nilodnayr

Terrapin Station

or with his right leg out instead of his left that is like telling someone to bat wrong handed

I was wrong... bad slide It wasn't a really a bad slide, it just happened that Paulino hooked Soto's ankle...kinda a freak thing.

Never touched the base...but at least he wasn't hurt, that could have been a lot worse.

If you add defense and offense, and he keeps up this hitting or anywhere close to it he will far far far far far surpass Braun's 08 campaign.

I seem to remember him hitting an opposite field HR about 15 seconds after Tim made a post about him pulling everything. if you look at his wrigley hit chart, he hasn't hit anything anything to the right of the right-center field gap. i guess maybe that's a concern in that teams could start shading him to really pull the ball to left, but he's shown a good ability to drive pitches that are even on the outside corner. http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/stats/individual_player_hitting_chart.jsp?playerID=434567&statType=1

If they are going to sign and keep Fielder, then LaPorta and/or Gamel are going to be traded for pitching help. W/o Sheets their 2009 rotation is a 1.b Ace and a whole lotta #3/#4 guys. Gallardo Suppan Parra Villanueva Bush

In the offseason when the Jays were talking to the Giants about a Rios for pitcher swap, the Giants said that they'd prefer to trade Lincecum than Cain because of Lincecum's injury risk. Sabean sat on the Rios for Lincecum offer for 2 weeks and then decided not to take it. Lincecum can be had, and the Giants (at least as recent as a couple months ago) prefered to trade him over Cain. Unfortunately, we really don't have a Rios to trade them.

and not to mention in a sport where sample size is something you strive for and really need inorder for stats to have validity, why would you cut your sample in half? Park adjusting home stats and road stats is iperative...now if there were only good park adjustments out there and easily accessible...

That all sounds cool and right. Dempster has definitely been BABIP lucky and that is the primary reason he has a better RA than he normally does. Agreed. I think, to sum myself up even more, is that Dempster hasn't really changed as a pitcher in terms of basic peripherals: walks, Ks and HRs. But when you move from relieving to starting, not changing is a victory because starting should costs you some performance. If Dempster can start all season with the same effectiveness as he showed as a reliever, I think that makes him our fourth-best starter. Yes, I think that is a good an important point that at least so far, Dempsters peripherals are fairly inline with what they were as a reliever and that is a win in and of itself. Although, its still very early to be saying that he will beat the typical loss in moving from the pen to the rotiation. Although, we are really speaking in generalities in terms of how close his peripherals are to what they were as a reliever...I'm not sure how much of a fluctuation in those rates would result in a drop in a half or three-quarters of a run in ERA (or rather DIPS).

he's a fine-tuned professional athlete, fatigue should not be an issue that really has nothing to do with anything it was also a joke as evidenced by calling Dempster "fine-tuned" Have you ever heard him sing? Puts David Archuleta to shame.

he's a fine-tuned professional athlete, fatigue should not be an issue that really has nothing to do with anything

The defense behind him, more than anything else. He's only allowed something like 33 hits in 57.1 IP. Yeah, his K rate, BB rate, and HR rate (and HR/FB) are all pretty comparable to his prior Cubs experience. Its just that coming into todays game he has a 203 BABIP, resulting in a 173 average against. Granted he has only allowed a 14.6 LD%, but thats not really a skill and will regerss to the mean. Regardless of what his ERA says, his underlying statistics show that he was and is a league average pitcher. There's still some interesting digressions from his previous Cubs career that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. 1) There is a noticeable difference in his pitch selection. He's throwing more fastballs at the expense of sliders. 2) All three of his pitches are coming in at a consistent 2 MPH below when he was a closer, possibly indicating a change in the way he's pitching. 3) Not only is his LD% lower, his FB% is as well, with the difference all going to his GB%. If he was just getting LD-lucky, I wouldn't imagine the difference would be that pronounced. http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=517&position=P He's nowhere near as good as his ERA, and I don't know if any of this will be meaningful long-term, but it's curious to say the least. RE #1 I'm guessing this has to do with him having to "conserve" his slider. When you are facing batters multiple times as a starter vs once as a reliever, you have to not show all of your pitches the first time around. I'm guessing this is just correlational with moving to the starting role, rather than a causation for his success. If anything, you would assume that a pitcher who does a worse job at randomizing his pitch selection will get hit harder. RE #2 I'm guessing the reduction in speed can be attributed to the fact that he was only pitching one inning at a time before and could go all out and is now pitching multiple innings and needs to conserve himself and/or get tired later into games resulting in a slower average than when he was closing. RE #3 Yes, his GB% has increased, and hes eclipsed the point where GB% becomes moreso due to skill than luck (ie r^2 exceed 0.5) of 150 batters faced. Thats great an all, but on the flip side that further exposes the luck in his BABIP. Fly balls get converted into outs more than any other type of batted ball, and even though he has a really low BABIP, he has a low FB%, meaning that his BABIP should actually be higher than our standard LD%+.120 estimation (because those non-line drives are mostly ground balls (infact 2:1 in comparison with FB), which are turned into hits much more often than FBs). Well Kyle you must have missed my original response to your comment on Demps peripherals and recreated the wheel is a more indepth manner. One booboo you made in your long post is that you said his increased GB/FB rates are helping his BABIP. Thats not true. FBs are turned into outs more often than GB, so an increase in GBs and a decrease in FB means that a pitchers BABIP should be worse. In Demps case, this isn't happening. When you are talking about a pitcher that has had a change in GB/FB the LD%+.120 estimation for eBABIP simply won't do. I aggregated and weighted Demps ball in play types to come up with what hes done as a reliever for the cubs... LD%=19.9%, GB%=51.3%, FB%=28.8%. There are about a bagillion different more indepth eBABIP calc, but I just pulled the first one I found that was simple. .763*LD+.265*GB+.131*FB. Using this, Demps eBABIP over his previous tenure as a cub was .325, his actual (again weighted) was .301. So lets be generous and say that maybe that formual doesnt work well for Demp or he has some ability to do better than his eBABIP, or whatever (point is I'm being generous here). Lets use that same formula on his batted ball type this year...it yields an eBABIP of .314. My generosity comes in where I adjust that by taking out .024 to say, well luck independet, Demp should have a .290 BABIP this year. When infact he has a .220. My point in all this rambling and my previous post is to consider that Dempster "has fundamentally changed as a pitcher" and that has caused him this success as a miniscule reason (if any) for his success in comparison to his luck. As Kyle more appropriately stated in his last post, if Dempster has fundamentally changed at all, its been ever so slight in comparison to the affect luck has had in the difference between his expected results and actual results.

so demp is good because hes induced a handful more GBs not because he has a ridicuous opp average and BABIP

yeah that part is nice, but he's been lucky on balls in play and his LD% is likely to increase since it's well lower than any recent year in his career. the biggest thing for him is cutting down on the walks. which hes really not doing

God damnit, if WPA says you have a 100% chance of winning the game going into the 9th, cosmic forces are going to make you win that game no matter what.

The defense behind him, more than anything else. He's only allowed something like 33 hits in 57.1 IP. Yeah, his K rate, BB rate, and HR rate (and HR/FB) are all pretty comparable to his prior Cubs experience. Its just that coming into todays game he has a 203 BABIP, resulting in a 173 average against. Granted he has only allowed a 14.6 LD%, but thats not really a skill and will regerss to the mean. Regardless of what his ERA says, his underlying statistics show that he was and is a league average pitcher. There's still some interesting digressions from his previous Cubs career that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. 1) There is a noticeable difference in his pitch selection. He's throwing more fastballs at the expense of sliders. 2) All three of his pitches are coming in at a consistent 2 MPH below when he was a closer, possibly indicating a change in the way he's pitching. 3) Not only is his LD% lower, his FB% is as well, with the difference all going to his GB%. If he was just getting LD-lucky, I wouldn't imagine the difference would be that pronounced. http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=517&position=P He's nowhere near as good as his ERA, and I don't know if any of this will be meaningful long-term, but it's curious to say the least. RE #1 I'm guessing this has to do with him having to "conserve" his slider. When you are facing batters multiple times as a starter vs once as a reliever, you have to not show all of your pitches the first time around. I'm guessing this is just correlational with moving to the starting role, rather than a causation for his success. If anything, you would assume that a pitcher who does a worse job at randomizing his pitch selection will get hit harder. RE #2 I'm guessing the reduction in speed can be attributed to the fact that he was only pitching one inning at a time before and could go all out and is now pitching multiple innings and needs to conserve himself and/or get tired later into games resulting in a slower average than when he was closing. RE #3 Yes, his GB% has increased, and hes eclipsed the point where GB% becomes moreso due to skill than luck (ie r^2 exceed 0.5) of 150 batters faced. Thats great an all, but on the flip side that further exposes the luck in his BABIP. Fly balls get converted into outs more than any other type of batted ball, and even though he has a really low BABIP, he has a low FB%, meaning that his BABIP should actually be higher than our standard LD%+.120 estimation (because those non-line drives are mostly ground balls (infact 2:1 in comparison with FB), which are turned into hits much more often than FBs).

The defense behind him, more than anything else. He's only allowed something like 33 hits in 57.1 IP. Yeah, his K rate, BB rate, and HR rate (and HR/FB) are all pretty comparable to his prior Cubs experience. Its just that coming into todays game he has a 203 BABIP, resulting in a 173 average against. Granted he has only allowed a 14.6 LD%, but thats not really a skill and will regerss to the mean. Regardless of what his ERA says, his underlying statistics show that he was and is a league average pitcher.

Does it count that we had dinner with him mom to celebrate her birthday when the Cards were in Chicago five years ago? No, not kidding. Bottom line, you cannot rely on what the beat writers say because try as they might, they cannot separate their personal feelings from it all no more than anyone else can. Plus their time in the clubhouse is limited and the players try to watch their "Ps & Qs" more when there are eyes and ears around in the clubhouse. They base their opinions sometimes on how willing the guy is to give an interview and how that guy treats the media. There was a player who played at one time for both the Sox and the Cubs. When he was with the Sox, he was grumpy and mean and would only give you the time of day if you had a TV camera. When he was with the Cubs, he was a joy to be around and accomdated any interview request. A friend of mine who is a writer told me this story...just really disliked this player as a Sox but really got to like the guy as a Cub. I'll take Scott Eyre for $1000, Alex.

It says a lot about Sotos mental maturity to be able to have a God awful at bat and then keep focused and turn it around. He really doesn't bring his bad ABs back with him. Even when its a string of bad ABs, like when he went 0 for that series and then hit a bomb.

Yay, thats me having an internet "coversation" with DePo!!!

http://www.isfauthority.com/managex/index.asp?x=142&y=142&articlesource=142

Yeah, its posturing, but pretty damn well played posturing. While reading the article I was thinking, bluff, bluff, bluff...until the Newsday sale. Zell was really under the gun to have to get the $650M by Dec 4th, forcing him to take an offer, even a sub-par offer. Now, he can drag this out much longer, increasing his leverage. In regards to the park/team. I dont see how the ISFA can come up with a proporsal that doesn't include taxpayers money (anyone know how they generated $ to buy U.S. Cellular?). And given the current economic lanscape and the state/city budgets, I don't see how they can do it with taxpayer money.

It isn't so much a negotiating ploy as a message to come up with a way to finance the deal that doesnt significantly devalue the actual team.

This would seem to be one huge step for Cuban. Does anyone know whether this "approval" indicates that Cuban will no longer have to worry about getting a majority of the owners to let him in? http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080513&content_id=2691506&vkey=news_chc&fext=.jsp&c_id=chc Holy cow...how much money does Cuban have? Net worth=2.8 Billion