wastra

I don't know how many different threads this argument needs to span before it gets read, but this is a poor observation. Please go and study Sorianos career splits and then reconsider your opinion. His best numbers are continually demonstrated at leadoff, with mediocre to poor numbers in the 3 and 5 hole (respective to what you want out of those slots). The big-time flashy numbers that make Soriano attractive occur at leadoff, and it is easily his best lineup split for his career. Sometimes a spade is a spade - Washington figured that out. Where did he bad in 2002 and 2003? Granted his best numbers occured this season but was that due to him batting leadoff, or just improving as a ballplayer?(or sadly a contract season) I simply can't agree with putting that kind of RBI potential at leadoff. Didn't BP produce a study that indicated your best hitters should be in the 1, 3 and 4 spots of the lineup? I know for sure that 1 and 3 were two of the spots but can't remember if the 4-spot is the 3rd. Having Soriano, Lee, and Ramirez in those 3 spots is exactly what should happen if that study has merit. I don't know about BP, but Bill James has written and spoken about his studies of lineup construction literally scores of times. Statistically, the best hitters should, according to James, hit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 in the order. Basically, the more at bats you can secure for your better hitters, the more runs they'll likely create over time. It's important to note, I think, that this ignores situational issues. It may create the most runs over a full season, but cannot speak to the liklihood of scoring in any particular situation. hence, there ARE times when a team might want to construct a lineup SLIGHTLY differently, as James himself admits, but by-and-large, best to worst is the best theoretical lineup.

I was struck by a thought as I sat unmoving in morning traffic behind yet ANOTHER wreck on the expressway caused, according to the radio, by a woman trying to apply makeup in a minivan while driving :evil: who rear-ended a stopped SUV and caused a four car mess. How did it get so bad? I honestly believe that half the people who post on this board, if given an accounting/legal advisor to handle some of the contractual issues, would have put together a far better team than the one we are stuck with, and wouldn't have spent more money to do it. I mean, I am the first to criticize Jim Hendry's decisions on many occassions, but he can't be so totally clueless can he? Is there another team with a $100 million payroll as horrendously BAD as we are? Has there EVER been one? I understand that he wasn't just handed $100m and given a list of players to fill out an empty roster and contracts were added over tiem to fill holes, etc, that stick around to haunt us- this roster evolved over 3-5 years. But the more I think about it, the more I believe this team was a display of collossal baseball ineptitude the likes of which baseball might never have seen- at least not in my lifetime.

I was Nielsen home for two years until I moved, and a friend of mine and his wife still are. They profile you before giving you the box to find out what your demographics are. For example, at the time, I was late 20s, single white male, income $XXXXX-XXXXX, etc. They use all kinds of data to extrapolate that to how many people and what kinds of people watched. So for every 20,000 single males in that demographic group, they give one a box. For every 20,000 households with X number of children between ages of X and X, they give them a box. So they're not randomly distributed, either, but statistically allocated.

No one has said it will be kept secret. There's a meaningful difference in perception of actively advertising it versus letting people infer it, or more importantly, letting the player handle it himself. TRYING to sabotage his trade value (whatever it may be now) is just stupid, and would only be done to placate unreasonable fans who think they own the organization or to publicly humiliate and devalue Jacques Jones, which is suicide for the organization. If they let it happen naturally, or on Jacques' terms, they can spin it any way they want- he can say he didn't like them letting Dusty go, for example, or wanted to be re-united with _______, etc. Meaningful difference? I don't see it. If there's a story on the sports page titled "Jim Hendry inquires about Craig Wilson" it won't take a rocket scientist to do the math. At that point Jacque's value wouldn't be signficantly affected by an annoucement of a platoon that everybody already knew about anyway. It's a huge difference. For one, the Cubs could always pass it off as simply wanting a better 4th outfielder than Pagan. Second, it allows Jacques to seek a trade on his OWN TERMS, rather than being seen as disgruntled with his role. It is important for signing free agents for players to feel the organization gives them that type of respect- warranted or not. No one is going to go to a team where guys are seen as being signed and immediately disparaged BY THE ORGANIZATION and dumped the next year. Look at the Yankees and how the ARod thing is being handled. the organization is doing it right by ARod. They likely WILL Listen to trade offers, but they're publicly allowing him professional courtesy and dignity by NOT saying "He can't hack it in the post season, we're shopping for a replacement." The simple truth is there is NO REASON to come out and say "we want to platoon Jones". All it will do is * off Jones and accomplish nothing constructive.

No one has said it will be kept secret. There's a meaningful difference in perception of actively advertising it versus letting people infer it, or more importantly, letting the player handle it himself. TRYING to sabotage his trade value (whatever it may be now) is just stupid, and would only be done to placate unreasonable fans who think they own the organization or to publicly humiliate and devalue Jacques Jones, which is suicide for the organization. If they let it happen naturally, or on Jacques' terms, they can spin it any way they want- he can say he didn't like them letting Dusty go, for example, or wanted to be re-united with _______, etc.

I do not see the reason that the Cubs would ever announce that they are going to platoon Jones. At least not until the platoon partner is signed. Lou should just have a meeting with Jones and tell him that is what he is planning on doing. He can do that in November if he wants to but I wouldn't expect to find out about it since I'm just a fan. At that point Jones can demand a trade and go to the press if he wants to. Just because a player wants to be traded dosen't mean it will happen either. I just don't see Lou coming out to the press and saying "I'm going to platoon Jones, I'm not sure with who yet but I'm sure we can find someone" That's exactly what I was trying to say earlier. The last thing you do is play these things out in the media. Players don't like that, and free agents don't want to come where such issues are handled through the press. On top of that, announcing he's going to be platooned only lessens what trade value his season may have accrued. hence, you handle this in private with the manager AND the player. Jacques can go public if he likes, but leave that to him. You don't want to try trading a guy labelled as "disgruntled". Free agents sure aren't goign to line up to play for a manager/gm who announces such things, decreasing Jones' value for contracts/trade status, to the public. It's F-I-N-E to platoon him, and go after someone to handle that. But don't air out the laundry in public- that serves no positive or useable purpose from the organization's standpoint. To be quite frank, the less other teams know about the Cubs offseason intentions until the latest possible moment, likely the better.

I don't think Lou should be public about whether or not Jones needs to platoon. He can be sly about it, and say "we're looking for a 4th outfielder who is strong against lefties." Or if he thinks Jones is the man, might squelch rumours quickly and say "Jacques is our man in right." But overall, It's not good policy to publicly come in and right away say Joens isn't good enough to face lefties. You do that in private with the GM. the public will hear about it through the grapevine, maybe, or infer it from the guys Hendry has discussions with. Either way, I HOPE the new on-field manager and our general manager start having internal- even informal if necessary- discussions RIGHT NOW about what needs to be done with this roster to contend in 07. Otherwise, neither needs to be in their jobs. It seems like the MLB teams are basically saying "to heck with the traditional quiet period during the playoffs...we're getting to work right now." Hendry has been as much a part of that trend as anyone- maybe moreso.

First off, it's encouraging that Hendry seems to want to spend big buck and put together a pretty dominant team NOW. Second, I have littel faith he'll do it successfully. Third, I'd rather pass on Lee and spend the money getting Soriano, Schmidt AND another quality starting pitcher.

I thought he had nice definition in his shoulders and arms, but his abs could have used a little more work if you ask me. :-k Baseball players don't have to be models to be in game shape. I agree - In fact I think that most are too "in" shape. The zero percent body fat doesn't work well in baseball. I'm sorry, but that makes absolutely no sense. I didn't make the comment, but I've read several doctors' opinions on it. Over the course of a season, due to travel and SO many games over SUCH a long season, ballplayers tend to lose 10-20 pounds over the course of a season. It's actually more likely to lead to injury when you lose 20 pounds of muscle mass than if you lose 10 pounds of muscle mass and 10 pounds of fat I have NO CLUE if it's right or wrong, but I've read it a few times. SOME level of body fat is healthy- that I DO know.

I've assumed Piniella was going to be the manager for a while now, so it's kind of hard to react one way or the other. My timetable for serious thought on this team is once Hendry starts making player decisions. It will be pretty annoying to read about how much of a difference Piniella made if they do win next year, but if they win, I'll live with that annoyance. It seems pretty clear that Hendry believes Detroit will win the WS, going with the crotchety old manager who won't accept failure approach. I really doubt that's why Hendry hired Piniella. I believe (just guessing) that if the TRIB does raise salary (115mil) the upper management as well as Hendry prolly want someone that has experience. I'm sure that is a big reason as well, but unfortunately, mimicing the latest "team of the year" has been Hendry's M.O. for many years. Every offseason, hendry starts talking about how he wants to build the team like whatever the previous surprise team was like. And I don't have any problems with a GM wanting to take an established, respected manager, btw. When your job is on the line, like Hendry, you don't save it by reaching out and taking chacnes on unproven guys- you sign the "safe" guy. f they win, he gets to take credit for bringing in a big name manager. If they lose, he can say "I did all I could- I even brought in the biggest name manager." Ultimately, Lou is the "safe from criticism" pick win or lose. He may fail, but it's tough to blame Hendry for hiring someone with his reputation.

It IS a very Yankees-like move, though isn't it? Throw money at the biggest available name to solve a problem? I'm not sure it's a GOOD thing, but it seems very Yankee-like to me.

Well, I don't know if Lou will be as bad as Dusty or not (I tend to think not), but Jim Hendry continually seems to gravitate to the worst of available options on almost every personnel decision he makes, and that is starting to infuriate me.

Of course, this was the worst National League I can ever remember, so they scored a few more runs against markedly worse competition.

This isn't about being ruthless, nice, or otherwise. It's about facing facts. The facts are that the Cubs stink, and a big reason they stink is overvaluing and overpaying guys who don't help the team win nearly as much as our management seems to think they do. I'm sure Juan Pierre is a genuine nice guy, good human being, and fine teammate. I'm sure he does indeed work his *** off mroe than anyone else on the roster. If we were a team loaded to the gills with talented players, he'd be a GREAT compliment in the clubhouse batting 8th or as the 4th outfielder. Unfortunately, our management's overvaluing of mediocre players has saddled us with some contracts on several medicore players who will be very difficult to get away from, and left us with a couple of problems. We need both pitching and offensive upgrades. With the emergence of Matt Murton, Jones' contract, and the inexplicably bad trade for Izturis, that only really leaves CF and 2B to upgrade. We can't carry a bunch of average or worse offensive guys like Jones, Cedeno, Bynum (please don't bring him back, Jim), Izturis, etc AND throw another contract at Pierre, that guarantees average or worse production then at up to 3 or 4 lineup spots depending on what happens at 2B. That simply cannot happen for a team with a massive payroll like the Cubs.

Steinbrenner is a weird man. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2619564

I jsut want a relatively hands-off manager. 75% of a manager's job should be done when the tea is NOT on the field. 95% of the manager's job when the team IS on the field should involve pitching changes. IMHO, the more managers meddle by calling hit-and-runs, steals, bunts, etc, the more they hurt a solid team. A good manager prepares his players well through scouting and teaching, handles the media well, and writes a pretty standard, logical lineup. He shopuld understand the "logic" of baseball as opposed "hunches" and tradition. A bad manager thinks he can significantly and positively affect the outcome of a game through his in-game hunches and calls (excluding pitching changes, which should be pretty-much by-the-book, imo).

Wastra, I respect your opinion and I used to love reading your posts even back in the ESPN message board days, but better check your numbers again. Considering the real stats, It is ridiculous to say that average major league pitchers would have a .330 OBP over the course of 700 at bats. It just isn't realistic. Pierre is not a great CF, but he has still put up a respectable career OBP of .350, he still has decent speed and he can still steal bases. The problem with your argument is that you are only acknowledging the negatives and spinning them by making his numbers worse than they actually are. I'm pretty sure that sabrmeterics do not MEAN that. :wink: What I find funny is that the same people that will take Murton's second half numbers and use them to make the case that he is better/equal to Carlos Lee, will completely discount Pierre's numbers since June. Especially considering Pierre's career OBP was much higher than he was playing earlier in the season. If Pierre could revert back to his career OBP or sustain his sucess that he had from June through October, he would have some value to some team. Heck, he would even be a viable leadoff candidate. I did not say pitchers averaged a .330 OBP, said that teh ML average OBP INCLUDES pitchers in the NL, so if you take them out, Pierre actually fares worse against the ML average. What positives do you want to highlight? He doesn't hit for a particularly high average, he doesn't have power, he doesn't get on base, he doesn't field particularly well, and he doesn't steal bases all that successfully. He's average-to-worse at almost everything. What he DID do is pile up distorted gross numbers due to NOT taking walks and swinging at everything over 730+ plate appearances. Yes, he has good foot speed, but as Goony poitned out, he isn't real good at using it. Yes, he's tough to strike out, but as I've shown, that does not translate into particularly high ability to get on base as opposed to making an out. What really is his strength that needs highlighting?

Without going into the rest of the post (which I agree with the spirit of, if not the intensity), Pierre had 699 AB's this year, not 799. Nice catch- sorry I did indeed mean 699, not 799. The numbers were all run on 699, so it doesn't change the gist of my argument, just the gross number cited.

Juan Pierre does NOTHING particularly well. NOTHING. He's fast, but he's not a particularly good baserunner. He makes contact, but he's not a particularly good hitter. He's quick, but doesn't cover a particularly large amount of ground in center. He's a proto-typical Hendry guy...an athlete who isn't really all that good at baseball. And if I have to read that he's valuable for leading the league in hits again, I'll puke. Maybe some people just don't understand what sabremetric stats MEAN, and that's why these gross stats get so much play on message boards. Let me put this in gross terms you don't have to read a Bill James book to understand (though I highly recommend it to all baseball fans): He hit .290, not .340. Then man had 799 at bats. That's almost EIGHT HUNDRED. He reached base 234 times this year in roughly 834 plate appearances. The AVERAGE major league hitter (including PITCHERS, for goodness' sake) would have reached base 230 times in that many apearances. If you took out pitchers and pinch hitters, how "average" would that be? If you took pitchers out of calculatign the average hitter in the NL, don't you think the "average" would make it on base 4 more times than with them included? And since he has less power than half the pitchers, the averag ehitter would have had a whole lot more total bases (more doubles, triples, homers), makign those times reaching base more productive. Juan Pierre is a mediocre-at-best player who got far more opportunities at the plate than anyone else of his caliber. It's just that simple. As for Dusty- he certainly didn't get a roster ready to conted for the NL crown, but I'm pretty darn sure the roster shouldn't have been as bad as it was this year, even with the injuries. Having a abd roster doesn't excuse Dusty for manglign that bad roster in total defiance of an sort of baseball common sense.

Havign scrubs IS a problem on a team managed by a guy who actively says he wants EVERYONE to play as much as possible. When hendry hired Baker, he should have known then that he can't have 3 25th men on a roster, because they'll get 350 at bats each. Lots of teams have those gusy- they just don't play them like regulars. And I'm not using this as a reason to bash dusty- that's his philosophy for good or bad, and we all knew that before he was hired. We have a GM who built roster totally incompatable with that philosophy, and that's all on Hendry.

Pierre is incredibly average at getting on base. that means,since the average includes scrubs, subs, and pitchers in the NL, that He's not really a very good offensive player. To be perfectly fair, the only thing Pierre does that is clearly above average is make weak contact- he does that remarkably well. He doesn't get on base, he's fast, but he's nto a particularly GOOD baserunner. He doesn't field all that well, and certainly fcan't throw to save his life. He also has nothing resembling a hint of power. That being said- he'd make a fine 4th outfielder to pinch run and sub late in games. the problem is giving a guy like him 730+ plate appearances. Few, if any other teams would give a player of his limited abilities that many opportunities. As far as hit gross hits numbers- the guy only hit around .290. It's not like he hit .335 for the seaon to get that many hits. If a guy gets 200 hits batting .290, you know it's due to an absurd number of at bats, not great hitting. .290 is solid, but it's incredibly unspectacular.

I figured out that the major leagues' average hitter would have reached base a grand total of two fewer times than Pierre did this year with the same # of plate appearances...and would have had a lot more total bases. The average hitter would have had fewer hits (lower batting average), but more walks (better BB/PA rate) and more total bases (higher SLG). Oh yeah...and that includes the NL pitchers in those "average" numbers.

I want a manager who does very little managing, to be honest. I want a manager who fils out RELATIVELY the same lineup card (intelligently) day-in and day-out. I want a manager who makes sensible pitchign changes (the most active role a mgr should take is with pitchers). I want a manager who preaches patience at the plate and stresses fundamentals. Aside from that, and helping rookeis adjust, I tend to believe that the more decisions a manager makes, the worse off the team is. All in all, I simply want a manager who puts the best team on the field in the msartest lineup and lets them do their thing as much as possible. Any more about their preferred "style" or what they like/dislike is just bad news for a team, imo. Managers don't win many ballgames, but they can certainly help lose them by trying to be TOO involved in the playing of the games.

What does that mean? Again, are you kidding me? Not too hard to understand what that means. What does leadership have to do with winning baseball. You really don't think that a good leader vs. someone who is lousy at leading makes a difference? Not in baseball. The manager's job is to put his team in the best position to win. If you want to call that leadership, I'll go with it. Aside from making a lineup card and changing pitchers I don't see how a "leader" has any effect in a baseball game? I am of the opinion that a properly trained babboon could manage a solid major league team as far as on-field game decisions. When they say "by the book", they literally mean it. If you make the logical decision that common baseball knowledge says to make 99.9% of the time, you're doing a good job. Unfortunately, MLB has a fetish for former players in that role who can't let go of the fact that they're not on the field any longer, when a better choice is probably a well-read impartial stats-geek who might or might not have a ton of professional experience. It's motivation and gameplanning that makes a manager special, IMO. When our gameplan for 3 straight seasons in EVERY game was to go up "being aggressive" and not clogging the bases, we've had a managerial failuer. Ultimately, I think a manager can hurt far more than they can help. You don't win because of a manager, but you can lose due to one's incompetence. Just put the logically best lineup on the field as often as possible, and look at the numbers before making in-game changes. Protect guys from injury, and do a decent job scouting opposing pitchers. it's guys like Baker who want to constantly change around lineups, constantly ignore the logical numbers, and bunt and every other at bat who screw it up. Justp ut the best team in th best lineup on the field as often as possible and get the * out of the way. Otherwise, the job of a manager is a PR man and a counsellor. THAT'S where MLB experience can come in handy- helping young guys get acclimated, teaching them the ropes of living on the road for am onth at a time, helping them deal with media pressure and fan pressure, etc.

I think it all depends on who we can get this offseason. If you can get a Soriano, you probably have to bite the bullet and put Theriot on the bench. But it's not like there are 7 clearly better 2Bs available. Maybe a Kent or someone like that, but not many. We have to upgrade the offense somewhere, and any 2 of the 3 outfield spots (if a trade can be made) and 2B are the likeliest spots. Fortunately/Unfortunately, the reality of our team is that we have to add some players, which means someone (or some people) are going to be out in the cold. Murton, Pierre, Jones, or Theriot are the only real possibilities (because there aren't many great SSs available and we're locked into a crappy contract with Izturis, making SS an unlikely place for a change, IMHO). The one thing about Theriot I'll say is that if it comes down to keeping him as a starter or keeping Pierre, I'll got with Theriot. I think he has a good shot of having BETTER OBP numbers than Pierre did this year at worst- a Better shot than Pierre has of suddenly havign a .365 OBP which I don't think is out of the realm of possibility for Theriot, though I won't bank on it.