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I hear that not getting owned by a bottom tier starter is cool. Too bad the Cubs never seem to get the memo before game time. Somehow, Sosa is on a huge roll right now. This is his 3rd very good start (the first two were against the Diamondbacks and Brewers). At least they each scored 2 off of him though-this is ridiculous.

Actually, no. Kevin Kouzmanaff-.155/.211/.247 in 97 AB's.

It's very confusing-it's almost like the player who played for the Cubs in April got replaced. Around the start of May, both his offense and his defense started to get a lot better. You're right, overall so far he has been a middle of the road NL shortstop. I just have no idea if June's version is going to be closer to the April version or the May version, as I could easily see both happening.

That's ok-people can root for my 2 fantasy league pitchers tonight-Cole Hamels and Rich Hill :D

This isn't the first time that this has happened in a big series-that's why I'm not sure the rule will be changed. I was trying to remember when this happened to the Pacers-when it did, I remember thinking it was absolutely ridiculous. I finally found it-in 1998, the Pacers were playing the Bulls in the ECF. It was game 4, and there was some shoving going on. Rose stood up, took 1 step, and immediately turned around and sat right back down. He was suspended for game 5, which the Pacers lost, and the Pacers lost the series in 7 games. The NBA didn't seem to care about changing their rules then, so I don't see any reason why they would know.

Any teams out there looking for a has-been/also-ran SS? I doubt they are trading Izturis. If he keeps up his current season numbers, they'll keep him. If he drops, he'll become untradable. BTW, SS's who Izturis has had a better offensive season then: Khalil Greene Jack Wilson Julio Lugo Bobby Crosby Yuniesky Betancourt Troy Tulowitski Jason Bartlett Tony Pena Jr. Michael Young Stephen Drew Felipe Lopez Omar Vizquel David Eckstein Adam Everett Royce Clayton John McDonald Alfredo Amezaga Alberto Callaspo All of these players are worse with 70 AB's or more. While the Cubs have a little bit of a black hole, so do a lot of other teams. I'm sure Izturis would have some value-I just don't think the Cubs are interested in trading him. The only way they make a deal is if they can get one of the top 5-6 SS's someway at the deadline.

PECOTA actually projected him as a more valuable second baseman this year than either Todd Walker or Jerry Hairston. PECOTA's credibility is falling if that is the case. Looks like PECOTA could be right on the money. That post was made last year. Patterson had a worse OPS in AA than Walker had in the majors-I think it's safe to say that PECOTA was well off on that prediction last year, even with Patterson's hot 61 at-bats at AAA at the end of the year.

thanks for the info Bruce. As always, it is much appreciated.

Bears get their second guy into the fold today-5th round pick Kevin Payne. 4 years, 1.815 million with possibility of incentives: http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2872414

Actually, the Cubs are one of the best in the league with RISP-that's not the problem this year. Even if they are bad at making productive outs (which I don't doubt they are from watching this team) that still wouldn't take them any worse than middle of the league overall in getting runners home.

Why? Gerald Perry currently has us at 2nd in batting and, more importantly, 4th in OBP in the NL. This is a big improvement. Yeah-while I think Perry has a little more work to do still, to take the offense from last year and have them above average in runs, 4th in OBP, and on pace to draw their most walks since 2002-there's nothing to fire somebody in their 2nd month on the job with. Now-if he could just figure out how to increase the walk rate a little more, and get some of the home run hitters to hit a few more (Soriano/Lee/Jones especially are all well down on their home run totals) then this offense could really soar.

It is true-they are 4th in the NL right now.

Look at the number of games played-the Cubs are 6th in runs per game, which matches up with their 6th in OPS. They aren't all that far behind 3rd though-a good week and they could be there in runs/game.

Yes, I did actually-in fact, it was just last Saturday in Philadelphia. When, I was there, but don't recall. Could have been in the beer line. It was during the 6 run 7th. It was the last batter Ohman faced in Utley-he hit a double to the right field corner, and Rowand had stopped at 3rd but Murton's throw sailed over the cutoff man into no-man's land in the middle of the infield and Rowand scored. Murton was charged with an error on the play.

Thanks for the link-it reminds me of the grand slam hit by Aramis against Willis in the NLCS. I think it was the same type of hit anyway, but that was the first thing I thought of.

Yes, I did actually-in fact, it was just last Saturday in Philadelphia. Murton's arm is not that big of a deal in RF though-right now he's hurting us with his routes out there and his range. His routes should improve with more practice, and his defensive problems at the moment should not cut into his playing time, especially when the other option is at best average himself in Cliff Floyd.

And by getting rid of all the league minimum guys you'd do what? Go with a 28 man 40 man roster? He's taking the league minimum guys away from the total. Basically, he's saying that if you take Wood away (his number-4 million) and - his replacement Marmol's salary (400 K) you get 3.6 million to put towards a SS.

I haven't seen anything about that (cubs.com shows a 41-man 40-man roster at the moment). My guess is Wood to the 60-day DL. You are correct: http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070515&content_id=1966470&vkey=news_chc&fext=.jsp&c_id=chc

There's one pitcher listed in the Baseball Encyclopedia that has switch-pitched-his name was Tony Mullane. I know that there were high school pitchers who did it about 20 years ago, but I'm not sure if they made it to college and did it there or not.

10 days later here are the updated totals-this continues to be a strange team Offense Cubs are 6th in runs/game Cubs are 4th in OBP Cubs are 6th in SLG Cubs are 6th in OPS Cubs are 9th in HR Cubs are 13th in BB/game 2nd in BA The offense needs to improve in home runs and walks. The team has slowly been catching up to the pack in walks/game-they are getting very close to passing 3 to 4 teams to get into the middle of the pack in that category, which would be acceptable to me with what should be a high SLG/high BA team. The Cubs current walk pace would be the highest total since the 2002 team. The HR's they should be top 5 in-they can move up a couple spots, but getting into top 5 means that they are going to have to start hitting them on a much more consistent basis. Right now they are on pace for 144 home runs-which is very low for the lineup they have. Pitching 5th in ERA 3rd in BAA 8th in walks/game allowed 2nd in strikeouts/game 2nd in OBP against 4th in SLG against 4th in OPS against 10th in least HR allowed 2nd in WHIP 5th in starter ERA 6th in reliever ERA The high number of HR's is the most glaring stat, espeically since that isn't even a rate stat and the Cubs have played less games than most teams in the NL. The walk rate is the next most glaring stat, but it also is much improved from previous years and it is in the top half of the league.

I'd didn't include organizations that win close to 100 games and make the playoffs each year. It's clearly stupid to include division winners and WS contenders year in and year out with the likes of the Cubs. The Cubs were not about in the middle of the pack. The finished LAST and spent the MOST to do so. Why do you continue defend the Cubs at every turn. I'm not defending the Cubs completely. They are one of the more inefficient big market teams, and it's something that they have to get better at if they want to compete year in and year out. I just happen to not think they are the worst organization. This is the part of your post I was debating: I agree with you on 2006-other than the Yankees, I'm pretty sure the Cubs were the most inefficient money/win, and the Yankees went to the playoffs so the Cubs obviously did a worse job. 2005 is a different story though. Some of the names on my list were not division winners or anything like that in 2005. The Mets spent 101 million to win 83 games. The Giants paid 90 million to win 75. The Mariners spent 87 million to win 69 games that year. The Cubs were not the most inefficient team in 2005 like you claimed they were. You also suggested that the Cubs would most likely be last in dollars per win if you look at the past 3 years. Just looking at my suggested team, the Mariners says that is not true. The Mariners spent 257.2 million to pick up 210 wins over those 3 seasons-that's 1.22 million per win. The Cubs spent 272.5 million over those 3 seasons and won 234 games for an average of 1.16 million per win. I'm sure if I took the time to look at the numbers I could maybe find 1 or 2 others. Yes, the Cubs have been very inefficient, just not to the extent that you said. There can really only be a comparison anyway to the big market teams-obviously a team with a 40-50 million dollar payroll is going to have a better efficiency ratio than a team with a 100 million dollar payroll (the threshold is so much lower-a 50 million dollar team winning 60 games (an awful season) would have to be matched by a 100 million dollar team winning 120 games, which has obviously never been done before). Throwing out the Yankees (who are in a class by themselves) there are so many teams to compare the Cubs to. Of those, the Cubs are closer to the inefficient side then the efficient side, but they are not the worst. It may be semantics, but that's really all I'm claiming. Edit: And after all this time, I finally realized what you meant-you were comparing the Cubs in 2006 to the Mariners in 2006. I am really, really sorry for the confusion, but I think my point about the Mariners overall stands. They have had a high payroll and been absolutely terrible the last few years. I am going to keep the post here, because I worked a while on it, and it still has a little bit of info in it. Again though, I'm sorry for misunderstanding you-it was my fault completely, and I can't believe I did that.

Lou does not trust the bullpen. :lol: You'd think carrying all these damned extra relievers would give him a few more he'd be comfortable with. The team dropped down to 11 today-that probably is in the back of his mind. Z needs to come out-now.

Z is throwing more strikes tonight than he has in most of his starts: 42 pitches through 3, 30 strikes and 12 balls.

According to Bruce (in the transactions thread), Cherry got optioned to Iowa to make room for Fontenot-apparently DeRosa didn't need to go on the DL after all.

what do the Arizona Cardinals have to do with anything? I thought he was talking about the Clippers. I don't know about other sports, but to me the Cubs are the clear favorite for worst run organizations in baseball. They're efficency is mind bogglingly bad. And they keep having the same problems over and over and over. The one constant is Hendry. He needs to be gone as soon as the ink is dry on the new owners mortage note. It just goes to show us that working hard is much less important than working smart and having a good strategy. I would say the Mariners are worse run then the Cubs. They have about the same payroll as the Cubs. Their 5 million or more players are Sexon with 14 million, Beltre 11.5 million, Ichiro 11.5 million, Washburn 9.85 million, Weaver 8.9 million, Vidro 7.5 million, Guillen 7.25 million, Johjima 5.65 million, Batista 5.5 million. Who among those players is a true impact player? To me, they are in worse shape and have been run worse than the Cubs have-they haven't even had that much of a problem with injuries the past couple years, and yet they still are mediocre at best (Felix is hurt, but that could be partially their fault). http://www.onestopbaseball.com/TeamPayroll.asp Cubs win. 94 million (66-96) Last place 1.4 million/win 87 million (78-84) Last place 1.15 million/win I'd venture to guess that the Cubs are worst on 3year averages too. Either way it's not good company in which to do business. It will be interesting to see if it gets any better this year. We are almost certain to win more games than in 2006, but how many more would we have to win to improve the ratio given how much we've spent. The payroll figures only have the Cubs at 6 million more than last year. By the way, I don't know why CubinNY had the Cubs as last in money per win in 2005. The Yankees spent 2.192 million per win that year. Boston spent 1.30 million per win. The Mets spent 1.22 million per win. The Dodgers spent 1.16 million per win. The Mariners spent 1.27 million per win. The Giants spent 1.20 million per win. Out of all the big market teams, the Cubs were about middle of the pack in efficiency that season, so I don't know how they can be seen as last for 2005. http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/a-look-inside-the-2006-open-day-payrolls/