CubinNY

Steve Stone.

It's almost as if he creates lineups based on some sterotypical "way" that a line up is supposed to be created. It goes like this regardless of who is filling the position CF 2nd 1st 3rd LF RF SS C P I am still sore that they've given up on Murton after less than half a season. I guess when Murton doesn't do well in his career all the Dusty appologists will use the tired "he sucked after he left the Cubs" excuse. When if was the Cubs that stunted his development.

I want out but they keep pulling me back in.

the Save is perhaps the most worthless stat in baseball, right after the Win. Suppose the Cubs are up 2-1, it is the sixth inning runners on second and third with one out and the starting pitcher just walked the bases loaded. Weurtz comes in and strikes out the next batter and gets the final batter to fly out to CF. Now, same score the bottom of the 9, nobody on, no outs. Dempster pitches a 1-2-3 ninth and gets the save. Which outs where the most valuable? Reserving your best pitcher for the bottom of the ninth is convential baseball wisdom. Sure, there are guys like Rivera and Gagne but those guys are rare.

What? Every pitcher that was in the Top 5 in PAP 2003 hasn't been the same since. Livan pitched better than his career numbers, the other two got worse but Redman wasn't that good anyway. That's not really convincing. I'm not saying abuse has no effect at all. Typically, the pitcher has a bad next year or gets hurt the next year and recovers. Show me a decent number of examples from the last 10 years where the pitcher got abused in one season and followed it up by a dramatic decline in quality and quantity of starts for a number of years or the rest of his career. Wood's just been run into the ground for over a decade, so I can write that off as a unique situation. I still haven't seen anything comparable to Prior that offers a definitive explanation for what has happened to him. Man your significant other must have a horrendous time debating anything with you. You consistently make up all the rules and all the exceptions to how arguments and debates should go. Must be nice. Everytime someeone refutes a statement you make with statistical evidence you come back with some non-falsifiable statement to continue your argument. I just don't understand why only the Cubs have to deal with two of their star pitchers providing an average season between them for three years in a row. I'd love to just say it's all Dusty's fault, but it just doesn't happen to other teams. If it did, I would accept it. There's definitely some bad luck involved or something. Or on the other hand, no other team has Dusty as a manager?? The very paragraph you wrote is all the evidence you need. Dusty leads the world in pitcher abuse points.

I can't believe I'm going to defend Dusty and the rest of Cubs management but the people on this board and others would have had a heart attack and probably would have burned Wrigley to the ground if the Cubs had shut Prior down in September with the division title within sight. Everyone would have been screaming for their heads. We can't have it both ways. 2003 is in the past and now we're paying the piper. Such is life. I didn't say shut him down, did I? Limit his pitches and innings. This may be beating a dead horse, but how many times have we seen 7,8,9 run leads and starters left in to pitch 125+ pitches. Craziness. Actually not that many. You just remember them more because it rarely happens the Cubs have a big lead and that includes 2003 to the present. Yes, I remember the playoff game where Dusty left Prior in with a huge lead. Still, it hasn't happened that many times. During the stretch run almost every game was a close one and that is where Prior and Wood racked up a lot of innings. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the biggest reason for the Cubs pitchers abuse is the lack of offense and having to leave the starters in so long because the bullpen sucked. Then this year we finally have a bullpen and can't get the game to them with a lead. Two or three games of throwing 30 to 40 extra pitchers (@ 100 pitches) is exponentially worse then an extra start (@ 100 pitches). I don't have the time to dig up the boxes from 2003 but there were plenty of games from late July on that the starter could have been taken out of.

I can't believe I'm going to defend Dusty and the rest of Cubs management but the people on this board and others would have had a heart attack and probably would have burned Wrigley to the ground if the Cubs had shut Prior down in September with the division title within sight. Everyone would have been screaming for their heads. We can't have it both ways. 2003 is in the past and now we're paying the piper. Such is life. Shut Prior down my big toe. How about not have him pitch meaningless innings in blow out games down the stretch? No one would advocate for Prior to have been shut down. But Prior pitched a lot down the stretch late into the game when the game was well in hand. They are damn lucky they even got that far as Z was done about half way through July. It could be the only reason why he is ptiching now. He didn't pile up the innings b/c he wasn't getting anyone out down the stretch. It's always the little things that Dusty doesn't do that hurts this team.

I'll blame Dusty for some things, but I don't know if I can go as far and say he and/or Rothschild hurt Prior. Starting in 2003, when Dusty took over here are Prior's Innings pitched and pitchers per game. 2003: 211 113 2004: 119 98 2005 167 104 Those number aren't that crazy. If Prior can't throw 100 pitchers per game without getting hurt it isn't going to matter who is managing the club. Wood's numbers look like this 2003: 211 110 2004: 140 101 2005: 66 88 My point is I don't think it is ALL Dusty/Rothschild's fault. These two guys seem to be extremely brittle. Wood has more of an injury history than Prior so he is a little easier to figure out. Not sure what the deal is with Prior, sure he threw 200+ innings in 2003, but most elite pitchers will throw 200+ innings in a year. Average number of pitches per start doesn't tell the whole story, I'm afraid. It has a lot to do with how many pitches they're being run out there for in certain starts. Just look at the PAP data. In 2003, Prior made 30 starts. Of those 30, 20 were 110 pitches or more. Of those 20, 9 of them were more than 122 pitches. Wood made 32 starts and also had 20 starts over 110 pitches, 8 of those over 122, and 1 of them over 133. Livan Hernandez, widely regarded as the most abused pitcher in baseball because of his "rubber arm," made 17 CAT3+ starts in 2003 (and finished 3rd in PAP - 1-5 was Vazquez, Wood, Livan, Prior, Redman, with Zambrano sitting at 11th). Average pitch counts can be helpful, but to say Dusty and Rothschild aren't highly responsible for Wood and Prior's troubles is ignoring the truth. How come Vazquez, Livan, and Redman have all pitched a lot since then? They aren't injured. But their managers abused them, how can that be? http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/images/capblog/2005/03/03/goat.jpg It's nice that you've learned how to insert pictures into your posts, but scapegoating is hardly the right answer here. Wood, Prior, and Z have been some of the most abused pitchers in baseball going back to 2003. So far, they've been lucky with Zambrano.

My thought is that both were/are injured. And it's Dusty's/Larry's fault.

For years Billy Beane has ripped off other teams by trading off his "dominate" closer.

Didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I wasn't in town when that was posted so I didn't see it. I just think that with all the talk of dealing Williamson and other bullpen arms, it's about time people consider trading Dempster. The idea that he'd turn into an elite closer is pretty much shot. He might remain a decent closer for a while though, and he does carry added value because of the label. You didn't hurt my feelings. Your post was much better thought out and written. I was just having a little fun riding on your coat tails.

Bump. Just because I want the record to show I was way ahead of goony.:wink:

I don't think Jones will be traded to NY. I think they have their sights set on Abreu or someone of more significance. However, if Jones were to be traded they could bring up someone from the minors like Sing (even though he looks like he'll never make it) or put Mabry out there. It's not like the Cubs are going anywhere this year.

Could anyone imagine what life would be like for Ozzy in New York? The more the media finds out they can get under your skin the more they dig.

I appreciate his lawn care tips and serious man love for Adam Dunn.

What is the fascination with Carlos Lee. He isn't that good and he will be overpaid and old. Lee is exactly the player Hendry should stay away from.

If he's fired now though, perhaps guys like Murton would get to play every day instead of being platooned with a Freddie Bynum. Baker can do more damage to this team, even when they're losing. Exactly. I wish I could find the date of the Clines qoute about Murton needing to be more aggressive and compare his pitches seen/PA. I bet there would almost be a direct corelation to that date and Muton's OBP slide. How is Murton supposed to get better at hitting right handed pitchers if he never sess them? Again, it's one thing to platoon a vet in the twilight of his career who is used to this type of thing, and quite another to a young player who is used to playing every day. Anyone want to look up Murton's # vs. righties in the minors?

If the Cubs signed Furcal he'd just be another high priced player underperforming his contract. He's at a point in his career where he will probably underperform until he retires. I was never for signing Furcal, and I'm glad he walked away from the deal. Walker>Furcal Cedeno>Furcal Pierre>Furcal (for the money) Furcal saved Hendry from himself.

What gets me is that all the so called baseball experts do nothing but defend Baker. They talk about the injuries, the talk about not hitting, they talk about poor pitching, they talk about the lack of run scoring. It's as if Baker has no control over those things when in fact nobody has more control over them than Baker. Everybody in the media wants to give Dusty a free pass because he is a likeable guy. It kills me. He continues to put out inferior lineups on a daily basis. He continutes to abuse the starters with high pitch counts and the relivers with usage patterns. He has demonstrated that although he may be a good guy in the clubhouse and can really turn a parabale, he's a poor in-game decision maker, and that's where it counts. What is the excuse going to be when Lee comes back and hits a bunch of one run HRs and the Cubs approach a hundred loses?

That's just silly. His pitches would be more polished at this point if he had concentrated on baseball, and that's what makes his potential intriguing. You can argue he's not worth the risk, but nonsensical hyperbole doesn't make your case. so say he has lots of upside like you would for anybody else. maybe if andrew miller trained an extra hour everyday he'd be even better, i guess detroit really got a steal. I don't think there's anything wrong with suggesting he has more room for improvement than Miller because he's a lot more raw. And he's raw because he hasn't devoted as much time to baseball as typical college players do. Yes, but that is just a theory. Maybe he's as good as he would be. Maybe not. Personally, I don't see what's so silly aboout Treebeard's post. I guess we've all been conditioned to hope for the best amonst all those toolsy picks Hendry seems to be infatuated with. Whatever the case, with only 2 picks in the first five rounds maybe the Cubs did need to take a long shot. then again maybe not.

That's the craziest thing of all, it tops the cake. I could almost understand if the Cubs were bringing up some young stud, but Fast Freddy Bynum? Are you kidding me? Just when I think it can't get worse, it does.

Pitching injuries don't just *happen*. When Mazzone was with Atlanta how many of their pitchers went on the DL every year. You can ignore it but all of the injuries suffered by the Cubs pitchers aside from the elbow beaning are at the hands of Dusty and Larry. The worst being Fox last year. Dusty fell into the old I'll use the hot guy out of the bullepn approach and bam Fox's arm falls off. Then there is Farnsworth. He ran Farns into the ground at the begining of each seasoon and at the end of the season Farns gets the "can't pitch in the big game" tag. When in reality he was finished by July b/c of his usage Pattern. And I haven't even touched the starters yet.

But I'm not just looking at him. His production has dropped some recently, and he's been frequently hurt the last 6-8 years. He's also old. Big Frank has been one of the most outspoken critics of the steriod testing program in baseball (saying they needed to do more) and actually led a semi-revolt a couple years ago against the union. I don't believe hs was on the juice.

This just really upsets me. That's all I can say. They are killing my love of the Cubs. Killing it.

A-Rod appears to have worn out his welcome with the Yankee fans. He is being booed after every bad AB and the papers are having a field day. Yankee fans don't like pretty boys, unless they are Derek Jeter.