jjgman21

aside from Pittsburgh, he's been pitching in enormous parks. when the Cubs faced him in SD, they hit 4-5 balls that would have been out anywhere else. any SD pitcher with a homerless streak should have a '*' next to it.

so with some Padres publicly admitting they would bean a Cubs player for Soriano's antics after hitting his dinger, will the umpires eject Young for a HBP because 'they knew it was coming because they were looking for it?'

both Kobe and Deng entered the league at a similarly young age. a pretty solid argument could be made that Deng significantly outperformed Kobe in the first three years of their careers. I'm not saying that Deng would outperform Kobe, but he will in three years, and the combination of gordon and deng would probably be more valuable than Kobe. that's a nice starting lineup, but with Noc injury concerns and no sixth man to speak of, I think that team is actually worse than this years team.

:pig: I think Jones will be dealt. Hendry found a way to deal Hundley when he was forced into it by fans and media pressure. The Cubs will pay most of his salary next season, but the fans hate him, he hates the fans, the media criticizes him, he whines about playing time, his average is below .250 and falling like a rock, where have we heard this before? I'm sort of hoping he blows up in some interview and calls the fans a bunch of idiots or something of the sort to force Hendry's hand even sooner. As things stand now, I think Hendry is waiting around hoping for a lot of other team's outfielders to get hurt, and will keep waiting till near the deadline. his quotes in the Pierre article come close. essentially what he says is he doesn't know how a player can keep playing hard with the fans on them all the time and how much he admired Pierre for doing so. who cares about whether the fans have anything to do with his suckitude or not, just keep yapping about it Jacque. Chicago's run better than you out of town before.

I checked BBR, fangraphs, espn. don't see it there.

anyone know where I can find team and league average g/f for the past few years?

I usually feel little sympathy for a Cards player, except when the Cards mistreatment may ruin a players livelihood, inwhich case I jump on it to condemn the Cardinals organization. good god, the Looper experiment is over with. put him back in the pen.

adding scrappy depth to the organization. wasn't augie available?

tri-fecta of "guys who will finally replace Santo" (which is nonsense because we should really have talked about "guys who will finally replace Madlock) Kevin Orie, Gary Scott, Cole Liniak.

that ball is a flyout in most parks. 335 foot cheapy literally off the top of the fence, by Mr. CheapShot himself.

just noticing who the Brewers will be facing. against the Twins, they miss Santana. hell, they don't even get Silva. Bonser and two rookies. then they go onto San Fran. they miss Cain and Morris. then to KC. they get Bannister, but miss Meche. then to Houston. if Houston doesn't skip a starter on their off day, the Brewers will miss Oswalt and Samson, but will get Jennings. if Houston does skip a starter on their off day, the Brewers get Oswalt, but miss Samson and Jennings. ETA - just carrying it through, looks like they will miss Snell in their four game set against the Bucs, like they have in both series they have had against the Bucs so far this year (only faced Gorzealanny once). pull the damn horseshoe out of your ass Brewers.

for clarity, on Friday night, not Sat. afternoon. wrong thread Truffle

probably the most famous right now, that fat catcher...Jeremy Brown?

Todd Van Poppel

if I remember the last game against Young correctly, the Cubs had several flyouts that are homeruns in any other ballpark.

just being a ranting, condescending jerk to me would probably get you plenty of votes.

Its better than putting a punchless Floyd, Jones or Pie up against a lefty. Those guys have NO SHOT against lefties. I have a couple theories about the Cubs lack of success against soft tossing lefties. first, think Mike Remilinger. often soft tossing lefties are change up pitchers who have reverse splits. second, a pitcher doesn't have to change his patterns to get batters out if he has early success and only has to face hitters from one side of the plate. all the pitcher has to do is throw darts at the outside corner and watch the Cubs hitters ground out to shortstop. third, it leaves your bench without righties, thus screwing you late in the game when you need to pinch hit as the opposing manager can bring in his loogies to get your pinch hitters out.

Why would he be available? Burrell could give you 20-30 hit over .280 and OBP over .380 as well. Pat Burrell has hit .280 twice in his career, and is a career .253 hitter. He also has a career .363OBP and a career .838OPS, including a whopping .787OPS this year. While I don't doubt he can give 20-30HR, he's only had two years where he's hit over 30HR, which coincidentally happened to the be the two years he hit a smidge over .280, and the only years he had 100+RBI, and two of three years he had an OPS over .890. Outside of those years he's failed to achieve an OPS higher than .822. At least Dunn consistently does what he does, and you know what to expect, Burrell is a rollercoaster. OPS+ 04 110 05 125 06 124 07 109 04 152 05 135 06 110 07 121 Burrell actually seems more consistent, just not as productive. I'd like the Cubs to pick up Dunn, but I think people are nuts to not realize that his shortcomings and even some of his positives are problematic. in my view, his low ave., high strikeouts, and high walks make him a great complimentary player, probably the best in baseball. but he's not a middle of the order run producer. we all like to point out how DLee missed the triple crown a couple years ago thanks to the guys hitting in front of him because "RBI is a team stat." this cuts both ways. if a player consistently has players on base in front of him, his RBI total should be sky high. Dunn has spent most of his career as a 4th and 5th hitter, thus he typically bats right after the highest OBP guys on the Reds. yet we don't see those sky high RBI totals. his high OBP helps him score a few more runs than your typical 4/5 hitter, but you need those guys driving in runs, not passing the burden on to worse hitters. it's also a matter of consistency. a high average guy is going to consistently drive in the runs, while a three true outcome guy like Dunn is going to drive in most of his runs in alot fewer ABs. thus, a player like Dunn will contribute to scoring runs in fewer games than a player like, let's say Aram. one final note. while Dunn is on pace this year to absolutely shatter his own strikeout record, he's also on pace for a career low in walks by about 30%. not good trends.

I really have no problem with Angel. he's just incompetent. the umps I have problems with are those that seem to have an agenda against the Cubs, and unfortunately so many of them seem to be crew chiefs. Reliford Tschida Joe West Hirschbeck Young Crawford all umps with a history of hosing the Cubs, and it just so happens they are the ones in charge, passing on their 'experience' to the young guys like Wolf.

Crap...we face a lot of bad pitchers...we're doomed. ERA+ added to Freds list. that's about 7 games out of 21 where the starter isn't at least average, and about 8 of 21 where the starter is pretty damn dominant. Nats roll over differently, and the Cubs have to face Hill instead of one of their feedbags, and he also is dominant. Kaplan was talking last night about how the Cubs have been fortunate this year. sure, we missed Oswalt, and Peavy this series, and Smoltz in Atlanta, but for the most part the Cubs have had a hard time 'missing aces' this year.

like and don't like like for the Floyd option doesn't vest reasons don't like because stacking the lineup with right handed hitters against lefties doesn't work, and is part of the reason the Cubs struggle so much against the 'soft-tossing lefties.'

not sure why people are mad at the fans. the fans acted like fans do. I just wish the umpires would act as umpires should act.

but for umps, 2-0 Cubs.

let's watch the umps get both wrong...both to the benefit of the Padres.

fan interference. batter should be out.