CubColtPacer

Thank you so much Tiger for giving me an answer and being so clear! That will help my speed on certain things considerably.

I don't think anybody is saying that either. If you compare the teams on paper though, the Cubs have one of the 3 best teams in the division, and possibly the best. Could they hit a pretty good amount of bad breaks and get 70-75 wins? Sure. When you compare them to the other teams in the division right now though, how can you justify that they are the 5th best team?

Based on the way the market worked this summer, you could make a case for IP to be the most important stat. With anybody who pitches over 170 innings considered good and under 150 to be bad. So would you take the under at 160 IP? That is a tough one. I don't think it is an appropriate metric, which I'm almost sure you don't either. But for argument sake, let say it is. I think I still take the under. With the bullpen I think Lou will have a quick hook. Much quicker than TLR. I'm not sure that would help you either unless Marquis got pulled from the rotation altogether, because he had enough games even last year where he pitched well enough to get to that number of innings. He had 110 innings in games where he gave up 3 or less runs, and he had 16 other starts-so even if Lou gave him a quick hook in those games (I put games where Marquis pitched 7 and gave up 4 runs in the second category because Lou might have pulled him an inning or two earlier), he would still likely get over 50 IP over those 16 starts.

You can say that all you want, but you're wrong. Last team wasn't a fluke. Last year was a more exaggerated version of 2005. It simply exposed the flaws of a poorly run team. The Cubs have had the lowest walks in the league for several years. It's been part of their plan. Acquiring Soriano will not change that. You can cite all the bad breaks that hurt last year, but bad breaks are part of the game. People are assuming 100% health for all but Prior and Wood and no major setbacks. That's foolish. This team could probably win anywhere from 75-85 wins. I'm looking at the upper part of that range. But it's hardly unfair to think more about the lower end. Let's look at the difference between last year and this year. Last year, you had 9 guys make 9 starts or more-here are the ERA's for 6 of those guys: Juan Mateo-10 GS, 5.32 ERA Sean Marshall-24 GS, 5.59 ERA Carlos Marmol-13 GS, 6.08 ERA Mark Prior-9 GS, 7.21 ERA Angel Guzman-10 GS, 7.39 ERA Glendon Rusch-9 GS, 7.46 ERA That's 6 horrible starters right there with 75 combined starts, and that doesn't even count the starters with less than 9 starts (Williams, Ryu, and Walrond add about another 5 starts with about a 7 ERA combined as well). That's 80 starts from people who should not have been in the rotation. For this team to come anywhere close to that, one of the top 3 starters would have to go down for a significant time and have Marquis and Miller (plus Guzman) be awful, along with the minor leaguer or Prior that replaces the injured starter for that time. Is it reasonable? Maybe at the edge of it...is it at all likely that all of that happens? No. Also, their top end starting pitching was awful. Rich Hill was the #2 starter with a 4.17 ERA over 16 starts, and Greg Maddux was the #3 with a 4.69 over 22 starts. Those are the only 3 starters with 9 starts or more that have ERA's under 5. The hitting I detailed in the A-Rod post-from the stats last year, 1B, CF, and LF should all be major upgrades for the team, with most of the other positions being equal or slight upgrades, with possible small downgrades at catcher and RF (depending on how much Barrett plays this year, and if they platoon Jacque or not). Even if a couple of the hardest to replace goes down (Lee and Aram for significant time, for example) the offense would still be better than it was last year. Finally, you have the improvement in the coaching staff, which the impact of that is still to be determined.

Bringing this back up again-is there any way to do this insde a forum and not a particular thread? I went looking for a thread today, and I knew approximately what page it was on. When there are 229 pages of Baseball Discussion threads, you know your thread is somewhere between page 100-150, and the only thing you can access is either page 3 or page 227, that makes those middle threads almost useless. Is there any way to navigate that using the URL, or could we possibly get it where there is a mark for every 10 or 20 pages?

On paper, the team probably has the best lineup in the division. As far as upgrades from last year, let's look at the differences 1B for the Cubs put up a .266/.337/.437 line last year-if Lee is healthy for most of the year, they should be able to put about 100 points on that line in a normal season, and possibly up to 200 (his 05 line was over 300 points away from that line, but both because of the fact that Lee is not likely to hit that well again and the fact that Ward will get some at-bats at that position puts the high end for 1B at about 200 extra) 2B for the Cubs put up a .274/.326/.411 line overall-DeRosa and Theriot should be able to match that (if DeRosa struggles and is under that, then Theriot will get the majority of the playing time by the second half), and might be a little bit better. SS for the Cubs put up a .246/.275/.324 line. Izturis would match that at the low point, and could be reasonably as much as 100 points above that. 3B for the team put up a .282/.340/.544 line-that seems about right. Aramis will be a little above that, and the at-bats that others will get at that position will push it down to that number. LF put up a .280/.346/.428-This one should go up with Murton/Floyd being there-at least 50 points, and up to 125. CF-.294/.333/.393-this one should go up at least 100 points, and possibly 200. RF-.288/.337/.498-this one could go down 50 points or so or could go up 50 points or so depending on Jacque's year and how much they platoon him. C-.287/.341/.473-this one should stay about the same as well. Barrett and Blanco had career years, but their decline should be offset by the fact that Barrett will hopefully play about 25 more games than he did last year. P-.145/.156/.252-this one is unknown. Z and Marquis will be above that number, possibly by quite a bit, and the other 3 will likely be below. Other situations PH-.216/.284/.320 (241 AB's)-this one should go up by at least 100 points with the Cubs bench this year. DH-.212/.278/.212 (33 AB's)-this one doesn't matter very much, but it should go up by a whole lot. So 1B, CF, LF, and the bench will be major upgrades. 2B and SS could be the same at the low point, but they are likely upgrades-the question is just how much. C and 3B should be about the same. RF could be up or down depending on what they do, and P is unknown. That's a vastly improved offense, even when not believing much in people's career years. Edit: I do get one of your points though that no matter what the offense is now, that if an improvement can be made one should do it, and a player like A-Rod would be another significant improvement.

You say that after 3 good/great starts (if you count the one in the minors, where people said he looked very good), 1 average one and 1 terrible one? That's a tough critic. I think we're basing it more on the previous multiple season of medicore to bad pitching. The sample size is on the side of the doubters. I'm just saying that this last part that I put in bold implies that he's been doing poorly all of ST, and that's simply not true. If I could take his 5 starts and replicate it again and again (including the horrible one and the minor league one that didn't go in the statistics) I would gladly do it.

No-7 man pen, Pagan is gone. The pen will be Howry, Erye, Dempster, Ohman, Cotts, Wuertz, and either Guzman or Cherry. Eventually, someone is going to have to be bumped for Woody. If Wood is able to get in enough innings to start the season on the active roster, Guzman and Cherry are out of luck (although, Cotts should be demoted but it isn't likely to happen). from what lou has said i don't think it would be too hard to imagine both guzman and cherry making the team over cotts, who has options left iirc. Cotts does have options left-the only reason that most people are putting Cotts in the bullpen for sure is that is what the papers were doing days after Lou made his negative comments about Cotts. Several of the newspapers still had Cotts as a guaranteed spot, so the assumption is that he has one for now even with Lou's recent comments, although most of us would like to find that particular fact to be wrong.

No-7 man pen, Pagan is gone. The pen will be Howry, Erye, Dempster, Ohman, Cotts, Wuertz, and either Guzman or Cherry. Eventually, someone is going to have to be bumped for Woody. If Wood is able to get in enough innings to start the season on the active roster, Guzman and Cherry are out of luck (although, Cotts should be demoted but it isn't likely to happen). True-Guzman and Cherry probably both go back to Triple A if Wood is available at the start of the season. There will be a lot of factors that will determine what happens if he comes back a couple weeks in (how people are pitching, has Guzman had to be in the rotation, etc.)

This is an interesting discussion. I wouldn't feel very confident putting anything either way, especially if people are talking about ERA+. In 3 of the 5 years Marquis had above 10 starts he's had above a 100 ERA+, in 2 of them he did not. I can certainly understand why in the bullpen he was awful-with his propensity to either be good and continue to be good for several innings, or be awful right out of the gate, that doesn't lead itself to a bullpen pitcher very well because it minimizes his good outings by only getting 1 inning of good work and still does most of the damage of the bad ones. So I'm willing to dismiss that little bit of work in the bullpen as pretty irrelevant to his starting career. So-his last year was under 100, 2 out of the past 3 years he was above 100, only 2 out of the last 4, but 3 out of his 5. He could easily go either way next year, and I wouldn't be willing to lay odds either way, especially after seeing evidence of both sides of him so far in ST.

No-7 man pen, Pagan is gone. The pen will be Howry, Erye, Dempster, Ohman, Cotts, Wuertz, and either Guzman or Cherry.

It's the top two seeds, not the top three, that are determined by overall record. Too bad, too. The Bulls are the 5 seed at present despite having a better winning percentage than both the Wizards and the Raptors. That is true this year. I saw what me meant there that usually it would be the top 3 teams with the best records and then the bad division winner in 4th. It just so happens that 2 of the divisions are poor this year, and so they have to take both the 3rd and 4th spot away from Chicago who has a better record than either of them.

Lineup protection has to have some impact. For example, what if the Giants in 2001 or 2002 had decided to bat Barry Bonds 8th? What do you think would have happened to their RS? Bonds would have been stranded on 1st a lot, and their RS would have gone down significantly. Now, most managers aren't that silly-but many managers do bring some of their worst hitters up the lineup to bat in situations they shouldn't. I tend to believe that when a team complains of a lack of clutch hitting they either 1) just haven't had their luck turn around yet, 2) don't get very many hits in the first place or 3) their lineup order is wrong, which means the people who get on base have bad hitters coming up that cannot drive them in effectively on a regular basis. I see all those options are perfectly viable. Most all of the things that old school people talk about exist-it's just that stats people have shown that some of those things balance over time in order to create a negligible effect overall.

You say that after 3 good/great starts (if you count the one in the minors, where people said he looked very good), 1 average one and 1 terrible one? That's a tough critic.

Group A: Pujols Group B: Beltran, Andruw Jones Group C: Cabrera, Fielder, Dye Group D: Adrian Gonzalez, Chad Tracy, Morgan Ensberg, Wigginton, Piazza -> Miguel Tejada, Miguel Tejada -> Jimmy Rollins WC: Edwin Encarnacion First Half Transactions:

I know the first 4 ranks are Bench player Everyday player Veteran All-star Hope that helps at all.

Laird's having an unbelievable spring so far-an OBP over 500 and a SLG over 880 now. Oh well, even the people who like Marquis knew he was going to have a horrible outing eventually-the key is how he bounces back in his next 2-3 starts.

I'm pretty sure that Lee is one who has always mirrored his ST stats with his performance at the start of the season. Wasn't one of the things in 2005 was that he would get plenty of at-bats in ST to get hot before the season started so as to improve his April? He did that in 2005 and 2006, and he was pretty good at the start of both of those years.

Without being able to see it, I think they should let Marquis swing away here. He's too good of a hitter to only be bunting one of the runners over-bunting with runners on 1st and 3rd should only be saved for the worst of pitchers.

Well, we know that Marquis is usually really good or awful in his starts. He has been like that this spring, and this one is one where we would hope Lou would pull him early during the regular season to minimize the damage.

He only has to clear revocable major league waivers. He'd never end up with any team who put in the claim. If this were outright/special waivers or otherwise irrevocable ML waivers, you'd be correct. But I agree the best option is staying in Mesa for the reasons Raisin explained. I understand that the waivers are revocable but if your KC isn't it worth taking the chance? There's no risk in claiming him except annoying Hendry and KC's GM doesn't seem to mind that too much. If they choose that optioning him is better, does it really matter? You take a chance that you can slip him by, and if somebody claims him you pull him back and put him on the DL-isn't that allowed?

Speaking of history, this is the Texans and I'm confident this move(like many things they have done will go down the toilet for them). I guess they don't understand the concept of an Oline and running game. First off, this is a different Texans group-they don't have the same GM as they did for even last year's draft. That could play a part in this move as well-Carr was the quarterback of the future with the old regime, and they may want to be trying to put a new look with the new GM. Second-while I thought it was silly of them to pass up Reggie Bush last year, they did think they had a solid running game at the time. Domanick Davis was a very good back for them, and it was unfortunate that he got hurt and missed the entire year last year. Also, their O-line is getting better. They drafted a couple of O-lineman last year, and their line got better last year-it should continue to improve this year as those players get experience.

The top 3 prospects right now for next year's baseball draft. Since the Cubs have the 3rd pick, they will have the choice of at least 1 of them if the team sees these 3 as the best as most do.

I can understand why Houston is doing this. Carr has some baggage on him now that the Texans inflicted on him. From watching about half the Texans games last year, I thought the Houston line did a much better job of protecting him then ever before (still not a good job, but not nearly as bad as most of his previous years). Carr, however, looked scared. Even when the protection wasn't breaking down whatsoever, he wouldn't stay in and consistently make the throws, but would rather settle for the short check-down option. I'm not sure that Carr will ever be able to un-learn that in Houston-a change of scenery is probably what he needs at this point. Schaub doesn't have that baggage, and so can get the ball down the field more to their playmakers.

Wow, I guess the Cubs are still shopping Jones. Even if Jones ends up going nowhere, I like the idea of Murton and Floyd being able to play at the same time. That's what I was thinking as well. I'm not sure this spells the end for Jacque (the fact that the Cubs implied yesterday that they didn't want Floyd to play all that much makes it much less likely that they trade an OF now IMO), but rather it now increases the number of combinations they can play in the field. Lou already said that he wanted to see if Jones can back up Soriano-well, somebody is going to have to play RF on those days, and it would be nice to know that somebody can play the position besides Theriot/DeRosa, who might be needed on the infield.