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CubColtPacer

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  1. I wanna say we did that in spite of Izturis, not because of it. It was in spite of him, although Izturis does have a .400 OBP in the last week :D
  2. Interesting-this is the exact same lineup, both positions and spots, that beat Snell last week. I bet that is not a coincidence.
  3. With left-handers coming up the next two days, I'd be very surprised if Jones and Floyd weren't the CF/RF tonight.
  4. The Yankees have made the playoffs every year. The Cards made the playoffs in '04, '05, and '06. Neither of them had the young arms and the farm system the Cubs had in '03, and neither of them failed to take advantage of the opportunities they had. The Red Sox have contended for the playoffs every year. The Mets were the only high spender that failed recently, and they changed their entire organization. The Cubs, however, keep trying to make things work with the current system, and it hasn't worked. They aren't the only ones. The Dodgers have been in and out of the playoffs. The Mariners haven't been in the playoffs for years. The Angels have been up and down. The Orioles haven't made the playoffs for years, and the Giants and Phillies haven't either. All of those teams have had similar payrolls to the Cubs.
  5. This is the tipping point year for Hendry. His biggest problem in his tenure was staying almost completely pat during the offseasons of 04 and 05. That didn't leave the team with enough talent when both bad development (Patterson, Cedeno) and devastating injuries to both middle of the order and starting pitchers happened (Nomar, Lee, Prior, Wood). Now Hendry didn't stand pat whatsoever. If this team ends up working out and being a playoff team, then Hendry gets more rope. If they have a high number of wins but no playoffs (say 87 or more), he gets next year to finish out his contract but would need to do something great to get extended. If this team is at .500 or worse with another big payroll, he will have to go.
  6. Which is one of the reasons why this article was very irritating to read.... Does Dave van Dyck know what he's talking about in general? All he did was casually mention that DeRosa has started in right before-I don't think that really says much about what's going to happen against a LHP. It's not like Lou told him that was an option against a left-hander. I know we've discussed this before, but people have been saying this about Murton's playing time since the season started. Don't worry, it's early. He'll get the majority of the time. Floyd is just hot. It was just an isolated occurrence (DeRosa's start). I think there is reason for concern that Murton is the odd man out at this point. There is a simple solution to getting an "everyday" lineup. Theriot at SS. Murton/Floyd platooning in RF. Jones in CF. Send Pie down (if he's not going to play regularly) and bring in a RH who can play CF and platoon with Jones. All I was saying is that there is legitimate concern about Murton being the odd man out, but this article adds absolutely nothing to that concern.
  7. Great discussion. Where would you guys say that the Cubs biggest depth problem is? Catcher is number one-putting Blanco in as the everyday catcher instead of Barrett would be a big loss to the offense (although not so far this season). 1B is another one-although the Cubs have two decent candidates to fill it this year unlike last year, that still is such a huge dropoff. 3B is probably the 3rd position player-the Cubs have Scott Moore in the minors who could come up and do an ok job filling in, but it would be trouble if he had to be in the lineup for a long time. Another SP is also a minor depth concern, although if Sean Marshall continues to pitch the way he has coming back from his injury that concern isn't very strong. offensively, yes, but blanco handles pitching staffs remarkably well and is a top notch defensive player. at 1b, of course there's going to be a dropoff, derrek lee is one of the best hitters in the game. at 3b, derosa would slide over before moore would be utilized, although he may be called up if ramirez goes down. Yeah, I was looking more at serious injuries-I think the team has enough depth that if a guy goes down for 5-10 days it won't be much of a problem no matter who it is.
  8. Great discussion. Where would you guys say that the Cubs biggest depth problem is? Catcher is number one-putting Blanco in as the everyday catcher instead of Barrett would be a big loss to the offense (although not so far this season). 1B is another one-although the Cubs have two decent candidates to fill it this year unlike last year, that still is such a huge dropoff. 3B is probably the 3rd position player-the Cubs have Scott Moore in the minors who could come up and do an ok job filling in, but it would be trouble if he had to be in the lineup for a long time. Another SP is also a minor depth concern, although if Sean Marshall continues to pitch the way he has coming back from his injury that concern isn't very strong.
  9. I think people were responding to the crack that Marquis has no "stuff" to get back. His ML body of work also shows that he must have pretty decent stuff-he may not have shown that consistently, but it is there.
  10. Which is one of the reasons why this article was very irritating to read.... Does Dave van Dyck know what he's talking about in general? All he did was casually mention that DeRosa has started in right before-I don't think that really says much about what's going to happen against a LHP. It's not like Lou told him that was an option against a left-hander.
  11. That scenario crossed through my mind as well-it's just really hard to tell which teams would be in the WC race this early. My goal for the team is that they can be 5 games over .500 each month from here on out (month of May starts today on that)-if they do that, then they would probably win at least one of the two races. Right now all the Cubs can do is win though-and if the Brewers do run away later in the summer, at least the team will still be in good position for the WC at that point.
  12. On the other hand, Barrett is a pretty healthy guy and he's 6'3" 210 lb. Wasn't Barrett a little plagued by injuries when the Cubs got him though?
  13. I just re-read the thread, and other than navigator's point replying to you just above, nobody has said that the Brewers will fall just because they are the Brewers. So I'm not really sure who you're responding to.
  14. God bless you. Good god is Hester fast..... Devin Hester you are ridiculous! Joniak is becoming an amazing play by play guy. On a side note, my buddy dvr'd the bears first pick and what the espn guys were saying about the bears and the pick, and drew r. celebrating a pick early. I almost threw something at the tv, listening to Steve Young criticizing the bears and grossman, and saying they should pick a qb. What a joke!!!! This coming from a guy who was known as a bust for his first 8 seasons, and was terrible in his first couple years as a starter(as a buc of course). Steve Young, Second Year with the Buccaneers(4th season as a pro), first full season as a starter. 195 363 53.7 2282 6.3 8 13 | Rex Grossman, Fourth Year with the Bears, first full season as a starter 262 480 54.6 3193 6.7 23 20 I definitely still get your point, but that was only Young's 3rd season in the league. By his 4th year he was in SF. Also, you failed to mention that Young put up 425 yards rushing with 5 TD's, compared to Grossman's 2 yards rushing and 0 TD's.
  15. Murton won't be taking Jones's AB's though-Pie will. Jones hasn't started in RF since Soriano switched to LF (I may be wrong and he's done it once, but I think it's not at all).
  16. i don't understand why it's a big deal if the cubs have three lefties in the rotation. teams have 4-5 righties in the rotation all the time and no one says anything about it. There are more right-handed hitters in most (all?) lineups than there are left-handed hitters. The NL hit .265/.340/.426 against LHP last year, and .264/.332/.428 against RHP. What matters is who is the better pitcher, not if you have too many LH, or not enough. Weird. I always assumed that with there being so many more right-handed hitters than lefties, that LH pitchers had a rougher time. I agree that you need the better pitchers in the lineup, regardless of whether they throw with their right arm, left arm, or if they kick the ball up there. Of course, that's totally obvious and probably doesn't need to be said. It could have something to do with on average that left-handed hitters are better than right-handed ones: NL pitchers against LHB: .271/.348/.442 NL pitchers against RHB: .263/.328/.424 The fact that left-handed pitchers can get out more frequently the side that has the better hitters might help negate the disadvantage they have from facing so many right-handed batters.
  17. I would have been willing to bet that Wuertz could have gotten out of 7th and not given up the lead as Howry did. I'd would have been willing to bet that the offense, with Murton instead of Izturiz would have scored more than the 3 they needed to get to the 10th. It's as reasonable to bet that Wuertz would have kept walking hitters as to assume he would have got out of the mess he helped to create. A reliever cannot come into a game late and walk the first hitter he faces. That's unacceptable. Yet not in the same realm of unacceptacality(it's a word, look it up) as getting pissed of at a walk and yanking a guy because of it to send a reactionary "message". We were nearly screwed in extra innings yesterday because he could've kept Wuertz in to finish the 7th, and instead he burned Wuertz, Ohman, and had Howry throw some pitches for good measure. The team was never in deep trouble yesterday. They had an ace in the hole if it had gotten past the 11th, otherwise known as Ted Lilly. He would have been pitching on normal rest, and him pitching in that game wouldn't have messed up the pitching rotation this next week because of the off day today. Now-usually a team does not have a luxury like that, so hopefully Lou does not use the bullpen like that on a normal basis.
  18. I would have been willing to bet that Wuertz could have gotten out of 7th and not given up the lead as Howry did. I'd would have been willing to bet that the offense, with Murton instead of Izturiz would have scored more than the 3 they needed to get to the 10th. For as bad as Izturis is normally, are you saying that Murton would have helped the team score more than Izturis getting on base all 3 times he was up to the plate? As far as Wuertz, maybe he would have gotten out, maybe he wouldn't have-that's really hard to tell, especially when one base hit would have scored a run.
  19. I think I brought up Pagan. No, he's definitely not on the same level as Pie defensively. But the only difference between Pagan and Pie to the ML club is defense. Both have speed. Both have mediocre offensive production at the ML level. I just don't see how defense in CF is worth wasting Pie's service time. He needs to be working on hitting lefties and taking walks. Pie couldn't hit lefties in the minors. Major league lefties are going to destroy him. My guess is that Pie will get some chances against major league left-handers coming up-Jacque and Pie will probably split the upcoming starts against LHP.
  20. 21-11 as of May 7th, 2006.
  21. Development is a long run story. If his development is compromised now, that has long-term implications. Pie will not develop as a PH and defensive substitution. That wasn't my point. If he spends a few weeks or months on the Cubs bench before eventually playing everyday (in Chicago or Iowa) he should be able to adjust and continue his progression. Hasn't Lou done this before with good prospects? From looking at the statistics, A-Rod sat the major league bench most of 1995, and then became the Mariners regular SS in 1996. Jay Buhner also did the same thing. I wouldn't be surprised to find several more examples if I actually looked hard-the time in the majors didn't seem to hurt their development.
  22. I think this has been a pretty good bullpen overall. Wuertz and Cotts were awesome early-both of them have been a little choppy lately, but not too bad. Dempster has been great-the only big mistake was the pitch to Pujols, but other then that, he's been very good. Howry recovered from his rough start, and is now having his usual good year. Ohman still has had too many problems with walking the left-handers that he's brought in to face. Cherry has been up and down. Eyre is starting to locate his pitches better after the horrendous most of April-I think he will start to pitch much better in the next month or so.
  23. So far Floyd is on pace to be about 50 at-bats under when his first option kicks in. After this next 10 game stretch with all these left-handers, he probably will be even further away from that pace.
  24. Not a bad idea, except where would The Riot play? I think, in my opinion, that there's no need to move The Riot, considering how well he's been performing. Again, the entire idea is predicated on the idea that Theriot will come back down to earth sometime. I think he is already come back down to earth. His SLG is even way down compared to last year, so I'm actually expecting him to show a little more power than he has so far. I doubt Theriot's SLG will go up much-his highest SLG in the minor leagues was 391. His SLG this year is .375. Theriot's BA might still go down a little bit too-I'm not sure his BABIP is quite this sustainable. His recent huge walk surge though has raised his OBP 60 points in the last week back to a great level.
  25. Yeah, I'm not very surprised by that. In just about every quote, Hill mentions about his change mentally is the reason he started to succeed. It's a common thing that pitchers say, but Hill talks about it so often that I knew that he must have been working specifically at that.
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