FergieJ31

Bunk .. Perry is talking out of his derriere there

Your avatar, however, is an amazing issue. Two amazing issues. There are too many amazing things about my avatar to count. If she's not a St Pauli Girl spokesmodel, she's missing her true calling.

An ergonomic keyboard and mouse too :wink:

In fairness to Scott, he was pretty solid all year up until he hurt his hammy in mid-August. He wasn't the same pitcher when he came off the DL.

Wasn't he saying a few weeks prior how there was "no way" that he'd be the one to give up the homer? Yeah I remember that - it was like his worst nightmare which this article only hints at: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/mlb/news/1998/09/12/trachsel_ok/ He denied feeling betrayed by his teammates but I didn't blame him one bit for being pissed; the Cubs were fighting for a playoff berth.

I'll never forget how ticked off Trachsel looked when Big Mac got high-fives from Cub infielders as he rounded the bases.

Yes indeed - anyone remember Juan's debut? He took a tough loss but it was a thing of beauty. http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/B08210CHN2001.htm I remember Cruz being favorably compared to Pedro after this game by the Brewers manager :shock: (then again, he could afford to be magnanimous after watching freakin' Reuben Quevedo own the Cubs)

To this day, I still can't wrap my mind around this game. I mean a 4 hit CG shutout with the playoffs on the line. He even had 2 hits and a run scored that game. Sure it was against the crappy Reds, but still unbelievable. Yeah exactly, as baseball games that was an outlier even though the Reds were decimated by injuries at that point (Dunn, Griffey, Kearns were all out IIRC). But even still, Estes had a WHIP of 1.97 is his previous 11 starts before that game. He was simply awful in a Cub uniform. I saw that game in stunned amazement. I always felt bad for Shawn b/c he seemed like a good guy. He got a very nice reception at the end of that game ... you got the sense he knew it was his last in a Cub uniform.

Who was the pitching coach for the Cubs in 1998? No way in hell would I allow a pitcher to take the mound with those mechanics. Oscar Acosta, with whom Kerry was very close by all accounts. Acosta wasn't afraid to get in Kerry's face and give him straight info. I have no doubt Acosta let Wood know about the risks in throwing his big hook. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not one of the many pitching mechanics "experts" that came out of the woodwork since 2003. Would YOU have ordered Kerry to stop throwing his slurve after he struck out 20 in his 5th major league start? Good luck with that one. At the time no one could say with certainty what damage (if any) he was doing with his motion. In 1999 Kerry freely admitted his slurve was a big factor in his injury. My point is, you never can tell. Put ten pitching coaches together in the same room and you'll get ten different opinions on good pitching mechanics - it's notoriusly subjective. Did Bob Gibson have great mechanics? How bout Warren Spahn - would you have let him take the mound?

Man I never get tired of watching this - just flat out electrifying: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CprMY7np0EI

Painful. The last pitch in the majors he threw was a two-run double to AGonz in game 7 that made the game 9-5 (AGonz was thrown out at third for the third out)

Interesting to note that of the top 40 guys in BBs, only 22 of them had 25 or more HRs. Power hitters definitely walk more than non-power hitters, but there are plenty of guys who don't have to be a big threat to hit the long ball to coax a walk. A big factor of IsoD is simply 'good batting eye', and that is its own skill that has little to do with anything else, like so many other specialized skills in baseball. Guys like Bellhorn are exceptional because they developed this skill even in the absence of great SLG (and Vlad is a marvel in the other direction, so to speak). But make no mistake about it: your odds of walking go up significantly if you're a threat with the bat and you have a modicum of plate discipline. Pitchers adapt to batter tendencies, batters must adapt too. Game theory can be applied in baseball. We Cub fans generally complain about lack of plate discipline, but the pendulum can't swing completely to the other side either, or else pitchers simply start grooving strike 1 and strike 2. Ideally there's an unpredictable mix of batters (and not the same batters) who have the green light on the first pitch and other batters who watch a few pitches go by. This is the strategy that makes the pitcher the most uncomfortable because he can't pitch to tendencies. I don't know what the optimal mix is, but somewhere in the neighborhood of "1 out of 3 random batters has first pitch green light" feels about right to me.

working the count to get a good pitch>walking>swinging at the first pitch If that were the case then guys who walk and strike out a lot should have the highest LD%s. Last season LD% and (BB+SO)/PA had an r of -0.06157, so nope on that one. BB/PA? 0.06227. So really no. That's not the point of working the count. It's to get the pitcher to throw extra pitches so he tires further down the road. Yeah it's easy, and too glib IMO, to just say "walking trumps everything". Of course it does if you only look at the surface (it's like the Piniella line about sending 8 midgets up to walk every AB). I think kctigers is forgetting one thing about why people walk: they tend to be dangerous hitters so the pitcher doesn't want to throw strikes. I also don't get why what MrWood said should imply a high correlation between K+BB rate and LD%.

That I can agree with. Yep. I imagine the MLBPA must still be reeling about this mess. I still haven't heard a public statement from a MLBPA rep since this story broke - has anyone? Edit to add: http://sports.yahoo.com/top/news;_ylt=Aub1uQKnc6Ux997gHIvD_JQRvLYF?slug=ap-athletes-steroids&prov=ap&type=lgns

Cedeno's OBP was .005 higher than Neifi's. That is pretty darned insignificant. Ronny was just as bad as Neifi. Seriously. It cracks me up when people try to say that Cedeno was better than Neifi last year. I'd take .254/.266/.343/.610 over .245/.271/.339/.610 every day of the week. Some people seem to forget that a hit is better than a walk. What do you consider a better AB.....a 10 pitch walk with no one on base or a first pitch single with no one on base? Obviously I'll take the 10 pitch walk with no one on base in that particular situation. My point was that I'd prefer to have a team full of guys that can hit their way on versus a team full of guys that can walk their way on. The ability to hit is more valuable than the ability to take a walk. Batters do not have the ability to hit...they have the ability to make contact. Some hitters make more quality contact than others which usually results in more hits, but you are forgettting that once the ball leaves the bat, the hitter loses control of the outcome except for a home run (and using speed to stretch doubles into triples, etc.). The ability to take a walk is more valuable than the ability to simply put the ball in play. So you'd rather have a team of guys that walk and never get hits, versus a team that hits but never walks? I'd take the team that hits and never walks, and I gaurantee you that my team would beat your team, all other things equal. Hitting is so much better than walking. I hear what you're saying and your logic is sound (a hit must be better than a walk), but measuring the "ability to hit" is much dicier than measuring the ability to walk. The ability to take a walk (measured by IsoD) is much more stable and predictable than ability to hit (measured by BA) from one year to the next.

Interesting ... my own initial reaction was: "I'm more worried about seeing Prior on the list than Sosa." Why? It's not like he just inexplicably caught the injury bug and therefore steroids must be the reason. Who said anything about an injury bug? I'm more worried about seeing Prior (or any other present Cub) than Sosa because it would be devastating to this team. I already have a pretty good idea that Sosa was juiced - Prior would be terrible news. Plus I'd hate to hear I told you so's from Jack McDowell. The more I think about it the more I agree with RynoRules ... this list could be really bad news for baseball in general.

Interesting ... my own initial reaction was: "I'm more worried about seeing Prior on the list than Sosa."

Nah ... there'll be a rainout or two that won't be played cuz the Cubs will run away with the division :wink: Seriously, I agree with CubinNY. .500 is a realistic expectation for this team as presently constructed. But even with that over/under, somehow it seems more likely that they'll lose 90 than win 90 ... maybe it's a skewed distribution. Someone (I forget who) on NSBB did a position-by-position WARP analysis sometime back around the time Soriano was signed, and came up with a number close to .500 for the Cubs, which sounds about right to me. If I can find the thread I'll post a link - that might be the sort of argument or analysis jjgman wants to see? The biggest unknown - the biggest source of variance - is Prior IMO. The extremes between late 2003 and 2006 are extraordinary. Which Prior will show up when he finally takes the mound? (i.e. will he be healthy but I hate that cliche.) There's a big difference in expected wins on him alone.

Yeah every time I see that guy I have a flashback of him smirking and yukking it up in the Marlins dugout at the end of game 6.

Chemistry and gamers and .. and clutchiness and stuff :wink: btw nice avatar UBlink, I've heard it conjectured that Black-Scholes is the most-computed mathematical formula in the history of mankind

Naw, if they went to Ole Miss they'd have beer guts and shaggy hair. It always seems that the general consensus is that southern girls are hotter than northern girls, but northern guys are better looking than southern guys. Everytime I have a gal pal who goes up north she returns talking about how hot the guys are. The grass is always hotter on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line. (btw, OMC, thank you for the sig pic ... perfect "counter-argument" to Treeman 8-) )

I couldn't agree more. This has been a somewhat depressing off-season, but one of the things I look forward to most next year at Wrigley is seeing Wood come out of the pen late in a game with the Cubs clinging to a slim lead. The crowd will go absolutely nuts when he starts mowing guys down.

His WHIP per inning does show the classic power pitcher slight downard trajectory, highest WHIP in the 1st and 3rd, decreasing to a shade above 1 in the last three innings (a regrettably smaller sample size out there in 7-9 of course).

Actually, he has done this in the past. I will NEVER forget the Cub/Cardinal series right before they shut Woody down in 2005. He was hitting 99-100 on the gun and making the best hitting team in the NL look like HS kids. He most definately is capable of being THE dominant closer in the game, and he has proven that he can come out and dominate for one inning. I'll never forget that series against the Cardinals either. Wood appeared 11 times in relief in 2005 after being removed from the rotation, and in that Aug 2005 series against the Cardinals he pitched 3 innings, gave up 1 hit, walked 2 and struck out 6, zero runs & zero earned runs. He followed it up with two dominating outings at Houston and at Colorado. In his 11 relief appearances Wood's line was: 12 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 5 BB, 17 K, 2 HR Most days he was cutting through hitters like a chainsaw through butter. However he did have one bad outing against Atl. Two of those three ER were costly thanks to a ninth-inning game-winning two-run HR by Chipper Jones. (Chipper also had a two-run HR off big Z earlier in the game. Torching both Z and Woody with 2-run knocks in the same game mustve been quite a notch on his belt.)

The other problem with a strong free agent class is that you would have to outbid all of the other big spenders (Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, etc.). If someone like Cabrera or Santana became a FA, do you think Steinbrenner would be outbid? Apparently the Cubs are now a member of that list; I hate to quote Dusty (from a different context) but, well, why not us? Time and time again folks here on NSBB have pointed out the need to overspend for real talent ... real difference-makers instead of crap. And they're absolutely right.