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He was always the most likely of the possible transfers. He has talent, but he always struck me as being more happy as a possible star in a more wide open system. He was always going to be an energy guy for IU that played a lot in some games and not at all in others. I wish him well. He apparently was a very hard worker. The only thing I'm worried about is that it hurts IU's shaky APR even further, but if that's the only point lost from this entire year (or maybe 1 more if somebody else transfers) it won't be too bad.

Really depends on what you mean by regular basis, but, then again, I don't see how what you're saying contradicts anything that I said. If you're trying to suggest that he was averaging anywhere near 95, you're way off base. Yeah, I looked at the graphs and according to those, Harden threw at least 5 95+ pitches only once in a Cub uniform. He did lose velocity towards the end of the year though. When he came to the Cubs he was averaging 92-93 on his fastball and touching 95-97 3-4 times a game. By the last month of the season (other than on 9/18 where he seemed to be pushing what he had left) his average fastball was down around 89-90 and frequently his best recorded fastball of the day was at 93-94.

Cubs statistics have Hill throwing out 5 out of 7 baserunners this spring while Bako has thrown out 3 of 7.

I think he's hit really well in the spring. I haven't been paying much attention. Koyie Hill has had a very good spring but the problem for him is that Bako's resurgence the last couple days means that he's right on his heels: Hill-39 AB's, .385/.429/.538 Bako-31 AB's, .355/.394/.516 They really have a chance to pick either one of them but Hill's claim on the job has greatly diminished over the last few days.

Oh no. I'm happy that you brought it up. Fox is an interesting case. As for the last question, it's one of those dilemmas for the organization. They don't want to really use him but they haven't really had the 40 man crunch to need to take him off that roster either. Plus in an emergency he's better than some of their other minor league options. Unless they get some talent for him they're unwilling to lose him. So he languishes in the minors until they either give him another chance or they find a taker for him. BTW, this is what Bruce Miles had to say on the subject just 3 days ago on his blog: Here's the link on that: http://blogs.dailyherald.com/node/1676

I love hearing that... I hope its true about the World Series thing. i think they're being awfully generous, unless they have a different definition of "down the line" and "foreseeable future" than i do. i think this needs to be the year. I tend to agree...our hitting core is actually pretty old. Lee will turn 34 this year and already might be slipping. Aramis is turning 31 this year, Soriano is 33, Fukudome is 32, Bradley is about to turn 31. It's unfortunate that the steroid era was the real reason that players were still peaking at age 35+. 2-3 years ago, I'd look at a 31 year old ARam and think he has 5 more years left at his numbers...now I have to be safe and say maybe 3 more years. That's the thing with being a large market team though..they are very hard to evaluate past 2 years. Yes, Lee is almost certainly declining (although he might have a slight bounce back this year) and Ramirez will be soon. At the same time, it's certainly possible that both those players are off the Cubs payroll in 2 years. Add in Lilly and that's 35 million dollars off of the payroll for 3 spots. If they can find one homegrown cheap player to fill 1 of the spots, they'll have plenty of money to sign 2 good to great players for the other spots without even increasing payroll. Teams at the Cubs payroll level just don't stay down very long unless they give out several horrible contracts. When you start having 30-40 million dollars of dead money you can have major issues, but the Cubs really don't have that. So this Cubs team probably has a very small window (1 or 2 years). But the Cubs have the payroll to be able to shift their focus of the team really quickly without having more than 1 mediocre season. Then if you get even decent contributions out of players like Vitters and Samardzija it just makes that process a whole lot easier. I just don't see the Cubs huge future problems unless the payroll goes way down or unless the Cubs have a couple spectacular failures in free agency. Getting contributions from their farm system would give them even more margin for error and allow them to have a couple bad failures in free agency and still be very good.

gathright will be to micah hoffpauir this year what ronny cedeno was to daryl ward last year. A guy who plays a different position and has little connection to him? I think he's saying that Gathright's use will be as a defensive replacement for Hoffpauir when he starts just as Cedeno frequently came off the bench as the pinch-runner for Ward. It's not an airtight comparison (as Cedeno did get a decent number of at-bats last year so that wasn't a majority of his role as it likely will be for Gathright) but it is a similar sort of relationship. The weaknesses of the 2nd players mentioned add value to the otherwise limited 1st players mentioned. close. i think that gathright will pinch run for hoffpauir when hoff pinch hits and gets on base, just as cedeno so frequently did for ward last year. I guess I could see that as well although Hoffpauir runs a decent bit better than Ward did. It will probably be much more situational while with Ward it was almost automatic that he'd be coming out for somebody (sometimes Cedeno, sometimes Marquis, sometimes another player).

gathright will be to micah hoffpauir this year what ronny cedeno was to daryl ward last year. A guy who plays a different position and has little connection to him? I think he's saying that Gathright's use will be as a defensive replacement for Hoffpauir when he starts just as Cedeno frequently came off the bench as the pinch-runner for Ward. It's not an airtight comparison (as Cedeno did get a decent number of at-bats last year so that wasn't a majority of his role as it likely will be for Gathright) but it is a similar sort of relationship. The weaknesses of the 2nd players mentioned add value to the otherwise limited 1st players mentioned.

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Take Lincecum if he's available :) He was a keeper. I ended up with Arod and Holliday. Pretty happy w/ my team actually. C- V Martinez 1B- A Gonzalez 2B- Derosa SS- Drew 3B- Arod/Cantu til ARod comes back OF- BJ Upton (keeper) OF- Holliday OF- Bradley U- Ortiz SP- Halladay (keeper), Lester, Dempster, J Johnson, J Sanchez RP- Marmol, Devine. Figure when Arod comes back, I'll try to trade Papi for a 2B and SP and play Cantu at U. why would Hanley, Pujols, Reyes, Wright, Sizemore, not have been kept? Because it's a rule of their league that the 1st 3 rounds from the previous year cannot be kept.

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Swinging early in a couple at bats hardly qualifies as openly defying your manager by refusing to be patient. Patience can only be measured over time, 5 pitches in 3 at-bats is something that happens to everybody. Maybe Lou overreacted to it. I'm not sure as I don't know exactly what was said. But I'm pretty sure a story at the time was that after Fox had swung at the first 3 pitches he saw and made 2 outs that by the 3rd at-bat Lou had him taking until he got a strike and Fox swung at the first strike he saw. Lou immediately pulled him from the game and then the Cubs announced they were going to ship him out before the next game. Fox wasn't going to get many opportunities. He had to implement Lou's suggestion immediately, and instead he went and did the exact opposite. Obviously the Cubs felt strongly about it as they have completely barred him since then when it didn't make sense to not bring him up. Their dislike for him might be getting a little bit less now though with the recent quotes from Piniella that he is getting closer to being a major league ballplayer. There's a perfectly good reason not to callup/use a guy who is essentially a potential DH. This team stresses defensive flexibility above everything else when it comes to their role players. He has no chance of being a Cub. Oh, I completely understand the reasons for most of the year to not bring Fox up. I was talking more about the two Septembers the team has had since then. The Cubs have had a weakness having pinch-hitters who can hit left-handed pitching in the late innings. They had to turn to Blanco several times last year because they had ran out of those pinch-hitters. It would have made sense to bring up Fox both of those years in September when his defense wouldn't matter and pinch-hit him in those opportunities. It would have cost the Cubs very little to at least have him available to do that, but they passed both years. Tim does bring up an interesting point though. Fox was an expendable player at the time and was probably a good tool to show the entire organization that the philosophy needed to keep changing to be more selective.

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Swinging early in a couple at bats hardly qualifies as openly defying your manager by refusing to be patient. Patience can only be measured over time, 5 pitches in 3 at-bats is something that happens to everybody. Maybe Lou overreacted to it. I'm not sure as I don't know exactly what was said. But I'm pretty sure a story at the time was that after Fox had swung at the first 3 pitches he saw and made 2 outs that by the 3rd at-bat Lou had him taking until he got a strike and Fox swung at the first strike he saw. Lou immediately pulled him from the game and then the Cubs announced they were going to ship him out before the next game. Fox wasn't going to get many opportunities. He had to implement Lou's suggestion immediately, and instead he went and did the exact opposite. Obviously the Cubs felt strongly about it as they have completely barred him since then when it didn't make sense to not bring him up. Their dislike for him might be getting a little bit less now though with the recent quotes from Piniella that he is getting closer to being a major league ballplayer.

The problem with that bench is that it's basically a bench of That has two players, one right-handed the other left handed that are identical in Fox and Hoffpauir. Both can be put in the of, but bad defensively there. Fox might give you an option at third, and as much as I hate to quote Dusty, his "the ball will find you" quote probably would apply here. Fox might make the plays there, but it's likely he'd give up just as many as he could bring in. The only middle infielder in that group is Miles, and trusting him to back up short is risky at best. Johnson becomes the only bench outfielder with any defensive prowess at all. Let's look at it this way...if Aramis needs a day off, I don't think the Cubs would be comfortable with Fox starting at third. Miles would be there which means there would be no middle infielder on the bench those days. I can't see a team carrying two players that profile like Hoffpauir and Fox do. To sum it up, a basic bench should have a righty oufielder, a lefty outfielder, a corner infielder, a middle infielder, and a back up catcher. RH Outfielder-Reed Johnson Catcher-Bako/Hill Middle infield-Miles 1B-Hoff This leaves one more outfield position. That likely goes to gathright, as he is lefty, can play a semi competant oufield, as far as I know anyway, and he beings some great speed to the bench. The thing about spring training is that there are very few jobs up for grabs, especially with a team liek the Cubs. Maybe a bullpen spot or 2, and maybe 1 bench spot. When you pick up a free agent, usually, the assumtion is that that guy will be on the opening day rotster, unless they have an awful spring training. This leaves a bunch of other guys like Hoff, Fox, and Snyder playing their hearts out for that 1 remaining spot, and the others will go back to Iowa until someone goes down with injury. We are giong to keep 12 pitchers to break camp? I would think with a bullpen of Gregg, Marmol, Heilman, Samardizja, Cotts, (not sure who 6th would be) would be flexible enough to allow us to keep 6 bench players instead of 5. We are going with 12 pitchers along with the rest of MLB. The days of 6 bench players are unfortunately dying rather quickly. Last year there was exactly 1 team that dared to use 11 by mid-season. I feel too that those 6 could handle the bullpen just fine, but managers these days are more likely to want 13 pitchers at times than 11. As far as Fox, not only did he not do well in his limited time here, but he also openly defied Lou by refusing to be more patient. He was shipped quickly out after his last game here where he saw 5 combined pitches in 3 at-bats. If he had a position and was a necessary component of the bench, maybe the club would be more inclined to give him another chance. As it was, they didn't even invite him to come be a pinch-hitter last September when there were no roster restrictions and gave those at-bats to Casey McGehee instead. Fox could potentially do well in the major leagues, but he has at least two strikes against him in the Cubs organization and possibly three. I can only see the Cubs turning to him if they get really desperate for hitting and have multiple injuries.

why? Because he gets on base 50 pts higher & scores more runs than Soriano? The main measure of a leadoff hitter is runs scored. With 76 last year, he was near the bottom in MLB in runs scored for leadoff hitters. Why? Because he does not have a leadoff mentality at the plate. He has more of an rbi producing mentality. Actually, he wasn't. Out of the players with at least 250 plate apperances at leadoff, Soriano was 13th out of 29 in runs scored. He had more runs scored than these people with a leadoff mentality at the plate: Orlando Cabrera, Jimmy Rollins, Chone Figgins, David Dejesus. And that only is a list of the people who had around the same number of AB's or more than Soriano did. Every person who finished higher than Soriano in runs also had more AB's than him (remember: this is only AB's and runs scored out of the leadoff spot. Runs scored when these players are hitting in other spots aren't counted). Of course, the fact that Soriano had 2 big DP threats directly behind him (Theriot and Lee) didn't exactly help his run scoring ability either.

And just because he did that last year, that doesn't make him an above average hitter today. You can't define players simply by their previous season. Theriot doesn't give you a .380 OBP, he did it last year, but that doesn't guarantee he does it this year. In 2007 he was bottom of the barrel. That's true, although bottom of the barrel is really exaggerating it (a .672 OPS was still better than 9 other teams that season and 1 point off a 10th). Theriot was definitely below average though that year. Last year, Theriot's production at SS was better than 20 teams. Even accounting for the fact that a couple of teams had their backups probably pull down their numbers of their starters that might have been above Theriot, that still leaves him as above average. It especially is so when you consider that he's 40 to 50 points better in OBP than other SS's around that production level. Theriot would have to come close to repeating last year to be above average. A .290/.350/.355 line would put him at average though. Cubs shortstops were worst in the league, and once Theriot took over the SS job his numbers were nearly identical to total Cubs shortstop numbers in 2007. Cubs SS's were the worst in the NL. Since players move leagues all the time and the sample size is so small it doesn't seem wise to eliminate half of your sample right off the top. Just to show the variability, in 07 only 2 out of the last 8 in SS production were in the NL, while in 08 4 out of the last 8 were. And the only reason Theriot was not much better than the other SS's was because his hot streaks were when he was playing 2B and 3B Looking at his overall numbers from that year, he was good enough to be comparable or better than 4 NL teams that season (San Fransisco, Houston, Arizona, L.A.). That's well below average in the NL and below average in the overall majors.

And just because he did that last year, that doesn't make him an above average hitter today. You can't define players simply by their previous season. Theriot doesn't give you a .380 OBP, he did it last year, but that doesn't guarantee he does it this year. In 2007 he was bottom of the barrel. That's true, although bottom of the barrel is really exaggerating it (a .672 OPS was still better than 9 other teams that season and 1 point off a 10th). Theriot was definitely below average though that year. Last year, Theriot's production at SS was better than 20 teams. Even accounting for the fact that a couple of teams had their backups probably pull down their numbers of their starters that might have been above Theriot, that still leaves him as above average. It especially is so when you consider that he's 40 to 50 points better in OBP than other SS's around that production level. Theriot would have to come close to repeating last year to be above average. A .290/.350/.355 line would put him at average though. It would be a few points light on the OPS, but would make up for it because of the above average OBP.

$9.5 million is not a lot of money for a free agent year option. It makes sense for the guy to sign a deal that allows him to be set for life. But he's leaving a lot of money on the table by agreeing with this. It's not just injury concerns for Floyd that is the problem though. He's still a big question mark as an effective pitcher. He struggled in AAA until his 3rd significant time there (4th overall time there). His ERA+ last year was good, but his peripherals were pretty lousy. He could just as easily flame out as continue to progress. This deal is pretty much exactly what the Twins gave Scott Baker and Baker has been better than Floyd. Floyd would have to break out in a major way to be leaving a lot of money on the table. At this point, he's maybe sacrificing 5-7 million in a very good scenario for him in order to pocket 15 million guaranteed. That's a great deal for him and he should be very happy the WS offered it.

What more does he need to build on? Theriot is cheap and gives you above average offensive production at SS. . Defense. Theriot might give you slightly above average offense for the shortstop position, but well below average defense. that's wrong. he's not well below average defensively. Nor is he slightly above average offensively. OPS+ under of 72 and 93 in his only two full seasons. They said slightly above average for the SS position. An OPS+ of 93 might be lower than the average player overall, but Theriot was 31 points better in OPS than the average major league SS last year because he was 61 points better in OBP than that average SS. Offense has to be broken down by position just as much as defense does or else the people in the harder positions (C, SS, 2B, CF) will never get their value to the team properly evaluated since 80% of the hitters at those positions are below average when compared to the league as a whole and not just their positions.

I've seen a couple of those instances, and they seem to not be calling it if the shooter has to leap way out of his way to get to the contact. If a guy can go pretty much straight up and still get hit, then it's getting called, otherwise you're just playing for the call and they aren't going to give it to you. YMMV of course with the variety of officials and their interpretation of the rules. . Agreed, but offensive players look specifically to draw the foul all the time. Even when they're driving they'll contort the body to draw the contact. I would agree with Truffle that if the defender goes straight up that's not a foul. I think if they meet in the middle though (both players jumping towards each other) the foul should be called even if it isn't the most natural way for the shooter to jump.

Totally agree ... Selection committee should select more mid-majors. I'd tend to agree with that but this year the committee is somewhat justified with their last few at-large teams by their performance. Arizona-Sweet 16 Wisconsin-won first game, competitive in 2nd Dayton-won first game Maryland-won first game Michigan-won first game, competitive in 2nd Minnesota-lost first game The problem this year is that all the minor conference winners (plus Miss. State) couldn't pull off enough upsets. The only 2 conference winners in the last 5 seeds (12-16) that won a game were Western Kentucky and Cleveland State. I do agree that the tournament is infinitely more interesting when you have a bunch of major conference-minor conference matchups than two middle tier major conference teams going at it. The committee though can't think about what will be the most interesting for the fans..they have to have a combination of who deserves to go/who is most likely to succeed in the tournament. And this year, it's become hard to argue against any of the teams that made it even though there were also deserving mid majors that were left out.

I thought it was an obvious no-call even though the Missouri defender was silly for getting anywhere close to him. The offensive player had to jump way out of his way to initiate the contact. Refs are already hesitant to call it when the person is jumping forward a little too far. Sideways is really pushing it. That does remind me though. Apparently the getting the guy in the air call on the perimeter is not being consistently called anymore. I've seen 3 different plays this tournament where the player ball faked, got the defender in the air, then jumped forward in taking the shot and got drilled and had no call made. I have no idea why they aren't calling it anymore.

I think the fact we think this tournament is slightly boring partially because we had a couple great tournaments in the middle of the decade and now pretty much everything is compared to those. For example, I randomly pulled up the 2004 tournament. In the 1st round, 10 of the 32 games were 6 point victories or less In the 2nd round, 9 of 16 games. In the Sweet 16, 2 of 8 In the Elite 8, 2 of 4. In the Final 4, 2 of 2. 0 of 1 in the Championship game Total: 25 out of 63 So far this year: 9 out of 32 3 out of 13 so far (3 left) So far: 12 out of 45 So to match that year's tournament, you'd have to have 13 of the final 18 games be tight games. That would be pretty unlikely. Here's 2003's numbers: 15 out of 32 3 out of 16 6 out of 8 1 out of 4 0 out of 2 1 out of 1 Total: 26 out of 63 This years tournament is hardly unusual but it isn't going to match up to tournaments like that. And especially since we got those 2 years in a row we subconsciously think every tournament should be like that.

That was what somebody said, but I can't find any confirmation of it. It doesn't really make sense anyway. The reason he was scratched from his start is because he was too weak. They would send him home to rest not ask him to throw a simulated game instead. They want to build up Harden's arm strength slowly and his late start to ST and his illness have hurt that. I'm not worrying that it is anything more than the clock is ticking on building up that endurance in time for his first start of the year.