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Actually, if we don't bring in someone from outside, I (and I think several others) are saying Cedeno should be handed the job. And he shouldn't be yanked if he sucks for 2-3 weeks. I think that's exactly what we're saying.

I think it's been pretty tame, all things considered. Other than calling abuck jealous and a moron, I don't remember any direct personal attacks.

the cubs starting rotation had the 3rd best era in the majors this year and the offense scored the 18th most runs. why would you go after starting pitching instead of offense? I'm assuming you are not serious because I am sure even you watched the NLDS. You don't think it is important to improve the starting pitching? Wait, so you think we need to improve our starting pitching because of the NLDS? Only 3 starters started games in the NLDS. Which of Z, Lilly, and Hill is it that we should rush to replace? And who, pray tell, in the world are we going to acquire that's an improvement on those 3 this season? Seriously. I thought you were arguing that we replace Marquis with someone less likely to suck. But it seems like you're arguing that Z, Lilly and/or Hill should be shown the door. In which case, I'm not sure we have the assets to even begin to fix our problems.

Yes. He was also great last year after the ASB. You'd think those second-halfs (especially since his overall numbers are still league average) would have earned him the starting gig over the likes of Floyd or Jones, but apparently not for this team. Hopefully he's the default starter for '08 unless we bring in someone who is, you know, better than Murton.

If you haven't seen anyone calling for Murton's head on this board (not nec this thread), you're not looking hard enough or you are ignoring it.

How about factoring in the 2006 season as well - I hardly think that the numbers mean anything considering he hardly played at all in 2007. Funny - I hardly think any of these win % numbers based on which SS is playing mean anything, regardless of which year you're discussing.

How in the wide, wide, world of sports can you say that? He's been given a handful of sporatic ABs while being a defensive replacement for almost the entire year. [this comment does not pertain directly to DKWG's post] It is the same crap again and again with our young players. A young player gets a handful of sporatic ABs during the year and "they can't hit major league pitching". Thank Soto has mashes the ball so far. I just don't understand the logic. He did have 177 AB's. He played in 26 games in June and hit .218. I understand this isn't much, but he hasn't shown much when he had the opportunity to show-case his stuff. He really hasn't done anything with the bat that excite's you. I hope he gets another shot at it next year. He can't be as bad as he's shown so far. A little late, but nonetheless:

I think it already is. Yes, clearly. AJP for any one of those guys would have been a very good deal. For the whole package? Unbelievable.

David Kelton mashed AAA pitching? Kelton's AAA OPS is in the mid .700s in just under 1400 at-bats. His best single-season OPS at AAA was .784. I don't think mizzou is concerned with facts or reality. Great post. Thanks for contributing. I assumed Kelton hit minor league pitching well and didn't bother to look it up. That's neither here nor there though. This is about Ronny Cedeno's inability to hit a baseball at the major league level. This is too good to pass up. Your made up stats about Kelton are relevant when they support your point (good AAA hitters suck at the ML level), but when they are found out to be wrong and no longer supportive, they are irrelevant. Was Kelton's performance at AAA or the majors every really relevant to a discussion of Cedeno? That's just fantastic. EDIT (after reading davhern's post above): are Ronny's actual stats relevant to this discussion? Not unless they make for good sound bites (like "an OPS higher than Jose Macias"), I suppose. The ones that completely contradict your argument (which is allegedly based on reality) are likely "not here nor there" - just like Kelton's AAA #s, huh?

Please...list these "facts" for me. Theriot 684 ABs... .276/.341/.379 Range Factor per nine innings 4.03 at SS 9 errors in 110 games at SS Cedeno 688 ABs... .247/.277/.349 Range Factor per nine innings 3.99 at SS 26 errors in 178 games at SS Ronny is younger and has more upside but Theriot has been better on the big league club by a significant margin. Both sucked. One sucked a little more than the other, but both sucked. To say that Theriot significantly improved the Cubs chances to win (which isn't what you said, but it's implied in that statement) is just wrong. At their level of suck, the difference between Theriot and Cedeno isn't going to mean much in the W column. And one's significantly younger and put up significantly better #s in AAA, so it's more likely that he's going to improve than Theriot. Nothing's certain, so you play the percentages and they favor Cedeno at SS (as between these two, as many have said, it's not like we're suggesting benching or trading away a solid starter to give Cedeno a chance here). I don't know how you can come here and argue with a straight face that the #s of a 23-year-old should be compared evenly to those of a 27-year-old when you're trying to determine who should get more playing time going forward. I think a 64 point difference in OBP in almost 700 ABs is a significant difference and would certainly make a difference in the W column. Here's the question I answered: He was only referring to what has happened. Not what will happen in the future. The fact is Theroit hasn't completely sucked and he's been much better than Cedeno. Like I said before, Ronny has more upside but teh Cubs better have a solid plan B. Well, the question asks whether Cedeno is superior, not whether he was. And for all we know, Cedeno, if he played a full year in the majors, would have equaled Theriot's performance this year. Maybe so, maybe not, but Theriot had 1 good month and a bunch of really really bad ones. Cedeno had a few bad ABs in the majors and a season of .900+ OPS in the minors. When you're asking who "is" better (rather than who "was" better), it would seem to me the purpose is determining who is better going forward. Not just who was better in the past (if you meant that, you would say "was" not "is"). This discussion is making me feel a little Clinton-ish. And as I said - at their level of suck, I don't think 60 points significantly increases your chances of winning. Maybe Theriot's #s in '06 would have meant we finished with 1 or 2 more wins, but at that point, does it really matter?

BECAUSE HE WAS 23 WHEN HE PUT UP THOSE NUMBERS. PS - love the straw man. Why don't you do a quick check of the minor league numbers of every hall of famer. I don't know, but I'm willing to bet that most of them put up pretty good numbers in the minors. Does that mean that everyone who puts up great numbers in the minors is a hall of famer? No, but your lame argument doesn't hold any more water than that one. AND HE WAS 22 WHEN HE PUT UP GREAT NUMBERS IN THE MINORS THE YEAR BEFORE THAT. Did he suddenly forget how to hit because he aged a year? I don't care how young he was. He sucked. This is a classic case of a guy who can't hit major league pitching. You're really this dense? He was 24 last year and put up great numbers. Maybe he suddenly learned how to hit again! If Cedeno had gone down to Iowa last year and continued to suck, I would have written him off. He showed very little in his year with the Cubs and I was worried that it was more than youth - that he was really just bad and 2005 was a fluke. But then he went down and basically matched his '05 numbers in '07. So now what's the real Cedeno? '05 and '07 of .900+ OPS from a young shortstop? Or '06, .600-ish OPS from a young shortstop? I haven't the foggiest idea, but as between a 25-year-old Cedeno who has 2 great AAA seasons in the last 3 years and a 28-year-old Theriot who...doesn't, I'll take Cedeno. We're not giving up ARod, we're not even giving up Eckstein, we're giving up a bad player for a younger one with potential. He was 23 and trying to hit major league pitching. Maybe he'll never be able to, but there are a lot of guys who would hit terribly in the majors at 23 who went on to be great players. Many great major leaguers aren't even in AAA at 23. If you forced every player to play a full year in the majors when they were 23 and decided based on those numbers alone whether they would ever be any good, you'd lose a lot of great players (and, more importantly for our purposes, you'd miss out on a huge number of average and good players who just weren't good enough to hit major league pitching at 23).

One is a 2b and one a LF. If Theriot were a superior defender, it would be easier to support him. He struggles to be average at SS. Admittedly I haven't watched much of Theriot's defense but his SS metrics on BR looks merely below avg. FWIW, to a lesser extent I think you could say the same thing about Murton's hitting and defense. I'm not championing Theriot but I don't entirely understand the love for Murton and Cedeno. I think they are interesting but that's about it. I'm a little surprised how some posters reacted to skepticism about them We're Cubs fans, what do you expect us to think? I'm sure you have no love for Cards minor leaguers. You probably write email after email to Walt begging him to add a guy like Jones, Floyd, or Theriot to block the guys in the system that have some promise. Murton and Cedeno have put up some really good numbers in the minors. When you're trying to determine if a guy is going to have success in the majors, success in the minors is a fairly good indicator (failsafe? Not at all, but as between a minor leaguer with 2 good seasons at AAA - at 22 and 24 - and a minor league with average or worse numbers in the minors, up to age 26, I'll take the former). As many have written, though it hasn't sunken in, we're not advocating benching Babe Ruth or ARod to get these guys into the game. By and large, the guys playing ahead of Cedeno and Murton have been much older than they are and fallen somewhere between average and horrible. Given the choice between playing a relatively young guy with great AAA numbers and guys with bad AAA numbers or old and clearly declining players, I don't see how you can fault people for wanting to give the young guys chances.

BECAUSE HE WAS 23 WHEN HE PUT UP THOSE NUMBERS. PS - love the straw man. Why don't you do a quick check of the minor league numbers of every hall of famer. I don't know, but I'm willing to bet that most of them put up pretty good numbers in the minors. Does that mean that everyone who puts up great numbers in the minors is a hall of famer? No, but your lame argument doesn't hold any more water than that one.

Please...list these "facts" for me. Theriot 684 ABs... .276/.341/.379 Range Factor per nine innings 4.03 at SS 9 errors in 110 games at SS Cedeno 688 ABs... .247/.277/.349 Range Factor per nine innings 3.99 at SS 26 errors in 178 games at SS Ronny is younger and has more upside but Theriot has been better on the big league club by a significant margin. Both sucked. One sucked a little more than the other, but both sucked. To say that Theriot significantly improved the Cubs chances to win (which isn't what you said, but it's implied in that statement) is just wrong. At their level of suck, the difference between Theriot and Cedeno isn't going to mean much in the W column. And one's significantly younger and put up significantly better #s in AAA, so it's more likely that he's going to improve than Theriot. Nothing's certain, so you play the percentages and they favor Cedeno at SS (as between these two, as many have said, it's not like we're suggesting benching or trading away a solid starter to give Cedeno a chance here). I don't know how you can come here and argue with a straight face that the #s of a 23-year-old should be compared evenly to those of a 27-year-old when you're trying to determine who should get more playing time going forward.

But Theriot's a little white guy that gets dirty, has grit, plays the right way, and all those other cliches that people use to help explain their inexplicable preferences.

Cedeno was 23 at the time, Theriot was 27 this year. To argue that Theriot's .672 OPS was a significant factor in any success we had this year, outside the one month that he was nay good, is not just ignoring facts, but making them up. Cedeno was really bad when he was 23 and really good in AAA when he was both 22 and 24. If the choice is Theriot, whose OPS at 27 was .672, or Cedeno who is not yet 25, the choice is obvious.

The reason I mentioned AAA is because you said Ronny was worse than Theriot in '06. Theriot was in AAA for most of '06 and put up mediocre #s, which I said I was sure Cedeno could match. As I've said elsewhere around the board, I'm not going to write off a guy for one horrible year in the bigs at the age of 23. I'm certainly not going to write him off so I could give more ABs to a known below average player in Ryan Theriot. Exactly. Theriot is about to be 28, Cedeno will be 25 next season. When he was 22 and 24, he put up great #s at AAA. Give Cedeno the SS position and let him hit 8th. Use Theriot as your utility IF and show Fontenot the door.

It would take an arm and a leg to get someone like that: a 23 year old SS who hits 330, steals 50 bases, hits 30 hr, etc. Arm & a leg? Are they having a fire sale? I can't imagine who the Marlins would have to get in order to give up HRam. He might not be a real slick fielder, but his offense dwarfs whatever shortcomings he has on D. I'm struggling to come up with a single player I'd trade straight up for him, if I were the Marlins.

This makes absolutely no sense. What about if we chose Print at home tickets? print out 50 of each ticket and try to sell them to the stupid people someone else in here mentioned.

Wherever he wants to play. Probably SS, but basically this.

Because the team is full of losers, so we shouldn't add the best player in the game? Otherwise, this makes no sense.

Are you trolling?

Notre Dame will probably be ranked in the top 25 too since they have a win. Keener beat you to that version of the ludicriously lame, played-out, absolutely-no-merit-to-it-at-all ND joke, but I don't care because at least people are making fun of us for having a WIN. Sorry...I just got home and didn't feel like reading the whole thread, but that wasn't a joke. Media and college coaches love ND! Top 10 baby!

But again - putting Marmol in isn't conceding the game. It's turning the game over to 2/3 guys to get you 3 solid innings. With Marmol, Howry, Wood, and Dempster fresh, that's not a bad move. There was no win just sitting out there that Lou gave up. A bad result doesn't mean it was a bad decision. Again, if Z gives up the HR in the 7th, Lou's a goat for not pulling him and going to our stud reliever. Or if Z throws 100 pitches, and we get to Game 4 down 1-2 and Z gets blown out, Lou's a goat for not thinking ahead. A bad result doesn't mean it was a bad decision.