SanJoseCubsFan

A rookie will always assume the lion is try to eat him. An experienced person may think he has a thorn in his toe or something more dangerious is behind him than a lion. Experience and perspective is important. This is the same reason CEOs are not 20 years old. At the very worst if the vet. thought the lion was hungry he could just trip the rookie and let him get eaten even if the rookie was faster javascript:emoticon(':)') Smile I like to use this analogy in this case. If a lion is chasing me and you, I don't have to be fast, I just have to be faster than you. The same thing goes with the vet v. the rookie. How the player performed after he left the Cubs or in the next year is completly irrelavent. If "the Horn" put up better numbers he should have played. Going with known production, if it is bad, is no virtue. :) :) :) :)

If he does type with his face does it make the point less valid? The Cubs have not a legit positional player since Grace. Dusty has only been here 3 years. Are you typing with your face? Im just seriously wondering what the hell is going on.

Only problem was both were not making the grade (ARAM came over) and the horn was 28 at the time not a young prospect. It does make a difference how they did later. It proves they were not everyday players like everyone thought. That is like saying Neifi had an OPS of 1.000 in 2004 so he should have given the starting job over Nomar in 2005. If the same goes for Neifi it should go for a prospect. They can either play or they cannot. An unknown is not better and you cannot assume will be better or worse. All I am saying is most of the Cubs positional prospects have done very little to merit playing time at the major league level a few years later. I like to use this analogy in this case. If a lion is chasing me and you, I don't have to be fast, I just have to be faster than you. The same thing goes with the vet v. the rookie. How the player performed after he left the Cubs or in the next year is completly irrelavent. If "the Horn" put up better numbers he should have played. Going with known production, if it is bad, is no virtue.

Ram1380 I am sorry if I came off harsh, I just wish someone could give me some evidence Dusty played some vet over an even decent prospect after all of the dust settled not when they were prospects. Maybe at the time they seemed like good prospects but most of these guys ended up role players at best. (Murton/Cedeno are the closest and they are both starting this year so I don't think they were stunted much) BTW-I think the Cubs have one of the best organizations with regards to communication with mgt/players. I have seats at SBC park down low and talked to Cubs players/coaches each year and up and down they all say Hendry and Baker communicate best and are the most honest of any organization or team they have been associated with. I think Murton made this comment because Dusty expalined why he was bringing him along not to throw a good comment his way in the paper. I have seen quote time and again how players love playing for Baker (Former, Current, never have played for him)

Ram1380 The point at 3rd is they both were not getting the job done. I think it makes sense to look at june and july. (hence A-ram trade). Did they take him out too soon with his OBS? Maybe but he was 28 years old and was painful to watch in June/July. Grutz is not my beloved. He only played for the cubs for two year. My point is many of Cubs prospect that "cannot" do worse ends up out of baseball in two years while the person everyone is all over is still playing for good teams (St Louis in this case-2004/2005) April 70 10 16 9 0 0 6 10 0 28 1 0 .229 .325 .357 .682 May 82 12 21 4 0 2 6 16 0 27 0 0 .256 .378 .378 .756 June 88 13 19 6 0 4 14 17 0 31 1 0 .216 .333 .420 .754 July 43 6 5 1 0 1 2 6 0 23 1 0 .116 .224 .209 .434 HSC had 120 ab in April/may before he was hurt and then had a less than .600 OPS. (mostly against right handers) April 54 13 13 2 0 5 14 16 2 20 0 0 .241 .431 .556 .987 May 65 8 15 9 0 2 7 9 1 25 1 0 .231 .333 .462 .795 June 16 3 5 2 0 0 1 2 0 1 0 0 .313 .389 .438 .827 July 33 4 6 1 0 1 4 3 1 8 0 0 .182 .270 .303 .573 August 25 0 4 2 0 0 2 4 0 11 0 1 .160 .276 .240 .516 Here are his right hand splits that year vs. Right 185 28 43 16 0 8 27 30 3 62 1 1 .232 .349 .449 .798 Karros vs. Right 224 20 55 7 0 9 30 13 0 35 0 0 .246 .286 .397 .683 You have a point but my point was after HSC was hurt he went down hill fast. Look at his splits in the second half almost all against right handers I disagree on the Cruz part, I do see your point. But, He was left handed and did have a very good Sept so the roll of the dice worked. I think anyone who saw Cruz pitch saw somthing that wasn't there with him and that has proven out. But, I will back off this one some but not on Cruz. He had a worst ERA than Estes that year. BTW, Cruz did get most of the starts is Sept and lost most of them BTW Estes is only 5 years older. September 7.64 1 2 0 0 4 3 0 18.2 25 15 15 3 8 17 .333 I think the Neifi/Cedeno arguement is an agree to disagree and that is ok. But, if Cedeno puts up simiar numbers to Neifi last year then please be the first to call him garbage. I won't because SS is a hard spot to fill. As I mentioned in a few posts many WS teams(around 50%) played with a SS with the offense OPS numbers as Neifi.

What choice was there. Cubs have not had ONE decent positional player make the majors on their team since Mark Grace. I think, please correct me if I am wrong, these were the younger options your were talking about Belhorn over Harris- start at 3rd got down to .180ba (decent obs) HSC over Karros-Was playing 75% of the time until he got hurt and batted low .200s and platooned Bobby Hill over Grutz-It was his job to lose in spring training and he lost it. Juan Cruz over Estes-Again, let's not go there. One year of decent relif that is about it. Cedeno over Neifi-Look wasn't the right move last year, Neifi did a decent job last year if you look at offense and defense. (yes his obs sucks horribly but so did allot of shortstops in the NL). Cedeno has the starting job this year. There wasn't options or younger talent to go to. Also, read what Murton and the players say about Dusty. SI does a who do you want to have manage you and he is usally at the top of the list. Yes, when you have a history of KNOWINGLY and Consistently playing veteran garbage like Lenny Harris, Eric Karros(against righthanders),Todd Hollandsworth, Neifi Perez, Shawn Estes etc...Over younger better options, to keep his "good ole boy" reputation amongst the leagues "veterans" intact(Boy the free agents are lining up to play for the Cubs). Which was not only to the detriment of the teams at the time, but to the long term betterment of the franchise as well, Then Yes you are by defintion self-serving.

I agree on many points as CubsDad. I use to love this board and it has been hard to post/read posts lately as there is so much venom on any move the Cubs make without looking at all points of what is takes to win. I posted on another tread that the Cubs offense, OPS wise, was as good or better than most world series teams. They did not score allot of runs and some of that is OBS and some of that may have been bad luck. I do not believe the offense is as bad as people think and there are two parts to winning scoring runs and preventing runs. I belive we will be as good as last year in the OPS column which should lead to more runs and better with defense and pitching which will prevent more runs. Sorry for the off topic post. Anyway, to answer your question. I have done research and using a few different runs created models. Juan Pierre had 77 urns created with his stolen bases and 73ish without. I then pumped up his caught stealing to come up with a break even point which is around 67%. The whole reason I looked at this was in hardball times there was debate about Depodestas hypothesis of OBS is 3 x as high as slugging. This in most peoples minds too high. It is somewhere around 1.2.-2x as valuable. Since you are basically, not exactly, trading on base for slugging with a potential steal you can see how Depodetas came up with his argument of 75% even though it under most other peoples runs created arguments doesn't hold. (see hard ball times, Bill James run creation model) Thanks for the idea of 66%. You have a link to the study on that or a source? Not that we don't believe you, but I'd like to see the data. I'm glad you're getting lots of PM's. I've gotten plenty too. If these people like your ideas so much, maybe they should join the discussion. We don't bite. Love Mother Earth, Vance

That is a broad generalization to say he is better is every aspect of the game comparing a part time player to a player who plays 162 games each year. Why don't we just start Todd Hollensworth? He was over .345 obs 6 times as a part time player. Maybe he can start? Many talk of small sample size and players will come back to earth once the full season plays out but don't want to take that argument into account if someone plays part time. It makes a BIG difference. Why has Philly not played him full time? He is 30 years old this year. He might be very good as a full time player but you cannot jump to that conclusion. Pierre is not going to hurt the team with a SB rate of career 74% vs. 75% mentioned in Money Ball. ESPN profiles are garbage. His .150 career IsoP is plenty good enough for a CF, and he's a better defender than Pierre. Michaels is better, aside from basestealing, which Pierre has just a good a chance to hurt the team as to help, Michaels is superior in every aspect of the game.

First, good pitching always beats good hitting and I have read Money Ball and many other baseball books. I was talking about OPS not OBS and I was not talking about the book. I was saying that OPS is the closest simple calculation to predict how many runs a team is going to score. It has as 96% regression correlation, do the math in Mini Tab or check our Hardball Times article. The point is, our offense, in OPS terms is good or better than many World Series teams the last 30 years. While this is true, the point is it doesn't have to be. while there wasn't much hope of improving the offense at SS (at least once furcal signed), this team could have been improved offensively to be less reliant on pitching. Pitching is far less reliable than hitting as pitchers are more likely to get hurt and because pitcher's performances tend to vary more from year to year. at the end of the day though, you just need to score more than your opponents and this should be how you evaluate roster moves. and moneyball was not about obp or how runs are scored. read the book.

I had a hunch that teams went defense first at this position and wanted to check. I just looked at the last 30 years of teams making the World Series and came up with some interesting numbers. Neifi had a higher OPS than 48% of the World Series shortstops (12 in the AL and 17 in the NL). This does not indicate he sucks or doesn't suck. It just means you CAN win with a SS that is a defensive player first. No one will argue he shouldn't be at the top of the line up but you can and most teams did play and win with a shortstop worse than Neifi. BTW the SS that are above him are HOFs-Jeter, Ripkin, Yount (sub HOF). I think this show defense is critical to this position. 5 of the NL teams had OPS under .610 for shortstop. I can attach the backup spreadsheet if anyone wants it. Also, the Cubs OPS offense was better than 68% of the teams in the WS the last 30 years. OPS is the #1 simple predicter of runs scored. In the post steroid era I think numbers will come down. At the end of the day our offense may not be as bad as many think and again, pitching will take the team to the playoffs or they won't. It is more on them than anything else. But the thing you are ignoring is that every single defensive metric has Perez grading out at, at best average. Most have him below average. Add in the fact that every offensive metric (not just OBP) has him between below average and terrible, and you get a picture of a below average baseball player. It's not people picking and choosing stats to support Perez being below average. It's people pointing out that nearly every stat shows Perez to be below average. And despite this level of evidence, everyone here sees that his best possible value lies in being the 25th man, which allows for him to use his "good teamate/clubhouse guy" skills without his poor baseball skills hurting the team.

Let's be clear OPS is the closest simple calculation to figuring out how many runs a team will score not just OBP. This is where I argue Neifi is not as bad as people think. It is obvious he sucks at OBP but he does do many other things at the league average or better for a shortstop-such as defense, club house, slugging etc. none have as much value as OBP. as wastra and poudre mouse have made very clear: not making outs is the single most important facet of the game in regards to scoring runs. the stat that measures OUTS NOT MADE is OBP. this cubs team was below average last year when it came to not making outs. consequently is was terrible at scoring runs. this cubs team was not bad defensively, nor was it poor in regards to team speed, and it was very above average in BA. one of the big reasons this cub team was not successful was because it couldn't score. another reason was it's injuries to starting pitchers, but even this could have been overcome with better plate discipline. maybe other teams DON'T need to work on their plate discipline, and maybe it's NOT important to upgrade for teams that have it. however, for this team, there was no bigger hole than OBP, there was no more important place to upgrade. the reason everyone talks about getting more OBP on this board is because the CUBS DON'T HAVE IT. i don't care if bill james is sitting in your living room right now, he'd take one look at this cubs team and say: "they suck at not making outs".

I agree, Wood has disater starts 20-25% of the time on short rest or not. That is the norm for many pitchers. Never mind that 3 or those 4 starts after 120 pitches were against great hitting teams (Phi/Toronto/St Louis). Again, I am not saying don't be careful but to say there is a link of bad starts after 120 pitches is a stretch. QS on 120 pitchs 65% QS on less than 120 pitches 70% There is not link there. If you include the playoffs it is a dead heat on good vs. disaster starts. He had 4 disaster starts out of 13. He only had 3 disaster starts in his other 19 starts. There's a correlation here.

Come on that is skewing the data. More times than not he had a great start not just a quality start. (he gave up 0 runs or 1 run in 60% of these starts) He gave up 7 runs two other times on 100 pitches. He had three terrible starts in that time frame that jacked up his era. Or in other words: When Wood is coming off 120+ pitch outings: 3.70 ERA Otherwise: 2.85 ERA

I think the Cubs have pulled back on Wood in 2004. He only had 3 starts of 120 pitches or more. Our pitches are very valuable to our success. I am not saying don't be careful but people have pitched for 100 years and injuries happen more because of bad genetics. Pitching is very stressful on the arm and something can snap for many reasons. If a pitcher is use to a high pitch count and 120 is not that high he should be able to pitch around that +-10 pitches most of the time. I am not saying pitch the guy 150 pitches every game. I think I showed in my last post that he didn't have many off games after a high pitch count. He had just as many off games after 70 pitches. Just because there isn't a hard and fast number you have to stick to doesn't mean you should ignore trends and avoid moderation. Dusty is an extreme abuser. Wood repeatedly suffered "off games" following high pitch count games. Common sense tells you that 120+ pitches repeatedly isn't good, and that you should pull a guy back when possible. Dusty never uses common sense in handling his pitchers, making excuses for that behavior isn't going to accomplish a thing. The bottom line is you can try and prevent injury, and "carry-over letdowns" by not routinely extending your guys, especially not the ones with a history of arm trouble. You can't prove a link, but you can't prove there is no link. A smart organization would play it safe and at least try to practice some level of caution. The Cubs ignore the possibility that there could be a link, instead deciding to search for the breaking point.

Here is the data on 120 pitches or more in 2003. I would say he was on more than off after a long outing. 9 out of 13 Quality starts. No doubt he had some bad games after 120 pitches but they were few are far between and could be chalked up to the ebb and flow of a season. # of Pitches Next Start Inn Next start Runs QS 124 8 1 Y 122 6 3 Y 124 6 1 Y 141 7 0 Y 121 5.1 5 N 120 6 5 N 126 3 7 N 129 9 0 Y 130 5 8 N 125 7 1 Y 122 6 1 Y 125 7 0 Y 122 7.1 2 Y Post Season QS 9 Total Games 13 Just because there isn't a hard and fast number you have to stick to doesn't mean you should ignore trends and avoid moderation. Dusty is an extreme abuser. Wood repeatedly suffered "off games" following high pitch count games. Common sense tells you that 120+ pitches repeatedly isn't good, and that you should pull a guy back when possible. Dusty never uses common sense in handling his pitchers, making excuses for that behavior isn't going to accomplish a thing. The bottom line is you can try and prevent injury, and "carry-over letdowns" by not routinely extending your guys, especially not the ones with a history of arm trouble. You can't prove a link, but you can't prove there is no link. A smart organization would play it safe and at least try to practice some level of caution. The Cubs ignore the possibility that there could be a link, instead deciding to search for the breaking point.

I stand corrected. There were 2 games over 130. I missed one. I never claimed over 120 just over 130. Quite a few pitches pitch over 120. It still does not make the point of Kerry Wood pitched over 130 pitches every game as was quoted. Even so, there has been no link with pitch count and injury-hence quasi-stats FYI, pal, Wood in 2003 had 12 games where he was above 120 pitches. One of those was a 130 pitch outing and one was a 141 pitch outing against St Louis on May 10th. 141 pitches in May! He threw 3545 pitches in total in 2003. In 2004, he was hurt half the year (perhaps because everyone from his HS coach to Riggs to Baylor to Baker decided to let him throw as many pitches as necessary), but still managed to rack up 2222 pitches in a shortened season, including 5 over 120. But yeah, quasi stats...

Come on guys, this is getting insane. #1 Kerry only pitched more than 130 pitches 1 game in 2003 and 2004. Plus there is no evidence to show # of pitches causing damage. #2 Kerry Wood has been hurt in almost every year he has pitched, Dusty or not. #3 Rob Nenn got hurt. These things happen in sports. You cannot tell me they knew how many "bullets" were left in his arm. Last I checked there is no test to see this. #4 Dusty for the most part challenges his starters and they are use to higher pitch counts. I cannot think of many pitchers that have had injuries. BTW almost everyone has Tommy John now so I don't think it would be just Dusty that would have this issue. If you don't like Dusty as a manager that is fine but to start drawing conclusions based on quazi-facts isn't right. Is Joe Torre an idiot because most of his starting staff has been hurt this year?

This comment is deciving For NL shortstops he is 6 out of 13 for all of those that qualify. 6 out of 13 is middle of the pack last time I checked. By the way many of the playoff team have a worse OPS shortstop. You can choose to ignore this stat but he is middle of the pack in the NL. The American league has better shortstops this year but so what, we play in the NL. I will say it again, if Neifi is horrible then every SS in the NL is horrible. Neifi has done a fine job this year. He had a bad spell in May and June and has batted over .300 with a .330 on base and +.750 OPS in the second 1/2. Quite trying to make this guy out like the worst player in baseball. This does not include today where Neifi is now at .700 OPS and Omar went 0 for 4. 1 Felipe Lopez Cin 540 85 154 31 5 20 72 15 6 47 .285 .339 .472 .812 2 Bill Hall Mil 463 62 128 34 3 16 57 18 4 35 .276 .325 .467 .792 3 Rafael Furcal Atl 586 94 164 29 10 11 55 44 10 59 .280 .344 .420 .764 4 David Eckstein StL 595 84 173 25 7 8 58 10 7 55 .291 .361 .397 .758 5 Jimmy Rollins Phi 633 102 178 33 10 10 49 37 6 42 .281 .327 .412 .739 6 Omar Vizquel SF 536 62 147 28 4 3 45 23 10 48 .274 .336 .358 .694 7 Neifi Perez ChC 531 56 147 31 1 9 52 7 3 18 .277 .302 .390 .692 8 Jose Reyes NYM 647 93 178 20 16 7 56 57 13 26 .275 .303 .388 .691 9 Alex Gonzalez Fla 435 45 115 30 0 5 45 5 3 31 .264 .319 .368 .686 10 Jack Wilson Pit 551 60 145 21 7 8 52 6 3 28 .263 .304 .370 .674 RK PLAYER TEAM AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB BA OBP SLG OPS 11 Adam Everett Hou 517 55 131 27 2 11 54 20 7 24 .253 .295 .377 .672 12 Royce Clayton Ari 492 57 132 26 4 2 43 9 2 34 .268 .316 .350 .665 13 Cesar Izturis LAD 444 48 114 19 2 2 31 8 8 25 .257 .302 .322 .624 Misleading stat. That assessment includes Nomar (191 ABs), Cedeno (80) and Valdez (13) in that mix. Among shortstops with at least 200 ABs this season, Neifi ranks 13th out of 20 in OPS (.692) and .002 lower would have him in 16th out of 20 among shortstops with 200 ABs (3 guys have an OPS of .691) Stupid subjective numbers! Hold it...

Yes but he only goes 7 innings in 11 of his 30 starts. The fact that he is 36th in IP is due to always going a certain amount of innings every game AND MAKING EVERY START. It is amazing he is that high considering he doesn't go deep into games as much as he use to. This does have an effect on ERA. The point is if you only go 6 or so your ERA is going to be worse. Many great pitches don't hold runners on. He makes that up by not walking anyone. Economize his innings? maddux is 26th in baseball in IP, 18th in the NL. Add 6% to his innings (this start should give him 3-4% more) and he's in the top 10. It's a tightly packed list . No one aside from Weaver (excluding lieber because of home ballpark) has as many innings with a worse ERA. Maddux throws fewer pitches now and makes fewer outs in a game, that's true, but that's a point against him. He is not still an excellent pitcher. Batters are hitting over .030 higher against him these days (and it's been steadily increasing the past 3 years) They're slugging 0.90 higher than his career average, also up each of the last 3 years. For some reason the OBP column is blank, but an OPSA .111 higher than his career averages (again, rising every year, but in this case up every year since 99, a bad year, and rising for several years before that.) Maddux is declining and has been for a while. He's lost his excellence along the way and he knows it. Anyone ever seen an attempt to calculate what sort of damage maddux's poor ability at keeping runners from stealing hurts him (if it even does, blanco is insanely good at throwing em out)

Did anyone see the AB? I give Cedeno props for the hit but every, i mean every pitch he fouled off was a ball. One almost hit him and a few almost hit the plate. Neifi usually doesn't see 9 pitches per GAME, let alone in one at bat.

It's exactly the point. Baker refuses to play the young players even when they are as good or better options than the alternatives. I agree about the organizational focus, I was talking about the topic of the thread, Dusty and his tendencies with young players. Really?, Dusty did play Choi unitl he got hurt at a 80/20 rule. Also, Dusty gave the job to Hill in spring training and he lost it. I think he batted like .110 or something. Neither one of these guys have proved to be even everyday players. I think Dusty has been decent at weeding out the good and the bad. Look everyone wants to see Murton play more but he has only done well against Left handers. He will get his chance and we will see what he is made of soon. The alternative is not always better it is just unknown. I am sure since we are rapidly losing any wild card hopes Murton and others will play more. I think Dusty's point, while badly worded, makes sense. You cannot just take one month when no one has seen a rookie and project his HOF career for a month of ABs.

Come on, he just missed a double foul and hit a frozen rope at the second baseman. Huh? English please. Gah. Nice DP Macias.

Brenley has commented on not bringing in your outfield too close in these situations. You need time to camp under the ball and get a strong throw off with you weight and momentum moving forward. If you are too close, and catch the ball moving backwards you have no momentum. Just a thought.

No one is "ripping on him" because theyre expecting .320 with 30 homers and 120 rbis, they're ripping on him because he is awful. Explain to me how he's awful besides OBP.. god knows he's only strook out 35 times this year and usually puts the ball in play. Neifi's job is to fill in for Nomar and he's done a fine job at it. And Neifi's more of a defensive player than an offensive stud like everyone WANTS him to be. Agreed, then 1/2 the shortstops in baseball are awful. Since middle of the pack is .692 OPS

Nothing is wrong with following prospects and having hope but the reality of the manner is most prospects turn out to just be that. I think Jim has held on too long to some prospects when he could have gotten more value for them. (Cruz, Mitre, etc). I agree no one want to see another Willis but we have had good luck in trading prospects for core players.(A-Ram, D-Lee)