fromthestretch

Apparently, St. Louis threw away their Bellhorn book when he got traded to the AL, thinking they were never going to face him again. Oops.

Tell me where I commented on the quality of Bellhorn's career as a whole. Wait...you can't? That might be because I didn't say it. I simply pointed out that you were wrong when you said he had one good year and was never heard from again. Lighten up, Francis. And I doubt that his success in 2004 had much to do with the "AL not having a big book" on him. It probably had a lot to do with his .364 BABIP. Considering interleague play, video footage, scouting, etc....I'm sure that AL pitchers were well aware of what type of hitter Bellhorn was.

Ask the 2004 Red Sox if they've heard of Mark Bellhorn. BoSox could name you everybody from that team from Martinez to Papelbon to Mueller to Youk. So that proves nothing. The point is that Bellhorn had more than one good year. I'm not trying to make a case for Ludwick. I actually agree with points 2 and 3 that you made above. But your first point wasn't accurate.

Ask the 2004 Red Sox if they've heard of Mark Bellhorn.

Even if his postseason stats were a good reason to deal Ramirez (they aren't), Eric Chavez isn't exactly a shining beacon of postseason success. His postseason OPS is lower than A-Ram's.

It's amazing to me the disrespect Dempster gets from some posters. He was our most consistent starter last year. While his 2008 season doesn't guarantee he can do it again, it shouldn't be looked at as a complete fluke either. Also, I'm always amazed that so many people think these athletes have the natural talent to hit 40+ HRs or win 18 games with a 3.00 ERA during their contract year and then put their talent to sleep for the rest of their contract. This really has nothing to do with him having this success in a contract year. It has a lot to do with him never coming anywhere close to this production as a starter prior to this season. I believe he came into 2008 with a career ERA just below 5.00 and a WHIP over 1.50 as a starter. Perhaps he made some changes that will allow him to be more successful, but it's not a stretch to think that he could post an ERA in the mid 4's and a WHIP approaching 1.40 next season. That's not taking anything away from what he did in 2008. He was great. But it wouldn't be wise to base an expensive four-year deal on that and that alone.

I'm not sure it would be wise to have both Harden and Marshall in the rotation. That's a likely 160 innings that you'll have to find from a 6th and possibly 7th starter. Harden is effective enough that even with missing 1/3 of the season the numbers for that spot are still excellent. I'm not so sure you can say that about Marshall. Sure, he'll give you a good 110-130 innings. But if the other 70-90 innings is filled in with an emergency starter, will that be worth more than Marquis? Plus with Harden having Marshall as that extra starter becomes even more valuable. He'll likely be able to be used to his full potential in that swing starter role because of those injury concerns with Harden. I was kind of thinking that Gaudin could step into that role if Marshall moves to the rotation.

As a starter the last two years, Marshall has done the following: 26 GS, 139 IP, 143 H, 63 ER, 18 HR, 45 BB, 100 K, 1.35 WHIP, 4.08 ERA At the very least, he should be replacing Marquis in the rotation.

I'll agree with this. As a starter, Dempster never put up a season even close to what he did in 2008. Signing him to a long-term deal, you have to believe that he's not only capable of replicating that success (or at least come reasonably close to it) but that he can do it into his mid-thirties. Both are rather risky assumptions. While Marshall isn't going to match what Dempster did this season, he's shown the past couple years that he can be effective, he's five years younger, and he isn't going to cost eight figures over the next 3-4 years.

What a huge contribution to this thread. Good job. Look, man. You could really help your own cause here by responding to the people actually trying to have a discussion about this rather than the ones you deem to be sarcastic and worthless to the thread. You keep making responses like the one I just quoted, you're just going to make things worse, and the discussion, which is already pretty much in the crapper at this point, isn't going to head anywhere.

This isn't little league or even high school. Major league players can overlook a lot of crap if the player helps them win games. Manny's attitude didn't prevent the Red Sox from winning the World Series in 2004 and 2007. They almost certainly wouldn't have won it without his production. So using this logic, i guess the Dodgers must have lost in the playoffs because of Manny ? Um, no. Not sure how you read that into what I typed. I basically said that Manny's attitude hasn't hurt his teams in the playoffs. It might cost him a year or two on the length of the contract, but then again, that could be attributed to his age, as well. You could see a few teams offering more per year with fewer years. I don't see the Cubs making a play for him. We all know Hendry and Piniella want a left-handed bat.

Because a lot of pitchers can have a good half-season before scouting reports come together. You claimed he had one good year. He actually had a couple very good seasons in the minors and a season and a half's worth of good performance at the major league level. It's not like he magically strung together 32 good starts in 2007 after doing nothing of note prior to that. And the point about scouting reports isn't really relevant here. He was very good in 2006 and was able to still pitch well in 2007. His struggles since then have little (if anything) to do with hitters adjusting. It has to do with his sudden inability to consistently find the strikezone. To be completely honest, that IS what I think Rich's problem is - failure to adjustment. With such a limited pitch repertoire, inconsitant pitch location, and questionable mental makeup on the mound....yea....I think it is failure to adjust. And if you disagree with that, instead of arguing over it, Im just curious - What is your opinion on why he fell apart? We can argue over if he's a good pitcher or not endlessly....but why do you think he suddenly collapsed? Who knows? It's not my problem to solve, and obviously the folks tasked with figuring it out haven't been able to yet. The bottom line is that he had control problems early in his minor league career. He straightened it out for a couple years at that level and then again at the major league level for about a season and a half. Now it's back, worse than ever. This has nothing to do with scouting reports as you mentioned a couple posts ago. I don't know if his problem is mechanical or mental (possibly a bit of both) or even if he's injured. Whatever is causing it, he's suddenly not able to command his pitches, outside of a single start here and there. That's the big problem here. If you can't command your pitches, you're going to walk a lot of hitters, and when you do throw a strike, there's a good chance it won't be a quality one. As many people have pointed out in this thread, it wouldn't be worth the Cubs just parting ways with him at this point. He'd have little trade value, and he's not exactly eating up a ton of payroll. As long as they don't go into 2009 counting on him to be a fixture in the rotation, that gives them some time to work with him and try to solve this problem. Anything he provides will be a bonus. We've seen that he's capable of being a quality major league starting pitcher. It's worth the effort to find out if he can get back to that level of performance.

Because a lot of pitchers can have a good half-season before scouting reports come together. You claimed he had one good year. He actually had a couple very good seasons in the minors and a season and a half's worth of good performance at the major league level. It's not like he magically strung together 32 good starts in 2007 after doing nothing of note prior to that. And the point about scouting reports isn't really relevant here. He was very good in 2006 and was able to still pitch well in 2007. His struggles since then have little (if anything) to do with hitters adjusting. It has to do with his sudden inability to consistently find the strikezone.

This isn't little league or even high school. Major league players can overlook a lot of crap if the player helps them win games. Manny's attitude didn't prevent the Red Sox from winning the World Series in 2004 and 2007. They almost certainly wouldn't have won it without his production.

:?

Why do Rich Hill's detractors always say he just had one good season in the majors and completely ignore the awesome 2nd half he had in 2006?

I'd hit that. Well played, sir.

He would be nearly half of the Rays payroll. They'd have to pick up a TON of his salary to get a guy like Davis or Hellickson. Do you think the Rays would give the Tigers a lower tier prospect and take on all/most of Maggs' contract? I know he would be 1/3rd their payroll or whatever, but they should have a lot more attendance next year and all of this year's playoff revenue to spend. Let's be honest, if they don't start spending money, it's going to eventually become a sad situation there. They won't be getting high picks anymore because of their good record and if they don't spend any money, they're going to have a 5 year window of being good if they don't resign all of their guys (like they did with Longoria) and then back to the crapper. They could deal a few of them off for prospects as their price tags get too high. Also, the fact that they might not have the first pick of the draft doesn't prevent them from getting quality players in the draft.

Considering Moyer's age, some of those might be grandkids.

Outraged? The guy had four bad starts to begin the season. You know what he did in his last 30 starts? 17-6, 3.58 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, 8.23 K/9, .231 BAA He's gone 32-17 with a 3.95 ERA and 1.18 WHIP in two seasons as a Cub. Tough to find much fault with that. And I'm still curious why you don't like Marshall. He did just about everything asked of him this year.

How is that measured? What's included in that? I'm not familiar with that statistic. http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/wpa.shtml

Who hits well in the clutch season after season. Manny has consistently been better with RISP throughout his career Not appreciably so (about 55 points of OPS). That's almost all from him having better OBP with runners in scoring position, which could probably be attributed to pitchers being more careful with him when there are guys on base. Where are you looking? Here's what I found: Bases Empty: .299/.386/.568/.953 Runners On: .330/.436/.620/1.056 RISP: .330/.454/.607/1.061 RISP w/2 outs: .315/.463/.605/1.068 Bases Loaded: .326/.378/.692/1.071 Close & Late: .276/.410/.491/.901

Who hits well in the clutch season after season. Manny has consistently been better with RISP throughout his career And in "Late & Close" situations, he's been worse.

Yep. They pretty much prove that over the course of a career, a player's postseason numbers don't deviate too much from his regular season numbers. There really aren't a lot of players whose postseason numbers are significantly better than their regular season numbers. Manny was already given as an example of this. His postseason numbers are very good, but they're a notch below his regular season stats. Others that have been noted as "clutch": Reggie Jackson was slightly better in the postseason: RS: .262/.356/.490 PS: .278/.358/.527 Derek Jeter is pretty much right at his career stats: RS: .316/.387/.458 PS: .309/.377/.469 David Ortiz' stats don't show much variation between the two: RS: .287/.382/.554/.936 PS: .293/.401/.543/.944 Of course, if you look hard enough, you'll find people who have a small sample size of postseason at-bats where their rate stats are much better than their regular season stats. However, it's doubtful they would have kept up that pace if given enough at-bats in the postseason. I mean, do you really believe that Sandberg would have continued to hit .385/.457/.641 in the postseason if given the same number of at-bats as Jeter?

I'd be curious to know your reasoning for this. Me too. Ted Lilly has been solid for the Cubs. Marshall hasn't exactly pitched like Howry either.