Rob

Actually, I think the Unit has a couple of inches on him. Maybe little unit would be more appropriate? uh....nevermind... Wow, I feel like I'm in a locker room right now...

'' Letting him have kids with a woman springs immediately to mind...

No rush to trade Rusch. Perhaps he can recapture his mojo in the bullpen. If he's traded, Florida might be a nice destination - a team with little to lose that might benefit from advice from a veteran. I wouldn't wish exile in KC on anybody. Stairs right now is worth a heck of a lot more than Glendon is potentially ever worth again. I'd pull the trigger on that trade in a second. Only problem is that the Royals wouldn't... I get the impression they're grooming Stairs for a front office job because he (inexplicably) loves it there.

Like most of you, on a production/inning basis I prefer Wuertz to Rusch. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep Rusch in the pen. We are in dire need of mop-up guy that can throw 85 pitches every once in a while and stay (relatively) effective. Our bullpen has been thrown into disarray whenever we need somebody to come in and go 3 innings, as nobody was capable of it before. This is definately the right move to be made, in this situation.

There had better not end up being a rainout. I'm leaving in 10 minutes to drive the three hours to Chicago for the game.

I think there is somebody from this board that went to one of the Cubs-Cardinals games in Wrigley and said they saw Walker hanging out with the Cardinals. I'm not sure though. Yup, I was one of those people. We actually asked him to come to the Cubs and he said "You don't want my ___ on the team" Sweet, I love MadLibs! "You don't want my banana on the team" :shock: How ruthlessly absurd! :lol:

Part of what's huring these guys so much is the lack of a real long-man in the pen, too. I think Aardsma threw 60 pitches today... that's not what he's used to. Not many pitchers are going to do well being stretched into a long role when they haven't been groomed for one.

Given the choice between a great young position player and a great young pitcher, I'll take the position player each and every time. The pitchers are just too much of an injury risk, if any of us haven't realized that yet...

His average is up to .275 now, but as someone else mentioned, he only has the one walk and isn't getting a whole lot of extra base hits or anything. that sounds awfully similar to another cf ive seen a lot of this year At least Corey has a cannon for an arm and the "potential" to have a hell of a year...

Two very good years? He was the centerfield equivalent of Jeromy Burnitz circa 2005 the two years in question. WARP1's of 4.4 and 4.9, versus Burnitz with his 4.5 last year (mind you, those numbers are adjusted for position). I don't remember hearing a whole lot of commotion everytime somebody called Burnitz merely adequate or even horrible. But god forbid somebody says that about a fast guy with numbers that aren't good for his position...

I'm not so sure you can say it was abberations based on sporadic use. I'd say he was getting sporadic use because he wasn't performing well, not the other way around. Yeah, I know he's a streaky hitter, but we really can't afford to pick him up and pray for a hot streak. When he's cold, he makes Neifi look like Barry Bonds...

Tony Clark's OBP: 2001 - .374 2002 - .265 2003 -.300 2004 -.297 2005 - .366 He's hardly a sure thing to bring our OBP up. Last year was his only adequate year OBP-wise since he hit 30 back in '02.

So there's a 40% chance that Jacques Jones won't suck? Or that he'll suck so much he'll implode...

Yup

Yeah, I know we're tops in Def. Eff, but that seems flukish to me, doesn't it? Besides, with DLee dropping out for awhile, we should be looking to upgrade our defense in any way possible. Oh, and the numbers I found said moving from right to center cost about .2 runs per season, though they were sandwiched in the def. spectrum by moves costing 3.7 and 4.5 runs, so it would probably be about 4.1 runs. By contrast, Podesednik had a 21 run switch. Oh, and LF and RF is about .5 runs different. I know it's kinda strange, but it does make sense to some degree. The numbers bear it out a bit, it makes some sense from evaluating personal traits, and there's the best kind of evidence... anecdotal! :lol:

Well our bench was nicknamed "The Lemons" a couple years ago, "The Carrots" could work in the stands, I guess.

Hey, I love the DH... but only in the All-Star game. I'm not paying to watch the pitchers swinging away in that kind of game, damnit!

Call me crazy if you must, but I think our outfield defense, while good, could be performing to a much higher level if we just shuffled the players around. JJ seems like he could handle center without much trouble at all. If memory serves me right, he was worth about 13 runs over average in right field last year. The transiton between right and center certainly wont be costing us more than that. And I just can't get over what a difference it make in Scott Podsednik's game to move him to left field. He went from being 10 runs worse than average in center to 11 runs better than average in right. While that's too much of a swing to assume all of it was real, it does make sense in our case. Pierre has tons of speed but gets bad jumps and takes bad routes to balls, and his arm could barely let him throw a tissue into a garbage can from 3 feet away. Left field being less spacious would allow him to get away with those bad jumps and routes and still be able to cover everything, and it would keep him from having to show off his arm on such long throws. Murton would obviously be the one left out. He does have the range to play right, but his arm would be decidedly worse than average for a right fielder. I just don't think it would make nearly as much of a difference on him moving from left to right as it would for Pierre from center to left though. Thoughts?

Definately. Although it's one of those things where if it goes wrong, everyone ends up screaming "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?!??!?!" Really fun. That's why we need to make sure it doesn't go wrong, not once, for the entire year. :shock:

As a fan base, we pump enough money into the system to sell out Wrigley every night and clear the shelves of tons of merchandise. We are supporting a 100 million dollar payroll. When we are putting that kind of money into this team, I believe we have the right to expect the team to perform at a level above .500. That's not to say that we expect to make the playoffs with the team that's getting our 100 million dollars, but that we expect our money to be spent wisely enough to do well on the field. We "are" booing Hendry. Expressing massive displeasure with his acquisitions combined with the performance of them is the easiest way to buy him a one-way ticket out of town, or at least to show him what we expect of him. Do you notice that nobody is booing Zambrano right now? We aren't upset with him being on this team, despite his struggles. JJ is another story entirely. And just as it is that we wont boo Z, we aren't going to boo Murton for that line either. As for Pierre, I'll agree that he'll be better than the numbers we got last year. But he's not better than anything we've had leading off since EY in his first few years, he's better than last year. CPatt hit .261/.307/.486 out of the leadoff spot in '04 in 250+ AB's, and Walker hit .294/.370/.535 out of the leadoff spot in 250+AB's in '04 also. Pierre couldn't approach those numbers if he played out his ass the rest of the year. It's not okay to boo somebody because he is performing just as expected. It's rarely okay at all. But I'll say again, the fans aren't displaying their disgust with the player so much as they are at the front office. It's not like we've got John Rocker out there, who deserved it just for being himself. We've got an extremely good young core of pitchers and a few position players I'd be hard pressed to move for any reason. There's no reason not to be excited about some of the parts together on this team. Besides, even .500 teams put together some lucky wins and make it into the playoffs. Thanks in advance for responding to the entirety of my post instead of picking out one line you have issue with. :D

Astros win :(

fastball high 1-1

strike at the knees 0-1

Berkman with the double... runners on 2nd and 3rd with one out.

Hey, I like Willingham a lot... but I doubt he puts up a .900 OPS for the year, when Derrek Lee couldn't even do that playing half his games in that park. Well since you're adjusting for the park, an .800 OPS out of the cleanup spot isn't bad at all. Besides, he has the potential to go a lot higher than that. He has an insane walk rate and prodigious power, all it will take is getting lucky on a few hits to put up Dunn-esque numbers.