Elrhino

a post that captures why casinos make tons and tons of money Casinos make lots and lots of money because their patrons don't understand regression to the mean. Apparently, other folks don't either. For a board that has so many posters preaching objective analysis, they sure are terribly subjective and biased when it comes to their anointed villains and persona non gratas.

JJs career numbers said he wasn't going to stay that bad all year. If the Cubs suffered through the .630 OPS half of the season, they should be the ones to enjoy of the .880 half.

In Jacques case, he's been on the team 1.5 years. In the first complete season, he put up a 107 OPS+. In other words, very similar to the way Braves stuck with Vinny Castillas and Julio Franco. And if Hampton sitting there with 14.5 million in dead salary isn't a "problem", I don't really know what is. How did they get stuck with that? They took on a horrible contract just like the Cubs do, they tried to "wait it out" when signs of trouble started showing up just like the Cubs do, and eventually they just have to keep him on the roster and eat the contract because they can't dump them off on anybody else ... just like the Cubs do. The difference being, they develop BA Top 50 players to replace them with, while we develop Bobby Hill and Hee Seop Choi. And don't kid yourself, if Cliff Floyd could play 1B the Braves would take on his $3 million dollar salary and his .780 OPS in a heartbeat. They've already paid out $3 million combined to Julio Franco and Craig Wilson this year for a fraction of the production. As the poster above said above, nobody is arguing that the Cubs are as good as the Braves at developing talent yet you insist on arguing that point. Your hair trigger when it comes to arguing plus your constant need to attack other's "credibility" on an anonymous internet messageboard? Go pour yourself a stiff drink and put your feet up. God, it must be miserable living life like that.

Atlanta's got Wickman and Andruw Jones this year, Tim Hudson and John Thomson last year. Oakland's got Eric Chavez, Jason Kendall, and Mark Kotsay. You can spend even larger amounts of money on high paid dreck too. The White Sox won a world series with a team full of middling salary guys and no superstars. The Cardinals did it the other way with a few studs, and the rest dreck. The Red Sox had a couple superstars, and then a bunch of role players. Don't overspend on bad players. Shocking revelation. Braves are also on the hook for the entirity of Mike Hampton's 14.5 this year. Also, if you think of Floyd's $3 million as "overpaid dreck", I wounder what you would call Atlanta paying Craig Wilson $2 million when he doesn't even last two months on the team. Actually, I'm pretty sure that Hampton is insured. And, I might point out that when Wilson didn't produce, they cut him. Amazing. They made a mistake BUT THEY RECTIFIED IT by cutting Wilson. What do we do with a crappy veteran? Keep 'em on the roster while punishing the young guy for the veteran's failure. And Floyd is overpaid, injury-prone dreck. Along with his incredible 4 home runs, he's hitting .304/.374/.415 for a .789 OPS. Wow. We're paying him $3M+ for that? Why, we have a nice little guy in AAA who did better than that last year who we are paying $415,000. With Jacque Jones on the roster, Floyd was always an extraneous piece. Hampton was insured last year, but not this year. And if Craig Wilson was hitting anywhere in the same stratosphere as Floyd's "wow" numbers, or could play CF or SS like JJ or Itzturis, you better believe he and his $2 million would still be on that Braves roster. Braves would have probably offered him a raise if he could put up an .780 OPS like Floyd is providing the Cubs. Unfortunately for the Braves and Wilson, he was a defensive monstrosity even at 1B and was putting up a .560 OPS at the time of his release. Not a real courageous stance to "rectify" that. The difference between the Braves organizationan and the Cubs organization is that they're developing and bringing up BA Top 50 prospects like Saltimacchia. McCann and Francour while we're so poor at developing positional players that our fans have to resort to pumping up and overvalue mid level prospects like Matt Murton to laughable hero status.

You'll get no argument from me that the Braves are better at producing every day players from their farm system, but to say that their philosophy is drastically different from the Cubs is wrong. The Cubs have had Pagan, Theriot, Fontenot, K. Hill, Fox, Soto, Gallagher, Marmol, Marshall, Petrick, R. Cherry, Guzman, Wuertz, Rapada and Pie on the active roster this year, and the Braves still pay for a 78 year old Julio Franco and his 62 OPS+ if the need calls for it.

I'm just going to assume Guzman is toast. When Kerry Wood beats you back from a rehab assignment, that's not good.

Atlanta's got Wickman and Andruw Jones this year, Tim Hudson and John Thomson last year. Oakland's got Eric Chavez, Jason Kendall, and Mark Kotsay. You can spend even larger amounts of money on high paid dreck too. The White Sox won a world series with a team full of middling salary guys and no superstars. The Cardinals did it the other way with a few studs, and the rest dreck. The Red Sox had a couple superstars, and then a bunch of role players. Don't overspend on bad players. Shocking revelation. Braves are also on the hook for the entirity of Mike Hampton's 14.5 this year. Also, if you think of Floyd's $3 million as "overpaid dreck", I wounder what you would call Atlanta paying Craig Wilson $2 million when he doesn't even last two months on the team.

If anyone deserves to go as a result from this game, it's Wuertz.

Jacque Jones - .889 OPS in July.

Ohman was the guy to bring in at the time. It still would have been if the ump was calling the strike zone according to the rulebook.

Looking at these two lineups and with the wind blowing straight in, how many would have bet the over on 13 runs scored today?

With Lily stealing 2nd, this series by the Giants has got to go down as one of the all time most embarrassing display of fundamentals.

There shouldn't be. He's been our best player for 3 years. Best position player. I'd argue Big Z as the best Cubs player though during that time period. Zambrano wasn't acquired via a trade though was he? He was aquired from Venezuela for an 8 ball. That's also how we got Sammy from the Rangers when Dubya was owner.

Lily: 95 pitches - 4 innings. :x

Since it appears to be the same neck/shoulder as before, I assume Floyd is about to head to the DL.

When you compare the roster July 19th vs. April 19th, it's pretty dramatic turnover considering the Cubs haven't really been plagued with injuries. Especially since no major trades have been made. If you were to tell me in February that Cubs would have had Pagan, Theriot, Fontenot, K. Hill, Fox, Soto, Gallagher, Marmol, Marshall, Petrick, R. Cherry, Guzman, Rapada and Pie on the active roster at some point before we hit August, I would have thought you were crazy. I bet if the Cubs lost 2-3 games in a row, Lou's "tinkering" would resume pretty darn quick.

I wish Lou would have pitched Eyre at least an inning or two. If Jim isn't going to DFA him, and if he hasn't by now you seriously have to question if it will ever happen, we're going to have to get him back on track sometime. We're essentially going with 10 pitchers on the roster.

This search for a reliever baffles me. If we need an extra bullpen arm arm so badly, why are we going with 11 pitchers (essentially 10 since Eyre never pitches)?

Feel the power of Angel Pagan, Koye Hill, Jacque Jones !!!

I hope Lou gets Eyre some innings. If Henry isn't going to DFA him, we're going to need him to get back on track at some point to at least get to a servicable level. This is about as low pressure a situation as you can find.

Your brain must have forgot Jason Dubois and Bobby Hill.

Cubs pitchers would beg to differ. He is an automatic out every time in the lineup. Right now the Cubs are getting by because the rest of the offense is picking up the slack, but as the season progresses that production is not acceptable. I'm not disagreeing about his offense. All I'm doing is pointing out what I hear directly from the pitchers, including one Mr. Z. I think this point is lost so often. Its fine to use statistical tools to evaluate players, however sometimes people get so completely lost in a statistical bubble that they completely ignore human behavour. Its fine to throw up some numbers that state that Michael Barrett had no negative impact on the Cubs, however the statistics aren't showing that HE WAS IN A FREAKING FISTFIGHT IN THE DUGOUT WITH OUR ACE PITCHER IN THE MIDDLE OF A GAME !!! Hello !!! If you want a rookie catcher behind the plate based on his AAA numbers, fine. That doesn't mean the pitching staff wants him here in the middle of a pennant chase. Guess who's opinion matters?

Only a small fraction of how good the Lee and Ramirez trades were. It was a bad trade, but if the question is of degree ... its not exactly going to go down as one of the great robberies of our era. In fact, I would hazzard to say outside of a few Marlin and Cub fans who closely pay attention to the players involved, the trade probably doesn't even register.

New here, aren't ya? Anyway, I like the trade. The Cubs basically gave up nothing and have a chance at capturing lightening in the bottle in a Kendall resurgence in the 2nd half. That's more than we had with the abysmal sense of doom I had with the position previously. I really see absolutely no downside to the trade whatsoever.

When Brad Ausmus is getting good rips off of you, you officially have problems.