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that's just 100% not true. Which part of it? The definition of "good" is subjective, I suppose. I'd probably say he's good, but not all that good. He's good for the amount of money he makes, I guess. As far as the ceiling part goes, how much further can he possibly take his game than he already has? How much more can he get out of his relatively limited abilities? i was referring to the "he's still not good" part of it. i consider the guy who lead the best offensive team in the nl last year in obp to be "good". but it's not out of the realm of possibility for him to actually improve. he's 29 and entering his 3rd full season. i don't get why his 2nd full year is automatically his best that he'll have. It's more because to improve Theriot would have to fundamentally change some part of his game. He hit .307 last year. That's getting close to the limit of what any hitter can do consistently, and especially one where the outfielders can cheat in slightly for. There's not much more chance for him to get more singles than he already is. He had an ISOD of .8 last year which is above average. And he did that by being very consistently patient on balls outside the zone. He can't really improve his walk rate much more because pitchers throw him so many strikes. His ISOP is the one thing that could possibly be improved. But to do so, Theriot would have to become more of a gap hitter to get those doubles and triples. And his swing style (in which he modified before 08 to help his low line drive ability) doesn't allow him to hit those gaps very often right now. So unless he wants to completely change his swing and possibly lose his ability to get singles, his power isn't going to skyrocket. So really the only things Theriot can improve in are defense and baserunning. Since his problems in defense are mostly talent based (lack of rage and below average arm) and not instinct based (good reaction time, good fundamentals catching) that makes defense hard to improve. Baserunning however could be improved with a little better of instincts and being a little more judicial on the basepaths. Most ballplayers have a path to improve because of a lack of consistency. Theriot's very consistent and so his improvement would have to come from a change in swing that would increase his power potential. And that's much harder to do than simply get a little more consistent as other players have to do.

Which player is which? Player A: spent parts of 10 seasons with the Cubs. Best 5 seasons ERA+: 142, 131, 127, 126, 119 Best 5 opposing OPS (not adjusted for era): .606, .619, .628, .640, .642 1 Cy Young and 3 other top 5 finishes Player B: spent parts of 10 seasons with the Cubs. Best 5 seasons ERA+: 166, 128, 119, 115, 114 Best 5 opposing OPS (not adjusted for era): .552, .634, .637, .658, .673 1 Cy Young and 1 other top 5 finish. Jenkins was better as a Cub than Maddux. But he wasn't that much better. I included opposing OPS because they are so different kinds of pitchers that it was a better all encompassing stat than trying to break down six stats at once. They are certainly close enough that you'd have a really hard time honoring one without the other. Jenkins has the advantages of being his best with the Cubs and being a little better during that time than Maddux was, and Maddux has the advantage of being a Cub farmhand and being a better overall pitcher. Both are loved by the fans. If they were wearing different numbers, it would be a good discussion on if one should be retired without the other. Since they wore the same number, it absolutely should be for both of them.

i like it. the more i think about it, the more i get po'd by the fact that a team can dominate their regular season and then have a bad game and be out of the dance. totally unfair, but you don't want to lessen the excitement of the conference tourney games. however, there needs to be some sort of exemption for ranked, major conference teams. The conference champion would not have to play the at-large game, so there is still an incentive to win the conference tournament. For lower-level conference teams, it is a HUGE incentive. But that means that you have typically 8 of the top 10 teams in the nation having to win 1 more game than a minor conference school who played well over a 3 day span to win the national title. That's pretty unfair. There would be very little incentive to be in a major conference that way. Why would you want all that competition when you could dominate a minor conference and get an automatic bye every year in the tourney? Plus..then you have a bunch of situations where a Pittsburgh for example has a decent at-large game to start, and then their second round game after the re-seeding is a cakewalk. You never want a tournament where the second round opponents are likely to be easier than the first for the top seeds, and this one would have that. I would love to see more mid-majors get in as well and I think the scheduling issue is a big problem (if more teams were willing to schedule decent mid majors, they would have more big wins to take to the committee at the end of the year). But I see this as a solution that tilts it far further in the other direction then it is right now.

you are missing 1992, apparently. Whoops, nice sort job, USS. Fine, I'll just use Mark Prior's 2003 and 2005. 178 and 120. Or Ryan Dempster's 2008 (151). My point is that Greg Maddux's Cubs performances don't merit the retiring of his number. I think pretty much everyone agrees with you. But retiring #31 without Maddux involved doesnt really make sense either. Why not? What says he has to be included? He wasn't consistently great for us. Yes, it sucks we had him and he walked due to a stupid management decision, but the fact is, the vast number of his great seasons (including his best) came in a different uniform. Leon Durham wore the number 10 shirt, yes? Did anyone say he should be involved in the retiring of Santo's number 10? No. Why? Because that would have been idiotic. This is sort of the same. I recognize he had 2 strong seasons for us, and was one of the best pitchers of this era, but retiring his number at the same time as Jenkins seems wrong somehow, like trying to bootstrap the Cubs onto his legacy as something more than wasted opportunity. It's not unprecedented for a Hall of Fame player have numbers retired by two different teams even if he was better with one team than another. Rod Carew has his number retired by both the Twins and the Angels even though his whole prime was with the Twins. Nolan Ryan is retired by the Rangers (along with the Angels and Astros) even though he only played for them 5 seasons and didn't have a stellar season with them. Maddux played portions of 10 years with the Cubs. He won a Cy Young in Chicago, had another top 3 Cy Young finish, and won his 300th game there. He is also loved by Cubs fans (which definitely has some consideration on retiring numbers if the case is close). His numbers as a Cub are not strong enough to retire his number without taking into account his other years, but the fact that he's a Hall of Famer and that his Cubs career helped contribute to that helps his case. Even then, he might not be a strong enough case to get his number retired by himself. But he certainly shouldn't be ignored when the number is going to be retired anyway.

It's really strange for Marshall to come in and get 1 inning today. It doesn't seem like the type of thing that a starter normally does to build up his endurance. It was another perfect inning for him though. Gregg with another scoreless inning with 1 hit and 1 K. That's 6 innings total now with 3 hits, 0 runs, 1 walk, and 6 strikeouts. Koyie Hill finally makes an out but is now 4 for 5 today. He is really going to put to the test if Lou is willing to go with the better person in ST or not.

Wasnt he a 2B with us? Nope. Dopirak is a big guy (6 foot 4, 225 pounds). He was a first baseman in the Cubs system except for a 5 game experiment in left field. He spent last year between high A and AA in the Blue Jays system.

FF is my primary browser and I'm not seeing anything like that. Is anyone else having a similar issue? Hmm. That is strange. I just tried also to click to view 5 Internet articles on the front page, and the writing only allows me to see appox half of 1 letter on each line. The rest of it is just blank white space. I switched the engine to explorer and it showed just fine once again. Update: I just tried it on my upstairs computer. It works just fine on firefox. I tried disabling all my addons on the laptop to see if that was the problem, but it wasn't. So I guess my best guess now is that it has something to with Vista? (my laptop runs Vista but my desktop runs XP). It doesn't seem like it would be that, but I don't really know any other significant differences between the two. I have vista and use firefox and I have no problem. Thanks. I guess I'll just deal with it then. That is really perplexing that it is just the combination of my computer and that 1 page. You would think either more computers would be affected or more web sites would look strange on this computer.

FF is my primary browser and I'm not seeing anything like that. Is anyone else having a similar issue? Hmm. That is strange. I just tried also to click to view 5 Internet articles on the front page, and the writing only allows me to see appox half of 1 letter on each line. The rest of it is just blank white space. I switched the engine to explorer and it showed just fine once again. Update: I just tried it on my upstairs computer. It works just fine on firefox. I tried disabling all my addons on the laptop to see if that was the problem, but it wasn't. So I guess my best guess now is that it has something to with Vista? (my laptop runs Vista but my desktop runs XP). It doesn't seem like it would be that, but I don't really know any other significant differences between the two.

Please keep your posts about the topic and not about the posters on the board. Thanks.

Tim..on Firefox the sizes are all wrong for me. This shows up especially in the bottom middle where the formatting seems to be off and all the boxes seem to be squeezed too tight (for example, the e-mail adresses go to about northsidebase and then stop, and the article section has the recent article titles underneath the article authors because there isn't room to display it horizontally). That's because the page seems to be zoomed in too much while on Explorer it looks fantastic. Is there just something with my computer that is causing these formatting issues or is it an issue with the Firefox page itself?

Their career major league numbers against right-handers: Soto: 407 AB's, .280/.359/.506 Fontenot: 406 AB's, .298/.379/.473 Fontenot was about 60 points better last year, but I felt that wasn't fair since Soto was so much better in limited action in 07. It's hard to go much further back because they've both improved so much in the last couple years. Anyway, there really isn't too big of a difference between them against right-handed pitching. I'd put Soto 6th because I think he will be a little better and for the problems it will create later in the game for Fontenot to be further up (if Miles replaces him because of a pitching change, do we really want him batting between Ramirez and Soto in the late innings?). But overall I don't think it's a terrible decision by Lou to start the season. If Soto shows himself to be a lot better than Fontenot, Lou will probably start switching them.

There's plenty of middle infielders who had very little power had good careers and made some money. Luis Castillo, David Eckstein are just a few off the top of my head, even Craig Counsell had 5 years or so when he was a everyday player. Jason Kendall had a pretty good career, with no power as well. If you're a middle infielder or catcher, and you hit for average and can take a walk you can have a good career as a regular in the majors with no power. Miles doesn't get on base at near the rate of any of those guys. Last year's BABIP inflated season was the only time he's ever exceeded a .330 OBP. The lowest of those guys you mentioned is Counsell at a career .343, with Eckstein over .350 and Castillo and Kendall pushing .370. That's the problem. Miles has one thing he does well, hit singles. His physique and approach prevent him from having any type of fluky power success, he doesn't take enough walks to have value as a Theriot/Eckstein type player, he's too old to have any type of age related improvement, and he's a below average defender wherever he plays. There's zero upside to having him on the roster, and we paid well over his value to guarantee he's around for 2 years. That's why people are continually upset about him. I agree, I was talking about Theriot when i was bringing those guys up. Miles is a bench player, not alot of back up infielders career numbers are better then 290/330 and thats why there back ups. I would say Miles sucks to if he was playing everyday, but as a bench player I'm fine with him. That's true that the numbers for Miles are consistent with many backup middle infielders. But most backup infielders are known for their defense and that's why they get a job with their poor offensive numbers. Miles doesn't have that defense to fall back on. The reason his offense is getting criticized so much is because that's supposed to be his best asset, and so when that's seen to be poor that's a big problem.

Wow. IU sure saved one of their worst efforts of the season for last. With Dumes out, 2 of Williams, Pritchard, Story, or Roth had to step up to score along with Jones. None of them did which made it an automatic blowout. Plus, they looked tired on the boards today and couldn't get to the loose balls. And why was PSU one of the first teams in the Big 10 to press IU today? That was a great coaching move and I'm shocked it wasn't every single night all Big 10 season with the way IU handles the ball. Well, it's good for the Big 10 with a good chance of getting 8 in now.

I would agree with this. I've been trying to find a way to get back to the front page other then typing the name of the site in again, but I haven't found any yet. It would be helpful to promote cross traffic between the two if there either was one or that the link was more visible if it already exists.

That will be interesting to see how they play without him and if they change their style at all. Dumes is very doubtful for IU tonight. A hard task becomes very, very hard without him. This Baylor-Kansas game is certainly entertaining. Baylor with a 1 point lead with 2:39 left.

If it's successful the tying run is in scoring position. and if it's not you're down to your last out and need a home run to tie it. I'm not saying I agree with it, but I don't think it's terrible. There was good reasoning behind the decision. Getting the tying run in scoring position if fine motivation, but the reasoning isn't all that great when you consider the consequences. Running with runners on 1st and 2nd and 1 out is actually the ideal time to run. You need to make it less than 60% of the time to make it worthwhile (less if the catcher throws to 2nd than to 3rd). Then when you add in that the team was in a situation where the team needed 2 runs and stealing becomes even a better option than normal. On the other hand, Youkilis is more of a fly ball hitter which is a detriment to stolen bases, and both him and Wright are threats to get the extra base hit that ties the game. It's one of those rare calls where both sides are pretty equally defensible. Against a very tough reliever, I can see why the manager would think that the stolen base/single combination is more likely than an extra base hit. It's a terrible idea to do in the 9th inning and down by two runs. The math would indicate otherwise. Of all the times to steal, that's pretty close to the absolute best time to steal. You want to avoid stealing: 1) early in the game 2) with poor to average baserunners (which this case certainly wasn't. Rollins has 123 SB to only 13 CS the last 3 years which is absolutely incredible). 3) when you don't need just 1 run in the inning (or 2 in this specific case of runners on 1st and 2nd). Stealing at a decent rate limits your chance at the big inning while increasing the chance you score the baserunners already on the bases. The only way this situation could have even been more ideal for stealing was if somebody like Theriot was at the plate (a double play threat and singles hitter). Other then that, it's pretty much exactly how you would dream it up.

If it's successful the tying run is in scoring position. and if it's not you're down to your last out and need a home run to tie it. I'm not saying I agree with it, but I don't think it's terrible. There was good reasoning behind the decision. Getting the tying run in scoring position if fine motivation, but the reasoning isn't all that great when you consider the consequences. Running with runners on 1st and 2nd and 1 out is actually the ideal time to run. You need to make it less than 60% of the time to make it worthwhile (less if the catcher throws to 2nd than to 3rd). Then when you add in that the team was in a situation where the team needed 2 runs and stealing becomes even a better option than normal. On the other hand, Youkilis is more of a fly ball hitter which is a detriment to stolen bases, and both him and Wright are threats to get the extra base hit that ties the game. It's one of those rare calls where both sides are pretty equally defensible. Against a very tough reliever, I can see why the manager would think that the stolen base/single combination is more likely than an extra base hit.

I always thought it should be the topics recently posted in (with social/rants taken out if possible). It just seems to me that the most active discussions should be the ones highlighted. That is especially true when the season starts and the game thread isn't even on there because it had been made the day before. The same goes for threads that have continuous discussion the first month of the season talking about a certain position. Those are the threads people remember so those should probably be the ones on the front page.

Rule 5 Lefty He's done real well so far this spring. 5.1 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 6/0 K/BB He's actually a right-handed pitcher (although with my track record lately you probably meant something else by lefty :D). I'm actually really surprised by him. I got to see him in the WGN game the other day and he looked really fluid with pretty good stuff.

That's basically what the Cubs did when they traded Marquis for Vizcaino in the first place. True. I should've said "so we're going to trade a guy we don't want who has no use for another guy we don't want who has no use." What he's saying is that it may have been cheaper to just release Marquis then to trade him for a bad contract. I don't think so. There is no way that the Cubs releasing Marquis would ever have been cheaper. They would have had to pay his full contract if that happened. Even if the Cubs release Vizcaino today, they still save approximately 5 million dollars over what releasing Marquis would have done.

yes, it's very meangingless. what does a player on the washington nationals have to do with anything regarding who should bat 2nd in the cubs lineup? .379 vs .359 is .02. your point about hitting to the right side naturally is valid though. i'm just not ready to essentially demote a guy after a solid year, in hopes that fukudome won't suck so badly like he did in '08. Thanks for the correction..I'm not sure what I was thinking! Yeah, I understand that thought about letting Fukudome prove he's doing better than Theriot before switching them. At the same time, baseball is a game of guesses. You'll always be behind some teams if you take the safe route and just go on past performance..as a GM and a manager you have to take your best guess on what these people will do in the future and be willing to make those tough calls moving your pieces around. Plus for lineup balance if you move Fukudome to 8th that puts Fontenot, Fukudome, and a primarily left-handed bench in the final 3 spots of the lineup, which makes it much easier for teams to bring in a left-hander to mow them down.

Yes, stats about performance in all situations, including when a runner is on first, can't possibly be used to predict how one can do if a runner is on first. That would be just asinine. what are you talking about? if you were actually following the discussion, you would see that the topic was theriot's ability to move runners over. when you show me data that includes his at bats with the bases empty, that's irrelevant to the discussion. If a guy hits a lot of grounders to the left side, chances are he's going to hit a lot of grounders to the left side even when there's a runner on 1st. that's not true at all. professional baseball players have the ability to hit the ball to the right side if they want to, theriot seems especially good at this. your dunn versus theriot comparisons are meaningless too so i'm not even going to address that. But if your swing is not naturally tailored towards it then you are sacrificing a lot of your ability to get a basehit just to hit a ball to the right side. Kosuke hits a lot of ground balls to the right side naturally. So he actually becomes a better person to hit runners over because he can do that while striving for a base hit at the same time. And a minor nitpick: Kosuke's SLG was .2 better, not .02.

I could show you his hit charts. They show that most of Theriot's outs are groundouts to the left side and fly balls to right field. Since we also know that most of those flyouts are medium depth or less, those types of outs are not conducive to moving runners over. He does have a decent amount of groundouts to the right side, but not nearly as many as to the left side. Here's Theriot's hitting chart for Wrigley from last year: http://mlb.mlb.com/stats/individual_player_hitting_chart.jsp?playerID=444135&statType=1 Edit: And as SSR mentioned, Theriot grounded into the highest percentage of double plays of any Cub last year. That isn't a quality I particularly want from a guy who is praised for being able to move runners over. Those are going off projections. 6 projection systems have Theriot's OBP as: .366, .360, .359, .355, .353, .345 And Kosuke: .386, .368, .361, .357, .349, .338 So they are extremely close in the projections. That is because Japanese players typically have a bounce in their numbers in year 2, and Theriot's numbers are likely to slide down slightly just because last year was his highest OBP season in the minors or the majors (other than the just over 1 month stint in 2006). That could be repeated, but it typically isn't.

well when we're talking about the number two slot, to me obp means a whole lot more than slg. which is why i think he's a great 2 hitter. that and the fact that he can move runners over, hit to the right side on a hit and run, etc. OBP is a very important statistic for a top of the order hitter. But Theriot and Kosuke are likely going to be at least similar OBP players next year. So the difference between who bats at the top of the order and gets a lot more at-bats has to be based on another factor with that one so close. And Kosuke's likely big slugging edge gives him the leg up on taking that #2 spot. As for moving runners over, Theriot is actually pretty poor about it. The majority of his groundouts come to the left side while his flyouts are to the right side. He's a little better at the hit and run, but it's better to do the hit and run at the bottom of the lineup where more risks need to be taken and batting behind Fontenot gives him the opportunity to do it. Batting behind Soriano is going to have more straight steal attempts and less hit and run. Theriot's just fine as a #2 hitter. But Kosuke is a better version of Theriot so it doesn't make sense to bat Kosuke 6 spots behind him.

cincy lost their last three games - they got blown out at syracuse, lost at south florida and then home against seton hall. i'd guess they're just not playing well right now and that's why they won today. it'd be the greatest thing ever if depaul won the big east tourney, but the odds of that happening are like 10000 to 1. That's actually probably underselling the chances, even after today happened. Conference tourney odds I'll go out on a limb and say at least one of the teams who are listed as 100% to win Round 2 will not, in fact, win Round 2 Round 2 odds are to make it to round 2. And all those teams who are listed as 100% are listed that way because they have a bye to that round so they automatically make it.