bukie

If you changed your name to Sunshine McRainbow you wouldn't draw so much attention. How about "Hollywood Meph" Or Crystal Meph...

This "rumor" isn't in either the blog or the "Rumors" section, so where's it from, the forum? Less than reliable, indeed.

So, the NL Central was...as bad as everyone thought, then. But hey, the Cubs were the best team in the division. Good for them, competing within the division...

Curious where the highest rated reliever is in your metric, and whether or not it happened to be Marmol.

You may have to play around with the weights given to specific things. You'll know it's right when Eckstein leads for his career. Plus, I would think the opposite of VORP would be VURP.

Dear Lord. UNLESS HE IS TRADED, DEROSA IS THE SECOND BASEMAN FOR THE CUBS IN 2008. Sorry for the "shouting," but the running theme amongst Theriot supporters that he or even Fontenot or anyone else should sniff 2nd base over DeRosa is one of the more absurd things in these threads. You want absurd, try the redeye where they suggested A-Rod to SS, Theriot to RF. Wow, yeah. I mean, A-Rod to SS?

The Cubs lost two games 3-1 and 4-2, and couldn't buy a run against a bad Doug Davis in a game where they needed runs. I think they need to improve the offense. I agree - the Cubs do need to improve their offense. We need more situational hitters with plate discipline. More guys who can draw a walk and are a threat in late/tight games. No doubt. The Cubs also need a better rotation - or they need more consistency out of their starters. Zambrano, even though he won a career high 18 games, also had too many losses and this wasn't a good year for him. Lilly was great, but can we expect the same out of him again? Marquis was too up and down, and Hill is still promising. We need at least one more SOLID starting pitcher. To break it down simply, the Cubs need more hitters who will avoid swinging at pitcher's pitches and pitches out of their zone, and can make consistently good contact on pitches that are in their zone. I don't care if someone swings at the first pitch if it's their pitch, but they need to be able to make good contact on a reliable basis. How does this relate back to Theriot/Cedeno? Cedeno is capable of making good contact. He has decent power. He had an awful 2006, to be sure, bookended by two fantastic years in 2005 and 2007. Nobody is saying that Cedeno should be handed a job, but he should at least be in the discussion if the Cubs don't bring in someone from outside the organization. If the Cubs aren't looking at bringing in someone from the outside, Cedeno is likely the best candidate to be successful in the long term. The reason for that is a combination of Cedeno's age, and the things he's shown at AAA. Sure, it may never translate to major league success, but he at least deserves a shot, since he really has nothing left to show at AAA.

The Cubs lost two games 3-1 and 4-2, and couldn't buy a run against a bad Doug Davis in a game where they needed runs. I think they need to improve the offense.

Looks like Illinois is going to have to develop a QB who can throw, or else teams will just stack the box against them for the rest of the year. Can't say the defense played that poorly, as they only gave up 10 points.

No, no he doesn't. Illinois would be really good if their QB could pass at all.

You know, if Illinois can manage to pull out a win today, there's a decent chance Gameday goes to Champaign next week. That just seems...wrong.

I'm almost more curious what Theriot would fetch in a trade, as he seems like just the type of player that could be overvalued as a sell-high guy this offseason.

Preliminary BCS Standings: rank team B C M S Cmptrs H Pts Harris C Pts Coaches BCS 1 LSU 1 1 1 1 1.00 2825 1.0000 1498 0.9987 0.9996 2 Ohio State 2 4 5 6 0.86 2643 0.9356 1399 0.9327 0.9094 3 California 4 6 8 5 0.82 2654 0.9395 1416 0.9440 0.9012 4 Boston College 5 8 4 8 0.78 2406 0.8517 1283 0.8553 0.8290 5 South Florida 3 3 2 2 0.94 2166 0.7667 1145 0.7633 0.8234 6 Missouri 24 5 3 3 0.88 1610 0.5699 0897 0.5980 0.6826 7 South Carolina 7 7 6 4 0.78 1809 0.6404 0823 0.5487 0.6563 8 Virginia Tech 9 12 10 9 0.66 1563 0.5533 0913 0.6087 0.6073 9 West Virginia 6 16 13 12 0.54 1855 0.6566 0931 0.6207 0.6058 10 Oregon 23 11 11 15 0.52 1692 0.5989 0936 0.6240 0.5810 11 Oklahoma 18 20 30 25 0.14 2218 0.7851 1145 0.7633 0.5628 12 Arizona State 13 2 7 11 0.68 1359 0.4811 0763 0.5087 0.5566 13 USC 8 25 24 26 0.06 2015 0.7133 1000 0.6667 0.4800 14 Florida 12 19 15 20 0.36 1364 0.4828 0714 0.4760 0.4396 15 Illinois 11 9 9 7 0.68 0871 0.3083 0425 0.2833 0.4239 16 Cincinnati 16 10 16 16 0.40 1083 0.3834 0578 0.3853 0.3896 17 Wisconsin 14 17 26 24 0.22 1309 0.4634 0689 0.4593 0.3809 18 Kentucky 10 18 17 18 0.34 1034 0.3660 0493 0.3287 0.3449 19 Kansas 26 13 18 13 0.42 0630 0.2230 0390 0.2600 0.3010 20 Hawaii 34 29 64 50 0.00 1266 0.4481 0632 0.4213 0.2898 21 Auburn 21 15 12 17 0.40 0191 0.0676 0143 0.0953 0.1876 22 Connecticut 57 14 14 14 0.48 0104 0.0368 0036 0.0240 0.1803 23 Florida State 30 22 21 21 0.18 0344 0.1218 0213 0.1420 0.1479 24 Purdue 20 26 27 22 0.08 0270 0.0956 0149 0.0993 0.0916 25 Texas 33 42 51 58 0.00 0372 0.1317 0195 0.1300 0.0872 Computers biased towards Illini...

Agreed. SABR statistics aren't intended to replace scouting observations, merely to supplement them with an objective analysis. I wish there were more splits and statistics available pertaining to specific pitch types, and how hitters react to them. There is more available on pitch location, but a high and inside fastball is completely different than a hanging curveball on the inner half.

I would guess that he re-signs with the Cubs for 3-5 mil as a reliever, unless someone is willing to pay a large chunk more than that for him to be a starter/closer somewhere.

Few would. But is Derosa really making that much? $4.75, and $5.5m the next two years. Not "that much" but a significant enough chunk. In my mind he was Todd Walker cheap. Well, he's making about as much as Jones is. Of the two, which is of more value to the team?

I always have the page open, but I'm generally too busy to contribute more than a post or two a day.

And would St. Louis find a way to cough up money for ARod? Oh God, there goes that nervous twitch again.

I'll try to explain one common sabermetric without using too many acronyms: OPS is a good example of a common SABR statistic ("sabermetrics" actually comes from the Society for American Baseball Research). Its value is that it contains a measurement of reaching base (OBP) and a measurement of hitting for power (SLG), two of the most important aspects of hitting. However, it simply adds them (OPS = OBP + SLG), which means the statistic of OPS considers one point of OBP to be worth the same as one point of SLG. Now wait a moment, some would say, those two statistics aren't equivalent. Consider that a perfect OBP (getting on base every plate appearance) is 1.000, while a perfect SLG (getting a home run on every plate appearance) is 4.000. Of course, that's not so simple as 1 OBP = 4 SLG either, because a good OBP and a good SLG don't ever differ by a factor of 4 (even for Barry Bonds). So, a more accurate representation of can be found by multiplying OBP by 1.6-1.8, depending on the person you talk to, which adds value to the OBP portion to balance out the statistic. So, consider 1.6 as a multiplier for a second. That would equate a .400 OBP to a .640 SLG, which to me sounds about right. That's basically the mindset of the SABR community. Take the stats that exist and make them more accurate for individual representation. Very little of sabermetrics has to do with team-based performance.

They wrote it better than I: Sabermetrics Manifesto To put it simply, sabermetrics is simply an attempt to acquire objective knowledge about baseball through facts, or statistics. It looks at only things that can be completely quantified, and it looks to try to quantify things that can't (the "little things", so to say). Sabermetric stats are an attempt to measure the complete value of an individual. No statistic is perfect, so the best statistics are those that minimize flaws. Most of sabermetrics is focused on hitting, as ERA for pitching is a fairly accurate enough measure of individual ability. Since things like runs, RBI, and wins are largely dependent on others, they are regarded minimally as is, in favor of other statistics. Also, counting stats are problematic because, obviously, the more chances, the higher count (on average). Stuff like Win Shares exist to try to compare players from different eras and doing different things (hitting, pitching, fielding) as accurately as possible. EDIT: I will say, however, that my biggest criticisms of most sabermetrics is that they undervalue the strikeout as an out (basically by passing it off as the exact same as any other type of out for a hitter, but oddly they value it more for pitchers), and how they pass off anything specifically unexplainable as "luck", when it's simply a combination of immeasurable factors.

That Juice Williams is a pretty solid RB.

Worth very little until all the games are "connected", meaning that every team can be linked to every other team through games. Until then the predictive values are partially based on last year's information. Of course, considering that, I'm surprised Illinois is as high as it is. That rating looks like a basketball poll with Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Cincinnati, etc.

Computer ratings are likely not much better at this point in the season. Sagarin's BCS ratings (ELO-CHESS): 1. LSU 2. South Florida 3. Missouri 4. South Carolina 5. California 6. Ohio State 7. Illinois 8. Boston College 9. Virginia Tech 10. Mississippi State 11. Arizona State 12. West Virginia 13. Kansas 14. Connecticut 15. Oregon 16. Cincinnati 17. Auburn 18. Kentucky 19. North Dakota State (yes, they are 1-AA) 20. Indiana 21. Florida 22. Florida State 23. Purdue 24. Virginia 25. Wisconsin 26. Oklahoma 27. USC

The chances of action tonight have just gone up exponentially.