barryfoote

I may be able to forgive him for the 84 playoffs, but I can't forgive him for the Steve Garvey's Celebrity Billfish Tournament http://www.cheapseats.tv/episodes_s1.html# Fourth from the top

I didn't mean to imply you specifically in my 'Orton hate' comment. I was referring to some of what I am hearing on the sports talk radio shows. Basically I agree with your assessment about Orton. My concern is that Grossman has not shown (so far) that he is durable and my fear is that if he gets hurt again then you still will have Orton as your playoff quarterback (assuming the Bears make the playoffs) with less game experience. Also, if you rush Grossman back before he is completely healthy, the likelyhood of injury would be even greater. I also think that it will take some time for Grossman to shake off the rust and I'm not sure that he would be much better that Orton until that happens. I understand the frustration though, this team with a good quarterback would be scary.

That's not what gage did. He started to cut in, saw that orton was throwing out, and went back out. It reduced his speed, but not by much. It still would have been badly overthrown, and only catchable by the dback Thanks for the clarification. It did seem there was miscommunication between the two on what route was being run.

This is where you lose me in these discussions Goony. You show all these stats where Orton is so terrible, but you don't have any stats to back up the above statement. Grossman hasn't done anything any better than Orton so far in his career, and I just don't know how you can be so sure that he'll be better... Please note that I'm not saying that he won't be better, I just don't know how you can say it with such certainty. Exactly, the only thing you can say for sure about Grossman is that he hasn't played more than three consecutive games in his entire career. The idea that Grossman, who has played in 0 regular season games this year and has played 0 regular season games under Ron Turner's offense can come in and play better than Orton after not seeing any live football action for over three months is wishful thinking. I don't get the Orton hate, he is a rookie and rookies will be inconsistent. I think personally he is farther along in his development than what could be reasonably expected and I think that with time he can be very good. Does this means he's a good quarterback yet? No it doesn't, but he is light years ahead of Quinn, Krensel and Hutchinson. If you want to blame someone, blame Angelo for starting the season without a quality veteran backup quarterback. Clearly, the Bears need better play from the quarterback position to be a factor in the playoffs. Hopefully Orton can progress to that point. One last thing, it looked to me that on the Orton interception Justin Gage stopped running his route. This would explain why that pass seemed so off if Gage was supposed to continue downfield. I don't know for sure that was the case, but that was my initial impression of the play.

I would not claim that I am qualified to break down someone's swing mechanics, but a friend of mine who played baseball suggested that Corey's holds his hands too high. If he brought his left forearm down to the top of the strike zone then he would have to lift up that forearm to hit anything above the top of the strike zone and that would be something that he could use as a key to lay off those high pitches. http://images.bleedcubbieblue.com/images/admin/patterson.jpg I'm not sure if that would work but I think that it brings up the point that there may be changes in swing mechanics that would allow him to better react to pitches that are outside the strike zone. I think the most obvious one would be to shorten the stroke to give yourself that extra millisecond (or whatever it is) to react to the location of the pitch. Hopefully he can work out something because if he continues to swing at pitches that he can't possibly hit, that will be the only pitches he will ever see.

I couldn't agree more

That would make some sense to me. You would figure that they would be shallower than normal because a medium-deep fly ball will score the run regardless of whether direction the player is moving, but they would need to be deep enough to get some momentum behind a throw that they could get Rollins on. My impression from the radio was that they weren't playing any shallower that normal and that seemed odd to me. The radio guys were pretty critical and I ran with that.

There was one move (or lack of one) that mystified me in this game. In the ninth inning after the bases were loaded the outfield was not brought in. I was listening to the game on the radio, and Pat said something to the effect of "Let's put it this way, if the outfielders catch the ball where they are playing now the game is over" What possible rationale could you have to not bring in the outfielders in that situation? Maybe someone on this board can explain to me what the possible benefit of not bringing in the outfielders was, because I can't figure it out. Again I was listening on the radio so perhaps Pat and Ron were overstating the issue, but I tend to doubt that.

I think Dusty should be fired because he's turning members of this board against each other. I do think that questioning his moves during a game is easy to do because you always have the benefit of hindsight. You can offer alternate approaches to approaching game situations with the assumption that the different approach will work. That being said, there is plenty of room to legitimately criticize Dusty for his game moves. One example would be when he brought in Remlimger to face Larry Walker in an earlier game this year against St. Louis. Not only does Remlinger gets out righties better that lefties in general, but Larry Walker was hitting about .500 against him on top of that. Unsurprisingly, Walker hit a home run. I wonder how many other managers would have made a move like that. And some of the statements made are a little over the top. I watched the Cubs during the 70’s and can guarantee you that there are many players worse then Neifi Perez. The issues with not playing rookies is somewhat overstated in the sense that rookies are like backup quarterbacks. If the starter is not playing well, the assumption is that the rookie will do better and if the manager is not willing to play the rookie right away he must be anti-rookie. However, I don’t think the criticism of Dusty not playing rookies is entirely unjustified, but I think it is a symptom of a larger problem, which is Dusty seems to have players he likes (like Hollandsworth and Macias) and players he doesn’t like (Hairston), and as a consequence he seems to make decisions on who plays partially based on criteria other than performance. For example when Hollandsworth was struggling mightily early in the year, it took forever for Dusty to give Dubois a chance. Granted it didn’t work out like we would have liked, but he should have gotten an opportunity sooner than he did (in my opinion). I also think that Matt Murton deserves more of a look based on what he has done so far. Hairston did not seem to a fair chance to earn a leadoff spot, and it was the demotion of Corey Patterson to the minors that forced his hand on that. I don’t have an issue with Macias as a 25 man, but it does seem like he is used in situations above other people that may be a better option (as a leadoff hitter, for instance). Competition is a wonderful motivator, but you need to let performance entirely dictate who plays in order for competition to be most effective. My biggest issue with Dusty apart from him playing favorites is that I don’t see him holding the players accountable for playing solid fundamental baseball. Macias didn’t run out that bunt the other day, is that going to affect his playing time? When Corey overthrew the cutoff man but 50 feet on a play where the man at 3rd base wasn’t even going to attempt to score, did he get benched for that? When Hollandsworth did not hustle when fielding a double earlier this year that turned into a triple (I want to say it was against Eaton the San Diego pitcher), did he get benched for that even for a day or two? When Ramirez doesn’t run out a ball he thinks is a home run but isn’t, is Dusty calling him on that? I'm not seeing that. I think you are kidding yourself if you think that this team would be running away with the wild card if we had another manager. But I do think the manager will either help or hinder your ability to win a handful of games during the year, and I think Dusty is hurting more that helping.

I think shutting him down for the year is the way to go. One question is whether a hurt Kerry Wood would be more effective than a healthy Hill, Mitre or Rusch. I'm not sure that he would be that much more effective that it is worth taking the risk of further damage. I also think that whether a starter or a reliever, Kerry will still need to work on his mechanics to relieve further stress on the arm and perhaps get a little more control over the location of his pitches. The earlier he has surgery the more time he will have to work through those adjustments. I wouldn't want to give up on him being a starter just yet. I do have concerns about his control in bullpen situations. Of course, I had the same concerns about Dempster so take it for what it is worth.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If he did that and didn't get fired, I'd march on Tribune Tower. That would be 2 in one season. I'll be right there marching with you.

I vote for the old Pittsburgh Pirates bumblebee uniforms.

My interpretation of this trade is that it's about the Cubs giving up on Dubois more than anything (fairly or not). I think that they may feel that Dubois's defense is too much of a liability and there are holes in his swing that would not be exposed on a minor league level but will be on a major league level. So they trade him for someone that is a better defensive option as a late inning replacement and someone who they feel may have some upside after his recovery from his knee injury. I get the impression that he is a better defender then Hollandsworth or Grieve, based on the spin the Cubs are putting on the trade on Cubs.com. If he is coming in as a bench player that can give you some defense this trade may make some sense. I'd have to say I'm lukewarm about it myself. One last thing, I hate the idea that the GM would trade players that have value because the manager won't play them. If that is the case, replace the manager instead. I know for the most part I am preaching to the converted on this one.

Speaking of calls that went NY's way in the past. Wasn't there a playoff game where Patrick Ewing took about 5 steps before making a game winning shot a while back?