erik316wttn

Bah. I really took it on the chin today. I had West Virginia in the Elite 8, and my upset detector was screaming when picking the Cornell/Missouri game... guess I was wrong about that one too. 17 of 24 so far after being 16 of 20 at one point.

The Cubs get swept in the first round for the third year in a row, looking like absolute crap in the process.

Looks like we're in for lots more Fukucopters this year.

The only one I've picked correctly thus far is Memphis.

I think theres a good chance it will happen with a new owner on board. He wouldn't have the political BS past with Sammy. Plus they may wait until he is in the Hall. Also worth noting, it is occupied for the next three years. Who has it now? Bradley, I'm pretty sure. Better than Marquis, at least.

I think theres a good chance it will happen with a new owner on board. He wouldn't have the political BS past with Sammy. Plus they may wait until he is in the Hall. Also worth noting, it is occupied for the next three years. Who has it now?

And Larry Himes from the other.

If everyone isn't maxed out in leagues already, I was wondering if anyone would like to participate in a h2h, max 12 or 14 team league with the following stats: offense: avg, sb, hr, rbi, r, obp, slug, bb pitching: w, k, whip, era, sv, holds, k/bb, obp against Post in the thread or PM me if interested. I won't create the league or send out invites unless it's worth it to do so. Just gauging interest at this point.

I know Sammy is persona non grata in Wrigley these days, but the only reason his number isn't up there is because of stupid BS politics. Any other team would have retired his number by now. He has done as much for this team as any other guy up there. He was the only reason to watch those sorry-ass teams in 99, 2000, and 2002. Seriously, I wanted to vomit when I saw Marquis with #21.

Wasnt he a 2B with us? Nope. Dopirak is a big guy (6 foot 4, 225 pounds). He was a first baseman in the Cubs system except for a 5 game experiment in left field. He spent last year between high A and AA in the Blue Jays system. He was also a highly-touted prospect who was supposed to be the future at 1B after Choi flopped.

i wonder if they'll do jenkins on one side and maddux on the other Ferdux Madkins?

I suggest beaning him in every AB this year for being such a pain in the 2003 NLCS.

Really? Maybe we should go after this DeRosa guy. And then trade him away for crap after a career year! It's brilliant! Brilliant, I tells ya!

I think it's rather ridiculous to dismiss the inordinately heavy workload and mistreatment of Prior simply because the evidence isn't conclusive. At his age, the amount of high pitch count games, back to back, and going back in after a shoulder injury, was bound to contribute to injury. It's not just three random games. It was something like a 20-game stretch of just ridiculous treatment. And to the naysayers.... when, exactly, does a high pitch count become a problem? What if he had averaged 120 pitches per start over the course of the season? What if he'd been left in for 200? Would you still say his workload had nothing to do with his breaking down?

According to most of the transactions threads around here, the Cubs are or should be interested in every person cut by Major League teams.

The typical starting pitcher is expected to have at least 1 or 2 major arm surgeries at some point in their career. It's just a given. It doesn't matter if they throw 90 pitches a game or 140 pitches. Based on that, you'd say the likelihood of a pitcher having a major arm injury in a given season is say, 10%, as a rough indicator. Then over the course of say, five seasons, well by that time there's about a 50% chance they have an injury, as a rough indicator. The stat this guy provided is useless and doesn't hold an ounce of statistical credibility. Period. I think your math is off. You estimate about a 10% likelihood in any given season for a pitcher to have an arm injury. Then after 5 years you say it's 50%. Really? Can you provide any sort of credible statistic that proves in the last, say, 10 years or so that 50% of all starting pitchers have had a major arm injury? By that math if they pitch for 10 years does it make it an absolute certainty that he'll have a major arm injury? I guess we'd better write Lilly off for this year then, because he debuted in 1999. I'd be more willing to bet that any pitcher who has four 130+ pitch starts in any given season, and 9 straight starts of at least 109 pitches is at far greater risk for major arm injury than one who only pitches say 85-100 in 9 consecutive starts.

To be fair, I saw why Lou did it. Z had struggled pretty badly in some of his August and September starts, other than the no-hitter. Demp was our most consistent pitcher all year.

I was quoting stats from the last 9 starts of 2003, not the last 3. Reading comprehension is your friend. Look at some of those pitch counts. You can't tell me that didn't play a significant factor in his arm troubles. This is from the article...

Last time out against Houston turned out ok, IIRC. Can the game be moved to Milwaukee?

That's a good article. I think the most telling of all is that pitch count stat over his last 9 starts in 2003. Dusty wrecked him. Period.

What does it mean it doesn't matter who he was facing? I think you've overextending yourself trying to defend your initial point. "Great movement?" How many pitches had great movement on them? It doesn't matter who he was facing because once the pitcher releases the ball, it doesn't matter who is at the plate - the pitch is the pitch. I don't think Pedro's going to suddenly start getting rattled by facing big league hitters. What matters with him is what kind of pitches he can execute - and he was executing great pitches. As for your final question - I don't have the game recorded, so I wouldn't want to trust my memory of 30-40 pitches several days ago to count individual pitches and explain what kind of movement each and every one of them had. Actually, the worst part of the DR being eliminated for me is that we don't get to scout Pedro any more. But the good thing is Marmol won't be out there possibly getting hurt.

I seem to remember Pat Hughes telling a story this past season about Warren Spahn. They had a nice conversation, and Pat was bringing this game up. Before Pat was even finished with his sentence, Spahn said "I hung a screwball." Pat marveled on how that stayed with him all those years. Also, It's kind of surprising that Spahn only struck out 2 guys in 15+ innings of work. His defense must have been extremely tired after that game.

It's a good way to get more players involved.

While it's great to make .02 look like an insignificant difference in SLG between two players, Theriot had 24 XBH's in 661 PA's. Fukudome had 38 XBH's in 590 PA's. Theriot isn't being demoted. He's being placed in the line up where his type of production is best suited. Especially when you basically have a heart of the order type hitter batting first in the line up. So then it's confirmed Soriano will stay in the leadoff spot? I know there was talk of moving him down in the order during the offseason.

Yeah, I did. I did everything I could to fill it and there were only 4 people there. There was no way I was going to have it filled by draft day. Sorry.