Mephistopheles

Moore's got the arm and hands to play 3B. His footwork isn't very good and a deficiency like that would be magnified at second.

Donald Veal and Eric Patterson made Goldstein's Tuesday Morning 10 Pack. Patterson's paragraph didn't really say much, here's what he had to say on Veal http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Sports/Headlines/sptCUBS01090506.htm and an article on the DCubs. Like a season in review type thing.

http://www.boisehawks.com/news/?id=5545 Boise to announce their new name/colors/etc Nov 15th.

Given the Cubs' luck I would assume it's an injury.

The Rays have a brighter future through the minors than anyone. I'll still take Neimann over Longoria, though I know I'll be in the minority with that one. Neimann's got the big fastball and the big slider. He also gets a huge downward plane on his FB.

I know this is like three weeks old, but it's first I've seen of it: Muskat in one of her mailbags. http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060814&content_id=1609547&vkey=news_chc&fext=.jsp&c_id=chc uhh, that's like the opposite of what i thought and have read that ceda is.

Price could develop into a nearly ML ready guy like Weaver and Miller. Wieters is an all around bat. He can hit for average and power.

why not draft matt wieters and move him to third. fast track him and viola. the cubs can pick whatever the hell they want if they continue to suck

ooh, it was the ninth inning down by 2? Shoulda used win expectancy, it certainly would have been a negative play at the time.

In that inning: +0.38 runs - Mark Ellis +0.23 runs - Throwing Error -0.17 runs - Marco Scutaro (even though he moved the runner up) +0.12 runs - Dan Johnson -0.11 runs - Nick Swisher When Dan Johnson came up, the average number of runs was .98 runs.

Notre Dame's defense doesn't look any better than it did last January. Choice and Johnson are trashing it.

Have you ever seen retrosheet.org? It doesn't have every box score for the last 100 years. It has boxscores with play by play since like 1972, with a lot of box scores from before then. That's more than enough information to get run expectancy. In fact it's probably better to only use recent data because the run environment is similar. http://retrosheet.org/boxesetc/B09140BSN1922.htm It has quite a few boxscores from as far back as 1922 with play by play. I don't particularily care what the bench's reaction is. Just because they think it is good, it doesn't make it good. Yes, an out moving a runner over is better than making an out with moving the run over, as I demonstrated, such situations don't occur enough to make a difference. I bet if you polled every manager in the American League Derek Jeter would end up getting voted as the one of the leagues top three defensive shortstops. This finding would get laughed at by the sabermetric community, in fact it happened: http://www.baseballamerica.com/online/majors/features/262142.html

Pardon me if I missed it, any ideas on his PC? More importantly his NP-S

Fair enough, but two things. 1.) Do you want a hitter of Aramis' quality trying to move runner over instead of drive them in, honestly? 2.) Aramis has had 110 opportunities (AB-SO-H). So one third of those could have came with less than 2 outs, 73 chances. Then ARam has 13 GIDP, giving him 60 chances. And again, we know he didn't do it every time. 51 total chances for David Wright 36 total chances for Jacque Jones

Just look at Juan Pierre. Possible situations that can move a runner up are: 1__ _2_ 12_ 1_3 Of course giving an out for a sac fly is a little different. I am not counting those. 1__ 55 ABs, 2 SO, 18 H _2_ 40 ABs, 3 SO, 5 H 12_ 21 ABs, 0 SO, 5 H 1_3 11 ABs, 3 SO, 0 H That's a grand total of 127 AB, and 91 opportunities to do it (AB-SO-H). That's roughly 2 opportunities every 3 games. With a runner on first, it's probably going to happen a LOT less. Not to mention that you have to have 0 or 1 outs for this situation to occur. Just say that the odds are 2:3 for it to be 1 or 0 outs. Then all of a sudden he has roughly 60 chances. Juan has 5 GIDP, tack off another 5 shots and we're down to 55. Juan also has 10 sac bunts, so we're down to 45. That's roughly half a win if he does it every time he has a chance. Also we know that the other guy we are comparing him to will do it a few times as well. JP is an odd case because he never strikes out. Those hitters will have less chances. We both know JP doesn't do it EVERY chance he has.

Of course for a team it'll happen a lot, but for an individual player? It might be more than 20, but say it happens 100 times. That's 1.2 wins, and I know for a fact it doesn't happen 100 times. Also, if a player goes into the AB thinking, "I am going to move the runner over and make an out." Is he really helping the team? The out is worth more than moving up a base, especially in a run environment like Wrigley Field and especially with a pitching staff that sucks.

It truly is poetic, but moving runners over and such aren't things that happen as often as you think. How often does a non-bunt out move a runner from first to second? That's very rare and it's not a situation that improves your likelihood of scoring. Of course moving the runner over and making an out is better than not moving the runner over and making an out. I don't know how often an average player moves a runner over in a non bunt play - I would assume it's less than 20 times a season. Even if someone did it zero times, moving the runner over would net an average .122 runs each time, making the net effect just 2 runs over 162 games. It's a situation that simply doesn't come around as much as one might think. Also, I am a strong believer in winning breeds chemistry, not chemistry breeds winning. Players are professionals, we should expect them not to allow issues in the clubhouse effect their play. I can assure you that if Mark Prior boned Sarah Wood, Kerry wouldn't be thinking about it when he's pitching. He's not going to sit there thinking, "Is Prior on the bench? Can I see Sarah in the stands?" This is of course an extreme situation and anything less would be the same. The thing is in baseball there is little player to player contact on teammates. There's not much time for communication on the field. You take your ABs by yourself. You field the ball by yourself. The ONLY situation I think something like this could arise is pitcher/catchers because they're the only ones who really work together. The rest of baseball is essentially an individual sport. Picking your teammate up when he screwed up? What does that mean? 2 out RBI? Stuff like that really doesn't have much year to year correlation as an ability. It's more than likely a combination of how well the player is hitting at the time and random probabilities. Hustle? Yeah that is something that sounds nice, but if a player who doesn't hustle still performs better than the player who hustles, the player who isn't hustling is still the better choice. Now if two players have the same talent, of course take the guy who hustles. There are two things about Ramirez. How do you know he doesn't play hard? When he doesn't run out a groundball? Just because he's not a chatterbox it doesn't mean he doesn't care. He doesn't strike me as talkative person, so it's no surprise that he looks passive on the field. Even if he IS someone who doesn't always hustle, I am not stupid. I won't take an inferior player over him because at the end of the day Ramirez's production is still going to be better. Sure Derek Jeter's got a good attitude. He's politically correct and is a nice teammate, but to say that the Yankees win because they have a bunch of guys like him isn't really correct. They win because they have a lot of good players. Whether or not they are nice guys or not doesn't really make a difference. Their statistics have backed up their success, so what has this chemistry done? Affect their statistics? Perhaps, but there's little data to suggest that this is true.

The DRays have no use for Prior. Their window of *possibly* competing is probably 2009-2011 when their next wave of talent comes through (Neimann, Longoria, Davis, McGee, etc) and their wave in now are in their mid to late 20s (Kazmir, Young, Upton, Crawford, etc). Mark Prior would be a free agent by then and I certainly don't see a chance he signs there long term.

Two uneventful innings pitched for Sean Gallagher thus far. 2 IP, 1 H, 1 K, 4 FB, 2 GB, 7 BF

Kottaras is a decent defensive catcher with high-end onbase skills displayed in the minors, what a shock that Theo is attracted to him And what a shock that Hendry wasn't attracted to him when he traded Maddux and Walker.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/images/dprice06428309bf.jpg http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/college/features/262362.html Price won BAs summer player of the year. It also looks like his changeup is developing into a good pitch.

Maybe Sean Gallagher can pitch his way into Kevin Goldstein's top 20 right-handed pitching prospects. He's one of the five honorable mentions: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=5475

Why couldn't they have implemented that rule last year? Darn...

For what it's worth, Bellhorn had + 1.54 wins in "clutchiness" for the Red Sox in 2004. Minus 2.01 for the Cubbies in 02 though.