CubColtPacer

Speaking of the Mets, if the Cubs were to trade Zambrano to the Mets by the trading deadline, what would be considered a fair deal? Milledge, Pelfrey and Heilman. The Mets could have had Zito for Milledge last year, and didn't do it. I doubt they'd do that deal for Z, especially with him struggling this much.

I have to say that I'm pretty shocked that Felix Heredia didn't even make the list. He tortured us for at least a couple of seasons.

How does Theriot not get the appropriate amount of playing time? He's tied for 5th in the team in at-bats despite being (position players with at least 20 at-bats): 9th in OBP 12th in SLG I don't mind him starting the majority of days now, because he is a little better than Izturis. I don't exactly see how he's not getting the playing time he deserves though-in a few days, Theriot will likely only be behind Soriano, Lee, and Ramirez in at-bats despite not being a good offensive player.

You win. Soriano's spot in the order is not the problem, or even a problem at all. And moving him in the order to put Pie of all people in the leadoff spot would be an awful decision. No one (at least not me) is saying Soriano's spot in the order is a problem. It's just that we have another player (Theriot) that most likely can get on base as much as Soriano. It's a waste of resources to have a guy with his power potential batting leadoff. He doesn't hit as well when not hitting leadoff. that's just [expletive]. the only time he's guaranteed to leadoff an inning is in the 1st. makes absolutely no sense to me why he couldn't produce from another spot unless it's just his selfishness getting in the way of him playing well because he's pouting about not being the "leadoff guy" That's still quite a bit of difference even with only one guaranteed at-bat. Also, the most likely hitter to bat first in an inning later in the game is the number 1 hitter, because the pitcher is the most likely person to make an out (and therefore the most likely person to make a 3rd out of an inning). 2003: 64% of Soriano's at-bats were with no one on base 2004-58.8% 2005-54.8% 2006-67.2% 2007-68.3% The two years he wasn't in the leadoff spot he saw a pretty big dropoff in those runners on base. When he went to the NL and leading off, those numbers went back up and even further. Here are his career numbers with the bases empty versus having runners on: bases empty-.288/.330/.529 runners on-.268/.321/.474 RISP-.254/.320/.444 Soriano hits better out of the leadoff spot, and better when there is nobody on base. The best way to maximize his production is to keep him there at leadoff.

Since this applies to a possible Kobe trade (which has been discussed at length in this thread) I'm going to put this here. It looks like the Lakers are going to try to build around Kobe instead of trading him. I've heard several sources saying that the Lakers are coming after Jermaine O'Neal-the deal would shake out something like Odom, Bynum, and the #19 for O'Neal and Tinsley (although I've heard several variations on the deal). If that happens, then any Kobe deal would be basically off. Edit: Ok, now it just sounds like an O'Neal for Odom and Bynum+filler deal

I have no problem with seeing Murton play more. I do think it is interesting that everyone always says that Murton's numbers may be down because he hardly plays, but never mentions that Floyd's numbers may also be down for the same reason when Murton has played more than Floyd has. I think both of them have a reason for that to be the case (Murton pressing for playing time, and Floyd has never had this many at-bats taken away from him). At this point in time, Floyd has been more successful at being a part-time player than Murton has, but neither has been good (.754 OPS for Floyd, .698 for Murton). Right now, I don't really mind who plays, but if the team continues to spiral, Murton should start getting more at-bats because he is at least a possibility for the future.

He's on pace for 400 AB, so it wouldn't take much to get up to 450 PA. As you said, if there's an injury to Murton, Jones or Soriano, or if Lou suddenly decides he needs Floyd hitting 4th everyday, then it becomes a scary issue. How is he on pace for 400 AB's? He has 104 AB's through 51 games-that's a pace of 330.4 AB's on the season, and he's on pace for just over 362 PA's on the season. He'd have to start playing just about everyday for the rest of the season in order to reach the 450 mark at this point.

The cap makes the rule unnecessary. If you already have a cap, the rule is just a pointless addition to make it more difficult to improve your team. A hard cap would make the rule unnecessary. The NBA uses a soft cap. Did you read CubColtPacer's post? Yes, I just don't see how it's true. Obviously it hasn't kept good teams from being dominant, as the same teams keep winning. Not allowing teams to trade actually pretty much guarantees that bad teams will stay bad and great teams will stay great. But I guess this is the closest anybody has come to supplying a reason for the rule. It's not like the NBA is the only league with foolish rules. It just seems to me that most leagues have these rules set up for a legit reason to benefit either the teams or the players. If you have a salary cap and then tax every dollar spent above that cap, then why can't they just tax the added dollars that come via a trade? It's not like teams are just going to be giving away Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson type players to the dominant teams and not take market value back. It appears to me to be an unnecessary barrier to trade. A man-made inefficiency that doesn't help anybody. A lawyerly creation designed to look smart but in practice and in reality, without purpose. The NBA is still a team dominated by the teams that win in the draft. It takes teams forever to get any good. More ability to trade would allow the better GMs to go from have nots to haves in a more timely fashion. The current system just seems to doom the bad teams to poisoning their home market. The NBA has just as much fluctuation from bad to good as any other league. You have your 5-6 teams at the top (where 1 team breaks in about every year) your 16-18 teams in the middle, and then your 6-8 teams at the bottom with terrible management. Here are the teams in the NBA who have won at least 50 games in the past 5 years (good teams): Detroit, Cleveland, Dallas, Phoenix, San Antonio, Houston, Utah, Miami, Seattle, Sacramento, Indiana, Minnesota, LA Lakers, Memphis, Portland. That's half the league right there-and that doesn't include the Nets (who were in the NBA Finals during that stretch), the 76ers (who were in the finals in the 2000-2001 season and were good as recently as 4 years ago), the Bulls (who won 49 games this year after being bad 5 years ago), the Wizards (who were a tough out in the playoffs last year), the Bucks (who won 51 games 6 years ago and were in the playoffs 3 out of the past 5 years), Denver (who has been in the hunt for several years including winning 49 games one year), and several other examples. It's not harder to go from bad to good or good to bad in the NBA-the only thing that makes winning championships harder than other sports is the best of 7 rule. In other sports, the best team doesn't win most of the time, but in pro basketball it does, and that's why you'll see less champions overall. There have been plenty of very good teams though.

The only thing I can see is this: we don't know where this team would be with a good bullpen. A good BP might not be that hard to acquire. We've lost probably 10 games due to bullpen collapses this year. If 7 of those are wins, then we're 2 over and probably not in such an ugly mood. Remember that you have to subtract the losses away from the total as well in that scenario. If we had won 7 of the 10 games that the bullpen was terrible in (your scenario), the team would be 8 over right now and leading the division by 1 game.

Those are the only pitchers I have, but my league has a strict start limit (120 starts for the whole season) and I'm at 42 through 2 months, which is on pace, and I've basically had 4 pitchers that entire time (I picked Sheets up in late April, and Halladay went down a couple of weeks later). There also are a few decent pitchers on the FA wire that I can pick up to start against certain matchups to get to 120 if one of my starters gets hurt.

I have a guy in my league who is very interested in my starting pitching. I have 5 starters-Roy Halladay, Rich Hill, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Cole Hamels, and Ben Sheets. I looked at his team, and the only guy that I could really use is Prince Fielder (he has Pujols playing 1B, so Fielder is in his utility slot-I have Adrian Gonzalez, and 1 of them would be in my utility slot). He still hasn't picked which pitcher he wants. So 1) Rank my pitchers please 2) Which ones would you give up for Fielder?

Bonds had 136 starts in the 3 spot in 2001-Kent had 12. Kent had 141 starts in the 4 spot-Bonds had 11. Yeah, I actually edited my post to correct myself before you responded. There was a year where they did that, though. Maybe it was '02. Yeah, they flipped the order around the middle of 02 to have Kent bat in front of Bonds, and Bonds ended up having 1 of Reggie Sanders, J.T. Snow, or Benito Santiago behind him.

Bonds had 136 starts in the 3 spot in 2001-Kent had 12. Kent had 141 starts in the 4 spot-Bonds had 11.

The majority of NBA teams are over the salary cap but under the luxury tax threshold. If a team is over the salary cap, the salaries of the traded players need to match up within 25% of each other. I understand that they need to, but my question is what's the purpose? I generally understand the rules of baseball's CBA and the reasons for specific rules. But I don't get the point of the NBA having this rule. The only goal, it seems, is to stop teams from making trades. Unless it was just a failed attempt to force teams to think twice before signing guys to bad deals in the first place. It keeps teams from having a firesale in order to free up cap room, and to keep good teams from being dominant. It's all about competitive balance and stability-the NBA would love to see most of their teams be with the team that drafted them, and that ends up happening more than it does in other sports. It's the same reason why if you are over the cap you can sign your own free agents to a max deal but you have heavy restrictions placed on what you can offer other teams fee agents. Less turnover on the roster means that there is more connection between fans and players. The fact that a good team over the cap has trouble improving means that the talent becomes more dispersed throughout the league.

You have it backwards. By using "greater than" signs when you probably meant to use "less than" signs you actually have Mesa as the top farm team and Iowa at the bottom. I think he wanted you to say that so he could jump in and add the last chain: >Chicago Cubs :D

huh? derosa complained yesterday about how he hasn't gotten use to the day games yet... but he still sucks at night. Do you mean that thread in baseball discussions a couple days back? That was Aramis complaining about the day games if that was it.

Nice Lee!

Lou's been having Pagan bat in the 2 spot the last few times this lineup against a left-hander was put in. I don't know why Izturis is any worse for that spot-he's having a good month, and he has great lifetime numbers against Willis. If this were a constant thing, I'd be upset (and I was really upset when Lou put Izturis in the 2 spot against a pitcher he's horrible against, Ben Sheets, early in the season) but he's a pretty decent option there for tonight. With that said, now that I posted this he'll go 0 for 4 and look horrible, but I guess that's how it goes :D

The first All-Star results are out. The only Cubs starter so far is Alfonso Soriano at 3rd among OFers with Beltran and Bonds. Ken Griffey Jr., Andruw Jones, and Carlos Lee are in hot pursuit. The only other Cubs in the top 5 are Lee in 3rd behind Pujols and Fielder, and Ramirez in 5th behind Wright, Chipper, Cabrera, and Scott Rolen. http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070528&content_id=1990778&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

when Lee's average drops to the .290 range, his slugging percentage will be around .510 based on his career IsoP. he's obviously not hitting for power like he did earlier in his career, so i would expect his slugging percentage to drop to the .470 range, making Lee a .290/.360/.470 player. I doubt Lee falls that far. He's a much better pure hitter than he ever has been before, and one of the better ones in the league. I would guess he'd be somewhere between .310 and .320 on the season. He will have to up the HR totals if he wants to maintain that average. I don't see why-several hitters hit .310 or better in the major leagues last year and had less than 20 home runs. Joe Mauer, Freddy Sanchez, Derek Jeter, Robinson Cano, Ichiro Suzuki, Carlos Guillen, Reed Johnson, Paul Lo Duca, Victor Martinez, Michael Young, Gary Matthews Jr. Even if Lee didn't up his HR totals, what keeps him from joining that group? He's patient and he hits the ball to all fields. He strikes out a lot, but not much more than Jeter or Michael Young (or Miguel Cabrera-who didn't make this list, but only hit 26 home runs last year, struck out 108 times, and still batted .339 in 576 at-bats). Lee doesn't have the ability to sustain a .350 average without the home runs, but I don't see a reason why he couldn't sustain a .310 average.

when Lee's average drops to the .290 range, his slugging percentage will be around .510 based on his career IsoP. he's obviously not hitting for power like he did earlier in his career, so i would expect his slugging percentage to drop to the .470 range, making Lee a .290/.360/.470 player. I doubt Lee's average falls that far. He's a much better pure hitter than he ever has been before, and one of the better ones in the league. I would guess he'd be somewhere between .310 and .320 on the season.

Even if true, that's a bit harsh, isn't it? I've never heard Barrett speak and thought to myself, "he's a total moron." I don't necessarily think he was talking about his overall intelligence, just his baseball intelligence. His instincts are pretty bad on the field, and he doesn't seem to take into account the score or spot in the game either. We've seen numerous examples this year-Barrett is the worst of all the Cubs at swinging at the first pitch for a guy who's walked the previous couple guys, his throwing behind the runner, trying to steal 3rd with 2 outs, the list could go on.

Derrek Lee with runners in scoring position this year-.467/.538/.778 I can think of 3 situations just in the last week and a half where he has done the job-the grand slam against the White Sox, and the single to give the Cubs the 1-0 against the Dodgers in the 8th on Sunday. Plus, he had the single yesterday in the 9th to bring up Ramirez with a chance to win the game. Lee has definitely not had a problem in clutch situations.

I believe you meant corner infielder or outfielder, and the answer is no, the team does not need another one of those. They desperately need 1 hitter up the middle, because between C, 2B, SS, and CF, they have 7 players, and only 1 of them is hitting well (DeRosa).

Agreed-this team can't afford to be any more patient with him. If he refuses to go on the DL, and refuses to go on the minors, then he has to be released.