggled not becuase of what is between his ears, same with Hill.

Five will get you ten that Hendry trades Murton for someone with the profile of Jeff Francoeur.

Don't you mean Mobile? Birmingham has been with the White Sox for quite a while. Um, yep I do. At least I got the right state. :D Actually I think you mean Montgomery. Mobile is with San Diego. The biscuts have been wildly successful. My wife's family lives close by and I've been to several games. The amount of support they get is nothing short of amazing. However, they do a lot to draw the fans to the game as well. There is a lot of entertainment for the kids. The food is great and the seats are all good. The contrast to the D-Jaxx game I went to are shocking.