Rob

I don't believe it. He looked gone at first glance.

I don't think that was a hit and run with the jump Lee apparently had. Sounds like Aramis swung while DLee was stealing.

Woohoo!

Like the grand slam to put the game away last weekend?

Wow, shocked if it is. I hated her in 24. I actually rooted for the cougar to catch her. Absolutely! So did I. Why the hell was there a cougar in that episode anyway? To get our hopes up and summarily dash them? lol. Kim Bauer in season 2 = worst moments in 24 history. Remember her karate kickin' boyfriend? He's not kickin' no more.

Absolutely not, and not even for a moment did I consider it.

Wow, shocked if it is. I hated her in 24. I actually rooted for the cougar to catch her. Absolutely! So did I. Why the hell was there a cougar in that episode anyway? To get our hopes up and summarily dash them?

I think your mom hits too many fly balls. Nice post.... for a seven-year old. ... Your mom... for a seven-year old...? ?

Wow, shocked if it is. I hated her in 24. I actually rooted for the cougar to catch her.

I think your mom hits too many fly balls.

Given Marquis' groundball tendencies, it wasn't a horrible idea to leave him in there. I worry about letting him go out there next inning though.

Sweet, just in time for Futurama reruns.

This game could be rough.

C. Young. Expected. I can't think of any particularly bad Young's off the top of my head. Even Dmitri went 3-4 tonight, and Delmon and Chris B. are pretty special talents.

And his 874th career K.

:roll: :roll:

Howard also has hit a HR in about 36% of his major league flyballs... I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Upton won't be able to do that. I'm also guessing that Upton may have a hard time sustaining his .451 BABIP. I'm not arguing that Upton = Howard. I'm arguing that a lot of strike outs don't necessarily mean much. The BABIP argument is a strong one that I do not debate. The strikeouts do mean something. If you are striking out that much, you have less opportunities to find a hole when you do make contact. Ryan Howard and other power hitters can get away with it by a lot of homeruns. Another way to get around it is to get on base alot via the base on balls. I'm too lazy to look up his stats but I dont recall him walking a lot. Upton walks quite a bit, actually. I've decided to try and trade Upton for value on my pitching staff and to grab Kendrick off the waiver wire.l

He's batting .239/.316/.306

And Lou ran Fassero out there 24 times to start a ballgame. Doesn't that speak to some sort of fundamental flaw with Lou? At any rate, if you want to chalk up the 37 game swing to pitching and (in particular, the bullpen) I'll allow it. Looking at the difference between our bullpen now and their bullpen there, we have a huge advantage in pitching talent, and we aren't getting much from them. Lou has been leveraging them all wrong, and if you want proof, check out the bullpens' Fair RA vs. their WXRL in comparison to other teams. Lou has shown a complete inability to know who to bring in and when, and this isn't merely hindsight bias. I could pull out a few more dozen examples of flaws on the part of the BBWAA... including the last few MVPs in both leagues. Bottom line, it's not once or twice the BBWAA has screwed up, and I'm more inclined to believe that Lou and Dusty getting their awards is more a function of breakout years from their guys (aka Jim Frey and Don Zimmer's awards in 84 and 89) than from exceptional tactical usage... which would be par for the course from the BBWAA, just another screwup. BTW, I find your last line about Dusty real interesting. I agree with it. It did take some talent... from his players. I've always been of the mind that it's real hard for a manager to win any ballgames, but real easy for him to lose them. Dusty was just lucky he had Barry Bonds' talent to cover for his mistakes. This is silly. 3 decades in the game and they dont know the mechanics. :roll: You seem to have missed my point. Would you feel comfortable flying on a jetliner that a pilot of thirty years with absolutely no other formal training designed and built himself? Just as there's a difference between understanding how to fly a plane, how to design one, and how to build one; there is a difference between understanding how to play the game and intimately understanding how everything interacts with each other to maximize return by exploiting the probabilities inherent in certain states of the game. Ideally, I'd love to have a manager with experience playing the game as he can help to motivate and fix fundamental flaws in the players... but that last part can be handled by the coaches... so all Lou really brings to the table with his experience is his ability to motivate properly, an important aspect of course, but he completely lacks the ability to use tactics in a beneficial manner. I don't mean this to sound rude, but I do know the numbers. I checked the out extensively when Lou was hired. He's managed some pretty talented teams though. And again, I feel that it's real hard for a manager to win his team any games, but real easy for him to lose them. Looking at the tactics he's employed, he is hurting his teams in this regard over the course of his career. The natural talent level has been higher than the results. Perhaps I've set the bar too high, but there were better options available than Lou Piniella. Girardi would have been a better choice, as would have been digging Larry Dierker up from the grave. By far the best choice would have been Fredi Gonzalez, though. Anybody who had spent their professional career under the tutelage of Bobby Cox who reads the works of Bill James has a very bright career coming. Yeah, not gonna debate this whole mess is Hendry's fault for his inability to recognize "proven veteran" players were not inherently more useful than young players... just as it's his fault for not recognizing that "proven veteran managers" doesn't mean they're anything more than the managing equivalent of Todd Hollandsworth or Juan Pierre... acceptible stopgaps so long as they don't cost much and are easily discarded once something actually useful comes along.

People who haven't seen him play don't know how freaking horrible he is. They just see the steals total.

I said it yesterday, I'll say it today. I forsee Lou putting an offense out there with plans of running a small ball offense. We'll manufacture one run through seven innings after running out of two rallies, one caught stealing and one busted hit-and-run, bust through with three more runs in the eighth on a three run shot, and lose 7-4.

Piniella inherited Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield, Willie Randolph, Rickey Henderson, Tommy John, and Ron Guidry in Ney York, and Steinbrenner spent plenty to keep the roster in decent shape. He then caught lightning in a bottle in Cinci, but let's go ahead and give him full credit for that. His other claim to fame is winning 116... but with your roster looking like this: C - Dan Wilson 1B - David Segui 2B - David Bell 3B - Russ Davis SS - Alex Rodriguez LF - Brian Hunter CF - Ken Griffey Jr. RF - Jay Buhner DH - Edgar Martinez With Raul Ibanez, John Mabry, and Carlos Guillen on your bench, you should be able to win more than the 79 games he won in 1999. Think about it. ARod, Griffey, and Edgar while all were extremely productive, and Lou can't manage a winning record? Even Dusty managed winning records when all he had was Barry Bonds. Speaking of Dusty, let's agree right now that Manager of the Year means jack squat. The BBWAA doesn't know a bloody thing about baseball, which they've proven time and time again with their HOF balloting. If they don't recognize Ron Santo and Bert Blylevin as great, they don't know what great managing would be either. Also, board icons such as Jim Leyland and Mike Hargrove? Really? I've seen some people lament that Jim Leyland was able to spark a turnaround in Detroit (a dubious claim at best) while the Cubs can't seem to turn it around, but I've never seen anybody say anything positive about Mike Hargrove ever on this board. Not once. Now if you wanted to try and pull some numbers that make them better than Earl Weaver, feel free to try. Um, lets see 18+ years service in an industry and being recognized for excellence in that industry. Gee what employer wouldnt want that. Do you realize how stupid this remark is? That's funny considering the numbers you're tossing out. Experience only matters if you are learning from it, and Lou and Dusty have proven time and time again they knew how to play the game, but they have no intimate understanding of the mechanisms behind the game. If you're the skinniest kid at fat camp, you're still at fat camp. If you're the most successful horrible manager, you're still a horrible manager. Just because there aren't many Earl Weavers doesn't mean we shouldn't hold them to the standard of what a good manager actually is.

Christina Kahrl doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of BP. While everybody else maligns the moves we've made, she seems to defend most all of them.

I think Todd is the Cards new setup man. He came in with a man on and nobody out in the 8th today, struck out one, gave up one hit and no walks. I think he's at a 7:1 SO:BB ratio in 5 innings for the Cards now.

I must have missed the part where Lou didn't actually make any of the mistakes I listed on the first page. How sophomoric of me. They aren't mistakes, they are nitpicks using the benefit of hind-sight. This thread doesn't exist if Izturis or Jones gets a hit. Expecting Lou to pinch-hit for Izturis is wrong. How many current managers would have pinch-hit in that situation? Any? Izturis isn't a good hitter, but that situation is just fine for him. All you want is the ball in play to score a run, even just a ground ball, and Izturis does that fairly well. Marshall was under 100 pitches and in control of the game. I don't understand why he should have been taken out because someone reached base. People would then cry that Lou doesn't have faith in his younger players and isn't giving them a shot. And why would Ward be a better choice than Jones in the 9th? Both are lefties and Jones had better numbers than Ward against the pitcher (albeit in such a small sample). This "mistake" is just fan disapproval for Jones showing up. Ummm, 1. I didn't nitpick about any particular in-game decision from last night. 2. Lou's been lucky to get a free pass from a thread like this so far. It was past due time. 3. And the benefits of hindsight? We all blasted those particular (from my earlier post, not yours) decisions the moments he made them, and he's been wrong about the lot of them. Hindsight has nothing to do with it; it's just good baseball sense and Lou couldn't have less of a grasp on it.