Hacking Out Machine

how can you hate matt vasgersian? he's da len of the nl west. No, he's the moron of the NL West. I'd take anyone of the other West broadcasters over him, except perhaps the soul-sucking Duane Kuiper. how the hell can you hate the guy? what does he do that's so aggravating? vin scully is the only guy in the west that's better than matt vasgersian, and he's the best broadcaster in MLB period. Agreed. Vasgersian is solid. Maybe those who are negative toward him are still thinking of his younger days a few years ago. He was a lot more brash back then, but he is very solid now. Quick on his feet. Good baseball acumen.

I'll tell you what...I've never seen a team foul off as many pitches as these guys have the last couple days in the early innings. It killed Hill yesterday, and it's done the same to Marshall today. Hill had 93 pitches in 3 innings yesterday. He threw something like 63 strikes. They just bludgeoned him with all the foul balls. I'll have to check how many they've fouled off in the first three innings of the past 2 games...amazing. To answer my own question, 34 fouls in the first 3 innings yesterday, 28 today.

I'll tell you what...I've never seen a team foul off as many pitches as these guys have the last couple days in the early innings. It killed Hill yesterday, and it's done the same to Marshall today. Hill had 93 pitches in 3 innings yesterday. He threw something like 63 strikes. They just bludgeoned him with all the foul balls. I'll have to check how many they've fouled off in the first three innings of the past 2 games...amazing.

You know what.....until Murton can prove he can do anything besides beat out infiield singles against right handers, I'd rather stick with Jones to see if he can start to pound righties like he has like clockwork for his entire career. Against lefties, obviously Murton should be in there every day, and Jones shouldn't be let within a country mile of the field.

Which is sad considering the wasted money we have tied up in Eyre, Jones, and bitch tit.s whose remaining salary we ate. Wieters has MLB ready power and understands the concept of taking a walk. He should be ML ready by mid 08 and could replace Barrett. 4-5 years after that he could slide to first or third to ease the wear on this knees. I hate this organization. When you talk about wasted money, don't forget about Howry, Samardzija, and Chris Huseby, the kid they threw 1.3 MIL at last year coming off TJ surgery. In Samardzija, they were willing to toss around stupid money to keep a kid who wasn't even the best pitcher on his own college team and hasn't fooled a soul since he turned pro(20 K's vs 72 hits allowed in the FSL in 51 IP???????). Looks good in a football uni, though. Now they'll pass on Wieters because he isn't worth the extra coin? Too bad Wieters didn't catch 20 TD passes at Tech. Then he'd be worth it. Maybe they'll draft Calvin Johnson. He might not be able to hit, but man is he athletic!

Well....if we're really lucky, maybe the Cubs will treat us to some more singles!!! Can't get enough of them singles....

This is absolutely correct. This Cubs team has done as well as any in a long time (at least since hendry has been GM) at working the count. The problem is what they do in those hitters counts. Never have I seen a team take so many weak swings, leading to weak contact in hitters counts in my life. It's almost as if guys like Barrett, Ramirez, et al get themselves in hitters counts, and then say, "Whew! Now I don't have to worry about deciding whether to swing or not. I'm in a hitters count so the pitch must be coming right down the pipe. I'm hacking!!!" You're supposed to get MORE selective in a hitters count, looking only for something you can drive. The Cubs get hyper aggressive in these situations, or so it seems to me.

I think you're reaching here. As Colt Pacer pointed out, Cedeno is, for whatever reason, helpless against lefties. He has also proven time and again that he is not, by any stretch of the imagination, even remotely adequate when it comes to OBP. So you're agrument that Cedeno is "the OBP" is somewhat of a joke. I know you are comparing him to Jones v lefties, which is perhaps the biggest mismatch since Dave Parker circa 1990 v a chocolate eclair, but we're splitting hairs here. As for everyone's questions about Cedeno's minor league stats, he was a completely inept offensive player for most of his career, until he somehow figured things out in'05, the year he was called up, and the basis for his worthiness to be comsidered a major leaguer at this point. To his credit, he pounded the PCL for 230 ABs in '05. Before that however.... Here are his OBPs in the minors: '01 Rookie league .398 (with a .355 BA) '01 Lansing .237 '02 Boise .275 '02 Lansing .269 '03 Daytona .257 '04 West tenn .328 In the majors, in 626 ABs he has a career OBP of .278. Ronny has proven he is NOT any kind of OBP threat. On the contrary, you'd be hard pressed to find a guy with a worse record in the majors right now when it comes to OBP. As we said earlier, for whatever reason, he is even worse against lefties, if that's possible. He might be the only guy in the major leagues right now who I would actually prefer Jones to when facing a lefty.

Adorable! But I have to ask...how do you pronounce her name? Is it Mc KenzEE or Mc Kenz-eye? My wife always prays the rosary for any newborns, so i'm going to pass your little one along to her. Just want to get the pronunciation right!!

Is it just me, or is Hendry's #1 goal in life to make baseball players happy? Having a GM that is well respected by players and agents is a good thing, and the way Hendry carries himself is definitely a credit to himself and club. But geez, his quest to perpetuate this reputation sure does saddle the Cubs with bad contracts pretty often.

Based on DeRosa's numbers against lefties last year, he appears to me to be a very nice candidate to spell Jones in right against lefties. (As previously mentioned in the thread) If not him, and a left fielder is acquired, then Murton is available. Of course, Hendry made it clear that he is the every day second baseman. How refreshing would it have been to see Hendry say something like, "He can also fill in out in right from time to time...." Could a second consecutive managerial regime be so blind and stubborn to trot Jones out there every day, even though a fourth grader could figure out he is helpless against lefties and the Cubs have more than one very viable alternatives to spell him?

I am also a big fan of Murton, but he provided absolutely no evidence that he can hold down center field...even in Wrigley. Bad breaks on balls...even misjudged a few. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here...Matt's barely adequate in left. I can't see him playing every day in center, at least not for long. Ditto for Jones. A Lee/Jones Murton outfield would be among the worst defensively in the league, and Jones and Murton at this point are league average offensive players. A shoddy defensive outfield like that would have to be way way way above average offensively to compensate, like a hypothetical Sheffield/Garciaparra/Lee or something like that.

I think the chances of Hill NOT becoming a very good, all star caliber pitcher in the major leagues is virtually zero. You simply do not see people dominate AAA like he has done and then fail to become a good starter in the bigs. The road to the majors is littered with guys who dominated at lower levels, but then flamed out, as well as guys who did pretty well at AAA and never found it in the bigs. However, I can't recall a pitcher who has absolutely dominated at AAA, like Hill has, who did not eventually succeed at a high level in the majors. If Hill refines his change up to where it's an above average pitch, I think he'll be better than guys like Buehrle, Cliff Lee, Sabathia, and approach the "poor man's Johan Santana" level.

Bill Wirts, the Blackhawks owner, thinks he can do worse. David Glass of the Royals thinks he has a strong case. James Dolan of the Knicks wants a piece of this action. Donald Sterling of the Clippers puts his team into the fold of worst run. And will, I do I agree the Cubs are a pretty bad organization is sports, I can still think of a few teams that are worse in their history then the Cubs. I think the Blackhawks are still worse. In the baseball world though. Glass has much, much, MUCH less to work with than Hendry. I'll throw Jimbo's hat in the ring for most incompetent GM in MLB. And as for '03, it has become abundantly clear we owe thanks to the Pirates for that little miracle, not Jim Hendry. Glass is the owner. It's his fault there's nothing to work with. At least Glass seems to be doing something about it. Since the GM was fired, the Royals have played much better baseball than before his firing. And I think he made a good hire with the new GM. You're right about the Royals. They already field a lineup almost on par with the Cubs, and with the addition of Alex Gordon to their lineup, they'll be even better. De Jesus, Gordon, Teahen, Shealy, that's a nice core. If they had any pitching, considering the current state of the Cubs organizational direction and philosophy, I'd say the Royals might have a brighter future than the Cubs.

How ridiculous would his numbers be if he worked the count more and didn't always swing for the fences. Now I might sound crazy but I think it would be be up there with Pujols and the Ortiz. I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. I always agree that working the count is a good thing, but whatever he is currently doing is working. The general complaint of someone who "swings for the fences" is that he strikes out too much. As was mentioned ^^^^, Ramirez strikes out very seldom, especially for a power hitter. Ramirez has struck out 167 times since the beginning of the 2004 season. For comparison purposes, Ichiro has struck out 177 times over the same period. My guess is that if he didn't swing for the fences, he'd still strike out seldom, but would hit for less power.

Is it the "leading the league by a mile in sacrifice bunts" thing?

Guys that really take off usually have big strikeout numbers in their past. (Santana, Liriano, Kazmir). As a result, I think Hill has the best chance to be a dominator.

Bruce...last thing(if you happen to make it back to this topic)...Have you ever introduced this site to Hendry? I know that there are some less than flattering things said about his moves here, but it is mostly filled with logical posts and thoughts by people who bleed Cubbie blue. If I had my druthers, I'd have a number of posts from guys like Goony, Tim, Big Bad B, Outshined One, etc printed out for him to take a look at.

Agreed. And don't forget one of the best OBP guys on that team was none other than Sarge himself. Hard to believe a guy would hold an opposite viewpoint as a coach from what worked very well for him as a player.

There you go; I think you answered your own question. It's the same stat he brought up when they signed Jeromy Burnitz. As you say, the stat is entirely random and varies from year to year with each player. All I can do is keep beating the OBP drum and maybe talking with some of their inside people about this silly notion. I did hear the interview today on the way to the park. In my opinion, Bruce, the SLG drum is just as important. Hendry also touched on this today(you probably heard), saying that they used to have a team that led the league in HR, but that didn't get them anywhere in terms of winning a championship. Well, that's true, but that offense('03-'04) sure did score a lot more runs than this one does. He was in rare form today. It's absolutely shocking that a GM could be so clueless as to what attributes lead to a good offensive team.

Bruce, One other thing. On the radio today, Jim Hendry stressed that he considers the most important offensive statistic to be hitting with RISP. He said something like, "For me, that's what it's all about offensively". One would assume that, since this is philosophy, he would attempt to acquire players who do well in this area. Do you think that Jim realizes that BA with RISP is almost entirely a random statistic? My guess is no, since they continue to value players whose offensive upside is limited to the largely random event of hitting singles.

The Cubs would prefer to keep Pierre, believing that what they've seen since June is the real Juan Pierre. I'm not aware of any serious talks, of late. Why do they so conveniently forget that Pierre's terrible play in the first two months is one of the biggest reasons that the period of time he has been producing in has been garbage time?

Not unless the current people do some serious soul searching and say, "You know what? The way we're doing things just isn't working, and it leads only to hit-and-miss results." That hasn't happened yet. Great job as always, Bruce. You are truly a beacon of light in an increasingly dense fog. Your co-hort, Barry Rozner's column was laughable today. Rozner's only concerns appears to be the happiness of Greg Maddux. I've never noticed such blatant sycophantic journalism in the sports world, outside of a Derek Jeter article. Several times a year he writes about how great Maddux is and about the Cubs responsibility to do right by Maddux. Imrem's take was interesting in comparison. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest the Rozner is more than friendly with Boras. If you recall correctly, it Rozner that suggested during Maddux's 2004 free agency that he had an offer of something like, IIRC, $60 million/4 years (or something similarly absurd). Rozner often makes baseless, devoid of logic observations, and then tries to pass them off as fact in order to support whatever his topic is. Yesterday, the point of his article was probably to remind everyone that he is friends with Greg Maddux, just like he periodically does with Sandberg. However, there has to actually be substance to the column, so he talks about what a great job Hendry did in the Maddux trade. In order to support that, he has to sneak in phrases like "bona-fide major leaguer" "All Star" and "Gold Glove" . He also has to justify that moving Cedeno to 2nd is a good idea, so he says, "There is no doubt that Ronny Cedeno has a bright major league future, but anyone who has watched him this year can tell it's not at shortstop." What basis is there for either part of this sentence? This type of writing is trying to fool the reader without really presenting anything other than conjecture as a basis for the argument. The Maddux 4 yr 60 million contract is another example. If you read him regularly(which I don't, since I'm not a subscriber to the DH, but I catch him whenever I visit my in laws in Arlington Heights), you'll notice this kind of thing a lot with him. I am not a fan of Barry Rozner.

Not unless the current people do some serious soul searching and say, "You know what? The way we're doing things just isn't working, and it leads only to hit-and-miss results." That hasn't happened yet. Great job as always, Bruce. You are truly a beacon of light in an increasingly dense fog. Your co-hort, Barry Rozner's column was laughable today.

Pierre's defense is fine, he doesnt' have the best arm but what you want from CF is range. Barrett's defense is another story though. I agree. Let's just ignore for a second that Pierre actually isn't above average defensively because his range isn't all that good because he gets terrible jumps and say he's good, and instead concentrate on the best hitting catcher in the National League, who certainly can't make up for his defensive shortcomings, which aren't all that bad to begin with, by hitting the living crap out of the ball. Oh. Wait. I don't agree. I agree with you, but that is one looooooong sentence.