Mephistopheles

And that will move Lowell (with his good defense) to the bench allowing Youkilis and his not so good defense to play third. I'd still hate to pitch with that defense, but man the offense would be absurd with four guys who could put up a four hundred on base percentage.

I heard that on Mike and Mike. The difference being Drew can actually play defense but it is the NY Times. Imagine Bonds and Manny on the same team? Imagine Bonds, Manny and Big Papi in the same lineup. Imagine that defensive alignment. Manny in right? Bonds in left? I feel sorry for their pitching staff and centerfielder.

Wasn't Prior supposed to be throwing sometime this month? Any word on that or was it just PR bull? EDIT: Wow, he is. http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070117&content_id=1780798&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

Vance you ought to do it, he's taking Kent - BUT ask to trade second round picks because then you choose in front of him and you can nab Adam Dunn.

1 vance_the_cubs_fan 2 IMB! 3 TruffleShuffle 4 Dobson 5 Rocket Sauce 6 kctigers23 7 Mark_R 8 wolf stansson 9 nilodnayr 10 Anze Kopitar 11 cuubs4life 12 baseball7897 Draft order Rules um serpentine draft, 5x5 roto scoring. Basically Yahoo rules.

The light went on. He just "gets it" now. I sure as hell hope that's not what Cubs management thinks, but I would hope that other managements do. Even in 44 bats, that's a tremendous difference in output. Frankly, I didn't think Ronny was capable of such offensive firepower. I dont care what he did, it's just that I'd MUCH rather have him as our starting shortstop over Cesar Izturis being a Cub. Izturis is just as bad offensively and makes quite a bit of money not to mention we traded a hall of fame pitcher for him (and didn't even get a prospect) okay im done beating that dead horse. For all intents and purposes Izturis = Cedeno

1. kctigers23 2. Anze Kopitar 3. nilodnayr 4. cuubs4life 5. Mark_R 6. baseball7897 7. vance_the_cubs_fan 8. Dobson 9. 10. 11. 12. cuubs4life, i would like to give veterans the spot if someone wants it, but for now you're fine.

44 at bats?

nobody questions that she is nice. they question her work ethic (so many errors in her work) and her lack of baseball acumen beyond the traditional cliches (how's that for redundancy?). I believe that is also why her HOF vote is questioned - because she does not display competency. Personally I don't understand why people expect such hard hitting in your face journalism from Carrie. I know that Cub fans are oppressed and everything, but I don't see her job description as being the hard hitting statistical analysis that everyone seems to expect. Id like her to show more since she has a vote for something as well-known as the HoF.

Yes because it's all about me and Catherine Zeta Jones.

Any evidence of this? Fiddling around with the Lineup Anlyzer seemed to indicate otherwise. the sims I have run indicate differently. the reason is that outs are precious commodities. while you don't need all power hitters, having batters that are sure outs is a huge liability. I haven't run anything with eqas of course. EqA is value per out, so it should average out evenly under that assumption.

Shoulda seen this coming with the collapse in his command last season. Dare I speak the last letter in the alphabet...

Actually I am pretty sure you quoted the wrong post.

And if you read, you will notice that I was talking about Zambrano's BB rate and high inning totals for a young pitcher - and he responded with K rate. It's a perfectly acceptable response. He was saying Z's K rates have gone up so its offset the BB rate and his PECOTA shouldn't be so negative. I then went and mentioned a couple other reasons that the picture is more like Jessica Simpson than Jessica Alba.

im giddy that college baseball starts in a couple weeks.

Wow, this is a sad story: http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/highschool/news/263140.html Warren was number 70 in the top 100 for the 2008 Class on BA. http://www.baseballamerica.com/images/bwarren07428309.jpg

In other news, the PECOTA cards should be out soon.

because pitchers, bench players and journeymen aren't averaged in, duh. That and all the good players get every at bat they possibly can, etc. Also the way these things are figured they are the weighted mean projections which are usually a bit higher than the 50th percentile projections - about 3 points higher to be precise.

Actually a lineup of .350s and .250s ought to produce more runs if you run through the formula. Not that is the definitive answer.

EqERA for the starting rotations (defense factored out as well as park) 1. 4.42 Milwaukee Brewers {Sheets, Vargas, Bush, Suppan, Capuano} 2. 4.49 Chicago Cubs {Zambrano, Prior, Hill, Lilly, Marquis} 3. 4.52 St. Louis Cardins {Carpenter, Wainright, Reyes, Mulder, Wells} 4. 4.65 Cincinnati Reds {Harang, Arroyo, Lohse, Milton, Ramirez} 5. 4.68 Pittsburgh Pirates {Snell, Duke, Gorzelanny, Maholm, Chacon} 6. 4.75 Houston Astros {Oswalt, Williams, Nieve, Wandy, Jennings} Wainright was at 4.36, I find that highly unlikely...I'll take that Prior 4.66 ERA with a grain of salt. If he's healthy there's no way he's that bad. If he's hurt then someone else is there, and Guzman's EqERA is 4.80. Over the course of the season, a handful of runs (that probably won't exist because of lower IPs picked up by RPs with ERA's under four). EqERA for Top 5 RPs, and here I may not have looked at who will make the teams the best... 1. 3.99 Houston Astros {Lidge, Qualls, Miller, Sampson, Wheeler} 2. 4.07 Pittsburgh Pirates {Gonzalez, Marte, Capps, Santos, Torres} 3. 4.09 Chicago Cubs {Dempster, Wuertz, Howry, Eyre, Cotts} 4. 4.22 Milwaukee Brewers {Capellan, Turnbow, Cordero, Wise, Villanueva} 5. 4.36 St. Louis Cardinals {Isringhausen, Thompson, Johnson, Rincon, Hancock} 6. 4.47 Cincinnati Reds {Bray, Majewski, KENT, Weathers, Coffey} I didn't include Wood's, because it's terrible, that and who knows what we're getting from him. Finally, using defense (averaged to 150 GP by the same lineups above) 1. +29.7 St. Louis Cardinals 2. +7.0 Pittsburgh Pirates 3. +3.2 Milwaukee Brewers 4. -1.8 Chicago Cubs 5. -6.0 Houston Astros 6. -25.4 Cincinnati Reds Take these with a grain of salt. It's not UZR and the DT fielding is suspect at best.

I looked at all of the offenses in the division, in two different ways. First I just averaged the projected eight starters for each team. Secondly I then did a weighted average for variances in each spot in the lineup. Straight Average: 1. .278 St. Louis Cardinals 2. .278 Chicago Cubs 3. .275 Milwaukee Brewers 4. .273 Cincinnati Reds 5. .270 Houston Astros 6. .267 Pittsburgh Pirates The fact that Pujols has a projected EqA at .349 and the Cubs have no one over .300 meant a lot. If Pujols goes down or even has a "down" year, they're done for. The Cardinals were slightly better here, averaging out at .2783 and the Cubs were down at .2775. The weighted average didn't do much and improved each teams by about .0075. I'll look ath EqERA in the rotations in a bit.

I find it hard to believe that there's any chance Carlos can win that case if it reaches it. Arbitration awarded salaries are much stickier than free agent salaries and last year Soriano lost his 12 million case but still was awarded a record 10 million.

he struck out more in 2006 in fewer innings than he had in 2005. His k/9 has gone up 4 straight years. and his groundball rates have gone down causing an expected increase in his home run rate.

In her defense, before the Internet her work was probably acceptable.

Zambranos walk rates and innings pitched have a lot to do with that.