wastra

When we're paying his contract for a .600 OPS next year, I don't think I'll agree. What is the continual fascination with a 4M contract on a behemoth organization like the Cubs? Besides, what you want up the middle (C, 2B, SS, CF) is defense defense defense behind a solid pitching staff. Corner OF and corner IF are positions to produce your offense. I'm certainly not saying a .600 OPS is acceptable from anyone, but if he has the luxury of hitting 7th or 8th in the 2007 lineup, it's totally acceptable with his Gold Glove defense. Honestly, I'm more concerned about Cedeno. I'd rather have an average defensive shortstop who can hit like an average player or better. stellar defense is entirely overrated when it's in lieu of even marginal hitting.

I do not agree with these statements. I would suggest that the combination of all of them in the same lineup is pretty bad, but any two of them (excluding Neifi, who should only see limited PT, as he has lately) in a better balanced lineup would be fine. For instance, Pierre has been excellent the last 2.5 months with an OBP well over .350 and 25 EBHs, yet has only scored 32 runs in 67 games, due to a variety of factors. Unfortunately things stack up such that the first 4 are likely starters next year. If we could find a way to upgrade 2 of these positions offensively (including Pierre simply maintaing his current and career paces), and see a return of DLee to at least .900 OPS, the Cubs could get back to at least the middle of the pack or better next year in runs scored. A big IF at this point, but just a couple of smart moves and good health away. Pierre, Izturis, and Perez ARE huge offensive liabilities. Neifi Perez is by manysabermetrics, amongst the worst major league hitters of all time. Izturis isn't that far behidn him, with the exception of one half-season. Pierre has some positives, but he's still an overall liability even with his .350 over the past month. Guys who have to hit .320 to get a .350 OBP run hot and cold. that's bneen a symptom of this team for 4 years now- when gys aren't hitting it hard, they're not getting on base at all. A guy who takes al ot of pitches and is patient can still get on base even when he's not making the greatest contact, at least providing a bit of a cushion for hte rest of hte team during his inevitable slumps. In my opinion, you want not only guys who can hit for some average, but guys whose differetional between OBP and AVG is significant, because it means they can help you offensively WITHOUT hitting. Otherwise, the team is overly subject to hot and cold streaks, and consistant offensive production is near impossible to muster.

While I wouldn't call it the "textbook" move to pull him after fewer than 80 pitches, I can't get myself riled up over it, as he actually had some legit reasons to do it. It may be a bit questionable, but it's not asinine or anything like that (as most of Dusty's comments and decisions tend to be), and in some ways a pretty good move at the time.

Since Murton was one of our brightest stars last night, I expect he'll need to be rested all day today. :roll: my prediction: Pierre cf Izturiz ss Pagan lf Jones rf Mabry 1b Perez 3b Cedeno 2b Blanco c

No, having great defense vs. average defense matters very little if the hitting is roughly the same. And Good hitting/bad defense >>>>>> Good Defense/bad hitting. Defense is usually OVERRATED compared to offense, but it's not irrelevant.

Marmol actually reminds me a lot of Matt Clement right now. Live fastball, nasty slider, control issues. Obviously, we all saw Clement when he was more developed than Marmol is now, but I think their repertoire and their weaknesses are similar. I really think Marmol's upside is a slightly better Clement (strong #3 starter). His downside is...well, I doubt he'll REGRESS from where he is now, so somewhere around where he is now, which is a passable #5 unless he gets really wild..

We should have enough depth in the pen to absorb a Wood injury if it occurs (again). The issue here won't be whether they WANT him back, it's whether he'll come back at a price that isn't out of line with expectations. My worry is that some team will offer far more as a Flier on him than we will. So this should come down to how much he WANTS to be a Cub. If he's willing to take a low-base, high-incentive contract, there shouldn't be any hand wringing overh is presence in the pen. it's relying on him as a starter that we simply can't do under any circumstance.

I justl ike to point out that Walker was also highly coplimentary of the Cubs and the city of Chicago. "The Chicago Cubs are the best team in the world to play for." -Walker on ESPN Radio

I just don't understand the whole point of the Izturis deal. If the point of trading MAddux was to improve the ballclub, I don't know how that happened, given we already have a good fielding, weak (though slightly better) hitting middle infielder in Perez. If it was to clear salary, as is normally the case in such deadline deals, why not take hte prospects he mentioned? Why take on a $4million+ albatross (like Perez/Rusch/et al) in the process, AND send money to the Dodgers?!? I can only assume that Hendry really WANTS Izturis, which baffles the mind, since his own team valued him highly enough to move him out of position most of the this year and then traded for a BETTER shortstop (Lugo) at a CHEAPER cost that we got Caesar. I know he fits the Hendry mould of the day- slick fielding athlete. But we weakened an already weak offense yesterday by replacing Walker with Izturis in the order, and frankly, don't see us getting Soriano for 2B next year, and I doubt there are any better 2bs on the market this winter. He's painted himself into a corner now. he HAS to land a PREMIER left fielder this offseason, or risk the same disasterous type of seson we had this year. there aren't any other positions open to add someone, unless Hendry proves to be an even bigger baseball idiot that I think him, and lets Ramirez go without a big-time fallback available. So Hendry just basically guaranteed us the identical lineup to this year with a POSSIBLE left field upgrade. He's guaranteed at least two questionable hitting spots in the order instead of one. Good LORD- he'd beter add some absolute STUDS to the rotation.

The problem isn't so much their "plan" as it stands. It's that the "plan" changes 180 degrees every season. A few years ago it was to get power. Then it was to get good "team" players. Now it's defense. All of this is underscored with the belief that "tools" are better predictors than past performance. This means that live arms are a commodity no matter their health, development staqe, control, etc. It means that athletes are more valuable than guys who have just hit well in the past. It means that guys who showcase those athletic tools (by swinging, rather than taking pitches) are considered more successful than those who walk, because walking doesn't show off any athletic ability. Hence it overvalues defense, and undervalues actual statisitcal performance.

words cannot express the level of rising anger I feel at one Jim Hendry at the thought that we'll be paying both Neifi Perez and Caesar Izturis next year.

I've been prepared for this all year. In fact, I expected it prior to the season beginning. But for the life of me, if Neifi is now the everyday 2B, or Hendry/Baker even SAY he's done a good enough job to be an everyday 2B, I'm going to lose it. And if Neifi is the opening day starting 2B next year, I swear I'm done with the Cubs until both of these cowns (Hendry and Baker) are run out of the organization. We've complained about their overvaluation of neifi, we've even been chastised by those who think we're making too much of Neifi's presence on the team. But every hypothetical doomsday scenario we've been warning about concerning Neifi for over a year is looking more and more realistic with each passing moronic move Hendry makes. So, again, it's not that Walker was traded, or that they don't see him as the future 2B for the team that's got me- I like the production he gave us, but am not such a fan of his that I think he's god's gift to the game. It's really my sinking suspicion that Neifi is their guy going forward beyond this year that's getting to me.

There's still no excuse for how they played the first half+ of the season. If we can play like this now, when nothing's really changed with the whole Wood (still out)-Prior(winless)-Lee(out) situation, then the first half flop was inexcusable.

I doubt most voters pay attention to anything aside from the gross cumulative stats: W/L ERA K IP But these type of awards ARE generally driven by press as well-Dive into the stands and you'll get a gold glove when you're the 4th best defensive shortstop in your league, for instance. So if Z can turn this consecutive win streak into something really memorable, he can sway a lot of voters simply due to the coverage he'll get by the media. Outside shot, probably, since he'll have a hard time on this team winning consistantly...but he's done it so far.

Isn't that the case then of being prepared for injuries by constantly developing and bringing up young players that are capable of contributing? The Cubs chose not to develop position players. Their plan all along was to put almost 100% of their effort into building the farm through arms, even though young pitchers are the least dependable players in the game. The difference between the Twins ability to overcome injury and ours is that we only have 2-4 real difference makers on the team, and so we can hardly afford to lose ANY of them, whilst the Twins may not have a 2005 Derrek Lee on their offense, they are better balanced top-to-bottom. Hendry built this entire $95million roster around basically 5 players..Lee, Aram,Prior, Wood, and Zambrano. Everyone else is basically support staff, and are support staff caliber journeymen, for the most part, whose CEILING is at best support level. We may have lost 2 of our top 3 pitchers this year, which the Twins didn't, but we also only backed them up with rusch and bunch of guys projected to be in AA or AAA this year, after knowing they were likely injury risks. Gooney's dead-on here. Our problems stem from a miserably constructed roster. How anyone can look up and down our roster and say "Yeah, that's worth $95 million" is beyond me...because we're 20 games under .500, and the NL that we're losing to is noticeably worse than last year as a whole.

I don't know about that. At least early on, I have a feeling his ego wouldn't let him just milk the club without fielding a winning team. He is an egomaniac, after all.

There was a show about Bill James on the science channel during the homerun derby. He showed, statistically, that a team will, over the course of a season, score significantly more runs if the best hitters are together at the top of the order than if they are interspersed. But flip-flopping similar OBP guys, or guys who are even mildly close in terms of obp does very little. For example, he showed a team with 4 Babe Ruths (one of the best hitters) and 5 Sandy Koufaxes (one of the worst). The best lineup was the 4 Ruths at the top, minor flip-flopping of one or two guys with a Koufax did almost nothing, so long as the Ruths were more or less bunched at the top. It was significantly higher than having them at the bottom, as well. So if you have a lineup with good hitters and bad ones, you want the good ones at the top of the order and bad at the bottom. Statistically, that's really the only definite.

The interesting thing about baseball is that it really CAN (more than almost any other sport) be measured by statistics. Teh sheer sample sizes of numbers makes it possible. Sabrmetrics is one set of statistical measures that seeks to delve into the meaning behind the gross numbers (HRs, Hits, SBs, etc) to see how they AFFECT the game. It doesn't seek to disprove anything- it seeks to give meanings to those gross stats that are, in themselves, more measures of past performance than future predictors. It's just numbers- it's not a political theory.

He's definitely been hitting more line drives of late. It would be interesting to see his ground ball ratio from before his hot streak and since. Hitting the ball more sharply has also made his bunting and the grouders he does hit a little more effective, since defenses now have to respect the fact that the balls not going to ALWAYS be chopped to the 2B.

Except for Boston, Oakland, Yankees and Mets, 3 of whom won the 4 divisions at the time. Boston led the league in walks by a wide margin. Definitely. There are always a few teams ahead of the curve. Granted...they were WINNING divisions. But you could still field a team of the low OBP guys and be competitive, but uultiamtely, you will likely lose out to the guys who know what they're doing. Today, you can't even be competitive because most other teams have caught on to the need to NOT make unnecessary outs and get on base. Amazing, isn't it, how that works? High team OBP beats pretty much any other statistical measure of a team's offensive potential. That is, of course, unless you can field a team of potential olympic decathletes (read:bad but athletic ballplayers). That's worked real well for Jim Hendry. :wink:

Yeah, I was happy to see that as well. Bruce is doing a nice job of throwing in some "non-conventional" stats into his articles. The whole article really broke down a lot of the problems that most people have with Dusty overall, with examples. Agreed. The advent of computers and microsoft excel has allowed us to compile and examine far more data far easier than ever before. In the sport most easily evaluated by statistical results, there's simply no reason to limit ourselves to JUST very basic, general, and vague stats simply because they've been around forever. IMO, the Cubs are about 15 years behind the bell curve, while other franchises have embraced such radical innovations as OBP. The Cubs are still looking for a team full of Andre Dawsons. Don't get me wrong, he was and is my all-time favorite player. But he was very symptomatic of the era he played in...he wouldn't take a walk if you paid him. In 1988, you could field a team of low obp, high slg guys and win because every other team was doing it too- just as in earlier parts of the 20th century, you could field a team of slap-hitting guys who couldn't hit for power in the dead-ball era. Today, you can't. Teams have to learn to change with the times instead of relying on trends that are 30 years old (especially when this team couldn't do THAT right 30 years ago anyway).

The Science Channel had a whole show on Sabermetrics last night...really cool. They pretty much proved mathematically that the A#1 thing to look for in a hitter is whether they make a relative large number or small number of outs (hence, OBP). Everything else is very secondary, as outs are the only finite controllable aspect of the game. Boiled down to a level that math idiots like me can understand, it's: The more batters you send to the plate without making 3 outs, the statistically higher percentage number of runs a team scores. Stealing bases? not a major factor. Sac bunts? bad idea. High batting average/lower obp? fewer runs. Really a neat show.

He still doesn't get it. Maybe not some of the times, but he's correct here, so what is he not getting this time exactly? Prior had 2 outs with nobody on base and gave away two runs by walking consecutive batters before a couple of ordinary singles. No walks and likely no runs. later in the game, it was the same story. The problem is the staff continues preaching aggressive hitting, downplaying the base on balls all the while lamenting their fate from giving up too many runs via the base on balls. They continue to foolishly believe that "clutch" two-out hitting is the reason this team is not doing well offensively. The problem is that the coaching staff only sees a walk as a pitcher's error born from lack of control. He doesn't see it as a function of the hitter, but sees it only as a function of the pitcher. In truth, NO pitcher will go a whole game without dishing out enough balls off the plate to put a couple men on. It takes someone with a good eye to not swing at them. Baker doesn't understand that you don't need a "wild" pitcher to coax a walk- you need a hitter who isn't afraid to lay off a pitch 2-5 inches off the plate. You need a lineup of hitters who take lots of pitches so that they wear down the starter earlier AND see more of his "stuff" on that given day. Baker is that old-school (read: terrible) type of manager who doesn't understand that walks can be "earned" by hitters. It's hitting skill as well as a pitching error.

Williams won praise for using his entire roster and his manage-from-the-gut style. The complaints generally related to Williams' tendency to shuffle lineups without offering any explanations to the players. So...wait...are we talking about Dusty or Jimy? Will Jimy at least be professional enough to not end or being every sentence with "man" or "dude?"

.282 isn't BAD for a minor leaguer, but it's really pedestrian for an actual PROSPECT, especially when it's not paired with a great OBP or SLG.