nilodnayr

And how are they going to upgrade SP? The market is bone dry this year. Its a lot easier to get an OF, than to get a SP.

. That's what he'd be replacing as well. Hence the last line in my post.

I'd trade Marshall or Marmol for Renteria. Hes no Tejada, but he'd be quite an upgrade over Theriot and he only costs $6M a year. Even if we don't have room to add payroll, we can find $6M in fat to pawn off.

Wainwright has a DERA of +3.95, same as Marshall. Look in the drop in numbers between Wainwright as a starter and as a reliever. H/9 +2.4 HR/9 same BB/9 +.6 K/9 -2.3 I guess if your point is that Marmol will have better stats as a reliever than as a starter, absolutely I'll agree with you. However, that can be said of the vast majority of pitchers. I believe that it would be most effective to use our best pitchers for the maximum amount of innings (meaning as a starter, not as a reliever) to have the greatest impact on the Cubs. I'd be more than happy to take a 3.95 DERA from a starter making $400K. Too bad the cubs are too dumb to see that.

It most certainly was in 2002. Pretty much the exact same situation Z never had a year like Marmol did out of the pen this year. I believe they feel comfortable with their 5 starters this year, I can't say the same thing about '02's staff. Zambrano doesn't have the same pure stuff as Marmol and they're different style pitchers. I think Marmol will maximize his effectiveness as a properly used reliever compared to a starter. Wainwright last year was more effective as a reliever than a starter this year, I expect similar declines in Marmol (although, Marmol has better stuff than Wainwright as well) as a starter to the point where the difference between him and Marshall isn't worth the loss of him as a properly used reliever. The whole point is that it then allows you to trade Marshall to upgrade elsewhere (like SS). And using Wainwright, isn't going to help your case, this year hes been awesome. Hes the 14th best pticher in the NL (using VORP).

Tejada's IsoP dropping 4 years in a row is definitely a trend. First of all its 3 years (04 was his career high in IsoP). Second of all, how significant are those drops? I looked at it two ways. One was simply a year over year % change in IsoP. This makes 05-06 look like a big decline with a 20% drop. 04-05 was pretty insignificant with a 6% drop, 06-07 slightly more significant with a 10% drop. Secondly, I normalized for 650 ABs (since he was injured for some of this year and its in progress) and looked at it from a total bases drop perspective. Because his average was so high in 06, the 05-06 drop in Normalized TBs was only 3%, he also only had a 3% drop from 04-05. However, from 06-07, his normalized TBs dropped 10%. The bad news, is you can't use the wrist injury as an excuse, because his IsoP before the injury was a paltry 117. The good news though, is that hes done much better in the second half with a 207 post ASB IsoP. While I completely agree hes in the regression stage of his career, what I'm saying is that I don't expect his OPS to drop 70 points a year from here on out. I still think he'll be an extremely above average offensive shortstop for the next 2 years and would be worth trying to acquire given his undermarket salary.

I would perfer if the front office had all winter to find new jobs...

They aren't too horribly different.

Ok, I'll quit my Lou defending :D

So, those people who are against it were also against Z starting, right?

I very much have to side with Meph on this one. I'd absolutely trade Marmol, definitely trade Pie, definitely trade Marshall, and would consider Hill. Marmos is a reliever, hes going to pitch 70 innings for us. No matter how great he is, its not going to make as much of a difference as a position player. Pie has major flaws. He has big upside, but who knows how much hes going to realize. Marshall is pitchig well, but has big injury history (which the O's are very careful about) and isn't that great. Trading Hill would all depend on who we would have to replace him. Tejada's 13M is ridiculously undermarket. He plays average D and is going to put up an 800 OPS in the AL East. His peripherals are all fairlyc consistant with former years. One year of dropping from 880 to 810 OPS is not necessarily a trend MORP has his 08-09 value at a smidge under $50M. I had never heard of this Luis Hernandez before the O's called him up...took a look at his bbcube page and man has he been horrible. To his credit, he has been young for his level. I can't imagine them handing him the starting job for 08. I'd be more than happy to give them Theriot :D As for Renteria, hes Tejada-lite. In production, in salary, and in player cost. Plus, they have Escobar to take over for him, so hes in a much more expendable situation. I'd have to imagine they'd be very happy taking Marshall for him. I'd do it.

Hell, I'd say Marmol has been more valuable than Theriot and he's only a reliever who wasn't even in the bigs in April. Marmol has a WARP3 of 4.3, while Theriot has a 3.7... and that doesn't even account for Marmol's much higher leverage. WARP for pitchers is leverage adjusted. Well sorta. It's a [expletive] way but it is. BP really has a disaster on their hands with WARP for pitchers. Its too bad theyre too dumb to know it oh and in addition, Marmol's leverage isnt all that high for a reliever. It really isnt. Thats Lous fault more than anything. I just looked it up. 53rd in the NL. Seems like it should be a lot higher. Correct me if I'm wrong (and I very well could be since I don't know a ton about Leverage Index), but isn't Leverage Index a situational stat, based on the various game state (inning, score, men on base, and outs). Its NOT based on who the pitcher is facing, right? So, while Dempster can pitch in the 9th inning of a one run game against the 7th, 8th, and whoever is left to pinch hit, Marmol could have pitched the 7th inning of a game with the same score against the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd hitters and would have a much lower leverage index, correct? As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that I'm kinda getting away from the main point of LI, but it would be cool to incorporate the OPS (or since its a Tangotiger stat, wOBA) of the batters the pitcher is facing. That would provide a more indepth picture as to how important the situation is.

I don't know if this info is accurate, but this is what I found after a brief google search: http://www.petcoparkinsider.com/2007-mlb-postseason-schedule-nl-playoffs The Cubs will not have homefield advantage unless one of the teams really swoons, so potential game 3's according to this would be on Saturday Oct 6th. Game 4's would be Sunday Oct 7th. Thanks, I'll be in the VWR lookin for Game 3 bleacher tickets! FYI, bleacher seats are reserved (not general admission) for the playoffs...so you could get stuck with the upper part.

ARam's game tying triple (and game winning PR run) get any mention?

I think your profession affords you to have a DIFFERENT insight into the game than many of us here. Whether thats better or worse is very debatable. There are many people here who have a significant advantage over you in terms of statistics and economics of baseball. Accuracy of a model to project the future is measured by looking back to see if that model made accurate projections. 95% of posters on this board panned Izturis, you liked him. Everyone makes mistakes, but this is a great example of statistics winning out over those who "watch the game". Baseball is not an individual sport. A position player who starts everyday is what, like 5-6% of a team? Point is, it took a bunch of other guys to win those championships and you provide no evidence that Theriot even helped those teams win championships, just that they won. Did the cardinals win the WS last year because of So Taguchi? Of course this all depends on a lot of other factors. Scarcity in the labor market, team strengths and weaknesses, etc. The game ends when you and your opponent each commit 27 outs (simply speaking). If at the end, you have more runs than your opponent, you win. Obviously, there is a tradeoff between giving up outs to score runs, but this is a long debate for another time. BLOT, not making outs is ESSENTIAL in this game. Honestly, we all envy the hell out of you.

Exactly Before the game today he was at 268/330/355. PECOTA pegged him at 272/331/360 worth 4.4M. Here are his future projections: 2008: 274/333/361 2009: 278/338/366 2010: 270/329/359 2011: 273/334/364 So, PECOTA has nailed him for 07, if its correct moving forward, hes not improving and staying around a 5M player. By the way, those #s are pretty close to his MLE from 05 and 06.

The only thing I can think of is insurance $.

OK, who had St. Clair in the pool for bears first touchdown of the season?

With Soto getting a chance to play more than once every other week lately, I have to imagine its him. Unless of course he completely tanks over the next two weeks.

i don't know much about injuries and whatnot, but this is what rotoworld said on June 8th, and it might be why the Cubs waited. So further proof the Cubs medical staff is full of jackasses So you're saying it's impossible it wasn't damaged further over the last 3 full months? And are these type of tests done by some sort of exclusive "Cubs medical staff?" I thought things like this were handled by doctors that treated players in general from around the league. I really dont see how in his very limited rehab stint he could have hurt it that much too cause the problem. To me it seems more likely the problem was there in June, and they either mis evaluated it(its happened before) or they overlooked it. My guess is the problem was there in June but was mis diagnosed, which sucks cause he loses 3 months of rehab time. Maybe...but again, isn't this the result of evaluations from national medical resources as opoosed to "the Cubs' medical staff?" I'm not saying they haven't screwed up, but I think it's pretty shortsighted to pin this on the Cubs organization alone. Plenty of doctors outside of the club have been involved along the way. Maybe I'm going crazy (since I can't find it), but I swear I read in a Will Carroll article that medial was synonymous with ulnar.

Um, that makes no sense. He traded Rowand for Thome. His other main acquisition was Vazquez. The only thing that I credit Kenny with was realizing that his 2005 team was insanely lucky and he needed to improve them in the offseason to have a shot at repeating. He realized that the team suceeded because of pitching and power hitting and brought in MORE pitching and power hitting because he knew what he had was due to regress.

I'm not sure if it's luck or what, but Ryan's better at the same philosophy. If the Cubs were a little better over Hendry's regime, they would have had more success. I think a little can go a long way. Of course, it would help if the Cubs could produce Mauer, Morneau, Santana, Garza, etc. Well the Cubs could've had Mauer instead of Prior...:P How? Uh..yeah nevermind...I was thinking the Cubs had passed on Mauer for Prior...it was the Twins passing on Prior for Mauer, wasn't it? Yes. The Twins had the first pick and the Cubs were second. The Twins chose Mauer over Prior because they thought they'd be more likely to be able to sign Mauer and because Mauer was local. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Mauer wasn't the consensus #2 pick. Who knows if the cubs would have taken him if Prior was off the board. I think thats what Rais is saying.

:lol: I'm liking the logic. We basically have already increased payroll by 8% for 2008 without signing anyone new. Let's go for 8% more in the offseason. Wonder what percentage ARod's salary would increase payroll? 8-) Roughly 30%.

:lol: I'm liking the logic. We basically have already increased payroll by 8% for 2008 without signing anyone new.

Of course you ommitted his 412 SLG. Thats 24 points higher than Juan Pierre last year. Now do you see?