mg420

wasnt gonzalez out at the end of 06 with an elbow injury? if he needs surgery will it still have been a good trade for the braves? i still think that jones will be gone before spring training. perhaps the giants are still interested in him.

time to move marmol to the bullpen.

you guys arent the only ones. baseball is the only sport i have any interest in. i would rather watch just about anything other than football. my wife & i went to see a movie on sunday and it was great because everyone was at home watching the bears. GO CUBS!

the cubs are looking for a stop gap in cf until pie is ready so i doubt they would go after baldelli. if they did though, i'm pretty sure i read that tampa bay wants a quality ML starter or 2 for him. i also doubt the cubs are trading marmol for anyone as they seem to be very impressed with his stuff (especially since he's only started pitching in 2004). imo he needs to be closing games at iowa in 2007.

so your logic is that because one pitcher with 7 wins had a better year than a pitcher with 16 wins, the # of wins are meaningless in determining a pitchers value?

the argument on the other side was that wins are of no value in determining the effectiveness of a pitcher and shouldnt be considered. as far as your "knowing how to win" theory, i have heard many prominent baseball men disagree with your statement including steve stone. i'm sure that mathematically you can run circles around him but my guess is that he might know a tad bit more about pitching in real life than you do. If you are using an outcome to measure the value of an individual player and as a predictor for future outcomes then you must ascertain how much influence that individual player has on the outcome. Pitchers have a significant influence over the outcome of a win, but so does their offense , their defense, and luck. If you look at ERA, you get a better idea of a pitchers value by eliminating their offense. If you look at DIPS, you get a better idead by eliminating their defense. If you look at component ERA, you get a better idea by eliminating some luck. If you look at ERA+ you get a better idea by eliminating park factors and comparing to the league. Obviously the game is not played in a vacuum, but that doesn't mean you have to value individual players using team statistics. Wins are a poor statistic in quanifying a pitchers value to a team because it is an outcome that a pitcher has a minority of influence upon. I dont understand why that is such a hard concept to grasp. Steve Stone was really good at knowing what pitches would be thrown in what situations, but other than that from all the comments he has made post-Cubs, he has shown that he is not the baseball genius we all thought he was. that's your opinion but i think it safe to say that he knows quite a bit more about pitching and pitchers by far than anyone on this board.

And why does that make it right? Is there no value in questioning the commonly perceived notion? The Church said that the Earth was the center of the Universe, does that mean they are right? Its funny that the the President is a bithering idiot, but hey, we re-elected him, so everything he says and thinks must be right (and Im a Republican). Do you blindly agree with everything your boss or manager or CEO says? Well they are getting paid to run the company, so how could they be wrong? the fact that the earth is not the center of the universe can be disproven while the value of wins by a pitcher is based on pure opinion. i just happen to value the opinion of people who have actually participated in major leauge baseball above people that will never participate other than being spectators. who knows more about flying a plane-a seasoned pilot or a guy who messes around with a flight simulator on his pc? questioning the value of a commonly perceived notion and saying that someone is a fool if they disagree with you are two totally different things.

the argument on the other side was that wins are of no value in determining the effectiveness of a pitcher and shouldnt be considered. as far as your "knowing how to win" theory, i have heard many prominent baseball men disagree with your statement including steve stone. i'm sure that mathematically you can run circles around him but my guess is that he might know a tad bit more about pitching in real life than you do.

you can also look at it as a potential 20 game winner and 3 potential 15 game winners. Aaron Small won 20 games for the Yanks...who cares? in case you didnt realize it, in baseball wins are a good thing. And the starting pitcher does it all by himself? of course not but the ability to give 5-7+ quality innings and keep your team in the game translates to wins. But they can still lose those games...ask Roger Clemens. You should have just said "you can also look at it as potentially one guy who can consistantly pitch excellently and 3 guys who can give you 5-7+ quality innings and keep your team in the game". If you talk about wins in a discussion about pitching you are going to get jumped all over. it's funny how most if not all of the people who actually get paid to run baseball teams put value in the # of wins by a pitcher-similar to batting average for a hitter. this is an interesting quote from a similar discussion in another forum that i happen to agree with- "We've been through this approximately 100,000 times now, but this all comes down to the same thing all our arguments come down to: you grossly overstate the importance of isolated sabermetric or modern or advanced or whatever statistics, while simultaneously overstating the unimportance of traditional stats. The stats you love to rely on -- ERA+, park factor, HR/9, VORP, or whatever it is this week -- are probably better at quantifying a player's ability. But neither statistics nor ability are worth anything in a vacuum. Yes, wins are a team stat. Baseball is a team sport. The only value a player has is value to a team. And wins are excellent at quantifying a pitcher's value to a team. "

http://www.cubshub.com/article.php?story=20061222115435461

you can also look at it as a potential 20 game winner and 3 potential 15 game winners. Aaron Small won 20 games for the Yanks...who cares? in case you didnt realize it, in baseball wins are a good thing. And the starting pitcher does it all by himself? of course not but the ability to give 5-7+ quality innings and keep your team in the game translates to wins.

you can also look at it as a potential 20 game winner and 3 potential 15 game winners. Aaron Small won 20 games for the Yanks...who cares? in case you didnt realize it, in baseball wins are a good thing.

depending on what the brewers would want (if they would trade him to a rival team) clark wouldnt be a bad option. he could spell jones against tough lefties and do the same for pie eventually. maybe he can pull a podsednik and have a year like he did in 2004. perhaps novoa & ryu would be enough to get clark.

you can also look at it as a potential 20 game winner and 3 potential 15 game winners.

I too would like to make a correction. The perception that he pitched much better in 2005 than 2006 is quite incorrect. Actually his WHIP was similar (1.43 vs 1.51) as well as his K/BB (1.82 vs 1.86). The real difference between 2005 Dempster and 2006 Dempster was "clutch". In 2005 he had an incredible 77.5 LOB% as opposed to 63.3% in 2006. Now the question is, which one of those is the abberation. Well, probably both. In 2005 he allowed 131 runners for an expected runs allowed of 44 (as opposed to actually allowing 35 runs). In 2006 he allowed 113 runners for an expected runs allowed of 38 (as opposed to actually allowing 47, although only 40 were earned). Dempster probably isnt going to be as bad as he was last year, but allowing so many baserunners, I'm not optimistic for a repeat of 2005. Even if he would have allowed 38 runs last year and assuming conservatively that 7 of them were unearned, his ERA would have been 3.72. Still not great for a closer, but probably a fair projection. how is having a 77.5% LOB as opposed to a 63.3% LOB and a 1.89 era compared to a 4.8 era not pitching much better?

if he has a year even close to what he did in 2005 as a closer, what he did in 2006 will be easily forgotten imo. in 59.5 ip he saved 33/34 with a 1.89 era.

great article Bruce. dempster's not making excuses & sounds like he's up for the challenge. he was lights out in 05 so hopefully he can regain his form in 2007. if so, and wood can stay healthy in the pen, they might be able to trade howry and have wood set up dempster. http://www.dailyherald.com/sports/cubs.asp?id=268561

thank you for the insightfull opinion. it adds so much to the discussion.

If Aramis looks like he might be out for a few days, I'd imagine they'll bring Moore up from AAA, so I'm not too concerned with the lack of middle infielders. At any rate, I'm just happy we don't have 8 second basemen on the roster (yet) i forgot about moore. i would still like to see mike f in a utility/ph role this year though. Hopefully, he gets the chance. Izturis and DeRosa with Theriot and Fontenot backing them up. Cedeno in AAA. my thoughts exactly.

If Aramis looks like he might be out for a few days, I'd imagine they'll bring Moore up from AAA, so I'm not too concerned with the lack of middle infielders. At any rate, I'm just happy we don't have 8 second basemen on the roster (yet) i forgot about moore. i would still like to see mike f in a utility/ph role this year though.

with ward signed, why are the cubs even looking at floyd (if, as reported, they still are)? by my count they need another utility lefty IF like fontenot (who can also play 3b) on the 25 man roster. if they do sign cliff and go with a 7 man pen, they will only have theriot, derosa & izturis to cover ss, 2b & sub at 3b when needed.

This is one of the best mental images of baseball I've had all offseason. Wrigley during this would rival Dodger Stadium in Gagné's heyday. No Metallica/AC-DC theme song needed, just the place going nuts. I believe Kerry is on record as being a big metalhead. So his theme music should be....?? "Balls to the Wall". I'm thinking "Harvester of Sorrow." That, or "Respect" "Night Goat." It gives me shivers just thinking about it. :D "enter sandman" by metallica

what about pujols & cabrera?

Any word on Jacque Jones? Think he's gonna be a Cub when the season starts? Hard to tell. Ideally, I'm sure the Cubs would like to move him and his (by this off-season's financial standards) moveable contract. But they've gotten nothing for guys like Sosa and Patterson in the past, so I'm sure they're not just going to give Jacque away. He can be a pretty serviceable player in a lineup that has Soriano, Barrett, Lee, Ramirez and Murton (yes, Murton!) all healthy and producing. Bruce, with the recent injury to rivera, is there any likelyhood of a jones for figgins swap that has been suggested?