bukie

4-0 for the first time since 1951...yikes.

There's no reason not to go for it there. He just missed it, but a punt is pointless. Punt try pinning them back even farther. Also I hate the playcall on 4th down after driving down the field running it down their throats they call a pass. You're likely netting about 10 yards. It's pointless.

There's no reason not to go for it there. He just missed it, but a punt is pointless.

Hopefully they can still pull out a win, and then not look past anyone in their Big Ten schedule.

A shot at Iowa basketball? That's kind of weak. First school that came to mind that hasn't won a regular season championship in a while, but won two conference tourneys.

No, it isn't. Softball won the conference just this past year and in 1997. And won the conference tournament in 09 and 97. And men's hoops won the tournament a few years back. That might be it though in the Big 12. Conference tournament wins are not winning the conference. C'mon, dude. That's why I specified who won what. I don't consider them the same thing, but teams still get trophies and call themselves "conference champs" when they won the tournaments. Only when those teams never actually win conferences. See: Iowa.

If it was that easy to get average offense at 3B, more than half the teams in the league would be doing it, and the average would be higher. Never thought I'd see the day where the Cubs offense at 3B would be taken for granted.

Not to mention Napoli is doing it for the Rangers.

Nelson, only because I don't think the Saints will ever not be throwing.

If you were a scouting director of a smaller market club, would you draft a HS pitcher in the 1st? With all things being equal, probably not. They are, on average, going to cost more to sign away from a college commitment and take more resources to develop. They are also more likely to bust than a polished college kid. It doesn't seem like a good gamble. On the flip side, as a small market team, it's almost easier to gamble on that end of spending than it is to gamble on free agency. Have to go for high reward projects internally if you're not going to be able to afford high reward FAs and you ever plan to compete.

Heh. Kind of an odd thing to say.

The Big 12 (in some form) will probably hold as long as Texas stays with it. And Texas will stay with any conference that lets it have control.

What would you know? Nate successfully predicted that Obama would win in '08, I think he'd understand. If either of you had actually read the article before wiping yourselves with it, you'd have noticed that his assertion is based on several years of college football survey data, cross-referenced with actual reported revenue from each institution's college football program. It's much easier to just throw strawmen around and dismiss any data you don't agree with, though.

No need to go all Gary Hughes on us in this thread, SSR.

Sabathia is over 120 now. So it's 9 in 573, up to 1.5% of starts. EDIT: The situation was Longoria extended an at-bat to 9 pitches. Soon as he reached base via walk, Sabathia was lifted for a reliever. He finished with 127 pitches.

Unless Matt Garza and Ryan Dempster are unique cases among the 150 or so starters in baseball that somehow need more work at the end of the season than they had the rest of it, then the Cubs are simply doing something with their starters that no other team not in contention is doing. Of course it's not a guarantee that their arms fall off, and nobody's even implying that. It's just totally needless at a time in the year where every team has 3-4 extra pitchers on the roster, and there's basically no reward except a complete game. How many of those 150 starts were at 100 pitches or less through 8 innings? I'm not going to tell you Dempster should have been extended, but I don't see a whole lot of risk with letting Garza finish two very strong performances where he hasn't been laboring. It was actually 572 starts among about 150 starters, for reference. Regardless of where Garza was through 8, there's no reason to not even have a reliever warming up when his pitch count gets up there. Complete game victories are nice and all, but it's just a risk that doesn't need to be taken at this point in the season. If anything, as Cub fans, we should be conditioned to think high pitch counts are no big deal, since the organization has had such a problem with it over the years (better in the Piniella years, but Baylor/Baker were terrible). But when even DBR's Reds aren't doing what you're doing with your two best starters, it might just be a good idea to back off.

Unless Matt Garza and Ryan Dempster are unique cases among the 150 or so starters in baseball that somehow need more work at the end of the season than they had the rest of it, then the Cubs are simply doing something with their starters that no other team not in contention is doing. Of course it's not a guarantee that their arms fall off, and nobody's even implying that. It's just totally needless at a time in the year where every team has 3-4 extra pitchers on the roster, and there's basically no reward except a complete game.

What, exactly, is the significance of this? Now the new logic isn't that he's suddenly likely to get injured, but that other teams aren't doing it so the Cubs should toe this arbitrary, invisible line instead? Anyway fact check time: Justin Verlander has done it 8 times this year alone. This is nothing new for Verlander, as he did it 9 times last year for a .500 Tigers team (including 6 of his last 7 starts). Felix Hernandez has done it 5 times this year. Gallardo has done it once in 2011. CC Sabathia has done it many times in his career and twice this year. He's been to the DL 0 times IIRC. I can probably keep going...but I think my point has been made. This is what good pitchers do, because they are good enough to do it. Garza will survive. Hell, more than likely he'll continue to thrive here as a pitcher. PROBABILITY WILLING he will find a way to move on from these career destroyers. Your point is in ignorance. You completely ignored everything I said in convenience, and then made a completely different point, ignoring any and all relevance. There's no point in disputing anything else with you if you'll continue to act in ignorance. Based on your post history, the probability of this is significantly higher than that of a team putting a pitcher in a high risk situation without a high reward possibility. I'll explain this once more to see if you'll catch on: - All pitchers have a finite amount of pitching in them. - Pitchers are huge investments to teams, especially good ones (teams AND pitchers, we're talking here). - Protecting the investment to maximize reward is in ALL teams' best interest. - Pitching arms are most vulnerable after extended use. - This is most empirically notable at the end of a long pitching season and in extended outings. - These are also the situations that teams can most objectively control with the use of pitch counts. - 27 teams decided through research and caution that 120 pitch outings in September are that objective threshold. - 2 other teams decided that the potential reward (a playoff berth) was worth the additional risk in the Giants and Rays. - One team decided to do their own thing and work their pitchers the hardest at the end of the season, after the pitching arms have gotten the most use, the reward being 4th place and avoiding 90 losses. - That is, unfortunately, the team I root for, so I'd kind of like it to not happen.

And by your estimation Garza was pushed to his absolute limits in these two starts? Gimme a break...What's the finite number? When is it fine to throw 120 pitches then? How many bullets does Garza now have for the rest of his career after these two devastating starts? Is the 5 months he'll have in the winter too little time to recover from these starts? Is this just a matter of finding something to complain about because the team's bad and therefore even the good games have to have something to complain about? Have you factored in Garza's minimal at best injury history? Have you factored in that he's 27 with 4+ full major league seasons under his belt, and not some 22 year old rookie? Have you factored in that these are his ONLY TWO starts where his body was pushed to such insurmountable limits this year? Have you factored in that he'll be making 2 less starts than his past two years this year and that he won't even touch 200 IP? Or that the two starts came in September, when his arm is loose and limber, rather than April/May when he's just getting into the swing of things? Is this anything but a minor complaint based on the very vague idea that 120+ pitches = bad unless special, unnamed conditions are met? Why are they obligated to toe some invisible line over some vague fear when they have far more data on Garza's health and conditioning than all of us combined here? Yeah, it's not like Garza has spent any time on the DL this year for arm trouble.

Yeah, I figured this is where the fear came from, hence why I don't buy that there's any significant logic behind the complaints. Now lets realize that Matt Garza isn't Mark Prior or Kerry Wood, both who failed for far more reasons than overuse. Wood never wanted to evolve as a SP, and faced the consequences of throwing all two of his pitches as hard as he could all the time. Prior, on top of being 5 years younger and only slightly above rookie status than Garza when he was worked like he was, also happened to collide with a player that year and then get hit with a line drive in the elbow the next year. It was a clusterf of bad things that shouldn't happen to pitchers. Believe it or not, there are pitchers out there who managed to survive two whole starts of 120+ pitches late in the season in their athletic primes. Maybe I'm just used to being coddled by Cubs management, then. Maybe throwing 120+ pitches in September isn't a rare thing, and teams do it all the time. Let's check... To this point, there have been 572 starts among all MLB teams (286 games, two teams each game). Of those 572 starts, a pitcher has gone over 120 pitches...just 8 times. 1.35% of the starts. Huh, well at least it's not just the Cubs then. Who else went over 120 pitches? - James Shields did, twice. The Rays are pushing hard for a playoff spot, though, so it's a little sensible. - Tim Lincecum did once and Madison Bumgarner did once. Again, pushing hard for a playoff spot. The other 4? Twice by Dempster, and twice by Garza. So maybe the other, what, 27 teams are just coddling their pitchers. You know, so they'll get maximum value out of them when needed. EDIT: In the name of full disclosure, if I set the limit at 120 instead of 121+, there are 3 additional starts: Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and Bud Norris. So...yeah, 11 of 572 starts, with only 2 teams doing it that aren't in playoff contention.

Plus, it's not as if the last 15 years of team history was littered with pitcher arm injuries to their most promising pitchers due largely to overuse.

You'd be making a far more logical point if you could prove that these two whole starts have actually increased his chance for injury in any significant way. Last start didn't seem to bother him too much out there today. Every pitcher's arm has a finite amount of use in it. There's a fine, subjective line between regular use and overuse, and there's no need at this point to even toe the line. Even weirder that they've avoided 120 pitch starts the entire year, and then use him for two in a row when rosters are big enough to have even less of an excuse for it. But yes, your sample size of one start is conclusive proof in your favor.

I don't think anybody here had a problem with the legality of the hits on Cutler, merely the frequency.

Never heard of a rival not wanting to give up a milestone? It's not a big deal and I only point it out because I know there are Brewer fans reading this right now. A meaningless milestone that nobody will remember a year from now? No, I have not. It reminds me of that time in 1998 where the Cubs did everything in their power to prevent McGwire from breaking 61 HRs first.

That's "everything" you could have done? Maybe last year. But the dolt conveniently glosses over the fact that he ignored the 5 MAN POSITION GROUP for half a decade in the draft. It's 5 positions you have to fill. Occasionally spending an early pick on it isn't going to cut it. They have to overcompensate just to get back to a normal level of attention. It also doesn't help when your most recent 1st round OL pick comes in pre-injured and sucks. Carimi? I thought he had that injury in the past, not that they drafted him with the injury. Chris Williams.