Illini Iceman

Dempster would need to throw a strike so I doubt it.

Ask the biggest idiot in baseball. Leave Bud Selig out of this.

I can't read this thread anymore until you stop typing "common" when you mean "come on" Common, give him a break.

Weird. What was the excuse when he blew those two saves in a row a couple weeks ago? Overworked?

First of all, Wood is coming off surgery and in almost all cases it takes quite a while for a pitcher to regain his initial velocity. Secondly, with 4 regular season + 3 rehab starts Wood is pretty much where most pitchers would be coming out of spring training, so he is not going to be as sharp as the guys that have been pitching for 2 months + spring training. The hitters are approaching mid season form and Wood is just getting into shape, so that is a recipe for disaster. If Wood makes good throw to third on the bunt in the second he probably gets out of that inning with no runs scoring and who knows what happens from there. IMO still WAY to early to make any judgements about what Wood will be like when he is back to full strength.

Given the usual shortage of quality catcher candidates I think that if the selections were to be made today Barrett would get picked. IMO there is just way too much competition and talent among OF for Jones to make it.

Olney basically throws out several qoutes from GMs or scouts he talked to regarding Wood or Prior's perceived value at those respective levels. A few examples: OMG! In just his third start after major shoulder surgery he looked like "shell of what he once was"? Stop the presses!

Managing in the AL is much easier than managing in the NL. The WS were extremely lucky last year in terms of the health of their team. I give Williams credit for brining in a lot of those players but they already had a pretty good nucleous of talent to begin with. Making stupid comments in the press and yelling obsenities doesn't make one a good manager. It also pretty easy to manage when your pitching is giving up no runs. It is the same as Baker in '03. When your pitching is shutting down the opponent every night you have a lot of room for error. If Prior and Wood had not faltered Baker could also have a WS title but that would not make him any better of a manager.

Or maybe he just needed to be coached by people who know what the hell they're doing at least every once in a while. Corey himself said he thought he should be batting lower in the lineup, specifically as a #6 hitter. Well, the Orioles are doing just that, and letting him work there. And look at the results. Wow, what a radical approach...nobody could have EVER thought of that! Corey definitely had some ego "issues," but if what he's doing now with the O's continues, it should prove he was VERY far from being uncoachable, or terrible or a headcase, or whatever other excuses want to be made. His success should be one of the most scathing indictments of how bad the Cubs' management and coaching staffs are right now. corey had plenty of ab's in the 7/8 hole last year. sure some blame should be placed on the cubs coaching, but most the blame falls on corey. He was yanked around the lineup and expected to change his role on a near weekly basis. The Cubs' plans for him seemed to change with the winds. That kind of inconsistency and blatant misunderstanding of your own farm pick is murder on the game of a younger playing still trying to find his role and skills. It's obvious even the Cubs realized that. Look how much playing time Murton and Cedeno have gotten towards the bottom of the lineup. Most of their switches have been to the two spot. Consistency. Corey was seemingly expected to be everything except the three and four hitters. And I'm not saying he may have not been a difficult player to coach. But those players are going to come around enough that having coaches that can't deal with those situations are a real problem. Look at what it means we might miss out on. He is hitting .290 with less than 150 AB's. I will hold out judgement until August or September after the "book" gets out on him in the AL. Maybe he will keep it up, but I have a feeling that over the course of the season teams will discover the flaws that we all know still exist in his swing and hitting approach and his numbers will come back down to more closely resemble his career averages.

Perhaps you could quanitfy which specific range you're referring to instead of these vague timeframes. Exact dates and post some numbers. This is what I wrote. That's some questionable logic. On April 28 the Cubs were 13-8 and Jacque Jones was hitting .231/.281/.500. On May 9 the Cubs were 14-18 and JJ was hitting .244/.289/.444.. It was a direct reaction to the inaccurate statement that "when Jones struggled, the Cubs were winning. The Cubs were 13-8 on April 28 (high water mark over .500). Between then and May 9 Jones was pretty much the same player, with a slight uptick in OBP and a noticable downturn in SLG. I'm not going through all those games and calculating the total, but if his numbers went in bad, and they came out just as bad, it's pretty safe to say he was bad. Jones had a big day on May 10 and the Cubs won. But the die had already been cast. They were way under and in a tailspin. Since that May 10 big day, his numbers have settled into a better range. He played better after the team was already a joke. The Cubs problems didn't just start after Jones got hot. He was a big part of their fall. And you simply cannot ignore his overall bad OBP (the teams greatest weakness for several years now), as well as the multiple pickoffs that torpedoes potentially big innings. At 14-18 the "die had already been cast"? I think if a few other players had stepped it up like JJ did at that point there was plenty of time to salvage the season considering they were only 4 under .500 with 130 games left to play.

This is why they are called rehab starts. If he was sharp and throwing in the mid 90's they would have him go right to the big leagues.

ok Seriously, what are you talking about with the title of this thread? it's called trolling. and yes, i'd rather have farnsworth than novoa, flowers, and moore. I think it is funny that this is considered trolling. If, for example, someone started a thread on a Cubs board saying "Who would you rather have now, CPatt or Pierre" that is classic trolling because it is just an attempt to rile up Cubs fans. However, the general attitude on this board is now so negative toward management that trying to bring up good things (yay - we now have upgraded our right handed relief corp) is viewed as trolling. Pretty wierd.

So the "friggin idiot" Piniella should have moved Lugo to second so Gonzalez could play short? Cantu gets benched in that scenario? Or does he get moved to third, in which case it makes no difference because the same three players make up the infield except in different spots.

I am thinking he is the next Rey Sanchez, but hope I am wrong.

They were actually good for a while in '85, but if I recall correctly wasn't at one point the entire starting rotation injured?

In an ideal world fans would give a 24 year old with barely 300 PAs to show his potential. He's shown flashes of what he can do, and his work ethic has gotten praise from the coaches. Let him use that work ethic to figure out how he can hit right-handers better. Watching Murton at the plate you can see he will be a good ML hitter once he gets more experience and learns the pitchers better. He does not swing at bad pitches and get himself out, knows how to cut down his swing with 2 strikes and goes the other way when pitchers work him outside. He won't be a super star but can definitely be a nice 6 hitter with a BA of around .300 and OBP of .350 or better. I am more concerned with Cedeno. He has less power than Murton and not nearly as good of a command of the strike zone. I have a feeling his numbers will really start dipping once the book gets out on him. He could still adjust and turn out good, but I get a Rey Sanchez vibe.

And how many runs have they scored and how many have we scored? When you say WE, do you mean the Cubs or Sox, since you are neutral?

Please. The ball was 10 feet away. Slide around him and touch the plate. How did AJ know the ball was 10 feet away (which it wasn't)? He can see that the ball wasn't there. And yes, the ball was about 10 feet away when he committed to train-wrecking Barrett and ended up hitting AJ about the same time as the collision. So you're only allowed to run over the catcher when he has the ball in his golve huh? Of course. Here's something. If Barrett, who had a better idea of where the ball was and if he was going to have it in time to get AJ out, knew that he wouldn't have it in time, why didn't he get out of the way and not black the plate? I'm very interested in your answer to that. You're "allowed" to run over the catcher whenever you like, just don't be surprised when you get a fist in the face if it was not necessary.

Please. The ball was 10 feet away. Slide around him and touch the plate. How did AJ know the ball was 10 feet away (which it wasn't)? . Exactly. But I'm the one that's blind. Don't the Sox lovers have something better to do than hang around a game thread at a Cubs board? Not enough Sox fans that know how to read and write to have your own board?

If you were so dedicated, you'd live in Chicago. Its a silly argument, but nothing more silly than what you're saying. That makes absolutely no sense.

Did Alcantara kick the guy in the face? In the chest protector. It didn't look like he was aiming anywhere in particular, he just lifted his right (back) leg and kicked the catcher before he took off after the pitcher. He's lucky he didn't hit him in the throat, which would have been the worst place to kick him, since his body and face were protected. Diffusion posted the link to video a few pages back: http://www.dmsjr.com/couchmedia/izzyfight.mpg

[-X Unless you belong to a sorority I don't think there is any excuse for that.

Wasn't this just the second game that Murton didn't start? And at this point it doesn't matter who is playing because nobody can hit consistently. I saw Barrett swinging at a Corey Patterson type pitch tonight. I didn't mind shaking things up a bit, but I still don't know why Bynum, Hairston and Perez are all on this team. I can partially understand two, but don't understand why all three are on this team. Dusty said in his radio pregame show that he was going to give the kids some time off (maybe just tonight) because their bats were slowing. I probably wouldn't have posted this without the words from the man himself I am not sure about Murton, but it did seem like Cedeno needed a night off. In the last game against AZ he was 0-5 and left 8 guys on base including 4 in scoring position with 2 outs. I don't see any problem with giving guys a day off here and there, though I am not sure I completely understand the logic of resting two guys in the same game.

How many innings would the Cubs current scoreless streak be if Batista hadn't walked Maddux with the bases loaded to force in a run a couple games ago?

I think it's pretty ridiculous that people have a problem with this thread. No one is starting threads everyday documenting when Corey struggles. But this is simply an incredibly stupid play by Corey Patterson and it's worth mentioning. What's more ridiculous? Corey making a baserunning blunder or a whole team scoring 4 runs since last Saturday without any days off? And in that span, how many pitchers have or had ERA's over 5.00 entering those games? If you don't like the thread feel free not to participate, but I don't see the point of hijacking it by bringing up the Cubs offensive struggles or Pierre getting picked off second on a bad call.