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Of course, that kind of proves to me that the lineup analyzer is not good. If you plug in the 8 exact same players and the OBP guy, I find that if you put the OBP guy in the 9 spot, you'll score 6.295 runs per game. If you put him in the 6 spot, that same lineup will only score 5.203 runs per game. If the 8 other players are the exact same, why would putting your best player in the 6 spot result in over a run less per game than putting him in the 9 spot? There's absolutely no way that can be true. This exercise makes me trust the lineup analyzer a lot less if it makes bad decisions like this.

The biggest base clogging situation IMO is when the fast player is at the plate, not when they are both on base. On average, fast players are typically ground ball hitters who beat out plays with their legs on a semi-regular basis. In the Cubs case, their leadoff hitter isn't that way, but that's very atypical. Having a slow runner on first base hurts the production of that fast runner. Their high propensity of ground balls creates more fielders choice situations that if nobody was on base the leadoff hitter would beat out. Now, does that mean you should ever root for a slow player to make an out before a fast player bats? Absolutely not. Getting on base is always, always preferable. Can you instead structure your lineup where slow hitters are not followed immediately by the fastest guys on the team? Sure, and that should be a minor consideration if it doesn't hurt your lineup in other ways. In the Cubs case, if Pie and Soto end up being very similar hitters, then I would hope they would switch those two players in the lineup. My guess is that Soto will end up being a better hitter than Pie, and in that case the extra plate appearances for Soto are a lot more important than the fact that him standing on first base is a possible detriment to Pie's production. If they did end up being similar hitters, maybe then you have 4 to 5 times a season where Pie gets on due to an infield single and Soto singles him around to 3rd rather than Soto singling and then Pie grounding into a fielders choice at second. It's not going to make more than a 5 to 10 run difference at the most either way, which is why they would have to be very similar before you would think about switching them.

No, it isn't. I don't think Lou ever said that it was. True, but the pitcher has to make outs somewhere. There are arguments about where that should be. I don't see how that's relevant, but Theriot does a very good job at being efficient at stealing bases. Of course, I was thinking about the people who Lou might put in the 9 spot in this section. If you were referring to Soriano in the 1 spot, then this quote is more relevant but I don't see how the next quote fits, so I'll assume you're talking about possible 9 spot hitters here. absolutely true An average American league team has attempted more stolen bases than an average National League team in 4 out of the last 5 years. The average National League team hit more home runs than the average American League team in 2007 after being close for several years. The perception is that American league ball is about waiting for home runs and not stealing bases, but that's not the reality. Sure there is. It's a very minor negative effect of speed. What made everybody furious at Dusty was that he neutralized a very minor negative effect by sacrificing a major component (BB's), which created a much, much worse negative effect. Clogging up the bases is real (in an ideal setting, every player would be fast enough to make sure that the next player wouldn't have to stop a base short of where they normally would). It's just not important whatsoever, and should be way, way down on the list of priorities to fix.

Congrats Penn State. You simply deserved it more today. There's really nothing else to say.

Why? You wouldn't be able to get the most out of that pitcher for the second half of those 100IP and run a greater risk of injuring if they end up throwing out of the pen in the 1st half of the year. Or if you have Marshall at Iowa to start the year, you're defeating the purpose of saving his arm. If it's Marquis as the #5, his greatest asset is that he has a rubber arm and will eat innings (assuming he's not shelled thru 4). As far as Marshall/Lieber, they would be wise to keep a closer eye as far as not leaving them out there well beyond early signs of fatigue. With Gallagher, they could be more liberal since he is sound mechanically, good size, and has a clean bill of health. I hope whoever wins the 5th spot will stick throughout the year. Even if Marshall was completely healthy, I don't think you can risk him going beyond 170 innings this year. That's 25 more innings then he has ever thrown in his career, plus the only 2 times he's gotten to 110-120 his arm has gone dead at that point. I'd actually be surprised if you could get 140 fresh innings out of him. They took him out many times early even when he was effective last year, and they still couldn't get a full season out of him. I love his production, but I seriously question his durability. Plus, Marshall has had his share of arm injuries as well. With Lieber, if his injury problems don't act up I'd be fine with getting 180-200 innings out of him. I'm just not sure if he can pitch that long without some sort of injury. It's possible, but with his history I'd call it unlikely. My plan would be to start Lieber and to throw Marshall into long relief, either in the majors or AAA. I know it's probably not fair to him to do it that way, which is why I'd leave it as just the ideal. Marshall's innings are then somewhat limited by the nature of his position, but he also doesn't pitch multiple days in a row and pitches for longer, minimizing the chance of injury. He then steps in at whatever point in the season Lieber goes down or another starter becomes ineffective.

Yeah, he pitched on Friday, but because of the injury he only got to pitch to 4 batters. So if they took him out for precautionary reasons, they likely want to make up that loss of an inning as soon as they can.

I would agree with that, and that is the biggest problem with Lieber. He'll be decently effective, but he'll also tax your bullpen and probably go out due to an injury in the middle of the year. Of course, I'd start him and then replace him with a rested Marshall (who would have somewhat limited innings until then because of his problems with having a dead arm) when Lieber got hurt during the season. My ideal would be to fill that spot with around 100 innings from each of them.

They picked up Tyler Brayton as well. He was the one free agent the Colts were even close to so far.

Why would that be a surprise? He hasn't had an ERA worse than that since 1995, and he has just moved out of one of the worst ballparks for pitchers to pitch in. I can certainly see how it would be reasonable for some to think there's a decent possibility he won't be very good, but there also is a pretty good possibility that he will have a mid 4's ERA once again. Moving out of Philadelphia alone is going to offset most of the degradation that an extra year has on him. Now, if he'll pitch more than 100 innings or not, that's a much more difficult question and prone to heavy skepticism.

Great job. The only one that I can really think of off the top of my head that wasn't on there: the parrot home run. No love for the parrot :D

Let's hope so. I'll even take Pie is going to be a SOLID player! He'll be solid and then progress to fantastic. I have confidence in Pie producing. The key is playing time and this year is the year for him to get that. I always wanted Pie to play this year, but I definitely feel better now that I see his swing has improved. He doesn't have a real short swing that I feared when they said they wanted him to play small ball, but that big long swing has been shortened and that should help him get around on those inside fastballs that he struggled with last year.

That usage of clogging up the bases doesn't strike me as wrong. You do want to set your lineup if you can so that really slow people are not followed directly by really fast people, because then a big element of the fast person's game (legging out extra base hits) is lessened. The difference is that Lou is talking about how to set his lineup. Dusty talks about clogging up the bases in reference to how hitters should approach an at-bat (by refusing to walk). That's two very different concepts, and Dusty's is clearly detrimental, while Lou's is not likely to have much of an effect either way.

One of them was. I believe it was a full count when he looked at a pitch that I thought was right down the middle. I know at least one of the other ones was a 1-2 count that he struck out on, and I'm not sure about the last one. He missed several pitches by quite a bit though during those at-bats.

Not that I'm concerned mind you (every good player has 40-50 games per year where they don't look good) but I'm kind of curious how Soto continued to look good today. It was about as bad as you can get for him at the plate today. The one AB of his that I saw was a good AB even though he just popped it up. It is starting to bother me that you don't see him go the other way much, though. Pulls the ball quite a lot. A lot of hitters have great careers doing that, though. I would agree that he only seems to pull the ball, but I am hopeful that his good eye makes up for that. He has enough plate coverage to be able to pull all the outer half in well, and he is patient enough to take the pitches off of the plate. It's only the pitchers who can locate it right on the outside corner that will give him fits. Yeah, the popping up was the first at-bat. He then proceeded to strike out 3 straight times.

Not that I'm concerned mind you (every good player has 40-50 games per year where they don't look good) but I'm kind of curious how Soto continued to look good today. It was about as bad as you can get for him at the plate today.

.357/.471/.500 with 5 SB's and 0 CS.

Even if he does completely bust, my guess is that he can live off that 1.475 million dollars he received.

ah okay, missed that part when reading the original premise. so he's an auto out aside from the home run. that makes my decision easy. HOLY CRAP, home run guy is winning 2-to-1?!?!? Yeah, depends on the week for me. Some weeks I like the idea of the OBP guy, other weeks the homerun guy gets the nod. I am slightly surprised that the homerun guy is running away with the thing though. But I think the fact that the guy will have an OPS of 1.250 over the guy with a 1.000 OPS is a pretty good point. except that (1) a point of OBP is significantly more important than a point of SLG, and (2) it's not fair to the guy who gets on base every time, because he doesn't swing the bat once to actually have a SLG%. If you change your assumption and say that the guy gets on base by hitting a single every at bat, it's the same outcome (he's on first base after his turn at bat) but now his OPS is 2.000. You are right that walking is slightly underrated in OPS and singling is overrated in OPS. The differences between how they move runners up is important, but not important enough for their huge difference in slugging. (I actually think triples are also overrated in slugging because they are usually give you the same effects as a double does other than the obvious of the batter standing on 3rd, and a home run is underrated in slugging because the guaranteed run is so important). At the same time, I feel like my point about balanced scoring is a big factor that isn't being factored in. If you asked a great pitcher that if you knew absolutely for certain that the batter was going to get a home run sometime in the game, would you walk the player every time? Most great pitchers IMO would rather walk the person every time because they can work around that and strand him. I know in a small way that was the Braves pitchers philosophy for years to not let the big guys hurt you and to get everybody else out. I think the biggest effect of choosing the OBP player is that the team would score more runs against bad pitchers than the team with the home run guy, and less runs against good pitchers than the team with the home run guy. Considering a good team usually already scores enough runs to win against bad pitchers most of the time, I'd rather take the advantage against the best pitchers in the league. BTW, if you just told me that the homerun guy would have 162 HR's and get outs in every other at-bat, I'd take the OBP guy. I would assume then that the homerun guy piles up many of his homeruns against the bad pitchers of the world. It's the specific fact that he's guaranteed to do it every game that puts homerun guy over the top for me.

WGN cannot get the games back on the Superstation due to MLB rules limiting the number of games that a station like that can carry. Plus, having to pay the Cubs for the loss of the cable rights+naming rights would make it way too expensive for WGN even if it was allowed. MLB has no control over how many games are on WGN. The Cubs have reduced the number of games on WGN because of the Superstation tax. The only other team now which pays this tax is the Sox since TBS is no longer the flagshop station of the Atlanta Braves. The amount due each season is based on the number of games on WGN since they do show the games on the Superstation as well as the local only feed. Putting all of the games back on WGN would be quite pricey...yes, in the multimillions and is already in the millions as is. Besides, with the comments that Zell has made about the Superstation and it's programming (comments not fit for a family type board), I would bet within five years there won't be Cubs games on Superstation WGN...only the local feed. This mind you having nothing to do with the tax but what Zell thinks of the quality of programming. Thanks for the correction. WGN used to say it was due to MLB rules on their website, but now they just have a public relations paragraph about needing to compete with other channels. The Bulls answer of the NBA directly limiting the number of Bulls games is the only answer on there still intact. Any idea what direction Zell might take with the Superstation as far as its overall lineup?

Except with the 1.000 OBP, you have a .000 SLG. While with the 1.000 SLG, you have a .250 OBP (approximately).

WGN cannot get the games back on the Superstation due to MLB rules limiting the number of games that a station like that can carry. Plus, having to pay the Cubs for the loss of the cable rights+naming rights would make it way too expensive for WGN even if it was allowed.

Wait - Howry blew 4 saves compared to how many BS for Dempster??? 3 for Dempster. At the same time, that save opportunities stat for Howry is a really bad stat. Anytime he came in during the 7th or 8th inning with a lead, he was eligible for a blown save, but he couldn't get a save. 3 of his 4 blown saves last year were outside the 9th inning. So really he was 8 for 9 in true save opportunities.

It looks like it will be some combo of Lieber/Marshall again tomorrow just based upon the rotation so far. I haven't heard any official word though.

Looking at a couple of his other articles and as Tiger mentioned his signature at the end, it's clearly satire. It's hard to tell that from the article itself though which shows some poor writing. He's making fun of guys like Murray Chass.

Don't you think that's a bit steep? It's not like the guy was a shut-down CB even before he got involved in those fiascos. The last 8 games or so, he was very close to a shut down corner. He had really developed fast in that area to add to his dynamic kick return abilities. I still wouldn't trade that much for him though. Anybody trading for him is betting on that he'll play at all, which is a pretty risky bet.