MPrior

I'd rather see a DLee that hits like Neifi Perez than Neifi Perez himself. At least Lee would have a chance of improving.

Regardless of the money, the point is that Jones is expected (foolishly, I would argue) by the management to produce far more than Cedeno, Murton, and Pierre. And, arguably, Murton has produced just as much as Jones has, given the relative importance of OBP to slugging. Walker has outproduced Jones for the same reason. Admittedly, Aramis is expected to produce the most of the bunch, and his slump is definitely the one that hurts us the most.

What's sad about this is that the most surprising part about that list is that we're actually beating someone in home runs and slugging.

That is a great way to define the luck that is the Chicago White Sox. Buerlie has two first and second with no outs and gets out of both jams. Not to mention his error helped six of the seven runs go unearned, so even his stat line looks good. I think that if a pitcher commits an error, his runs should still be earned. There was a thread about this not too long ago, it was pretty conclusively shown that those runs should be unearned, but I can't remember exactly why offhand. Earned Run Average is a measurement of how effectively you pitch, not how well you field. That's why runs scored because of the failings of the defense behind you aren't counted as earned; and under this system, it's irrelevant who makes the error, because no matter who is responsible, it has no bearing on the pitching itself.

I read that too, and it scared the crap out of me as well. I like to think that Murton already has his head on his shoulders enough that he won't be entirely ruined.

Yeah, but there was a guy named Boof Bonser in the draft. You've gotta take that kinda thing into account, you know. I feel like it more than makes up for the inadequacy of the first round. Heh heh. Boof Bonser.

I'm definitely with you on this one. Kerry Wood, when he's on, is about as fun to watch as any pitcher I've ever seen - not to mention as dominating. I would love for him to be absolutely lights out the rest of the year, and stay with the Cubs for his whole career. Now is this going to happen? Not a chance in Hell. But I can still hope.

I have to ask. Is this actually true, or are you just talking in hypotheticals? Cause if it is true, that's kind of awesome.

So we don't have another Hill for Dunn blooper by Hendry. If I ever find out there was a Hill for Dunn offer rejected by Hendry, I will drive to Chicago and beat him with his own shoe. I'm pretty certain there was no such deal. Hendry mentioned it in an interview when they were asking about trading Hill for Kearns or something, and Hendry said, "I wouldn't trade Hill for Dunn straight up." There was no such actual deal proposed.

Don't worry; I'm the special one, so they'll win it for me, and I'm only 4 years younger, so it should happen in your lifetime. No biggie. Also, the Cubs suck. And I only think that they'll win in my lifetime because I'm completely delusional.

I actually think being a Cubs fan is a criteria for diagnosis of depression, delusions, and auditory hallucinations* in the DSM. *The idea being that hearing voices is one of the only feasible reasons anyone would willingly choose to be a Cubs fan.

I agree that firing Dusty won't solve all our problems, but that still doesn't mean that he's not a bad manager who should have been fired long ago. At the same time, I think firing him is a bad idea unless you feel pretty certain you can get a suitable long-term replacement who is a significant improvement. If they can get ahold of such a person, by all means, fire him. But if not, it'd probably be better just to wait for his contract to expire and spend the offseason searching for his replacement. That way, you'd create less bad blood with the players who really like him (and there are plenty who have at least publicly said that they do, and that his presence was a reason for signing; that may just be crap they spoon-feed to the media, but there might also be some truth to it). It's highly unlikely that firing him at this point is going to make that much of a difference for this season anyway - there are too many problems with this team that have nothing to do with Dusty.

The only people I know of who were touting 2006 as "the year" were people who said, "Red Sox in 04, White Sox in 05...so it's gotta be the Cubs in 06!" I always thought that those people were deranged or delusional, or both. This team, even without the Prior, Wood, and Lee injuries, would be lucky to make the playoffs.

As far as the original topic of this thread goes, I think that if Aramis opts out of his contract, it will be because he thinks he's worth more, not because he wants to leave the Cubs. So he'd probably give the Cubs first crack at re-signing him. So that wouldn't be ideal, but I imagine that, one way or another, Aramis will be a Cub next year.

Khalil Greene now has as many home runs as the player on our team with the most home runs. Khalil Greene.

No question.

I'd rather be rich than stupid.

Good to hear. If he comes back, at least there will be something worth watching.

Well whats going on now really dosent back your statement up, with the exception of 1 game (sunday at St louis) we have been hard pressed to get a hit let alone a run Lee if nothing else provided protection and we were scoring when he was there, now thats not the case hell if we had 1 run in this game, we wouldve won it What's going on right now supports my point excellently. You said it yourself: we've been hard pressed to get a hit, let alone a run. That, as I said, has much more to do with the atrocious performance of the players on the field than it does with the absence of one off the field. Forget Lee. Let's just say that Aramis, Pierre, Jones, Hairston, and even Neifi were currently hitting somewhere around their career averages. I'm not saying they're hitting the cover off the ball, here - just their career averages - we would have scored more than five runs in seven games. And in addition to those underperformers, Barrett hasn't done much since he jammed his finger, Walker's been pretty quickly coming back down to earth, as has Cedeno, and Neifi and Bynum are getting far too much playing time. No one is hitting well right now, and our good luck with RISP earlier in the season has been completely reversed.

That's ridiculous. I'd much rather be the Royals. Yeah, they've scored even fewer runs, and their offense is (gasp!) even worse than ours, which I didn't actually think was possible, but we've got that one crucial, cruel element which causes our misery to far surpass that of the Royals: hope.

It's pretty bogus to suggest that Lee's absence is what's causing this dearth of offense. Yes, Lee was extremely productive. And yes, we miss him terribly, and so does the team. But the overall suckiness of the entire lineup has less to do with Lee than it does with the terrible performance of the players who are actually playing.

Yes, and they eased him back in the following season with 287 innings (including the playoffs) pitched - at age 23/24, nonetheless. Then he threw 282 the following year. In retrospect, he's fortunate his career turned out so well. A workload like that would have destroyed many young pitchers' futures. That definitely would destroy careers. That's crazy. It's fair to say, though, that Clemens is clearly the exception rather than the rule. Even before he was drafted, he was known as a workout junkie, and that's continued all the way through his career. He turned himself into a workhorse, because he felt that was the only way to get drafted. Also, he's the greatest pitcher of a generation (maybe even two or three). That helps. As for the age difference thing, I'm pretty sure it makes a pretty big difference what age the abuse occurs at. The people in the know (not me) call it the "injury nexus," which is basically a period in a young pitcher's life when he is particularly susceptible to injury, due to any number of factors (but I assume the biggest are development issues and the huge jump in workload). And the injury nexus is around the ages of 21-22 or 23. Also, regarding the idiocy of leaving pitchers in the game too long, check out this article. It presents a pretty convincing argument for why pitch counts matter.

When you think about it, wood and sparks don't really go very well together at all...wood tends to burst into flames, actually. Okay, so that's too terrible to even be called a "joke," but I still find it a little humorously foreboding.

I think that's an overstatement. It's not that the batting order doesn't matter. It's that it matters a lot less than the overall production. But it still has an effect.

What are you talking about? That kind of production would be GREAT for our offense! The sad part is that's actually pretty close to true.