CubColtPacer

Yes-time change tomorrow, and Arizona doesn't change times-so that's why the normal starting time for the games suddenly moved from 2:05 CT to 3:05 CT.

which means-if the Cubs go with 12 pitchers, who exactly do you hope for (besides Wuertz of course-I know that you'd give one of the spots to him).

Those are not the only criteria-and at this point, things like RPI are basically ignored by the committee. For the last bubble teams, it's all about maximizing the top wins, minimizing the bad losses, and playing well down the stretch. Purdue is much better in the wins department, Illinois is better in the losses, and they both have finished well. Their profiles are very, very close-I'm not sure how anybody could say it was wrong either way it went. Also one last criteria that is sometimes used is which team you'd rather not face-I'll let people put their own opinions on that one, although I have mine right now for most of the teams in the tournament. I thought it was said explicitly that it is not taken into account "who you'd rather not face" And excellent word subtlety saying Purdue is "MUCH better" in the wins while Illinois is "better" in the losses. The thing is it's really the other way around, the only thing Purdue has on the Illini regarding wins is that they won the head to head matchup. Illinois has an extra win over IU to combat that. I'm not comfortable with a home win in a conference where road wins are impossible to come by being the difference between two teams. Especially when that same team lost to the worst team in the conference earlier in the year. The conference wins are very similar-it's in non-conference wins where it splits off Purdue's best 4 non-conference wins-Virginia, Depaul, Oklahoma, Missouri Illinois' best 4 non-conference wins-Bradley, Missouri, Miami (OH), Florida A@M The difference in Purdue's wins is decently big there. Looks even bigger when you put Florida A&M in as one of their best 4 when Austin Peay, Belmont, and UIC are all better. U of I's nonconference schedule is ranked 38 and Purdue's was ranked 92. They're both 7-3 in their last 10. Illinois is 9-7 in road/neutral games and Purdue is 5-9. The difference in their non-conference schedule is misleading. A closer look shows why this difference is not as large as it appears to be: Illinois Purdue Maryland-16 Butler-30 Xavier-33 Georgia Tech-52 Bradley-39 Virginia-54 Missouri-90 Depaul-68 Miami OH-102 Texas A&M CC-82 Belmont-117 Missouri-90 Austin Peay-118 Loyola-Chicago-100 Illinois-Chicago-160 Oklahoma-101 Jackson State-176 Delaware State-114 Florida A&M-184 Indiana State-141 Idaho State-192 Western Carolina-245 IUPUI-211 SE Missouri State-291 Georgia Southern-241 Wagner-297 Savannah State-289 Northern Colorado-336 Illinois played 3 teams in the top 50, Purdue played 1. Purdue though played 6 teams between 50-100-Illinois played 1. They each played 3 between 101-150. The reason their SOS is so different is because Purdue's 4 bad opponents have much worse RPI's than Illinois-once you get under 150 though, does it really matter? Both Purdue and Illinois should beat any team under 150 anyway if they are at 160 or 300. I would submit that their SOS is actually pretty equal when you correctly dismiss the differences between teams under 150 as inconsequential to a bubble team-they are all there for easy wins anyway.

Maybe they wouldn't be interested in what the Cubs are offering and would be interested in somebody else's offer. I was just pointing out that opting out of his deal gives ARod the biggest freedom, without too much of a risk of throwing away money. That's true, but he'd have to take a discount to play for the Cubs. I can't imagine our budget could handle a 20M dollar player, not at least without trading one or more of Lee, Ramirez, Soriano, Marquis, Lilly and not re-upping Z. If he wants to play for the Cubs as this rumor suggests, his best shot to do so without giving up much cash is to get the Yanks to eat part of his remaining contract in some trade scenario. If he cares more about the money, he should opt out and sign with Boston, who would love the opportunity to pay back the Yanks for Clemens. I obviously don't know Arod, but I'd think after being the highest paid player and being unhappy for so many years, taking 15-17 per for 4 years or something like that and playing in a town that will worship you and a manager that you respect would be something he could swallow. Yes, but the Cubs couldn't. At least not if they resign Zambrano, who will very likely make about 15-18 per season. Now, if the Yankees were to pick up about 4-6M per year of ARod's remaining 3 years, that, combined with what Texas is paying, puts him down into the 12-15M area, and the Cubs might be able to afford that and Z also. If the Cubs don't resign Z, it becomes easier to sign ARod at the price you mentioned. That's really a difficult choice. It's hard to stomach paying any pitcher what Zito got, even one who's young and effective. If the Cubs let Z go, ARod would be a great alternative this offseason, if he indeed does opt out. I don't see the Cubs getting both barring an absolutely brilliant trade, and even then, it would probably mean putting the Cubs into the 110M range with payroll in a couple of years, and I doubt the Trib is going to go that high. 110 mil is the payroll this year-did you mean higher than that? Is it that high? ESPN's salary page isn't accurate for this time of year so it's hard to tell. I thought the payroll was going to be around 100-105M this season. In the thread Tracking Cubs 2007 payroll (a sticky in the transactions thread) they have the latest payroll as 113.58 million. Now, they might not be completely accurate, but they have the closest figures from all that has been reported, so it's probably somewhere around there.

Those are not the only criteria-and at this point, things like RPI are basically ignored by the committee. For the last bubble teams, it's all about maximizing the top wins, minimizing the bad losses, and playing well down the stretch. Purdue is much better in the wins department, Illinois is better in the losses, and they both have finished well. Their profiles are very, very close-I'm not sure how anybody could say it was wrong either way it went. Also one last criteria that is sometimes used is which team you'd rather not face-I'll let people put their own opinions on that one, although I have mine right now for most of the teams in the tournament. I thought it was said explicitly that it is not taken into account "who you'd rather not face" Well, I did a quick search and I think this quote does say that the committee does take that factor into account (although I remember a more explicit quote than this-from Andy Katz's article talking about Texas getting in as an extreme bubble team:

What about Michigan State?

Those are not the only criteria-and at this point, things like RPI are basically ignored by the committee. For the last bubble teams, it's all about maximizing the top wins, minimizing the bad losses, and playing well down the stretch. Purdue is much better in the wins department, Illinois is better in the losses, and they both have finished well. Their profiles are very, very close-I'm not sure how anybody could say it was wrong either way it went. Also one last criteria that is sometimes used is which team you'd rather not face-I'll let people put their own opinions on that one, although I have mine right now for most of the teams in the tournament. I thought it was said explicitly that it is not taken into account "who you'd rather not face" And excellent word subtlety saying Purdue is "MUCH better" in the wins while Illinois is "better" in the losses. The thing is it's really the other way around, the only thing Purdue has on the Illini regarding wins is that they won the head to head matchup. Illinois has an extra win over IU to combat that. I'm not comfortable with a home win in a conference where road wins are impossible to come by being the difference between two teams. Especially when that same team lost to the worst team in the conference earlier in the year. The conference wins are very similar-it's in non-conference wins where it splits off Purdue's best 4 non-conference wins-Virginia, Depaul, Oklahoma, Missouri Illinois' best 4 non-conference wins-Bradley, Missouri, Miami (OH), Florida A@M The difference in Purdue's wins is decently big there-Illinois though has no bad losses, while Purdue has two-Indiana State and Minnesota. It's really about which one is valued more. As for that last criteria, I'm trying to look up that story because I'm curious about that now.

Lunardi has the #s wrong. Illinois has beaten MSU and IU twice. 2 of their losses came to Iowa and UM. That'd make them 3-9 at worst, and if you're being compared to the locks in the tourney, how does the Purdue loss get included in the #s? It's possible I heard him wrong-I wanted to make sure to get all of the teams in the proper spots quickly and get to the other game (I rewound and watched it again while I was writing that post), so when I put that statistic in at the last moment I didn't watch that particular statement again, but rather went off my memory from 3-4 minutes before.

Those are not the only criteria-and at this point, things like RPI are basically ignored by the committee. For the last bubble teams, it's all about maximizing the top wins, minimizing the bad losses, and playing well down the stretch. Purdue is much better in the wins department, Illinois is better in the losses, and they both have finished well. Their profiles are very, very close-I'm not sure how anybody could say it was wrong either way it went. Also one last criteria that is sometimes used is which team you'd rather not face-I'll let people put their own opinions on that one, although I have mine right now for most of the teams in the tournament.

Wow, and then only about .1 or .2 seconds went off the clock on that out of bounds, but the refs declared the game over anyway-I guess the refs can now make the clock say whatever it wants.

They're still looking at it. Apparently the clock might not have started on time so there may still be time left. They are messing this up-there was a timer's error. That shot never should have counted, but it did. The referees cannot change it, and arbitrarily putting time on the clock makes no sense whatsoever.

C'mon Stanford. The fascinating thing is that he said that once the committee closes nominations, they start to look at all the bubble teams records against the locked tournament field, not just necessarily certain RPI numbers. Apparently he believes that Stanford jumped up because of their good record in that particular statistic.

I thought that I'd give an update here-Lunardi was just on TV-his last 4 teams in are Purdue, Stanford, Drexel, and Kansas State. His last 4 teams out are Old Dominion, Illinois, Florida State, and Air Force. He said that the problem for Illinois is that it had a record of 2-10 against teams that are locked into the field. He gets about 63 or 64 out of 65 right each year, so 1 or 2 of those teams that are just out will likely be in over 1 or 2 of those teams that are just in-it will be interesting to shake out which ones those are.

They will still be safely in, but I do believe that all of the seed improvement that USC has been doing with their two previous wins in the tournament has been washed away with this performance-this is the sort of thing that could cost them a couple seed lines tomorrow night. What do you see for Tennessee after we crapped out in the first round Thursday? I figure probably a 6 seed. That seems about right, maybe a 5 since many of the other teams who were in that region also went out early in their conference tournaments and not many teams are making a huge run through the conference tournaments which would push them up into that range.

They will still be safely in, but I do believe that all of the seed improvement that USC has been doing with their two previous wins in the tournament has been washed away with this performance-this is the sort of thing that could cost them a couple seed lines tomorrow night.

Teams like Purdue, Illinois, and K-State should be safe if there aren't upsets tomorrow. If Arkansas wins the SEC and NC State wins the ACC-things are going to get a bit dicey.

I believe it was 6 walks for the Padres game yesterday, and 3 walks today. Those 3 walks are still more than last years average though.

Now that's something I'd be fine with at this point-a second utility guy which allows Theriot to be used off the bench early without fear of somebody getting hurt later.

Buck Coats can play SS. Not well. But he has had quite a few games there in the minors. Right. Thats what i was trying to say :lol: Coats tore the ball up in ST last year as well-over a 1.100 OPS-that didn't help him much during the season.

There's guys in the NBA who have been around forever for no apparent reason. I would agree-the NBA has just as much of that as the MLB does.

They only have Prior scheduled for two today.

From what all of you are saying-it's that Prior is improving and may be ready in a while, but probably won't improve fast enough to be ready for the team out of ST? That's what I'm hearing-it just seems like it might take him a while to be ready and get that command back.

If I counted right, he should have 4 more.

Rocky Cherry seems to be giving him a run for his money at the moment... Certainly; it'd be nice if Wuertz got healthy too - he has a better track record than Cotts and would, imo, be better than Cotts this season. Who is the long reliever in that scenario? Guzman? I honestly think long relievers are a bit overrated, especially if it means an inferior pitcher makes the team. I think that's why Cotts has a spot no matter what. Oh, I would probably agree, but you're right that Lou has stated explicitly that one of the relievers would have to be a long reliever. I like the long reliever only because there would be a couple pitchers on this team who might be prone to missing a start without going on the DL-that's where the long reliever can come in handy and make a spot start without having to bring somebody up. In general though, I do agree that an inferior pitcher should not get the job just to be the long reliever.

I think you should do that to a point. Blanco is going to get his 30-40 starts-to use the pitching matchups to determine when those starts are going to come is a good idea IMO. To give him more starts than Barrett needs off to rest because of the pitching matchups? That's not such a good idea. Lou would be looking at a pretty useless sample, though. Are you talking about with the Cubs pitchers or them hitting against opposing pitchers?