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Here's a link to another study: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~mbodell/battingOrder2001.html Basically it shows that a team should put their top OPS guys at the top and then work their way down to make the optimal lineup, followed closely by taking top OBP and working their way down. It's only done on the Blue Jays of that year, but the data should be close for most teams. I also don't understand why people have said Theriot has "made things happen" in the leadoff spot. Soriano has done everything Theriot has done out of that spot if you look at their stats in that spot. Both have hit for a high average, they've walked approximately the same amount in that spot, they both steal bases at a relatively high clip. What is Theriot doing that Soriano was not doing for those that want Theriot at #1?

I want a game tonight but a day world benefit our pitching staff and Ram... Considering the off days remaining in the season, the Cubs need to play tonight. The pitching staff will be a lot more tired if they have to play a similar schedule like they did in 2004 at the end of the year.

I'm not sure Hendry has changed. I think it may be more a case of Dusty likes that type of player but Piniella has this habit of liking players who can actually play. So, basically Hendry is a G.M. who is a little too attuned into what his manager wants. Considering that Hendry is pretty good at contracts and trades for the most part, maybe we just need to hire somebody with only 1 job-to hire the manager :D.

While Hendry has done a pretty fair job trading, he's made more of his fair share of head-scratching roster moves. I think if we took a look at the rosters over Hendry years, we'd find a lot of players who played for the Cubs, then never wore another major league uniform (Jose Macias and Freddie Bynum come to mind). To me, if you have players that no one else wants when you're done with them, they pretty much had no reason to be on your roster in the first place. I agree with this point, although Bynum was wanted. The Orioles traded for him, and he had 47 AB's with the Orioles this year before he got hurt, putting up a .277/.320/.532 line. Also, all of those types of players have now disappeared from the Cubs roster, which makes you wonder if Hendry has changed or not.

Neither of them are announcing this game today, so no worries there.

I think I heard that the PTBNL would not be decided until after the season is over. My guess is that player will never arrive-the Cubs will most likely simply get cash.

The difference is that a club is a lot more likely to know whether they'll need pitching as opposed to hitting than they are going to know if they'll need a SS or CF or C or whatever position you can think of. As for whether or not Soto is a good player, I guess that's purely opinion. If you don't want to think he's that good, fine. I don't think he's an all-star or anything like that, but I think he's as good as what we've had catching this year, better defensively, and can hold his own with the bat. Considered the price a decent FA catcher may cost, if we can get the same production out of a 300K dollar rookie, why wouldn't we?? With big money at the corners, LF, and in our starting rotation (well, 3/5ths), we need a few cheap starters like Soto, Murton, Theriot, Pie, etc. Unless you plan on becoming the Yankees, we won't have a 10 mil $ guy at every spot. Definitely-with the market for catchers that is going to be out there, Soto is a better gamble then any of the catchers on the market. Soto should be the starter next year (or at least split time with another catcher) and then a veteran be brought in as the other catcher, if that's Blanco coming back or somebody else.

no he's not. He is at a 24.3% strikeout rate on the season. That concerns me as well-I didn't realize he was striking out nearly that much.

Didn't we go up a game on the Crew earlier this season? I'm pretty sure we haven't. Since we've been chasing the Brewers, the best we did was tie them for a few days.

Would you really want Mussina & his deal this whole time? If I were a large market team, yes I'd want Mussina and that 6 year deal. He was durable throughout those years. He had 3 very good years, 1 above average, and 2 average. Teams every year end up wasting money on 1-2 year deals for bad pitchers/paying for reclamation projects/giving rookie pitchers without much promise starts (which usually end up being terrible starts) because they don't have enough pitching. If I have a guy who I know is going to be in my rotation and durable every year like Mussina was, and more often then not was going to be very good (and the rest of the time at least average), I wouldn't mind at all giving him a deal like he got.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/4340964.html And here's one from San Fran: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/20/SPGINMGE7R1.DTL From Baltimore: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000899.html I think you can see that the Cubs were not bidding against themselves whatsoever. There were several teams willing to give Soriano 7 years, 120 million. The Cubs decided to go 8 in order to make sure they got him, and they impressed him enough that they did. Those articles say what Soriano wanted.... they don't say what it is that other teams were offering. In fact, the WaPo article states that the Orioles were "floored" by his contract demands. Yes, the Orioles were floored by those demands, but other teams clearly weren't. There was no way that Soriano would have gotten less than he was desiring with that many teams after him so early in the free agnet process. As the San Francisco article states, several teams had already put offers in that were considered high enough in the Soriano camp to keep negotiating. In that same article, notice it said that San Fran never had a chance to match the offer-it seems to imply that they would have seriously have considered matching the Cubs offer if given the chance. Remember that Lee got 6/100, and Soriano was considered a much more desirable free agent with more teams chasing him than Lee. Lee was the backup plan for most teams, but Soriano was plan A. I don't see any way that Soriano comes out of free agency with anything less than 7/115, probably 7/120, and if the Cubs hadn't offered an 8th year there is a possibility that someone else would have in order to make sure they made a splash.

Mike Mussina's long-term deal didn't turn out to be that bad. There are others that I suspect would be just fine, but it's really hard to find contract data from 10 years ago.

Well, since his next start is against Milwaukee and he is scheduled to not pitch against the Cubs in their series with Arizona next week, I say go ahead and break the record Webb :D

I wouldn't call the Soriano contract brilliant. He was bidding against himself. Nobody would have given Soriano 8 years, probably not even 7. Here is an article from the Houston Chronicle talking about how the Astros had made an offer to Soriano-here's a quote: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/4340964.html And here's one from San Fran: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/20/SPGINMGE7R1.DTL From Baltimore: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000899.html I think you can see that the Cubs were not bidding against themselves whatsoever. There were several teams willing to give Soriano 7 years, 120 million. The Cubs decided to go 8 in order to make sure they got him, and they impressed him enough that they did. There are even other teams besides the Astros and Giants that made similar offers for Soriano in that week of free agency that I didn't list. The thought that nobody was willing to give Soriano 7 years at that type of money is simply not true.

BTW, I noticed something that should help us next week. Brandon Webb is now at 40 consecutive scoreless innings. His next scheduled start is Wednesday against Milwaukee, and then he'll miss the Cubs series. That's a huge break for the Cubs (and makes up for the fact that last month he pitched against the Cubs but not the Brewers).

Howry and Pie are in the game. Pie's in for Ward, Pie to center, Jones to right.

What? They said he lost a lot of weight and got tired playing catch for 5 minutes. Colitis can be pretty serious. I find it surprising that he was able to play through it as long as he was.

Well, that's a little of an exaggeration don't you think. His ERA is 5.01, if you count that as almost 6 :D This is the one Cardinals pitcher who the Cubs cannot seem to figure out, and I'm not sure why. It's not that he's just a bad pitcher, or the Cubs offense, because they hit the other pitchers just fine for the most part. I take it you missed Kip Wells owning us. I try not to think about that :D Seriously though, Wells allowed 11 baserunners against us in 6 2/3 (8 hits and 3 walks). He got really lucky that he only allowed the number of runs he did.

Well, that's a little of an exaggeration don't you think. His ERA is 5.01, if you count that as almost 6 :D This is the one Cardinals pitcher who the Cubs cannot seem to figure out, and I'm not sure why. It's not that he's just a bad pitcher, or the Cubs offense, because they hit the other pitchers just fine for the most part.

It was announced a little under 3 hours ago.

Well, now that's probably a little over the top reaction. At the same time, I think there is evidence to possibly show that Hendry has learned from some of his mistakes. After the Izturis trade (which was probably his last big misstep) Hendry has been very good as a GM this past year. He traded Neifi and Nevin away for prospects. He had a very good 2006 offseason acquiring some of the best on the market at every position. Kendall has ended up being a big piece to the puzzle acquired during 2007. He also refused to make the Jones trade to the Marlins even when there was significant public pressure to do so, and that has turned out well. There is no debating that Hendry's tenure from offseason 2004-middle of 2006 was very, very bad. Since then though, Hendry has turned it around. Will that be enough to save his job? I don't know, but I think he has gotten better as a G.M. as time has gone along.

and my point was less about comparing them statistically and more about people clamoring over a guy who is maybe 5th or 6th best on his own team. latent racism? who knows, but there is no reason at all that Theriot should be selling jerseys at such a high rate when he really is just sort of okay. he doesn't even really have much personality Agreed, although you have to remember that jersey sales are always tilted towards rookies/players with new teams. Theriot is basically a rookie with a catchy nickname-there aren't that many of them out there. My guess is that in regular jersey sales, Theriot is probably still behind Soriano, Lee, Ramirez, and Zambrano.

I wish the eckstein references would stop. While I agree that people (and the media) love their "scrappy", light hitting, white middle infielders; Theriot doesn't exactly fall into that category. Just take a look at their slg/ops over the past 3 years: Eckstein 2005: .395/.758 2006: .344/.694 2007: .363/.706 CAREER: .360/.710 (7 Seasons) Theriot 2005: *Only had 14 PA* 2006: .522/.934 (159 PA) 2007: .374/.724 CAREER: .408/.771 (3 seasons) I realize he's never going to be some bigtime slugger, but he's proved to have more pop than eckstein with 2 more of both homers and doubles over the past two seasons. And while two isn't really a big difference, when you consider he's done it in nearly 300 fewer PA, it becomes a little more significant. Theriot's minor league numbers and major league numbers this season match up pretty closely to Eckstein's. Theriot's 2006 major league numbers are the only aberration in the data set. He is really a very similar player to Eckstein. He has maybe slightly more pop and slightly less OBP ability, but they are still close enough to be a valid comparison.

Compared to the pitching market? Hardly. Z would have gotten 7 years, 130 million+ out there. Props to BleacherBadger for bringing us this news last night!

I'm not surprised by the Cubs withdrawing him. They need him right now for the race. As far as next season goes, Jones should have a little bit more value on the trade market if the Cubs want to trade him. He'll only have 1 year left as opposed to 1 1/2, and his recent play has probably convinced some teams wondering if he was simply done. I'm still not sure the Cubs could get much in return, but they can probably get out of his deal without paying anything just as much in December as they could have if they had let him go to the claiming team now. As far as Patterson goes, his July was this: .340/.359/.510, and his August is this: .288/.328/.424. For somebody looking for outfield help, Patterson is not bad for a month and half stopgap, and remember whoever claims him can simply non-tender him in the offseason. I can understand why somebody claimed him-I'm not quite sure why the Orioles pulled him back.