FergieJ31

Ruffles_have_Fridges: i'm the fridge, i'm the rookie, i may be large but i'm no dumb cookie Da Fridge makes a cameo! Great stuff. :lol:

Yeah I agree 100%. This rumor - if true - makes absolutely no sense. Woody and Acosta were known to be very close. After Acosta resigned in 2001 due to his public feud with Baylor, I don't think I've ever seen Kerry as publically ticked off at Cub management. And given Woody's health issues, why on earth would someone issue a false statement about a "twinge" that would fuel negative speculation?

hehe you got the gist of my jest :D who'da thunk maddux would be 4-0 at this point with big Z 0-1? what bizzaro world are we in anyway?

I hope Mark Buehrle was watching (whoever he is).

Someone had a sign yesterday that said "Benedict Mabry" so he isn't universally applauded. We also had Benedict Veres and we remember how that turned out.

Gotta love the biting truth by Mr. Miles. And this quote by Jacque Jones has my head spinning: :shock: :shock: :shock: On the surface this is an astonishing statement, but in JJ's defense there are two ways to parse this: The bad way, arrogant: "Hey, I don't want to take a walk." The good way, sarcastic/self-deprecating: "I should be taking more walks but I'm swinging at everything." Everything else I've read about JJ suggests he's a relatively humble guy (I read the backpage feature on him in the Trib last week), so I prefer to go with the 2nd interpretation.

Agreed, but that double switch in the 5th was not a brilliant move. Moreover, Cedeno appeared to be out of position on Pujols' single; he did not hit it that hard. I kept waiting for Ronny to appear in the middle of my screen to scoop the ball. My thought exactly. Ronny definitely cheated a bit toward 3B.

Gee such creative nick names you have. Mariotti called Wood Kid Rx and always says to stick the next pin into the voodoo doll of Kid Rx or Prior I'm no Mariotti fan but I was sort of amused by his label for Prior & Wood: Blue Cross and Blue Shield. "Team MRI" is another good one. If you don't laugh you cry I guess.

Anyone have a link to the clutch debate? SonnyD is new here. You guys can post as many links as you'd like, I'd be more than happy to go through those debates, but there is no way I will change my mind on "clutch hitters". "Clutch" is all relative. Relative to when and how often it happens. A player can be a cluth hitter for a day. For example, 8th inning, 2 outs, down 1 run, men on 2nd and 3rd, hits a double to knock the go ahead run in. He was a "clutch hitter" that day. A player can be a "clutch hitter" for an entire season ( DLee's .304 avg/.431obp with RISP). But the most telling line, is what a player does THROUGHOUT his career. I'm sorry, but if a player hits .325/.425obp throughout his ENTIRE career with RISP, he is a "CLUTCH HITTER". Saying there is no such thing as clutch hitting, is like saying Ichiro isn't a good hitter. He just gets lucky when he gets his hits. To put it another way, every player, every time they go to the plate, is up there with the intention to get on base. For this example, let's just say to get a hit. Would you rather have a player hit .300 with runners on base, or .300 with the bases empty??? Another example, player 1 hits .400 with RISP and .200 without. player 2 hits .200 with RISP and .400 witout. Both hitters are batting .300 OVERALL. Which scenario would you rather have??? Player 1 is obviously a "clutch hitter". The point is, situatinal hitting is VERY important, and can actually be measured and truly means something. And we're back to the same old question: If it's real--if players do consistently and reliably differ in these ways--show me the stats and prove it. No one has been able to show it yet. Of course, if you're inclined to believe in it despite the lack of evidence, that's your prerogative. It is true that demonstrating "clutchness" as a persistent, measurable quality seems impossible, for the reasons Bob's Keeper states. This oft-cited paper by Bill James is also germane to the debate: http://www.sabr.org/cmsfiles/underestimating.pdf I'm personally agnostic on the whole clutch hitting debate. Just because it's not measurable doesn't imply it doesn't exist, only that it cannot be verified statistically. Read the Bill James paper for a beautiful explanation of that concept. As that great baseball theorist Albert Einstein once said: "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

Now that's Old Style! :wink: Godspeed all DL'ed Cub All-Stars, get well soon.

wow you're not kidding about the downhill thing: Tatis: 1999, OPS = 957 2000, OPS = 870 2001, OPS = 702 2002, OPS = 698 2003, OPS = 544

Trivia q: who was the premium pitcher ($2.3M in 1999) off of whom he hit BOTH grannies? Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! I know. Were his initials Chan Ho Park? :lol: Chan was da man

Trivia q: who was the premium pitcher ($2.3M in 1999, $15M last year) off of whom he hit BOTH grannies?

which might represent one of Ronnie's more coherent moments ... you can actually find "man" in the dictionary.

Today's HR count: Eckstein 1, Albert 0 I hope Eck made the most of this and got in some good trashtalking in the dugout.

Well neither his answer, "Chicago (by far), Los Angeles, St. Louis", nor the question specified gender of said "tail" :oops: That said, I grow weary of the Edmonds=gay posts here.

Wow that was Maddux circa mid-90's ... what a performance.

O'Neill said he's going to be out 4-6 weeks. Oh wow, I hadn't heard that. That's terrible. Yeah I feel bad for the kid - I heard he was too distraught to talk to the media.

The reverse psychology thing seems to be workin' tonight ... yeah Lee blows :lol:

meh. only a double ... Pujols is slumping :)

:shock: Albert is a monster

I'll bite b/c it's already been answered: Define "an extended time". I think it's only natural to get excited about the return of a player of Kerry Wood's calibre, even if the player is injury-prone. I'm looking forward to seeing the standing ovation Kerry will get when he takes the mound for the first time this year at Wrigley.

Take out one of the 'o's in good and you've got it (CFiCT's sig).

Cheerleaders in baseball?!? That's... umm ... terrible .. sacrilege ... (yowsa look at that blonde)

He doesn't seem to have a lot going on upstairs, that's how. That is not necessarily a bad thing in baseball. I remember a vinet in Moneyball where Beane is reconting a story where he and Lenny Dystra are sitting on the bench talking about the pitcher they were going to face. I can't remember the pitcher's name but he was really good. Beane says someting about the pitcher and Dykstra says, "who is he" or something like that. Beane goes on to tell Dykstra how good the pitcher is and Dykstra says, "F it I can hit him". Yeah I loved that story - great stuff. The pitcher was Steve Carlton.