Jon

He did not spend all of 2007 in the majors. He also pitched 41 innings in AAA so he had about 110 IP total in 2007 between the minors and the big leagues. In 2006 he had 138 IP combined between West Tenn, Iowa and Chicago. Therefore, the 105 IP he is on pace for this year per your calculations would actually be a slight reduction from previous years so I wouldn't worry about his arm falling off just yet. I did forget that he spent time in the minors last year, but 7 of those 8 minor league appearances were starts. I'm not talking about abuse, but rather what we can expect of him as a reliever. The abuse is a different discussion. So his relief appearances stretched out for a full season would have meant 92.2 IP and 1,550 pitches. He would have led the league in IP. Only two relief pitchers over the last four seasons have totaled 100 IP and five have totaled over 90 IP. If he throws 105 IP this year, though, he's not pitching in a high enough percentage of high leverage situations. Maybe that increase even supports my argument. His LI wasn't very high last year. This year, his gmLI is only 39th among all relievers in baseball and his inLI is way down the list at 62nd. Why should we expect Lou to use him more exclusively in high leverage situations when there has been a clear pattern that Piniella just wants to use or overuse him in the late innings, regardless of leverage. Doesn't that make his IP less valuable? In Marmol's case, not in a theoretical situation in which a truly dominant reliever might produce expected wins in line with such starters in some instances, do the numbers really backup the idea that he should remain a reliever?

And along with it the wins. Even if his leverage index increases, I can't imagine that he'll pitch enough innings to make his value as a relief pitcher comparable to what it could be as a starter.

Through 17 games, Marmol has had 9 appearances with a total of 11 IP and 188 pitches. He's on pace for 86 appearances, 105 IP, and 1,792 pitches. In 2007, he threw 69.1 IP and 1,158 total pitches. Do you really think he's going to keep going at this rate? Looking at wins this early in the season doesn't mean a whole lot. And as I stated before, Marmol is not only used for high leverage situations. He pitched the 7th and 8th innings after entering with a 3 run lead and kept going with a 4 run lead on 4/15. In his other 40+ pitch appearance, he came into the game to pitch the 7th and 8th after entering with a 4 run lead.

Well, a WP/passed ball now scores the run. Which is less common in this situation than the pitcher getting a hit. It's better than striking out, but it's nowhere near applaud-worthy.

One of my biggest fan pet peeves is still when people applaud a batter for moving a runner while making the second out of the inning.

Wow, that was the "amazing" catch by Reed yesterday? He nearly came to a complete stop before making an unnecessary over the shoulder basket catch. He easily could have just turned around and caught it normally.

He could certainly use to improve, but he only has 13 big league starts and, most importantly, only 78 starts outside of the majors in his entire life. That's nothing. And if he flipped with someone like Dempster or Marquis, the Cubs could have four long relievers in the bullpen.

I've gotten used to the a lot of things this organization does to piss me off, but playing worse veterans over already better younger players is one thing that I just can't get over. This includes starting vs. pitching out of the bullpen. The biggest problem with Marmol throwing 40 pitches in relief is that the Cubs aren't isn't maximizing his production. If he's throwing that many pitches in an outing, certainly not all of them are coming in high leverage situations relative to the typical late inning relief appearance. Of course, if he theoretically throws only in high leverage situations, he's not racking up the innings to maximize his production, either. The simplest solution is to make him a starter. And as for Marshall, I'm mostly speechless: 4/18 - 0.1 IP, 2 pitches 4/17 - 0.1 IP, 2 pitches 4/13 - 0.2 IP, 11 pitches 4/11 - 1.0 IP, 13 pitches 4/9 - 1.0 IP, 16 pitches That's 3.1 IP with 44 pitches over 1.5 weeks. Based on his averages from starts last season, if he made two starts over the same 1.5 weeks, we could have expected 10.2 IP with 168.4 pitches. And he's better than Marquis and Dempster. What on earth are they doing to him?

Apparently Marshall has been converted from a starter to a LOOGY. And Marmol throws nearly enough pitches to start every time he takes the mound, yet he can't start, either. Does Piniella have any idea what he's doing with the bullpen? If the goal is to minimize the value of his pitchers, he's doing a great job.

I literally just suffered some brain damage. Lou is like a little kid these days. He can't make up his mind and stick to the decision more than a few days. Though I wanted Murton called up, I think it's lame for Lou to be talking about dumping Patterson already. If you're not willing to give the guy a fair chance you shouldn't call him up in the first place. Lou really values immediate production. He thinks that a few ABs or appearances are enough to judge a player's short term value on, so if you don't produce right away, you're not going to play much. He needs to take a step back. Let's not forget about the express bus that Hendry runs between Iowa and Chicago for bullpen pitchers.

It's hard to ignore the pre-arb long-term extensions trend now.

Yeah, I couldn't disagree with that more. If the Cubs need two weeks of scattered playing time to evaluate a prospect, they either have no faith in their scouts or they have no idea what they're doing. Or both. We've already seen that Piniella places a lot of value in Spring Training performance, though. Hendry, as well.

Yeah, I wouldn't pay much attention to the talk right now. Besides, RotoWorld is only speculating that Briggs is sitting out because he's unhappy. He could very well be sitting out for another reason.

Pawelek already moved to the top bunk just in case.

I don't believe there has been any update in a month or so, but things are looking pretty positive. BTN has already caved on the subscriber fee that they're charging Comcast, as well as on the biggest point, which is that the channel will appear on Comcast's expanded package. BTN wanted the channel on Comcast's basic package. I'd be pretty surprised if it's not completed by the middle of the summer.

ESPN/ABC loves Penn State: Sept. 27 - ILLINOIS at PENN STATE, 8 p.m. ET, ABC, ESPN or ESPN2 Oct. 4 - OHIO STATE at WISCONSIN, 7 p.m. CT, ABC, ESPN or ESPN2 Oct. 11 - PENN STATE at WISCONSIN, 7 p.m. CT, ESPN or ESPN2 Oct. 18 - MICHIGAN at PENN STATE, 4:30 p.m. ET, ESPN or ESPN2 Oct. 25 - PENN STATE at OHIO STATE, 8 p.m. ET

Where are you getting your numbers? Per ESPN, I see: .283/.417 and an OPSA of .700 After I posted that this morning, I noticed that ESPN's gamelog didn't include last night. I wasn't sure if the stats were updated, as well.

I'm not sure if this has been posted yet: I literally just suffered some brain damage.

I'd have to believe that there's an implicit agreement not to touch Bonds. The scolding that Hendry would receive from Selig would probably be worse than what he gets for going over slot.

I sure wish I could ditch work this afternoon. There are some really good seats available on cubs.com, including half-price bleachers with the college discount code. And it's a value game. I just pulled up 2 in the 10th row right behind home.

And just for the heck of it: K/BB ratio 2002 - 1.48 2003 - 1.79 2004 - 2.32 2005 - 2.35 2006 - 1.83 2007 - 1.75 2008 - 7.67 Of course, his OPSA is sitting at .929 right now, nearly .300 points higher than his career average, with a .395 OBPA. So far, he's given up a lot more hits than he normal does.

It looks like you're right. The last time he did that was a 4-game stretch in late July and early August of 2002. However, one of those starts was cut short after Z left the game with an arm injury in the 4th inning. And that was only a few starts after he joined the rotation from the bullpen. He's never had a stretch in his entire big league career like this in regards to walks. The last time Z had no walks in a game going into this season was April 28th of last year. He had no such games in 2006, 2 in 2005, 1 in 2004, and 1 in 2003 in the post-season. Amazing.

Lieber will be the first guy out of the 'pen tomorrow if Lilly doesn't last. If Marshall doesn't pitch tonight, that means he could be facing a long relief appearance having thrown a total of 11 pitches over the previous week. I'd argue that it would have been better for him to get in an inning of work tonight and be better prepared for a long relief appearance. Certainly throwing a little tonight would not have limited his abilities to throw long relief in a couple of days. But let's not forget that Piniella would have let Carlos throw more than 101 pitches. That last AB only lasted 1 pitch and I'm not even sure that he had anyone warming up in the bullpen.

It's a rant because you said a variation of the same thing about 10 times. We get it, you're not happy that Z was still in there but there's no need to keep repeating it over and over. As far as the Z question, you answered your own question with the bolded - it's a routine. And as far as PAP, my basic knowledge of them tells me that they don't start until you go over 100 pitches and, I believe, it's ((# of pitches) - 100) ^3. Z threw 101 pitches which would add up to a whopping 1 PAP. It's not that big of a deal. I'm being told that it's better to let Zambrano throw over 100 pitches because he's used to it and that makes no sense to me at all. There's a long list of reasons why he shouldn't have been out there and just how risky the decision was is completely irrelevant. Piniella is managing a roster of 25 guys and not a video game. He shouldn't be making these kinds of decisions. IT'S ONE FLIPPING PITCH OVER 100!! If he had thrown 99 pitches, would you be bitching and moaning so much? You're making it seem like he threw 115 or 120. Apparently nobody is getting my argument, or David's, so I'll start over. It has nothing to do with how much risk there was involved. It's that Lou made a decision that carried some risk when there was no reason to. Again, the amount of risk is totally irrelevant. I would have liked to have seen Zambrano taken out after 6, when his PC was in the 80s. We have three long relievers who need work. One will be held back for tomorrow, but that still leaves two. But the overall point is that there's no redeeming value to Lou's decision yet there's a risk, so why do it?

It's a rant because you said a variation of the same thing about 10 times. We get it, you're not happy that Z was still in there but there's no need to keep repeating it over and over. As far as the Z question, you answered your own question with the bolded - it's a routine. And as far as PAP, my basic knowledge of them tells me that they don't start until you go over 100 pitches and, I believe, it's ((# of pitches) - 100) ^3. Z threw 101 pitches which would add up to a whopping 1 PAP. It's not that big of a deal. I'm being told that it's better to let Zambrano throw over 100 pitches because he's used to it and that makes no sense to me at all. There's a long list of reasons why he shouldn't have been out there and just how risky the decision was is completely irrelevant. Piniella is managing a roster of 25 guys and not a video game. He shouldn't be making these kinds of decisions.