TB_11

You have a lot more confidence in Hairston than I do. I don't care how hard he supposedly worked this off-season, I've just not been impressed by him or his ability to stay healthy. That said, if he does start most of the time, I will be pulling for him to succeed. The most important thing Hairston brings to the Cubs is that he's not Neifi.

There's essentially two chemistries to consider. One is 'they all get along and are friends' chemistry. I can't imagine this would have an ounce of effect on a team's performance. The other is 'they've played together for years and know each others tendencies' chemistry mentioned by MOJ above in other sports. Possible examples in baseball would be a catcher who knows what call to make in which situation when catching a certain pitcher, or a first basemen who knows when a shortstop goes to his left he tends to the right of the bag, or even a double play combo that can execute well. Regardless I'm not sure these 'chemistries' really have a whole lot of value, and would be able to be measured if they did.

Call me crazy....but the Cubs...IMO, have a similar player already in their system...Felix Pie. I know he gets alot of comparasion, and hypes, but I fully believe that Pie will be a Sizemore type player for the Cubs before 2007, is out...if not sooner. I agree on your assessment of Pie's potential. But there's no reason why we couldn't have Sizemore and Pie in the same outfield. :D

Nice move by Shapiro. I know there's a few on this board (including myself) who would have liked to see Sizemore in Wrigley at some point in the future.

1. Ryno 2. Babe Ruth 3. Z 4. Prior 5. Tie between Ted Williams and Hector Villanueva Pedro would have been #5 if he had stayed in the AL and we didn't have to play him every season.

Pierre is definitely a better option for 2006 than Gathwright, although the thought of having developed versions of Murton, Pie and Gathright roaming our outfield next year is enticing.

Both Prior and Z are in one-year contracts. If Prior can show himself to be durable when he comes back, his value could be higher than Z's as he's getting a little bit more than half the money Z is this year. If a team thought that by bringing in either one of them this year it would have a higher chance of signing them to a long-term deal once the season is done, Z's value would be higher. Either way I say if Z repeats his performance from the last three years in 2006, signing him to a long-term deal should be priority number 1 for Hendry. Even if he slips a bit this year or gets injured, Hendry should still make it a priority.

As bad as our offense might be, it's improved over last year's disaster. For starters, we shouldn't be seeing Corey and Neifi ahead of DLee and Aramis in the lineup. Any combination of Pierre/Hairston/TWalk/Murton at the top of the lineup is a MASSIVE improvement in OBP in the one and two holes of the lineup from last year. As much as I didn't like the Jones signing, he's likely to do better than Burnitz. Murton will be better than Holla/Dubose were last year in LF too. No way we score 20-40 runs less than last year. I'd say more like 20-40 more than last year (which still isn't great). Fair assessment. Two things I would say though are first that the upgrade from Corey and Neifi to Pierre and TBD at the top of the lineup will be slightly offset by a regression in Derrek's performance. If he can put up triple-crown worthy numbers for the season again we'll obviously take it, but I don't think we should expect it. Also I'd say going from Burnitz to Jones is a wash in my opinion. They've put up pretty similar numbers over the past few years. I expect us to put up score slightly more runs next year, but that's due more to the removal of awful offensive performances from the 2005 team.

Maddux as pitching coach and Z as hitting coach.

Actually I think this tends to get a bit lost in all of the criticism of Hendry. Most Cubs fans (at least on this board) are pretty fed up with Dusty, but Hendry has kept his faith in him. Dusty deserves bashing for things like letting Neifi get ~600 PAs last year, and Hendry deserves bashing for sticking with a coach who would give Neifi ~600 PAs.

I get frustrated by this line. There was what, two significant FA upgrade options? One seemed like a lock and bolted for an absurd contract and the other wasn't going anywhere to begin with. It wasn't the best year for FA. There were trading opportunites out there, but any significant upgrade would come at the cost of players named Prior or Zambrano, at which point people freaked-out. Hendry's only missteps this offseason were granting extra years to Jones and Perez. I don't mind either of those guys on one-year deals, but neither were good fits for this team on multi-year deals. Otherwise, he turned within to fill holes at SS and LF, acquired very solid bullpen help, and upgraded CF significantly. The current offense isn't anywhere near as bad as people make it out to be. It stacks up with either World Series team from last year. That's the point. While the Astros and White Sox offenses were mediocre and average respectively, both teams were able to succeed because they had excellent and durable starting pitching. Hendry thought that the Cubs could get by on the same, and given the injury risks that exist to starting pitching (namely our starting pitching), it was an unwise decision. Additionally the decision to sign Perez for an additional 2 years and $5M was an indefensible move. The Jones signing wasn't as bad, but there were still better options available.

For all the praise he deserves for putting together the pitching staff, he deserves just as much criticism for putting the success of the team squarely on the staff. He had an opportunity this offseason to significantly upgrade the offense, and he didn't. The offense now isn't strong enough to overcome a mediocre performance from our pitching staff. Hendry deserves the blame for this. Additionally as good as the staff is when healthy, the bullpen additions from this offseason were completely overpaid for.

I guess I'm a fool. Higher payroll doesn't = winning. How you spend the money you have is what puts together a winning team. How have the Braves been as successful as they have? The A's? The list goes on. If money = winning, the teams with the top payrolls would win the WS year in and year out, but that's not what happens. I don't think anyone believes that money = winning, but to say it's not an advantage rich teams have over poor teams ignores the issue. It's one of the main reasons that the Yankees and Red Sox remain competitive every year, and that people expect teams like the Dodgers, Mets, and Cubs to do consistently better than the Devil Rays, Royals and Pirates year to year. Ask any team, whether it be the high-and-foolishly spending Yankees down to the consistently-successful-on-a-budget Twins and A's, whether or not they would want an extra 10M added to their payroll, and every team will say yes. The Cubs could reasonably spend this much more on their payroll, but choose not to. Profits and a mediocre chance at success are worth more to the Tribune company that no profits and a better chance at success.

I think the problem is that they spend 100 million when they could spend 10 million+ more. They look at the Cubs as something that should turn a profit.

Ben Petrick had 4 RBI for the Rockies without a hit. Don't know if that's the record or not, though. The boxscore is on retrosheet - September 20, 2000.

This was a discussion a friend and I were having the other day to rid ourselves of depression following the Prior news. Where does Pedro fall in the 'Greatest Starters Ever' debate? My friend (a baseball history nut) places Walter Johnson first, and then Clemens, Pedro, Koufax (surprising), and Lefty Grove as his next four. Was interested to see what people on this board thought.

Wood: NTC According to Cot's Contracts, the NTC is only for '04-'06 and does not include the option for '07. I'm assuming the Cubs will buyout the last year of his contract for the $3M.

Wood: NTC

There's much more to it than ERA+. I'm not saying Carlos isn't elite or that Fergie is superior, but not seeing them as near equals is absurd. I don't understand what point you're trying to make. Are you saying that it's absurd not to call those 3 year stretches for each pitcher equal? My point is comparing ERA+ for Fergie vs Carlos does not conclusively tell me that Carlos was superior in the last 3 years. What do you want to consider conclusive? We're not talking about the difference between Zambrano and Shawn Estes when talking superiority, we're talking about who performed better among two very good pitchers. Fergie's main advantage was in innings pitched - he went over 300 IP in the majority of his seasons with the Cubs, vs Z who's given us 200+ innings in each of the last three years. I don't know whether a 300 innings per year, 130ish ERA+ pitcher is more valuable than a 210 innings per year, 140ish ERA+ pitcher. Maybe some of the statheads on the board can shine some light on it.

Fergie doesn't really have an advantage vs Zambrano's last three years in terms of ERA, as Fergie put up the above numbers in a different era. For instance in 1968 he put up an ERA of 2.63, when the park-adjusted league ERA was 3.16. On the other hand Z put up an ERA of 2.75 in 2004, when the park-adjusted league ERA was 4.27. Fergie's advantage is in his innings, as he routinely pitched over 300 innings when he was a member of the Cubs. Z is a modern-day innings eater, as he's given us 200+ innings in each of his full seasons with the team.

Essentially we have a true #1 starter, and then four guys who should be either a #4 or #5 starter after them. The problem is the offense didn't improve enough during the offseason, which means that for the team to succeed we needed a 2003-level of performance out of our starting pitching. Doesn't look like that can happen with these five as our rotation.

Apparently he needs more wins. Right. I guess those three straight years of at least 130 ERA+ don't matter, especially when the only starters to have accomplished this from 2003-05 were him and Santana. I'll stop attempting to hijack this thread now.

Is Zambrano not an elite pitcher?

Anything that gets Augie on the roster is fine by me.

This is about as transparent an attempt to hijack a thread as I can recall seeing here. If you want to contribute something relevant to the discussion try to convince us that Neifi Perez or Jerry Hairston should start over Walker. I'll take both sides of this thread. I do think that Walker gets a little more credit than he deserves on this board. He's not a great hitter, even for a second baseman, but he's a good hitter. And even with his troubles defensively, I believe he is without a doubt our best option at 2B. Evidence (his and Hairston's offensive rankings among all second basemen with at least 300 PAs, Neifi's excluded because he shouldn't even be considered): Walker Hairston 2004 2005 2004 2005 OBP 12th 11th 3rd 17th SLG 8th 7th 24th 27th RC/27 5th 7th 11th 28th Look back over previous years and you find the same thing holds pretty consistently for Walker: He's generally about in the top third of second basemen offensively. He's shown a consistent level of performance that Choi, Harris, or Dubois (who's bandwagon I was on) haven't. Given his significant advantage offensively over Hairston, and his huge offensive advantage of Neifi, he should definitely be the starting second basemen, regardless of what he says to the media.