CubColtPacer

And if they release him, they'll pay him 4 million to sit at home. Is that supposed to be better?

Well, really none of the candidates for the #2 spot have produced so far this season very well. The four people who have played in the #2 slot so far have produced OBP's of .321, .313, .303, and .182 so far. Even if you throw DeRosa in there, that's just .333. I fully expect them to pick it up, but they've all been about the same. :?: Murton has a .375 in the #2 spot. Upon closer review, I guess you probably meant his overall OBP. I haven't seen his pitches/PA numbers, but he sure seems more patient in the 2-hole. He probably also gets better pitches to hit b/c they're not going to pitch around a guy who scouts have to know is generally patient with Lee & ARam behind him. My impressions were the opposite, but that's mostly seeing how much he struggled on Opening Day swinging at everything and how much better he looked on Saturday when he was in the 6 slot. It's only been 2 games for both of those, so there's not really enough evidence for an indicator either way.

Well, really none of the candidates for the #2 spot have produced so far this season very well. The four people who have played in the #2 slot so far have produced OBP's of .321, .313, .303, and .182 so far. Even if you throw DeRosa in there, that's just .333. I fully expect them to pick it up, but they've all been about the same.

Well, he is their cleanup hitter-I would assume that the team thinks he is good.

2 things: 1) Shouldn't Murton see plenty of pitches to hit in front of Lee and Ramirez anyway when he's in the 2 spot? 2)I'm not sure about making Soriano angry this early in the season, especially when we may have to ask him to switch positions later in the season.

I like this. He sent a message to his team without risking much. If he had continued to hold Encarnacion out, he would have hurt the team, but it doesn't sound like he is going to do that, so it's just sending a message with the only drawback being removing a player for 4-5 innings.

that's what I understand too. Although, I don't know how they'll determine who was a starter and who was on your bench. They didn't really-whoever was your starter on day 1 was your starter every day through the first week and a half. I lost a couple good starts by Hamels, but that's all right. It's only the first week and a half, and if there are no more issues it won't matter much over the whole season.

I'm pretty sure Dave Bush would argue with you there :D

Exactly-high schoolers may fail at a higher rate, but the most talented players also typically come out of of high school. If you draft 10 players, a big market team would rather 2-3 become true impact players and the other 7 be awful then all 10 become mediocre (or 1 standout, 5 mediocre, and 4 failures would probably be a better comparison). I dont think the most talented players come out of high school. I dont really understand your argument. I really dont care if they draft highschool players further down in the draft, because those picks are more of a roll of the dice anyway. You want to draft a higher risk player with your highest pick? THere will be plenty of high ceiling guys availible with the 3rd pick I'd just rather see them use that pick on a guy thats more likely to succede in pro ball than one that more likely to bust. Id like to see the top 10 picks from the last 5 years and see how many of the position players that succeded at star level were highschool players and how many were college players. Let me go a little further back then that so we can allow all players to make their way through the minor leagues. I picked out 1998-2002 as a good timeframe (let it be known, I did not skew the results with those years purposefully-I have absolutely no idea who was drafted in the top 10 in each of those years). 2002 B.J. Upton-HS Donald Greinke-HS Prince Fielder-HS Scott Moore-HS Drew Meyer-college 2001 Joe Mauer-HS Mark Texeira-college Chris Burke-college 2000 Adrian Gonzalez-HS Luis Montanez-HS Rocco Baldelli-HS 1999 Josh Hamilton-HS Eric Munson-college Corey Myers-HS BJ Garbe-HS 1998 Pat Burrell-college Corey Patterson-HS J.D. Drew-HS? Austin Kearns-HS Felipe Lopez-HS Sean Burroughs-HS Carlos Pena-college I have to run, so I'll just have to give you the data for now without any analysis.

Exactly-high schoolers may fail at a higher rate, but the most talented players also typically come out of of high school. If you draft 10 players, a big market team would rather 2-3 become true impact players and the other 7 be awful then all 10 become mediocre (or 1 standout, 5 mediocre, and 4 failures would probably be a better comparison).

You're right-I didn't even see that. This move of pitchers is not a great thing for that first Cardinals series-now the Cubs have Lilly, Marquis, and Miller going in that series with nothing really to be able to do about it. If they skip Miller again on the next Thursday the off day (which I suspect they will with the Cardinals series coming up) that means they could throw Marquis, Z, and Hill when they visit St. Louis though.

It's this stuff that OFFICIALLY pisses me off. Great. Now we get 2 off-days, and they probably rescheduled it during a long game streak with no breaks. It should have been rescheduled for tommorow. End of story. This is stupid excecutive baseball. Actually, it fits better for the rest of both teams as well. If they had rescheduled it for tomorrow, it would have been the first of 14 in a row for the Cubs and the first of 11 in a row for Houston. They rescheduled date is the first game after the All-Star Break. It will be the first of 11 for the Cubs and the first of 7 for Houston. Not to mention all of the logistical problems that would happen if the Astros have to stay an extra day in town now. It works much better both baseball and business wise to play right after the All-Star Break.

Hey, they were over .500 too. Baserunners and a winning record, that didn't happen very often. Yup-the funny thing is that isn't the last time it even happened (the 16 baserunners and 2 or less runs). Here's another one: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=260803216 There was also one where the Cubs had 15 baserunners and only scored 1 run. They were actually quite good at this particular trick :D

Just from taking a quick look through last year, here is one game where the Cubs had 16 baserunners and only scored 1 run: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=260503129

No they aren't. They are justifying that he's barely playing at all. Again, complaining about a lack of playing time isn't complaining about a not getting all the playing time. Just like complaining about a poor pitching performance isn't complaing about a lack of a perfect game. There were at least 8-10 people complaining Friday night about Murton not playing in only his 2nd game that he didn't start. This thread was started when Murton had started 4 out of the 6 games decrying his lack of playing time.

They have 3 home games though that have a pretty decent chance of being flexed to a night game (broncos, giants, saints). What's the limit for primetime games? It's not much more than 5 is it? There's actually a good shot at starting 5-1. I'm chalking up the Chargers game as a loss, the Eagles game will be really tough. Well, I doubt you get more than 1 flexed (I think you'd hit the limit then) but the likelihood is that at least 1 of those 3 games will become a night game. I think you got a break by having SD first. That's the game that would be the game you'd almost have to chalk up as a loss, but the first week tends to equalize things out. So you can maybe steal a win there. I could see you starting 4-2 or 5-1, but there could easily be 4 competitive or better games in there (chargers, chiefs, cowboys, packers).

They have 3 home games though that have a pretty decent chance of being flexed to a night game (broncos, giants, saints). Also, that's the same the Colts got. After the opening game they get on primetime at home, their last 4 primetime games are all on the road.

Here is a link to the entire schedule of the Bears: http://www.chicagobears.com/news/NewsStory.asp?story_id=3278

Seriously? You're commenting on his SLG right now? That's the same as Jacque Jones, who has started everyday and doesn't appear to be anywhere close to losing his job. That's basically one single worse than Soriano right now. The absurdity in the Murton critiques is just beyond ridiculous right now. The guy hasn't played. He's been given the least amount of opportunities of any supposed regular, and is basically being used similar to how Ryan Theriot has been used. He's had one instance where he's started back to back games, and was substituted out after 2 at bats in that 2nd game. All they are doing is responding to the people who are very upset that Murton is not starting every game-they are just saying that Floyd is deserving of plenty of playing time as well, and to do that, they have to point out Murton's struggles so far this year.

December 17th, Bears at Vikings-Monday night game

The only reason I can think of it is this. They are very concerned about keeping Z on as close to correct rest as possible. So they have a motivation to pitch him on Friday. Then comes the question-do you change the order on Saturday and pitch Hill, then Marquis, then Lilly-or do you pitch Lilly, Marquis, Hill (maintaining the R/L/R order)-it is certainly possible then that they would just maintain the order they went with at the start of the season and pitch Z on Friday, Lilly Saturday, Marquis Sunday, and Hill Monday. It all revolves around how much rest they want Z to get.

Do the Bulls have another pick? As far as I know, when they trade picks they will only have the Knicks pick and their own late 2nd round pick. They wouldn't have a pick in the late 1st/early 2nd in order to take Afflalo.

BTW, one of the biggest impacts on how a team does in the year happens today-in case anybody missed it, the schedule comes out at 1:00. With the way variables change in the NFL from week to week, when and what order you play teams can have a definite impact on a team's record.

If they get all the way to the 5th slot, they have an 18.44% chance of getting one of the top 2 picks.

Even if it doesn't hold up under appeal, it sends a big message that the commish isn't going to tolerate this stuff. I'm fine with the message, I just don't really like how he's going about enforcing it. This sort of ex post facto enforcement is just a bit troublesome to me. I'm fine with year long suspensions for certain actions, I just think the lack of precedent will cause problems, and could ultimately undermine the whole movement towards stricter enforcement. You are basically forcing the union to fight you on this, as opposed to coming to a mutual agreement. I'm not sure it will force the union to fight. Goodell and Upshaw worked closely on these cases before the decision, and the 6 man player council that was just created met to discuss these cases. So the commissioner already had significant input from the players and the player's association before coming to this decision-if they had all told him that these sorts of punishments for these two were unacceptable, you'd wonder if the commissioner would have proceeded anyway or not. My guess is that the player's council advised Goodell to suspend them for this long, and Upshaw probably isn't as happy about this-but the player's association has a very tight tightrope to walk now because the fans and probably many of the players support this.