CubinNY

Marshall looks good against the minor league team the Giants brought. In fact, all of the Cubs AAA and AA pitchers have looked pretty good to date. One of the only good things about the WBC and the Prior and Wood setbacks (if that is what we want to call them)is that we'll get to see a lot of the farm arms.

I am having a hard time with this one. ZZ was so predictable. He was contrary to the point of ridiculusness. I remember one thread where he argured about music against everyone else. Then when one or two people agreed with him he changed positions mid thread and started arguing with them. yanr was before my time but I got to read some of his gems. cubsfanbreadsauce I felt sorry for as he was just a kid living in Alaska with not much going on up stairs. The others were unremarkable in anyway. I think I will have to go out of the box and vote for auggiedoggie. His hatred for Todd Walker should be remembered by all.

I concur. I freaking feel like Bill Murry in Groundhoug Day. Maybe the Cubs should reassess their reassessment of thier reassessment and try something altogether different with these guys. At this point I don't know what to think. I really wonder how much all those 2003 innings hurt the long term future of both Wood and Prior. Thank goodness that Zambrano wore down in late July or he might be right there with them.

And wants to go back to the AL after this season. Bowden may give Soriano away for pennies on the dollar tallent wise, but he will still cost @10mill for the privilege of him agreeing to play 2nd base poorly.

Pie with his second tripple of the year.

If Dope has a good spring and continues to hit in AA he becomes a valuable trading chip come deadline time. I really think he is destined to go to the AL and become a 1b/DH. Unless, he can vastly improve his defense.

Grissom is done, he's been done for at least two seasons. keeping him on the roster only holds a someone else down.

Dempster is not exactly zeroed in yet. He has to throw strikes

This news does not really upset me all that much. I've thought that whatever the Cubs get out of Wood at this point was gravy. What really worries me is Prior. Meanwhile, that mean old bitter Steve Stone is laughing somewhere in Arizona.

Ozzy doesn't need anyone to fire him up. Just wait Ozzy will wear out his welcome on the South Side soon enough. His team won the first World Series in this town in 88 years. I think he's going to be loved by at least half of the city for a long time. I'm not saying that he's not crazy, but he managed a World Series team in Chicago. He's the only person on the planet that is alive to say that. The first time they go on an extended losing streak and Ozzy starts calling out the players to the media, we'll see how much love there is. Or if Reinsdorf decides to stand pat and not upgrade at the trade deadline we'll see what Ozzy has to say about that. He is due for a Hal McCray or Lee Elia meltdown sometime this year.

Ozzy doesn't need anyone to fire him up. Just wait Ozzy will wear out his welcome on the South Side soon enough.

Does anyone know if the University of Memphis has a good baseball team?

Actually, Carlos and Barrett should consider squashing Edmonds between the two of them. hahaha! that is great. The only problem is... Edmonds might enjoy that. Babombom. I'm here all week folks. Don't forget to tip your watress and bartender.

:lol: when I saw this was a 20+ page thread, I assumed there had to be something more than the original report, so I read the whole thing... sucker! :lol: I just joined and I got sucked into reading the whole thing, too. Some of you guys are pretty sensitive. Just a little pice of advice then. Personal attacks are frowned upon here.

Get use to the sound of that Cub fans.

Done. This guy is a no brainer for tha HOF.

I agree much to my dismay (regarding the Cubs. I usually agree with goony). However, if the deal nets the Cubs a power stick in the OF I won't be disapointed.

Per Will Carroll: Kerry Wood continues to impress with his throwing and looks to be on track or even ahead of optimistic projections. Given the normally gloomy returns from labrum surgery, Dr. Kremchek’s repair on Wood is going to be closely watched to see if things progress differently. Did he or did he not have labrum surgery? Ken I don't think so. But he had some problem with his shoulder. the Labrum is on the back if I am not mistaken Even with his injury last year, Woody was still gassing it up in relief. I think he hit 99 once or twice. With a tron labrum, the pitcher looses velocity. If Woody had a torn one I would hate to see the velocity he was capeable of before the tear.

You never know. I'd be up for giving it a try.

Me too! It is frickin 14 degrees here in lovely Mahopac NY. Man, I hate February.

You mean the part where he proved the Earth revolves around the Sun? As a matter of fact building on the work of Copernicus, Galelao went one step further and published much of Copernicus's orignal work under his own name. This got him into a lot of hot water with the conventional wisdom crowd, namely the pope. After signing the papers for the pope saying that Sun didn't move he supposedly said under his breath, "but it still moves". For that he was placed on house arrest for the rest of his life. Let's end this silliness and get back to discussing the terrible idea of trading Murton for Alph, shall we?

Where I grew up in Michigan (along the shore of Lake Michigan) we called them FIPs. There use to be a sign on I-94 at the Bridgman exit that said, "FIPs go home". In reality, I didn't mind people from Illinois coming for the summer as they added to the tax base and spent money. FIP= Freaking (but not that word) Illinois People

You're right...I forgot about that. Yeah, John seems to get in a little trouble once in awhile. How is the school academically? When SI did their "academic" college basketball preview a few years back, Memphis's grad rate was a whopping 0 percent, and I'm guessing it hasn't improved. The college of education is not well rated, but they hired a new dean two years ago and he started cleaning house, which is the reason the positions are open. I am not sure about the rest of the university. Grad rates posted by the NCAA for athletes is notoriously flawed. Nevertheless, a rate of 0 is pretty bad.

I'm not exactly sure what you are saying, but in your attempt to prove that the minor leagues weed out players who can't handle pressure, you appear to be doing exactly what you rail on others for doing , using anecdotal rather than empirical evidence. you want proof of other people's ghosts and ufos, but fail to provide proof of your own ghosts and ufos. You cannot prove something does not exist only that it does. The evidence we have suggests that a pesky runner on first affects the hitting stats of the guy behind IF there are no outs. With one or two outs the effect is minimal. This inderectly supports that the average pitcher in the bigs is not distracted by the pesky guy on first. Now if we are comparing pitching from the stretch and the winde up, then the evidence is pretty clear that any runner on base will affect the stats of the pitcher and the hitter. But again this does not support the pesky baserunnner distracting the pitcher. I am sure there are isolated cases where it could and does happen, but I wouldn't plan an entire line up hoping to distract the pitcher. If you would read the entire thread rather than try to prove you can piss farther then next guy you would have noticed that already. Here is the link if you care to read it http://www.retrosheet.org/Research/PankinM/sabr32.pdf

Exactly. And distraction does not always translate to tangible results. And from what we know, more often then not it does not translate to anything. What we have is conventional wisdome based on a logical belief but nothing that supports that it is so. For a guy to even make it to the majors he would have to be able to handle such situations with some level of success. A good baserunner will lul the pitcher into to thinking he is not going almost making him more comfortable. It is much easier to steal with a normal stretch then a slide step.kl;j the bolded part above is actually a bit of wisdom based on a logical belief but with nothing that supports that it is so, too. the entire notion that the minor league process weeds out those who are worse under pressure, is expected to be accepted, without any scientific evidence of whether this is or is not true. some how we are just supposed to accept that baseball players are different than every other profession in the world because there is a minor league process. there are people who have reached the top of every profession even though they don't perform well under pressure because they are extremely talented overall, but somehow baseball's minor leagues operate differently than the weeding out process in every other profession. I think we see evidence of some attrition by the stats guys in this area. Bill James admitted that there were problems with the way they were trying to measure clutch. and despite the notion that any good pitcher will be a good closer, we saw Depodesta give Gagne a huge contract, Epstein give Foulke a huge contract, and Beane trading for a proven closer three years in a row. I look at it this way. pitching is an activity of intense concentration. there is so much to think about in terms of what is the best pitch to throw in a given situation and it takes tremendous concentration to execute that pitch mechanically. anything that contributes to breaking some of that concentration is going to cause more mistakes and lead to better opportunities for the batter. a fast baserunner may not always result in tangible results in terms of better opportunities for the hitter, but it will rarely if ever result in worse opportunities. a lulled and therefore comfortable pitcher is presumably not a better pitcher. thus, the net effect will be a net gain in improved opportunities for the hitter. If the bolded part results in something tangible more often then not (i.e. an earned run or run scored) then the guy never gets out of low A ball unless no one ever gets on base. A guy like Greg Maddux is the case in point. He has never worried about guys stealing on him. Why is that? He gets the next guy out.