CubColtPacer

actually, minute maid/enron is a neutral park as far as offense. everyone thinks it's a hitter's park because of the crawford boxes, but CF and the power alleys are very deep. I wasn't saying it was a hitter's park overall. I read an article two years ago when he was doing really well then too and he said about two out of three at bats he tries to hit it to LF because if he gets any kind of good contact it has a good shot at being a HR. He said the only time he doesn't is when he needs to SF, or just get a single to win or when a pitcher is particularly good at not allowing him to do that. I remember seeing it once but can't remember which way it went but I would like to see how many HR's a year he gets in that porch. He hasn't exactly feasted on his home park with home runs though. Since 2000, when Minute Maid opened, Berkman has hit 121 home runs at home. He's hit 153 on the road. So he may be using the Crawford boxes when he's at home to get home runs, but that just balances out the fact that it's hard for him to hit home runs unless he hits it down either line. He isn't really a player who you can say that would have downgraded production if he moved out of Houston, because he's proved that he's just as good if not a little better on the road as at home. BTW, here is his hit chart which does show him over the years going to the Crawford boxes a little more than you would expect for somebody who hits left-handed most of the time (click on all years and then hit go to get his full career at that park): http://mlb.mlb.com/stats/individual_player_hitting_chart.jsp?playerID=204020&statType=1 But then you pull up his 19 triples, and you can really see why he gets more home runs on the road.

That's the thing. If the Cubs just keep playing pretty good baseball, then for the Cardinals to keep up with them will mean that St. Louis will build a huge lead in the WC. There's only 2 teams that are less than 7 games out of the Cardinals right now, and 1 of those is closer to their division lead than they are to St. Louis. That's why I'm not too worried about what the Cardinals do. If the Cubs just play somewhat well over the next 3 1/2 months (for example, 5 games over .500) that would leave them with 93 wins overall. I don't see how the Cardinals and another WC team pass them if the Cubs end up anywhere near that record.

He had a leg injury for weeks before the back injury forced him to the DL. That's what they're primarily working with him now on to try to get that ready to go so he can maybe make a start or two or at least run the bases after he pinch-hits.

I can't say I liked it, but I'm happy they did that. It really made me appreciate what those people with early TV sets had to do in order to keep up with the game. Myself? I probably would have stuck to the radio in those days and create my own pictures instead, because I felt the camera angles were very distracting.

It sounds like they're going to call up two players: We will see on the Reed Johnson thing. My only worry on that is that if Lou doesn't feel comfortable putting Theriot in the leadoff spot, he'll make sure that Reed Johnson or Fontenot are in there everyday to fill that spot. That won't be quite so bad if Fontenot leads off against right-handers and Johnson leads off playing CF against left-handers, but we will see what they do.

He's played there in the minors, and he started a game for the Cubs in left a couple of weeks ago.

Losing Soriano would be pretty bad, but thankfully the Cubs have depth. My guess is Hoffpauir would come up and get the majority of starts in LF, with the lineup being: Theriot Fukudome Lee Ramirez Hoffpauir Soto Edmonds DeRosa I think they would miss Soriano, but this team has so many good hitters (and few elite hitters) that it likely wouldn't be as big of a dropoff as it usually is when you lose one of your "stars". Certainly not the same dropoff as when he was gone in August last year.

How many times does this organization have to prove to you that they overcome obstacles and win despite circumstances. The 06' team wasn't as talented as other clubs, yet they won. I'm not saying they'll win it all, but this team will be there till the end, book it. And yes, please revisit this thread at the end of the year, right or wrong. I will eat crow gladly if need be. The 06 team wouldn't have even sniffed the playoffs had the division not been completely horrific. Any team can get hot once they get in the playoffs. You could have put the 03 Tigers in the playoffs, and they would've stood a chance to win a championship. I don't expect the Cardinals will even be sniffing a playoff spot by August. I think August is probably a little too steep of a dropoff for them. They have a 3 game lead in the WC currently over Florida and 5 games over Milwaukee. There's nobody really in that WC race who you really expect to just take off on several long winning streaks, so the Cardinals would have to be really bad over the next month and a half to not at least be in the thick of that race come August.

Lineups Braves Y. Escobar ss K. Johnson 2b C. Jones 3b M. Teixeira 1b B. McCann c J. Francoeur rf G. Norton lf G. Blanco cf J. Bennett p Cubs A. Soriano lf R. Theriot ss D. Lee 1b A. Ramirez 3b K. Fukudome rf G. Soto c J. Edmonds cf M. DeRosa 2b R. Dempster p And I got beat..badly. Oh well. Well, I'll point out my utterly useless fact. I think it's interesting that the Braves bat their OF's 6/7/8 in the order. It shows you they've had a lot of trouble picking up bats in places where they should be getting better production from.

I always thought that 12 pitchers was just crazy Lou and one of his fascinations. I knew that it was a trend that a few teams did around the league, but I really thought that standard practice was still 11 pitchers. I looked it up...and was I ever mistaken. In fact, the Cubs would be in rarer company with 11 than with 13. Right now: 11- Angels 13- Minnesota, Atlanta, Florida, Cubs 12- everyone else (Note. Detroit and St. Louis currently have 11 on the roster, but they also only have 24 on the roster. Since both teams have announced that they are 100% adding a pitcher in the next 24 hours to fill that currently empty spot, they really belong in the 12 category). The 6 man bench is close to dead.

My guess is that Bennett will be on a 75 pitch limit, so the Cubs really need to be patient and get into that bullpen early once again. Even though the Braves have 8 relievers at full strength, Bennett is 1 of those, so they're down to 7. Soriano is iffy on if he can even pitch out of the bullpen with his injury. Carlyle and Acosta both threw over 40 pitches each last night. So if the Cubs can chase Bennett after 4 or 5, it could really help them both tonight and tomorrow.

I think they trust Hoffpauir enough to make sure that Ward is completely 100% before he comes back. From what I read now, he basically is at the level he was before the latest injury. His back is ok, but his leg still bothers him, so pretty much the only thing he could do is hit. They are sending him to Arizona to hopefully get his leg better so when he does come back, he's not so limited. This is what Lou had to say about the DH: It looks like the Cubs will face 5 right-handers and 1 left-hander during these first 6 inter-league games (Kazmir being the one left-hander).

It was a straight steal. Aramis didn't look interested in swinging at all, even after the pitcher had just released it. And I think the Cubs have made much better decisions on when to run the last couple weeks, which is why their stolen base percentage continues to rise. Any CS lately has pretty much been a mental mistake and not because of a bad time to run (Cedeno oversliding the bag, Soriano getting picked off, etc.)

Appearances, not innings. Yup. He's given up 2 runs in his last 31 2/3 IP, both in the same game (a 15-2 loss to Colorado in August of last year). That streak dates back to the beginning of July last year.

He's still only given up 6 runs in his last 19 1/3 innings. It's too early to say if he's going to have a bad month, or if this is just a bump in the road. Every reliever who pitches as much as he does is going to get rocked sometimes.

More upset about the acquisition of Trachsel (actually, most upset about the usage of Trachsel) then the players given up for him. It was pretty obvious that the Cubs had absolutely no desire to keep the first two (they weren't even part of the planned September callups) and looking at those 3 right now, there really isn't a legitimate prospect among the 3. I never thought much of Cherry, but Renshaw and Moore certainly could've got something more valuable in return. Maybe packaged together with a couple more players. For example, Sickels has Moore as a C+ and Renshaw is not even a C. Moore was the only guy with any trade value at all, and he didn't have much.

I'd use him in the 8th if the Cubs don't score and plan to go to Howry first tomorrow. 2 reasons. 1) The Braves have the middle of their order up next inning, and 2) I'd rather have him go less days, and pulling him now gives him maybe the same amount of innings but more overall appearances. If the Cubs score, I'm pulling him though.

More upset about the acquisition of Trachsel (actually, most upset about the usage of Trachsel) then the players given up for him. It was pretty obvious that the Cubs had absolutely no desire to keep the first two (they weren't even part of the planned September callups) and looking at those 3 right now, there really isn't a legitimate prospect among the 3.

Are you sure? Their career numbers are pretty much exactly the same. Sure, Meche was very good last year, but Marquis has been very good in some years too. They are both players who have always had better stuff then their actual production, and most of that has been due to stubbornness on their parts. I don't see anything more than maybe a tiny upgrade, and that's before you consider Meche's enormous contract.

It looks like small sample size of an already unreliable figure. I'm not saying the Edmonds number is necessarily wrong (although it probably is, but Petco probably dragged that number down quite a bit). The infield rankings look somewhat ok (there's several numbers that I disagree with, but none large enough to really jump out as completely wrong). When it gets to the outfield though, I disagree quite strongly. LF for example. Chris Duncan as 28 runs above average? Jay Payton as 20 runs above average? (I realize they both have extremely small sample sizes due to their part-time play, so this data is probably very shaky and prone to change). And how Fukudome doesn't appear on that RF list when you see the players who are actually on the best list is a little crazy.

Bako just hit another home run high off the foul pole. And if the Reds were ever going to sign Neifi, now would be the time. Jerry Hairston Jr. fractured his thumb today on a successful stolen base attempt. He's now the 3rd Reds SS to be on the DL. All they have left on the major league roster is Paul Janish.

It was no secret that DeRosa was attributing his new found success at the time to the toe tap maneuver that the Rangers hitting coach taught him. There was just a lot of disagreement out there if that was the reason for his hitting to get a lot better, or if it was mostly just a career year. The Cubs thought it was the former, and in this instance, they turned out to be right. I remember the questioning here during that winter wondering if the statistical projections on DeRosa were flawed due to them not being able to properly take into account his mechanical change at the plate, and if they were flawed, exactly how flawed. I think DeRosa has exceeded the expectations of even his supporters, who mostly thought he'd be a .750-.770 OPS player who can play several positions.

Does PECOTA's contract value have any monetary value added for versatility? I'm honestly not sure, but a productive player who is also versatile is worth an extra 1-2 million IMO because whenever there's an off day or an injury, it allows the hottest player on the bench to get starts, rather than just whoever plays that position. Plus it allows the bench to much more easily have a player with little defensive value on it like Ward, even with only a 5 man bench. I would agree that DeRosa is probably somewhere around 13 million dollars in value overall already, and it's a great job if a free agent even lives up to their contract, let alone possibly double the value of it.

This actually hurt us. I'm not sure about that. Have you seen Jones's numbers against Marquis? He could have won Sunday's game by himself.

Z actually had some help blowing the game yesterday--or I should say lack of help in the field. But you're correct about Marquis, very nice job tonight. Could he be turning the corner? I doubt he's turning the corner. He'll spray a few of these here and there throughout the season. Now if he can keep throwing strikes, he can be an average starter once again this season like he was last year (he should be very close to that average starter mark after this game). He'll still have plenty of his 5 2/3, 3-4 run starts where he looks pretty bad, but I really thought that the one thing ESPN got right (probably because they got it straight from Lou) is that the key to Marquis is for him to be aggressive. He's been trying to nibble all season, and it's caused him to get behind in counts, which has forced him to come in and throw easy pitches to kill. If we can get a 4.75 ERA or better out of him this season (he has a 4.54 right now), I'll be satisfied with him. To do that, he needs to continue to go right at hitters for at least a majority of the starts, because that disaster start that he hasn't really had yet is going to come at some point. So he needs to have more good starts to counterbalance that.