CubColtPacer

They cut from Peyton to Dungy on ESPN news-there wasn't much to report there, as Dungy provided very few quotes. They haven't shown any other people yet.

I'm hoping the Bears consider a similar strategy. I'm sure they will, but like the article says, if the Colts see they are doing that they will start mixing in quick snapping. Since being out of position is worse than not showing Manning the look, the Bears will be forced to back off,

That's going to be an absolutely amazing game.

That's a very interesting analysis. While you're right that the Cubs should have less double plays (due to the high strikeout totals from the pitchers), the striking difference in the numbers does back up the claim that the Cubs could not seem to turn the double play when they needed to last year, and that it hurt them greatly during the season.

The fundamental insight that spurred the development of this metric was the realization that balls in play that turn into outs for every pitcher tend towards the same value. The primary variables are: 1) type of batted ball (gb, fb, ld) and 2) defensive efficiency. #1 varies by pitcher and #2 varies by team. Not every individual ball has the same chance of becoming an out, but over the course of thousands of balls put in play per year, this has been repeatedly shown to average out. What this means is that looking at the efficiency of the defense is a very valid metric. I understand your stance, and your opinion - that's not the problem. I'd like you to answer the question about where overthrowing cutoff men, throwing to the wrong base, Barrett calling 8,000 fastballs (on 0-2 and 1-2 counts) a game, Pierre playing about 10 feet behind second base, etc etc comes into play by numbers? Edit: Meant to type 0-2 and 1-2 :D I replied to your post before you edited it. I game the answer to your question in my response to cubcoltpacer. In short, the defensive efficiency on thousands of balls in play is far, far more impactful than what happens on any 50 plays you care to pick out during the year. And while you watch the Cubs all the time and those 50 plays stick out in your mind and tell you the Cubs have a bad defense, the truth of the matter is that every team has some number of plays just as stupid every year. But however many it is, and however great the difference in those between the Cubs and the team with the smallest number of gaffes, the rate of making outs on thousands of balls is overwhelmingly more important. With the defensive efficiency ratings and the number of at bats total for the season, the difference between 3rd and 22nd defensively is less than 100 plays. The variability of those plays that cannot be measured could swing it that much. From seeing the 2006 Cubs, they had all those things go wrong. Their OF defense gave up base after base. Their infield defense (especially Cedeno) made a larger percentage of their errors than normal during the middle of big innings. Those plays (and others) caused the difference between being a good defense statistically, and a defense that blew several games in the 2nd half (and I could go provide the examples if needed) and was overall a below average defense.

Ask Jason Marquis what he thinks about our outfielders when the seasons over. If our outfielders do a very above average job of converting fly balls into outs, I don't think he'll have room to complain. However, he may do so if the OF doesn't accrue "style points". But isn't the fundamental idea of defense creating outs when the ball is put in play? I'm not trying to be smart here, but you do know that's what defensive efficiency measures, right? I would agree that the defense's fundamental job is creating outs, but I think a secondary job has to be not giving up extra bases, along with turning extra outs that cannot be measured as easily. For example, the throwing arms of the Cubs outfielders allowed runners to move up on a consistent basis. Also, I saw more easy double plays last year turned into no outs than any year I've ever seen of Cubs baseball. I could go on, but those two things hurt the Cubs greatly, along with some particularly bad defense with runners on (for example, how many errors of Cedeno's were throwing home with multiple runners on and throwing it 30 feet wide of the plate? 5 or 6? That's exceptionally high, and caused a couple of games to swing with the big innings that resulted-those errors hurt worse than an error with nobody on).

Then what do you base your opinon on, their astrological signs? Even the most saber-inclined fan (myself included) will admit that there isn't a tried and true, reliable way to measure defensive ability yet for baseball players. There are some decent metrics popping up, but nothing that's nearly as widely accepted or respected as some of the offensive metrics. That's how I feel-the people are doing a good job at refining the defensive metrics, but they shouldn't really be seen as nearly as reliable as the offensive metrics just yet, and even the offensive metrics cannot account for quite everything (nothing ever really can put all the variables in correctly). They should be looked at and given weight, but given pause when looking at a thing like the Cubs defense that struggled mightily at times, especially in the 2nd half of the season.

Yep. Oh, and yes - our defense is crappy. There's Lee...and...that's about it. Can't follow you there. We were 6th in defensive efficiency in '06, and 13th in '05 and '04. I simply can't follow you there. In a sport like basketball, a team can have good team defense without having good individual defenders. In baseball, one must have good individual defenders to have a good team defense. Last year, the Cubs didn't really have it. Murton was average, Pagan was below average. Pierre and Jones were good at getting to the ball, and terrible at throwing. Ramirez was better, but still not great. Cedeno was below average. Neifi was very good at second, Theriot was average, and Bynum was terrible. At first, Walker, Mabry, and Nevin were average, with Lee being very good for his few games. Barrett was below average, while Blanco was above average but slipping. How can you have a significantly above average defense when there are very few plus defenders on the field? Let's tackle this another way. The Cubs are ahead of the Cardinals last year. The question is-how can that be? Molina is much better than Barrett. Pujols is better than the Cubs first baseman that were there last year. Eckstein was better than Cedeno, and Rolen is better than Ramirez. The Cardinals OF defense isn't great, but they are probably about the level of the Cubs. With all these advantages-how does it turn out that the Cubs have a better defense than the Cardinals?

I found myself doing that once. Don't you just feel dirty now? Let's just say that it's an experience that will be even harder to repeat than it was to do it the first time :D

Simmons has had us losing a ton of games this year-----the fact that he picks against us is a positive. Yeah, and if he picks us, I'm not going to be happy either. In fairness to Simmons though, he is picking against the spread, and the Bears and Colts both were heavy favorites in many games, which makes it tempting to pick the underdog to cover. In addition, both the Bears and Colts played the Patriots, and of course Simmons is going to pick the Patriots in that case. Ugh-I can't believe I just defended him.

But you can't forget that there's significant statistical proof of a Coors Field "hangover" effect. You can make the point that his numbers have been dropping, yes... but his away numbers certainly aren't reflective of his actual talent level right now. I wholly expect Helton's numbers will be better than his away numbers-but I do think there will be a dropoff from Colorado. Coors Field is perfect for a hitter like Helton, and I'm not sure that Boston will be as kind to him. I could see him putting up an 830-900 OPS next year (which would be significantly better than his away numbers last year) but would that be enough to justify the contract, the talent given up, and the small loss on defense that the Red Sox would give up? Considering the length of the contract, I would say probably not.

One thing that should be mentioned that hasn't is that Helton's numbers will likely seriously drop moving away from Coors field. Here are his home/road splits from the last 3 years: 2004: home-.368/.490/.693, away-.326/.446/.544 2005- home-.353/.471/.616, away-.287/.418/.453 2006- home-.338/.445/.531, away-.266/.360/.421 He's 33, his numbers have declined each of the sharply between both of the last 2 years, and his home and away splits have been around 200 points each of the last 3 years. This is most certainly not a sure-fire trade for the Red Sox. In fact-it's certainly possible that they are getting the last 5 years of a contract like Soriano's (depending on how much the Rockies pay) without getting the benefit of the first 3 years of production-and it could be even worse than that if he can't pull those away numbers back up to where they were pre-2006. I think this is an extremely risky trade for the Red Sox, and if they have to give up decent talent, I wouldn't make the deal. Helton might work for 2007, but he's not likely going to work well beyond that.

The neighbor to the South is always watching! :) Yeah-it still takes 2 more national titles for us to catch you :D. That's all right, number 2 and 3 in national titles all time isn't bad!

A-OK? Both instances drew suspensions. Get off the moral high horse, you have the dirtiest coach in the game. The dirtiest coach in the game? LOL-there's people at major programs who have both had bigger violations and more alleged violations than Sampson ever has. John Calipari just to name one-and I don't think he's on the moral high horse, he's just saying that if IU's recruits don't show class, than the players for Illinois show the exact same lack of class. They either both can make mistakes, or they both should not make any mistakes.

I'm not suprised at being laughed at a little on this (I'm a big boy I can take it). I seriously think this is one of those things that nobody will speak about, but has the potential to have an impact if one of the teams gets too lose down there. It's happened before... when did it happen before? I remember very distinctly when that Atlanta situation happened, all of a sudden the only thing that was being talked about was how he was caught with a hooker, and what would the team do to him, etc. etc. That was the only thing anyone was talking about after that---the only thing the team heard until up to game time. I think it became a HUGE distraction for the Falcons. I agree that it was an absolutely huge distraction for the Falcons that year.

An IU recruit did the same thing in high school, and got suspended for over a year for it. It will be interesting to see if something similar happens to Mayo. Just another example of the class Kelvin is bringing in. He made a mistake-can people not make one mistake? Here are some of his quotes from an e-mail sent this week to the Indiana beat writer: He sounds like a kid who's been through a lot in life-from all I've heard about him though, once they take him out of his environment it will be much easier for him. He made a mistake, but he seems to have a pretty good head on his shoulder, and has owned up to his mistake the whole time. If that's too much of quotes mod I'm sorry-it's not really a published article, but just a blog from the beat writer where he provides more quotes that he couldn't get in the paper. The link is below (believe me, there are some not intelligent IU fans on there, just a friendly warning): http://blogs.indystar.com/hoosiersinsider/

An IU recruit did the same thing in high school, and got suspended for over a year for it. It will be interesting to see if something similar happens to Mayo.

No. They don't. But their columns aren't meant to be read, so really that's your mistake. True-one of them got posted on a message board yesterday that I took a look at (my mistake) and one was in my paper this morning. I guess I'll avoid any more Chicago articles from now on, unless they are talking about the Cubs :D. Yeah, I don't recommend you read the Cubs articles either. That's actually exactly what I was thinking after I posted that.

And yet an injury ravaged U of I team with a coach that is nothing special without Bill Self's kids just beat IU. Yes they did. We'll see them again though, on their way to the NIT. Not sure I'd be on my high horse if I was an IU fan. You've got to dig pretty far back into that nostalgic past to find any glory. As for the future, I doubt there will be any IU national titles coming, maybe forever. It's hard to say that-I mean, an IU team almost basically stole a title 5 years ago (came about 7 minutes away) and they weren't really any better than this year's team, for example. Any team can win a title if they have the right pieces, and IU looks in the next year or two to have the right pieces-the problem is that it depends on getting hot at the right time, which is not really something that a team can control.

No. They don't. But their columns aren't meant to be read, so really that's your mistake. True-one of them got posted on a message board yesterday that I took a look at (my mistake) and one was in my paper this morning. I guess I'll avoid any more Chicago articles from now on, unless they are talking about the Cubs :D.

What's this with all these Chicago writers taking shots at the city and state of Indianapolis and Indiana? Not only are they not funny, but half of them aren't even true! I thought Chicago writers had a little more class than that?

How things have changed in the last 6 months. 6 months ago, I would have wanted Illinois to kill Purdue, but this IU-UI rivalry has become so intense very quickly, and I found myself rooting for freaking Purdue to win a game. HA HA HA you have beat us once in the last what, 5 years now? I wouldn't say it is too intense just yet. IU beat Illinois a couple? more times in the Big 10 tournament. IU-Illinois has had some great, last-minute finishes over the last 4-5 years. While Illinois has won most of the games during the season, it still was intense-and from the atmosphere at Illinois last week, it seemed pretty intense to me. At least, I've seen a couple other Illinois home games, and the crowd wasn't nearly as intense as they were for the IU game.

That would be a great argument if it was true. In Sept the team had a .414 winning percentage...better than their season total of .407. Who did we play other than Theriot, who was awesome? Well, it extends all the way back to the trading of Maddux and Walker-when most people talk about last years team, they talk about those two being on it-the team could have been a couple games better with those two. Lee would have come back and stayed if they were in the race. Z was held out one more start then he normally would have when he hurt his back. Aramis sat a couple more days then he normally would. There were a few more things with pitchers, but the biggest things were the trading of Maddux and Lee coming back late, and then leaving early. This is a team who had Henry Blanco playing first base for multiple games-that doesn't strike me as a team trying to win. Their winning percentage after Maddux got traded was .404. Right inline with their season total. Whether they were trying to win or not, they still ended up being just as good in Aug and Sept as they were the rest of the year. True-but the team was different by July than it had been in May and June. The team was just starting to play better in July when the pitching staff turned into Z and the 4 rookies in August (admittedly, Hill was amazing, which helped). The team had a 2 month slump where they were one of the worst teams to ever take the field-it's not like they were a consistent .404 the entire year.

That would be a great argument if it was true. In Sept the team had a .414 winning percentage...better than their season total of .407. Who did we play other than Theriot, who was awesome? Well, it extends all the way back to the trading of Maddux and Walker-when most people talk about last years team, they talk about those two being on it-the team could have been a couple games better with those two. Lee would have come back and stayed if they were in the race. Z was held out one more start then he normally would have when he hurt his back. Aramis sat a couple more days then he normally would. There were a few more things with pitchers, but the biggest things were the trading of Maddux and Lee coming back late, and then leaving early. This is a team who had Henry Blanco playing first base for multiple games-that doesn't strike me as a team trying to win.

Gene Wojciechowski wrote an article in September giving 100 predictions for the NFL season, and he's come back and graded them. Some of those were playoff predictions, and he gives himself half credit when he picks the winner, but not the loser correctly. Here is a note that Bears fans may want to pick up on: What does it mean? Gene is going to pick the Bears in whatever column he writes this week after trashing the Bears for the last 7 or 8 weeks. Congratulations on changing his mind! http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_gene&id=2744346&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab2pos1