Elrhino

Exactly. And I appreciate the fact that he seems to be enjoying himself. A happy worker is a more productive worker, in my experience. I also agree with Vance that we should try and deal him during the offseason and upgrade. Finally, I don't understand why some of you find it so hard to admit that he has done a very nice job since the ASB. Its like there's some sort of Anti-Jacque society out there: "The first rule of Jones Club is we never say anything about him that could be perceived as a compliment." :wink: Because many of them took the irrational position that Jacque was more likely to continue to produce at a sub .700 OPS in second half rather than producing at or about his career norms. They were wrong. In fact, he's been even better. People don't like to admit when they are wrong. The funny thing is that the dislike for Hendry and dislike for Jones here seems to be clouding the judgment of certain of our so-called analytical posters. It was a pretty unremarkable proposition -- from an analytical perspective -- to suggest that Jones was likely to produce at or about career norms in the second half. Nevertheless, certain so-called analytical posters rejected that notion. In my view, that's a function of their personal dislike of Hendry and Jones. This post is complete BS. He's been great. Everybody has admitted that. But overall he has still been piss poor. Are we not looking at the big picture now because everything is rosy? Speaking of complete BS, his OPS+ his first year was 107. Even after his dreadfull start of the year, he's going to probably end up with an OPS at or over 90 while playing CF (his career OPS+ is 100). How would that qualify his time as a Cub as, in your words, "piss poor"? Average, okay. But piss poor? Hyperbole like that screams "I have an irrational, subjective bias against Jacque Jones".

If JJ came up through the Cubs system and everyone invested enough of their lives to keep track of his AA boxscores every day, this board would be demand a JJ shrine be built in front of Wrigley Field after this second half of the season.

If you would have told me on July 4th that the Cubs would have been in 1st place heading into September with Soriano missing all of August, Zambrano posting an ERA over 7 in August, ARam hitting 3 HR's in August and July combined ... I would have taken it and said Lou performed some miracles.

When I saw the score I thought it was the Cowboys vs Ravens in a preseason game.

Wow, people sure do get awfully defensive and angry when you compare the messageboard heros (Murton) to the messageboard persona non gratas (Jones and Floyd). It's like you've told them there's no Santa Claus.

I shudder to think where the Cubs would be without Jacques' 2nd half.

Since it's hard to criticize Kendall and Jacque these days, we need to find a new messageboard boogeyman who we deem is singlehandedly dragging down the entire team for all intents and purposes. That man is our backup catcher who is getting 4 at bats a week. Sweet, let's dwell on Koyie Hill.

Its kind of interesting that Kerry Wood and Z played on the same team, because I can't think of two pitchers in my lifetime that on one had could be dominant, and yet made you so nervous and instilled such a lack of confidence. They could dominate a lineup and strike out 8 through four innings, but the first time they gave up a bloop single or a bb you thought "uh oh, here we go".

It is when he's hitting better than Derrick Lee.

Catchers tend to not decline gracefully, but rather fall off a cliff. That could explain Barret. Don't ask me what happened to Lance Berkman and Andruw Jones.

I could see Beane signing him to be a DH. The dude is still putting up an insane 1.076 OPS.

I think the Cubs should just scoring like soccer, with 10 minute celebrations everytime they score a run with Pat screaming "GOOOOOAAAAAAAAALLLL" in the background.

The bullpen by and large though has been very good. You can find several examples of how they held the opposition scoreless. What I questioned last night was Piniella using Ohman in that situation. You play the hot hand...Ohman has not been hot recently. I would never have put him in there. I think Piniella has his faults with bullpen 'roles'. Eyre and Ohman have more or less been designated as the "we're losing, don't give 'em more" guys, or situational lefties only. I would much rather have seen Marmol or Howry in the 8th, but that only happens when they're up by 2, not down by 2. At the current rate of usage, we'll be lucky if Marmol or Howry have any gas left in the tank by September. They're both in the NL Top 12 for appearances in the last 30 days. While many fans never seem to look past the game at hand, managers have to allocate innings with the entire season in mind. Yeah, it would be nice if they could only pitch Eyre and Ohman in non-close games, but with this offense non-close games will be/are few and far between. Unless you want future arm problems for Marmol, everyone in the bullpen has to eat a share of innings, especially since the rotation can't seem to pitch out of the 5th inning. The bullpen is taking all the heat, and no one is talking about the real elephant in the room ... 3/5 of our rotation isn't pulling their weight, and the bullpen is having to take all the burden.

I don't think there is any question the Cubs are not playing nearly as well as they have. Our best power hitter hasn't hit a HR in a month, and outside of Z (maybe Lilly to a lesser degree), I really have no confidence in any of our rotation members when they take the mound to provide a quality start. Luckily for the Cubs they've had series against the Giants, Cardinals, Reds and Astros. That's not to say that we're doomed. All teams have hot streaks and cold streaks .. the important thing is to fight through the cold streak without going 3-13. All the Jacque and Kendall bashing aside, the most important thing for the Cubs is that ARam has to start finding his power stroke and Hill has to start pitching like a #3 pitcher. It doesn't matter who you DFA and who you bring up from the minors ... if those two things don't start happening, the Cubs are dead in the water.

ARam losing his power stroke bothers me 100X more than Jacque.

If our starting rotation doesn't start going deeper into games in August, our bullpen could start unravel awfully fast. I don't expect much from Marquis, so Hill and Marshall need to step it up .... pronto.

Given that our starters ask our bullpen to work at least 4 innings every single game, it's not surprising that our bullpen is starting to wear down.

Maybe you should watch the game and see that Demp struck him out. Yes, let's blame the ump the whole game. After all, they're just out to get us. Where in the hell should Ryan have put one on 2-2 to get the called strike 3 on David Wright? I'm not saying that it wasn't a bad call, but come on. Blaming the ump for losing the game? Our pitchers walked 11 batters today. Last I checked, that's really bad. He struck out the guy. You know how much difference a leadoff walk makes as opposed to one out with no one on. Plus he has called many pitches against us. Jones had a 3-0 pitch above his letters called a strike. He walks he also scores on Kendall's double The Cubs are just flat out lucky that they are even in the game at that point for the call to even matter. When you only score 2 runs and walk 11 guys in a game, you should be blown out.

Good luck finding a non-pressure situation to break Kerry in with our offense Lou.

ARam with .... warning track power.

ARam is so overdue for a HR it's not even funny.

What's the alternative? Kerry's warmed up, and Marmol better not come out for another inning. Yea because the rules wouldn't allow it. I don't know why some of you believe you can just keep pitching Marmol 20+ pitches every single game with no repercussions.

What's the alternative? Kerry's warmed up, and Marmol better not come out for another inning.

I guess when Hernandez routinely throws the ball 10 inches off the plate, that 8 inches off the plate looks like a strike.

Yes, because Guzman never had arm problems when the Cubs just left him as a starter. He's never shown even a modicum of sustainable durability, no matter what the role or how he was handled. Evidently, throwing a baseball isn't good on his fragile arm.