Rob

I don't know... the strike zone is pretty large (at least the bottom portion of it) tonight.

Does Wuertz even have any options left?

They still have Mat Gamel, Alcides Escobar, Jeremy Jeffress, Angel Salome, their huge haul from this years draft, and will be getting 4 top draft picks for Sheets and Sabathia after this season. And there's still talk that they might trade Fielder in the offseason for a huge haul... which they could do if they just wanted to move Gamel to first (a move he probably needs anyways). I don't think they have to worry too much about the farm running dry in the next few years.

I don't think it's necessary for us to make a move for another starting pitcher. Marshall is around as insurance in case of injury, and if Marquis just gets too bad to hold down a spot any longer, Veal and Hill are making some pretty drastic turnarounds right now... and there's always the possibility that Guzman comes back in late August. C, 1B, 3B, LF, and RF are all pretty well set. There's not likely to be any real upgrades available at SS. Any upgrade over DeRosa at 2B is likely to cost far more in talent than the difference in production would warrant. The Edmonds/Johnson platoon in CF seems to be working... The right side of our bullpen seems fine... Yeah... I guess all I'm really looking for is a lefty out of the pen and maybe a few better bench options.

There are some fun reactions on the message boards out there... I've been reading Athletics Nation, Brewerfan, WSI, Gateway Redbirds, and a touch of Orioles Hangout (just because all they ever did this winter was talk about how crappy the Cubs minor leaguers are)

Like it or not, his batting average is going to have an effect on his production... and in the context of this season, his bad luck on balls in play is resulting in his OPS being about 70 points lower than you'd expect. (30 points of missing batting average in this case translates to about 30 points of missing OBP and 40 points of SLG). And considering that about 32% of his professional PA have come this season, the missing 70 points has a pretty huge effect on his career OPS too. My little back of the napkin calculation would have his career OPS at .788 instead of .765 if he hadn't been so unlucky this season. Would you respond differently if told we have a 22 year old CF having a bit of a down year in AA but with a career OPS near .800, making significant strides on his only real problem and a lot of untapped potential? I'm not trying to say that Colvin is a knockout prospect here. He isn't. But passing him off as a bust who has never hit is downright irresponsible. He's still worth keeping an eye on in our system, if for no other reason than the fact that he is making progress in the one area of his game that was truly lacking before this season. Simply rediscovering his stroke from last season would make him a pretty nice prospect in a system without much in the way of positional talent. And we've all seen hard hit liners that stay up just long enough and somebody calls it a fly ball. Or a liner that lands two feet in front of the SS playing all the way back in the grass, who nabs it on the short hop and all of a sudden it's called a ground ball. All in all, you're probably gonna break pretty close to even on that account over the course of the season. I can't speak exactly as to where minorleaguesplits.com obtains their data, but I know a multitude of places (professional operations like STATS Inc and BIS) make their own calls on it... and they all tend to have fairly similar data, last I remember hearing.

For what it's worth, Colvin's BA is certainly lower than it should be right now, given how many line drives he's hit. At minimum, it's about 20 points low. If the "unknown" batted ball types were liners (and they probably were), it's closer to 30 points low. Just for the sake of argument, his best-case adjusted line is around .270/.335/.415. Is that line particularly good? No. But it gels much more closely with what most expectations were from him... and he'd still have some projection left to work with. He'd have some slight value in a trade as a 3rd or 4th piece. Wait, why would they probably be liners? And who determines what a liner is anyway? Colvin has been consistently poor at hitting baseballs as a professional. I have a hard time believing it's about bad luck. Taken from the glossary of the fine folk over at minorleaguesplits.com/ And he's right, it's just 10 points of BA (6 unknown batted ball types all season for him so far). That's why I didn't feel terrible about calling them liners when giving off what I admitted was a best-case adjustment. And I'm not entirely sure why you think he's been "consistently poor at hitting baseballs", he put up BA's of .291 and .306 in Tennessee and Daytona last year and has had solid IsoPs. Before this season, the complaint was never about his bat, it was about his patience (and possibly his defense)... a problem he seems to be making significant strides with. He just appears to need a good consolidation season.

For what it's worth, Colvin's BA is certainly lower than it should be right now, given how many line drives he's hit. At minimum, it's about 20 points low. If the "unknown" batted ball types were liners (and they probably were), it's closer to 30 points low. Just for the sake of argument, his best-case adjusted line is around .270/.335/.415. Is that line particularly good? No. But it gels much more closely with what most expectations were from him... and he'd still have some projection left to work with. He'd have some slight value in a trade as a 3rd or 4th piece.

3 more strikeouts for Veal, while giving up a double. Line is at 5 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 9 SO, 1 HR.

10 straight batters (4 Mudcats and 6 Smokies) have struck out.

Veal was shaky in the first... * John Raynor homers (7) on a line drive to left field. * Dante Brinkley grounds out, third baseman Josh Lansford to first baseman Kyle Reynolds. * Gaby Sanchez strikes out swinging. * Alberto Concepcion doubles (8) on a line drive to left fielder Jake Fox. * Lee Mitchell walks. * With Andrew Jenkins batting, wild pitch by Donald Veal, Alberto Concepcion to 3rd. Lee Mitchell to 2nd. * Andrew Jenkins grounds out, second baseman Matt Matulia to first baseman Kyle Reynolds. But he recovered nicely in the second... * Brett Hayes called out on strikes. * Grant Psomas flies out to center fielder Tyler Colvin. * Tim Corcoran strikes out swinging.

I don't really see much that Gallagher has done wrong. Lincecum's grounder just found a hole... that happens. Lewis hit what should have been a double that wouldn't score Lincecum... Edmonds badly misplayed it and turned it into a triple. And then Soto dropped that one.

His line is now at a sparkling .292/.387/.594 so far this season... And again... his BABIP is a mere .288 in his time with the Cubs, despite his LD% being 20.5%... which would imply his BABIP should be closer to .325. In other words, his line looks that good in spite of the fact that he's been robbed of three hits by bad luck. He should be batting closer to .321/.411/.632.

Corking the bat doesn't really help a batter out much (if at all). There are tons of studies on it if you feel like researching it.

Woo!

Chris Young GIDP... game over.

Torres walks Reynolds.

Jackson flies out in front of the warning track in left. Hudson tags from first and advances to 2nd. One out.

Hudson leads off the bottom of 9 with a single. Connor Jackson up.

That was an awesome catch. Something tells me he might end up sitting out tomorrow after hitting the wall so hard.

Chris Young just made a HUGE catch in CF to save a few runs and give the Dbacks a chance to come back in the bottom of the 9th... still 4-3 brewers.

I think it sounded worse than it was.

Interesting. I wonder how much turnover there has been in the scouting staff since Rizzo took over?

ERA 2005 - 2.48 2006 - 2.22 2008 - 2.67 K/9 2005 - 10.55 2006 - 10.15 2008 - 7.39 BB/9 2005 - 4.66 2006 - 4.78 2008 - 4.46 H/9 2005 - 5.59 2006 - 5.25 2008 - 7.77 HR/9 2005 - 0.62 2006 - 0.41 2008 - 0.76 If Veal had been injured and missed all of 2007, we would still be pretty stoked to see this guy coming up the ladder. Hopefully, it just took him a bit longer than most to adjust to the more advanced hitting, and we'll be seeing him continue to improve. I'm still pretty high on him, though I don't doubt that Hendry and co will probably end up throwing him in the pen if he stumbles again.

Keep him at 3rd until it becomes painfully obvious that he has no future there. Why kill his value when we don't have to?