Ender

I think if we can blow teams out for 40 straight games we'd be sittin pretty. Do people not understand that blowing teams out is more impressive than winning close games? I think its a pretty common misconception. Winning close games just means you got a little lucky and was evenly matched with another team. Blowing a team out means you beat them in every sense of the game. Or in this case it means they scored a bunch of runs on the Brewers worst pitchers.

I believe I heard somewhere that Fielder hit balls out of Tiger Stadium... ...at 12 years old. :shock: There's no way that's true. No way. Its true, do some googles if you want. Here is one article that mentions it. http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20050512&content_id=6079&vkey=news_milb&fext=.jsp

Not yesterday though. 5/0 K/BB in 7 IP and only 1 baserunner per inning(with no XBH). True, I attribute that more to the fact the Cardinals lineup is pretty terrible :).

He's right though, Marquis' indicators have been very mediocre and if he pitches like this all year his ERA will be around 4.50 which is better than I would have expected. 5.3 K/9, 3.8 BB/9 are not very good stats and he's not going to continue to give up 0 HR's or strand 80% of all runners. He's also had DER of .769 which isn't going to continue. Of course saying that to a reporter does show a lack of class even if he's right.

I dunno, Zambrano was a good pitcher all of two months last year but he was just amazing those two months. The rest of the year he was average to below average. 2004 was the last year he was consisently good month to month, 2005 and 2006 he was all over the place. I'd personally be very worried about the start.

his back problems go back to at least 2002. Sheets had back surgery in October 2004. he missed five weeks in 2005 because of an ear infection, had back problems in the middle of 2005, missed five weeks for the shoulder tear at the end of 2005, missed the beginning of 2006 because of his back (not his shoulder), shoulder tendinitis/strain (not the same injury as 2005) in May shelved him most of the season. so in sum, you are completely wrong in your assessment of Ben Sheets' injury history. No, the 2005 and 2006 injuries were 100% related. Yes he had back surgery, post season surgery for soreness in his back but he didn't miss any time because of it and was still effective after it so hard to really make a fuss over it. The ear infection is not an injury. The guy has had one major injury that stopped him from pitching and spanned the end of 1 year and the start of another. Its still very hard to look at his career and call him injury prone.

Sheets has had one injury in his 6 year career that just happened to span the end of one year and the start of another. Its not like the guy is injury prone and should be expected to fall apart at any minute. He's been healthy and throwing fine for 8 months now.

That would be my guess. I live in Milwaukee and there is a pretty big push to get more Brewer fans in the stadium against the Cubs and well attendence is up in general now that we have a team with real major league players on it!

Zambrano's projection is probably because of how abused he's been over the past 3 years and the fact his control slipped last year to very dangerous levels, very few pitchers can walk over 100 a year and not crash and burn eventually.

Fielder had a .347 OBP last year and a career .398 in the minors. Hart had a .357 in the minors including .377 and .391 in AAA. Hall had a .345 OBP last year. Hardy had a .368 OBP in AA and they think he'll be a .340+ eventually because he has very good plate discipline. Jenkins had a .357 OBP last year and his 3 year splits vs righties is a .366 if he platoons. It might be plausible that they only have one guy over .350 but its just as plausible that almost the entire starting lineup is over .340. I don't think this is going to be their undoing.

If Oswalt, Sheets, Peavy and Webb all get hurt this year Zambrano has as good a shot as anyone to walk away with the CY. Hard for me to pick someone who has control problems that actually got worse last year to win it. Maybe in 2008 if he can start to fix the problem in 2007 but I'm not seeing it for this year.

Some teams will be better than expected, some will be worse. Predictions are supposed to be the middle of the road projections assuming nothing major goes wrong or right. If Prior is healthy, Wood is healthy, Hill pitches like the 2nd half of last year and the offense hits up to its potential the Cubs will win 90+ games. But it certainly isnt' a safe bet to predict them to win 90 in my opinion, something is going to go wrong. If Sheets stays healthy, Bush pitches like many expect him to, Weeks, Fielder, Hardy all grow up fast the Brewers could win 90+ games, its still a much safer bet to project in the mid 70's to mid 80's for them because its just not likely everything goes right... though it could happen. Some team will have everything go right and they'll be 2005's white sox or 2006 tigers teams who way outproduced what they probably should have. As for the Dodgers, they are batting Pierre 2nd so thats a downgrade. Kent, Garciaparra aren't very likely to stay healthy given their histories, that leaves a pretty weak lineup. Hard for me to be sold on them just yet.

Brewers have the potential to have the best starting rotation in the NL so I disagree. I do think they are giving the cardinals a bit too much credit on the pitching side though. I could see the Cubs scoring as much as the Mets if everyone is healthy. Soriano, Lee, ARam match up very well with the Mets 3 best hitters.

The Brewers got killed last year by injuries, they lost 75% of the IF and 40% of their starting rotation long term. So its really hard to pat yourself on the back for being right about them not being a top team. Any team that has 5 important players go down for half a season is going to look pretty ugly. I think the Brewers have as good a shot as anyone else in the NL Central. Its going to take at least two of the young guys stepping up a good bit to make it happen and Weeks, Hardy and Sheets staying healthy. Sheets, Capuano, Bush, Suppan, Vargas is probably the best rotation in the division but the bullpen could hold the pitching back somewhat and the offense is most likely just average.

This deal is pretty bad. Stewart hasn't been productive since 2004 with the bat and his defense is below average at this point. I guess it never hurts to have depth but I'd much rather give Dan Johnson more playtime and just save the money.

Hardy's offense is underrated because of a terrible start to 2005 when he not only was jumping to the majors with very little time in AAA but also was coming off of a major shoulder injury. In the 2nd half of 2005 he posted an .866 OPS, in the first half an .560. In 2006 he OPS wasn't so hot but it was because he had just had a mini slump when he got hurt, he posted a .772 OPS in april which is probably about the OPS he'd post in a full season if they protect him a little bit against good righties. He is not going to be a black hole in the lineup long term.

Santana is the only pitcher in baseball I'd even consider giving Zito's contract to. I'd think they need to talk him down a year or two at the very least. I personally don't think Zambrano is going to age well with all that mileage on his arm and his control slipping instead of improving. That contract would really scare me as a GM.

Can we take out Zambrano's bad start against Pittsburgh then? Well besides the obvious difference that Sheets left with an injury which affected his pitching, I'll do you one better and take out Zambrano's 4 IP, 7 ER game against the Brewers. That makes his ERA 3.17. Doesn't that show something to you? The fact that removing one single bad game swings your ERA by 0.24 while it barely changes your peripheral stats? Take out one game against Was and Zambrano has an ERA of 3.54. The difference between a 3.54 ERA and 3.17 ERA is one bad start replacing one good start and thats over a full season. In Sheet's case it was half a season so double the effect. That doesn't even include things like the bullpen holding runners on, good/bad defensive plays etc. Zambrano leaves the game with the bases loaded, bullpen comes in and gives up a grand slam, his ERA goes up to a 3.53 instead of his 3.41 if they let in 0 runs. One single batter faced by someone other than Zambrano could raise his ERA by 0.12 on the season. Is that a stat you really trust?

Zambrano has had a better ERA+ each of the last 3 years (5 years actually), yet Sheets has had a better FIP each of the last 3 years. Does this mean that the Cubs' defense has been great while the Brewers' defense has been atrocious, and Zambrano has been really lucky while Sheets has been really unlucky? Seems like a lot to assume there. Sheets had a better ERA+ in 2004, but 2004 and 2005 were really close and 2006 I already addressed, one bad start that Sheets left hurt increased his ERA by 0.50 on the season while leaving his component ERA largely intact. I think if there is a flaw in this comparison its that ERA+ is not a very good stat, its still basically flawed in the exact same ways ERA are except it pulls out park effects somewhat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_independent_pitching_statistics Check out that link for a bunch of math and links to other places that show that a component ERA is just a better measure of a pitchers ability than ERA in general. Its more predictive of future success for sure. You can pick whichever one you like the best to compare, I just used FIP because its the one that thehardballtimes used which is the site I visited.

I'm highly dubious of saying Lilly>Suppan at best they are equal and I could envision a world where Suppan is better for durability reasons. I guess I fail to lump Sheets into the same category as Prior. Prior has had exactly 1 fully healthy season in his 4 full season career. Sheets has had exactly 1 injury in the past 6 years, it just happened to bridge the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006. Sheets came back and displayed health and posted some of the best stats in the majors in the 2nd half of last season after recovering from his injury. He went 85 IP, 78 H, 88 K, 10 BB, 3.15 ERA, 1.03 WHIP and was completely dominant. Prior came back and posted a 6.75 ERA and never looked fully healthy and was finally shut down for the season again in August. I'm just not sure how you classify these two as the same type of injury risk. Sheets is a pitcher who got hurt, took a little under a year to get healthy and displayed a half of season of completely healthy pitching. Prior is someone you can't count on at all and just pray you get something out of. Rich Hill posted a very nice 2.93 ERA, 1.05 WHIP post all star break in a 12 start sample, 80 IP, 24 BB, 79 K Bush ended the season on a 74 IP, 6 BB, 51 K, 0.90 WHIP note in his last 11 starts drawing comparisons from many to a Chris Carpenter. If his K rate spikes with age and experiencehe is going to become a very good pitcher with that control of his. Again given Bush having a stronger overall track record and more experience I simply would have to give the edge to Bush in that case. The last thing I'll mention with the Brewers is they were the worst team in the NL last year at strand rate, the teams ERA was way worse than it should have been and the bullpen was a disaster blowing the majority of high leverage situations. I'd expect even if the two starting rotations pitched exactly the same for the Brewers to have a higher ERA as I'm going to guess the Cubs have a better bullpen and probably better fielding as well. So I guess a lot depends on how you are going to judge the pitchers, a component ERA stat is going to make the Brewers look better than actual ERA will most likely and that has nothing to do with the starters themselves.

Yeah it's really stupid to judge pitchers based on how many runs they give up. Pretty meaningless stat. ERA+ might not tell all, but I'm not enamored with FIP. Sheets was not nearly a run and a half better than Zambrano last year, nor was he more than half a run better than Z in 2004. ERA is a team stat, plain and simple. Its like judging pitchers by W's. FIP isn't the be all end all of course but some sort of component stat that looks at something other than just ER's is a much better system. Last year other than the game sheets left while injured he was one of the best pitchers in the NL and yes he's around a half run better than Zambrano as a pitcher in reality. 103.1 IP, 96 H, 38 ER, 11 BB, 113 K, 1.03 WHIP, 3.31 ERA taking out the start he left while hurt. What you see in his ERA is one bad game which makes a huge impact on ERA and not on other stats. Sheets is Zambrano but with a few more HR's and about 1/3 as many walks.

FIP - last 3 years Sheets - 2.53, 3.26, 2.47 Zambrano - 3.13, 3.55, 3.83 ERA is a horrible stat to judge pitchers by. You are highly underrating Bush as well, he had an outstanding last year other than the one week that Yost decided to use him out of the bullpen between starts. Here is a nice article on him. http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2006/09/bushs_league.php I do agree that Hill and Prior are huge wildcards in the rotation. If Hill hits his potential this year rather than down the road which is probably more likely it makes the Cubs rotation look a ton better. If Prior is healthy that again makes it much stronger. But if I had to take pitchers based on this season alone ignoring the future I'd take Capuano and Bush over anyone on the cubs rotation not named Zambrano.

Sheets > Zambrano assuming health which considering he's had 1 injury that bridged 2 years is pretty safe. Capuano > any other pitcher the cubs have Bush > any other pitcher the cubs have Suppan = Lilly Vargas = Marquis most likely I dunno, I'm not seeing the cubs being as good as the Brewers unless Prior is healthy to take that #2 slot, Hill explodes onto the scene or Sheets goes down.

Actually, I mean Hendry probably believes what he said, but I think Melvin is alot smarter. Put it this way, thats an easy way to please the average fan. Just a second-you called this quote of Melvin's "dumb" a few weeks ago: So why would you think he was telling the truth in that quote, but not telling the truth in his quotes about Suppan? I don't see why he would lie about one and tell the truth on another, which makes me think that he really does believe the sorts of things that he has been saying all offseason. The brewers were one of the worst teams in baseball defensively, on the base paths and situationally and thats why they had a team ERA so high above their team FIP and why their team hitting underproduced so much compared to its OPS... so I really don't see why you would call Melvin dumb over the statement unless you took it out of context or you really believe that the players have 0 control over these things. The fact that this has held true for the past 2 to 3 years makes me believe they have at least some control over it and are failing at it.

I think Lilly is a slightly better pitcher but has more injury concerns. Miller park is a bit more of a pitchers park than Wrigley though so I expect them to put up pretty similar numbers. Neither team will be above average defensively so thats a wash.