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The biggest reason why they should get a big bat before a starting pitcher is that there is no clear pitcher to really replace. They've all been up and down, while there are clear positions in the field where there can be a massive upgrade. So sure, you could upgrade and get an ace that would help, but the upgrade from one of Lilly/Marquis/Marshall/Hill to the new ace wouldn't be nearly as much as an upgrade at C, SS, CF, or RF. That doesn't even begin to address the fact that a great starting pitcher is the absolute hardest thing to trade for.

It's certainly not stupid to sit Pie for Pagan against lefties. Really? Pagan has a .742 OPS against LHP this year, right? and .596 against LHP last year, right? Pie may not match those #s, but frankly I don't care. In 50 ABs, Pagan has a .281 OBP against LHP. Whatever Pie's #s are, the difference between them and Pagan's #s is less significant than getting our best position prospect regular ABs. I don't want Pie to be in a platoon, I want him to play every day and see all pitchers and learn to hit them. If Lou isn't prepared to do that, we need to send him to AAA (which is probably dumb b/c our CFs are so bad, that we might as well let Pie learn at this level and take advantage of his great defense). So, to reiterate, playing Jones or Pagan over Pie is just stupid. Pagan is the option that's really stupid. You could make a case that Jones has to play to boost his trade value but Pagan is just a low-ceiling prospect with no trade value. Having Pie lose starts to Pagan is indefensible. I think I could make a pretty good case that sitting a player with a .277 OPS against lefties is good for the team. We are in a race for the playoffs after all. Really? B/c it's 32 ABs, so I'd like to hear this "good case" you're going to build for sitting our #1 prospect, who is 22, for a non-prospect like Pagan, who hits LHP terribly. You realize if Pie goes 3/4 with 3 singles against a LHP in his next game, his OPS jumps like 150 points? Maybe Pie can't hit LHP and never has been able to in his career (I don't know what his MiLB splits are), but again - you're not replacing him with a great hitter. It's hard to say what the difference b/t Pagan and Pie is against LHP b/c you don't really have enough of a sample at the ML level to know how good Pie is. But again, if the choice is Pie against all pitchers, learning to hit, and getting regular ABs, or sitting him in favor of crap like Pagan, he should play every day. I don't really think Pie is going to OPS .277 against LHP if he faced them regularly, so whatever the difference is between Pagan and Pie, the 3 ABs they're going to get at the bottom of the order isn't going to make a lot of difference in our playoff chase. But please, make your "good case" - I'm all hears. Pie's AAA splits: Against RHP: 93 AB's, .462/.510/.667 Against LHP: 28 AB's, .143/.226/.214 2006: Against RHP, 400 AB's, .293/.349/.500 Against LHP, 152 AB's, .256/.322/.327 Pie is likely to have a .500 OPS or less in the major leagues against lefthanders at least this year.

Hopefully he'll replace Samardzija in Peoria when it's time for Jeff to go back to ND. Haha, these posts were from July 16 and 17 of last year on the first page of this thread - and in less than a year, Billy Petrick is in the big leagues. Even funnier, I thought you were making a joke about Samardzija going back to ND to play football. If that makes any sense. ------- Unrelated, I don't see how it is possible for the Cubs are calling Samardzija's pitches. Anyway, what does it really matter? He's in the bullpen now. Samardzija has been starting for a couple of weeks now. Edit: A little late. As far as calling his pitches, the Cubs minor league coordinator is probably telling the coaching staff of Daytona the ratio of pitches and type of pitches in certain counts, and then they call the pitches from the dugout.

BTW, one of the notes from yesterday said that Ward may get the start tonight in RF.

Just to add this note to the thread that I saw this morning: http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/padres/20070707-9999-1s7padnotes.html

Lou won't pinch-hit Ward or Floyd against a left-hander unless he absolutely has to. Remember the same thing happened when he pinch-hit Hill against Colorado (Fuentes) and left Ward on the bench.

Yeah, not a good night for the sinker that had been working well for 3-4 starts (that doesn't mean all those starts were good, but his g/f ratio over the last few weeks has been very good) suddenly be lost again.

he's a big groundball pitcher, almost 2.3 to 1 Not good when he's going against a FB pitcher and the wind is blowing out A fly ball pitcher? Marquis is a big ground ball pitcher as well-1.69 G/F. Maholm is at 1.99. Also Maholm has allowed 15 HR this year in 106 1/3 IP, Marquis has allowed 10 in 100 2/3.

Everybody knew he would struggle being promoted so fast. The good thing is that he can spend a year and a half there without being behind on track, so it's just fine if he struggles the rest of the year there as long as he plays well next year. Besides, his struggles have mostly been because of his disastrous start there (3 for his first 28). Since then, 38 AB's, .316/.333/.500 So he's been pretty good lately-he just needs to work on that K/BB ratio, which he has time to do.

Yes and no. Both Wuertz and Marmol struggle some with lefties, so there's some validity of needing more than one lefty in the pen. I don't think Wuertz or Marmol struggle enough against lefties to warrant another LHP in the pen. Wuertz has walked more of them this year, but his OPS against is nearly the same between the two sides of the plate, and he was significantly better against lefties last year(and he did well against them in AAA). Marmol is a little harder to get a read on considering he hasn't been a reliever that long, but my guess is considering his repertoire(similar to Wuertz's) that he won't have a super drastic split. Just to counter a little bit-Wuertz has also not been used a lot or pulled when tough left-handers are coming up, which artificially deflates his numbers. Plus, his 3 year numbers before this one showed this: Against Left: .230/.341/.399 Against Right: .216/.292/.332 He may have corrected something to make that split disappear, but I think usage pattern has had a lot to do with it as well.

Two words: Jim and Hendry. yeah well, that [expletive] better be sent packing after this season... I wouldn't count on it unless we end up below .500. Yeah, as the season goes along it seems less and less likely that Hendry will be fired. Even if the Cubs finish a few games short this year, he will most likely be the G.M. next year IMO.

I didn't realize you could go on a rehab assignment before your DL stint was even over. It's been that way as far back as I can remember. You just can't rejoin the major league club before then. That seems like a convenient way to skirt around the 10 day rule then. Petrick goes down, Cherry comes up, and Petrick is available to be immediately recalled because Cherry goes on the DL while the only thing it costs the club is 5 extra days to recall Cherry.

I can't imagine that's the case. If you have a solid medical reason for taking a medication, no organization can ban you from taking them. I'm sure that certain players have received exemptions so long as they're under a doctor's care (as long as the doctor isn't Dr. Nick). well it wouldn't be the organization, it would be the league. there are tons of medical reasons to take steroids. I wouldn't think MLB would allow that just because there is a medical reason for it. I don't see why the Cubs don't come up with an imagined injury for Eyre. every team in the league does it (see Wade Miller). You can't imagine an injury if the player refuses to go along with it.

Ding, you win I think it's in a little better shape than you are making it out to be. No...it's not. It's pathetic. Agreed. Seems terrible to me, position-player wise. All we have to show for ourselves at the moment are a couple of admittedly eager college prospects with pretty low ceilings and another "toolsy" CF who is, not suprisingly, floudering at the plate. Others we have recently tried out, such as Cedeno & Murton, seem to be close to tanking. And it's been this way for 20 years. I don't see how it could be classified as anything else other than bad. I look across the Illinois/Wisconsin border, and I see a farm system up there that makes us look like idiots. While I won't argue the Cubs have been better at developing players than the Brewers have (because I don't believe they have) looking at position players only obscures your point. In pitchers, the Cubs have a key advantage. Z, Hill and Marshall in the rotation plus Wuertz, Marmol, Ohman, and Gallagher/Petrick in the bullpen compared to Sheets and Gallardo for Milwaukee. That still doesn't make up for the Brewers advantage in position prospects, but it makes up ground (and a large part of the remaining difference has been problems with injuries for the Cubs-Patterson, Wood, Prior, and Guzman having major injuries really hurt the farm system record of success) Carlos Villanueva? And the big difference between the two has been sell high trading vs sell low trading. Acquiring Jorge De La Rosa, Chris Capuano, Chad Moeller, Lyle Overbay, Craig Counsell and Junior Spivey for Sexson, then flipping Overbay for Dave Bush, Gabe Gross and flipping Spivey for Ohka. Also Davis for Vargas and Estrada. A lot of those guys aren't rocking the world, but they are providing good solid production for guys who were close to their walk years. I didn't include Villanueva because he came in through a trade from the Giants, and I was only including players who came up completely through the system. None of those trades you just included involved anybody from the Brewers farm system, which is what we were discussing. If you do want to include trades though, the Cubs farm system also netted them Lee, Ramirez, and Murton. I'm not sure what actual trades that involved Brewers that came up all the way through their system gave them.

Steroids are a 50 game ban. Other substance abuse cases have a completely different program and punishment scale.

Steroids aren't stimulants. And stimulants aren't steroids. yeah - it's greenies, not roids. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2927670 Damn. Read between the lines on this quote: Haha. Tigers can't get rid of Neifi soon enough. It's easy to interpret that way in this case, but teams say that every single time something like this happens, quality player or not.

I keep meaning to ask, WTF is a Senior Circuit club, and why does it matter how they rank among senior circuit clubs vs among the rest of the league? The National League is referred to as the Senior Circuit because it is the older of the two leagues. So they are just saying how the Cubs rank in the N.L. in those categories.

I didn't realize you could go on a rehab assignment before your DL stint was even over.

We have to DFA Eyre. Dempster Wood Howry Marmol Weurtz Ohman Guzman If Demp or Howry are traded, add in Petrick. Wow is that an amazing bullpen. That's only one left-hander. So? The Cubs have essentially only had one left-hander for the last month and a half and it's worked out just fine. Eyre doesn't really count because he has just been coming in during blowouts and in blowouts it doesn't matter if the pitcher throws with his right or left hand. Also, the Padres bullpen has gone between 0 and 1 left-handers all year, and they have been pretty good I'd say.

Ick. Brown has a .310 slugging percentage. Pop? Well, he did have pop before this year, and he does have a .360 OBP against left-handers. I'd trade Jones for Brown-KC was interested in him before the Cubs signed, maybe they'd still be. At least it gets us a player who can hit left-handers better than right-handers instead of the other way around. That would fit better with the Cubs roster.

I'll be more worried about the offense if they don't have a pretty good weekend here. RFK turned some of their home runs into outs, and that really hurt the offense (Ward and Soriano's balls last night are good examples of that). The Cubs haven't hit a home run since Ramirez's walk off shot a week ago-PNC park should hopefully change that a bit.

A truly confident person doesn't need to brag. Kind of like scoring a touchdown and just handing the ball to the ref. It makes perfect sense to me. Same thing with me-I don't really understand the confusion.

Technically, Koyie Hill has a higher OPS than Barrett since the trade: 29 AB's, .172/.250/.310 compared to for Barrett 37 AB's, .243/.243/.297 They are all terrible though. I certainly did not think that after 3 weeks all 3 catchers (Hill, Barrett, Bowen) would all be under a .600 OPS. It appears that Barrett has lost the starting job in SD already-now it's time for one of Hill/Bowen to lose their job to Soto.

I hate to see news like that. I hate to see anybody get hurt, although I know it happens. I'm very glad it wasn't a Cubs guy, but I wish we could have passed the Brewers without seeing somebody go down with an injury that could really hurt his career.

I want them dead and buried before the deadline. But they have reason for optimism right now with Carp coming back soon. But if the Cubs and Brewers come out strong after the break and the Cards continue to muddle a few games below .500, I don't think we'll see any big deadline moves from Jocketty. They may not sell everyone off (Rolen?), but you won't see them make a splash. I completely agree...I'd like to see them lose a couple more series in a row...and Jockety start selling off pieces...Rolen/Edmonds...some of their remaining bullpen arms...The team is not good right now...but if Carp and Mulder come back at 80-90% of their former selves, their starting staff becomes very serviceable...and they've still got that pujols guy. I wouldn't worry about Mulder-he had another set-back a week or so ago, and is nowhere close to going on a rehab assignment. Probably the best case scenario right now for him is to return in mid-August, and with how many delays and setbacks he has had already that seems very unlikely.