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This is hilariious. Who has complained about DeRosa on this board? Anyone? Ever? Seriously? The DeRosa signing wasn't loved by many on this board. Not to mention after his bad week this week, there were at least a few people advocating benching him for the season-not as many as those who wanted to bench Cesar or Floyd, but they were out there. Of course, that is sort of the point of the board :D

In the summer that is long gone. That's 2 in 2 days then for him-Jacque hit one in the 1st inning yesterday that would have been long gone in the summer.

It wasn't on Barrett-the base was stolen without a pitch even being thrown.

:shock: I'm not surprised by that-Bymum had 4 HR, 5 3B, and 5 2B in just 136 AB's last year. Power was the one thing he did pretty well.

50-50 isn't a good percentage. Well, let's say it another way. Without using the hit and run at all in that inning, the Cubs get 1 run instead of 2. Without using the hit and run, the Theriot grounder could have been a DP and the Cubs wouldn't have scored any runs. Well, I calculated 1 because Lee still got a single, advanced on a WP, and then scored on Murton's single before Barrett would have made the 3rd out in the inning. And Sully, admittedly I can't tell you for sure-I'm listening as well :D I was just trusting Pat when he said it would have been a DP instead of saying that it just could have been one.

50-50 isn't a good percentage. Well, let's say it another way. Without using the hit and run at all in that inning, the Cubs get 1 run instead of 2.

A hit and run kept us out of a DP early in the inning, and then had us hit into a DP the end of the inning-it evened out.

Murton in RF and Jones in LF? Are you sure that's not flip-flopped, or that Floyd isn't in place of Jones? I find it odd that Lou put Murton in the 4 hole, considering the main reason he's been out most of the season was due to a lack of power. And why is Barrett given middle of the order status? He's been as bad as Izturis this year. Yeah, we're discussing the flip-flop in the game thread as well. Our guess is that while Murton learns right it makes sense to try to have the best OF defender play the other corner so Soriano can help Murton out a little bit. As far as power, that has been our reason why Floyd is playing, but it never was Lou's reason. As far as Barrett, the only player who really has been better than him who is behind him is DeRosa, and he is 1 for his last 12, while Barrett is 5/17 with 4 BB's this past week.

I do too-but it's the only way that Murton and Floyd can ever play together, and it will definitely increase Murton's PT if he can handle RF as well.

My guess is that they want to give Floyd rest, but they also want Murton acclimated to RF so that he and Floyd can play together some days. Also, while Murton is learning RF, it makes sense to put a better defender in the other corner spot so Soriano can move a couple steps over to protect Murton, and that means Jones over Floyd.

That's the plan I would endorse as well. If we start cancelling events around the country and somebody sees that they can shut down parts of the nation with attacks like these, then I'm worried that they will increase. Keep on going, but pay tribute and recognize the great loss today.

Doesn't DeRosa bat very well against LHP? If so it doesn't make sense to have Theriot at 2B against them then. The solution is simple. get rid of Izturis (completely out of here if possible) and make Theriot our starting SS with Cedeno backing him up. He said at the very least have Theriot at 2B with DeRosa in RF-allowing both of them to play against a LHP, and taking Jacque out of the lineup against a LHP, which I think everybody wants also. The good thing is that this happened the first time around, although flipped (DeRosa at 2nd, Theriot in RF).

Winning your division guarantees a top 4 spot. The top 4 spots (the 3 division winners and the team with the best record that didn't win their division) are then arranged by record.

There really isn't a way to construct this lineup correctly if Ramirez is out. If you start with the premise that 3 spots in the lineup are filled-Soriano in the 1 spot, Theriot is playing so he has the 2 spot, and Izturis has the 8 spot. So if you have the hitters who played today-Jones, Lee, Floyd, Barrett, DeRosa. Keep in mind that Lou wants to split the left-handers-why? So what happened today to the Cubs with Stanton against Jones cannot be compounded by having Floyd bat right behind him. It lets either one of the Cubs big hitters face a left-hander in the late innings, or it lets one of Floyd or Jones face a right-hander in the late innings because the left-hander was used to get the other one out. DeRosa seems like the candidate for the 7th spot-he really has been struggling this past week and was the opening day 7th hitter anyway. That leaves Jones, Lee, Barrett, and Floyd-you could do Lee/Jones/Barrett/Floyd, Jones/Lee/Barrett/Floyd, or Jones/Lee/Floyd/Barrett. I really don't see the big difference between any of those lineups, and so in this lineup Jones hitting 3rd or 4th is just as good as anybody else paired up with Lee.

I don't agree with that. The Cubs this year are built to be a heavy slugging team that hopes to be middle of the pack in OBP. Their strength is their slugging-they just hope that their OBP is not a huge detriment. So it's problem of design and not execution. In a way, yes. With the pieces that were there already though, it would have been almost impossible to build a high OBP/high SLG team in one year. SLG was available, and so that's what the team went out and got. This team is hoping to be similar to Atlanta/Texas/Mets/Detroit of last year (who finished 5th/6th/7th/8th in RS). Here are their OBP, SLG, and HR ranks Atlanta: 15th in OBP, 5th in SLG, 2nd in HR Texas: 12th in OBP, 8th in SLG, 13th in HR NY Mets: 17th in OBP, 9th in SLG, 7th in HR Detroit: 24th in OBP, 6th in SLG, 6th in HR Now, it's not the ideal-the Cubs offense probably cannot be top 3-4 in the league because of their OBP deficiencies. They have built a team like these teams of last year though-if you can get around middle of the pack in OBP, and one of the top 10 in SLG and HR, you can have an offense between 5-10 in the league. As of the last updated stats before today's game, they had accomplished the middle of the pack OBP status so far-but they are severely lacking in the SLG component that was supposed to be their strength. This can still be one of the better offenses in the league even if the OBP is not in the top 10.

Okay, so you look at K/9 and K/BB and HR's allowed. Awesome. Hits, walks, and runs allowed are kinda sorta important too. They're important looking backwards, but after three games they are in no way important as a predictive stat. Nobody's trying to predict the rest of the season. They are just saying-who has pitched better so far-Z in his 3 starts, or Marquis in his 2?

Even if he's even with the right/left split, which I doubt (he probably just has a minor split difference), but even if he has no split if he bats anything like the 2006 Cedeno did than he is basically the same as Jones against a LHP-pretty close OBP, Jones with a slightly better SLG.

For sure? Do you have his minor league splits somewhere that I don't know about? All I'm doing is basing it off of his limited major league numbers Cedeno in 2005: against RHP (41 AB's)-.341/.426/.415 against LHP (39 AB's)-.256/.275/.333 2006 against RHP (382 AB's)-.251/.279/.353 against LHP (152 AB's)-.230/.250/.303 2007 (just for fun-if 39 AB's mean little, 5 means nothing) 0 for 5 against LHP Jacque Jones Against LHP 2004-.245/.328/.329 2005-.201/.247/.370 2006-.234/.261/.416 2007-1/4 They are both terrible, but from available evidence, it seems that even against LHP Jacque is better than Cedeno against LHP. If Cedeno didn't have these splits in the minors, it might be different-I don't know if that's the case or not.

I don't agree with that. The Cubs this year are built to be a heavy slugging team that hopes to be middle of the pack in OBP. Their strength is their slugging-they just hope that their OBP is not a huge detriment. Before today's game, their OBP was 12th out of 30 teams. 12th-I know that may be hard to believe, but it's true. Obviously today's game will take that down, but I'm not sure how much. Their slugging was 15th-that is unacceptable for this team. This team is tied for 25th in home runs-this is a team that should be top 5 that is 1 home run away from being tied for last. OBP may end up being the worst area of this team, but it is not what it is right now. This team simply cannot hit home runs like they were supposed to do right now, and that is costing them. The middle of the league OBP is not. You can disagree all you want. The Cubs won't win on a consistent basis until they learn to quit swinging at junk. Are you saying they cannot win with a middle of the road OBP?

Because Lou messed up by pinch hitting with Murton earler and leaving himself with only Ward(lefty) and Blanco on the bench to ph. Ward shouldve pinch hit with Ward first but Lou didnt think that far ahead and see the possible Stanton Jones matchup. Basically, that is correct. The only options were Cedeno, Blanco, and Ward. Cedeno and Ward are actually worse against LH pitching then Jacque is, and Blanco burns your backup catcher and makes you put Ward out in RF for the next inning, all for the benefit of having a bad hitter pinch hit. I'm not sure the Murton usage was the absolute incorrect usage though-maybe have Ward bat in the 8th and then have Cedeno pinch run for him. The reaction in the game thread would have been priceless if Ward had come up to pinch hit leading off the 8th, especially after the reaction the other day when Ward pinch hit with Murton still sitting on the bench :D

I don't agree with that. The Cubs this year are built to be a heavy slugging team that hopes to be middle of the pack in OBP. Their strength is their slugging-they just hope that their OBP is not a huge detriment. Before today's game, their OBP was 12th out of 30 teams. 12th-I know that may be hard to believe, but it's true. Obviously today's game will take that down, but I'm not sure how much. Their slugging was 15th-that is unacceptable for this team. This team is tied for 25th in home runs-this is a team that should be top 5 that is 1 home run away from being tied for last. OBP may end up being the worst area of this team, but it is not what it is right now. This team simply cannot hit home runs like they were supposed to do right now, and that is costing them. The middle of the league OBP is not.

Or WHIP (Z-1.875, Marquis-1.27) or BB/9 (Z-6.188, Marquis-4.90), or HR/9 (Z-2.25, Marquis-0), or even VORP (Marquis/1.1, Zambrano/(-5.0). The only thing Z has been better in is K/9 and K/BB. Is this going to continue? Of course not. Z will rebound, and Marquis can't sustain anywhere near this ERA. I don't see how Z has pitched better than Marquis so far this season though. It's not like Z has even been unlucky-every run that has been scored off of him has been definitely his fault, if that be giving pitches right down the middle to Adam Dunn or walking people in his last start.

JJ looked aweful the first 2 or 3 months of last season as well but then turned things around with a great second half. I was really hoping they would trade him during the offseason, as I saw this kinda start coming. I wonder if Floyd could play right and Murton left? Not quite-JJ was awful in the first month of each half (April/July). He was very good in both May and June. As far as Floyd playing right and Murton left, I'm not sure. They were going to have Floyd play right in 1 ST game this season, but then they changed their minds 15-20 minutes before gametime. As far as I know, neither one of them has gotten any time in RF at all this season even in the spring (and IIRC, Murton has never played there in his career).

Threatening to bench? I'm guessing Izzy and Floyd. Hopefully Jones too. How are we going to bench all 3 of them? Are you going to put Ward in RF or put Cedeno in at SS and Theriot in RF? Both of those are not good options right now either. I would love to bench everybody who isn't playing well, but the truth is that Lee, Ramirez, and Theriot (Theriot in the last 3 days) are the only players hitting well.

I think that ball of Jones's is gone during the summer-the wind really knocked that one down.