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Hendry simply can't plan on having Cedeno be the starting 2Bman next season. That's completely true..there is simply not a single valuable part to his game right now. I wish him the best of luck-I hope he finds a way to turn it around. Right now though, he is absolutely terrible offensively and below average defensively, and there is simply not time to see if he will get any better.

Entering the game Howry-67.2 IP Dempster-64.2 IP That's certainly not a huge difference at all.

Isn't that Cedeno's third throwing error in the last month while throwing home? I mean, there aren't that many times where a shortstop throws home-Cedeno seems to throw wildly in that direction just about every time.

I think if Hill doesn't blow up in the next couple of weeks (which I don't think he will do) he is the only one of the youngsters who has completely secured a rotation spot for next year. I think there should probably be 1 other spot available as an open competition between Guzman and Marshall (with Marmol and Mateo being sent down for more seasoning). Great work Hill for proving a great number of us wrong by turning the corner!

17 pitch inning - just a little better than the league average I believe. 5.4 P/PA-I believe that crushes the league average. We were very patient that inning-when the hits come, we'll be able to push Duke out of the game early if that can somehow even come close to continuing.

Did our first two hitters really just take the first 5 pitches of each at-bat?

That's how I was on Sunday when Blanco was batting 6th-the horrible thing was, that was the proper spot in the order for him-he was better than the people in the 7th and 8th spots.

I have to think that Cesar will not come back at this point. He's been out for 3 weeks or so, and we've heard nothing about him-I bet they are telling him that there is little point at rushing it right now, and if he hasn't started to come back yet it will be very late if he comes back at all. Edit: Nevermind, I guess I should do more reading. Izturis is supposedly coming back at the end of the week-I do hope that it is more at the expense of Cedeno than Theriot at this point.

I think you're forgetting dumping Hundley and getting Grudzielanek and Karros. That was definitely a good trade. Barrett was a trade as well-also, the trade for Nomar was a good trade-even though Nomar didn't work out for the team, it still netted us Murton for barely anything.

I'm guessing that Murton will be in LF, Pagan in RF, and Theriot at second today along with Cedeno at short. Is it Lee's day off? Wasn't Lee off on Sunday or Monday? Sunday-but he's only supposed to be playing 2 out of 3 right now, or at least that's the plan.

I'm guessing that Murton will be in LF, Pagan in RF, and Theriot at second today along with Cedeno at short. Is it Lee's day off?

LOB is how many guys were left on base after 3 outs. Double plays, pick offs and caught stealing along with force outs and fly balls that nail a runner attempting to advance with less than 2 outs are just some of the ways OBP can be higher but have a lower LOB. And the team who gets on base the least is typically going to be right there in terms of having the lowest percentage of runners left on base. I didn't think about force outs-fielder choices may change that, but that's still a big difference there. To score 43 less runs while putting more runners on (I calculated it out by each of their at bats-the Dodgers have put about 20 more baserunners on this season). Over a 65 baserunner difference using the ways to get out mentioned above (the difference in the runners who scored+the Dodgers extra baserunners) seems remote statistically.

seriously if cpatt had his bad seasons and hit .240 with 20 hrs...how much better would we be with jones' .275 and 25hrs for double the money and no upside? If CPatt had a season like he's had this year, he would be a moderate downgrade from Jones (13 points less in OBP, 70 points less in SLG). If he had a season like last year, the players are like night and day (73 point difference in OBP, 142 points in SLG). Jones is a great deal better than Patterson's bad years.

I would agreee with you that Dusty treats veterans with a different type of approach most of the time. However, the Murton and Jones situation doesn't work IMO. Murton is not in a platoon, instead it's a matter of Baker wanting to get Pagan at-bats as well. Also, because Baker wants to get Pagan more at-bats, Jacque has started to be in a platoon as well-Pagan has started several times in RF as well over the last month.

I would agree with the overall sentiment, but Pierre just completed his third consecutive month with an OBP at or above .346. I wouldn't just classify it as simply a "hot streak." That said, he's not worth the money he'll get, is only okay as a base stealer (runs into too many outs), is only okay at best in the field with a terrible arm, and doesn't provide enough offensively to offset the periods where the abundance of ground balls aren't falling into the right gaps. Does Pierre even have that many ground ball hits anymore? It seems to me the last couple months that most of the time he has hit ground balls he has made an out-it has been more line drives and bloops into left field that have dropped in front of the outfielders. I'm not sure what is classified as a ground ball versus a line drive versus a fly ball (is a line drive off the bat that hits the back of the infield and keep going a line drive or ground ball? Is a bloop into left a line drive or fly ball?). However, Pierre doesn't hit many sharp ground balls, and his infield hits aren't that much this year-so it's his line drives and bloops that have kept him hot. I would agree that Pierre will likely be better next year than this year, but that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be worth the money that he'll command, and definitely not if the deal is multiple years.

to the decade or Pierre's numbers? A year or 2 off the right decade, and about 60 points of slugging off the numbers also.

That's how I feel-if Pierre was the worst problem, we'd have a pretty good team-hopefully we don't re-sign him for big money, but there's other areas that need to be fixed first.

vs this It's slightly different because there was one out instead of two, but I think the double standard is pretty clear. One out and 2 outs are a huge difference-stealing 3rd with 2 outs does almost nothing for you, while stealing 3rd with 1 out can be the difference between needing a hit to score, or just a fly ball. Also, didn't Theriot try to take 3rd with a 2-3 run deficit? Pierre's was with only a 1 run deficit. Finally, there were completely different hitters coming up for Pierre than Theriot. Did Dusty go too far to defend Pierre? Yes-but Pierre's situation was completely different from Theriot's in every respect.

The one thing I'm not sure about that exchange is how the Phillies can lead the league in runners left on base. They have a .344 OBP and 736 runs scored on the season, while the Dodgers have a .350 OBP and 693 runs scored. Which of those teams is it far more likely that they've left more runners on base? So I would be surprised if that stat is correct-but the Cubs are probably the team with the fewest runners left on.

What rally? It was only him :D

Wow..Pierre really must be in contract drive now...he's reached base 11 out of his last 15 times up now.

What happened? Why was Ramirez thrown out?

One positive we have-it appears that Lee has fully recovered from his injury-it's nice to see him playing well again.

As far as I'm concerned, Aardsma and Williams did way more for this team than Hawkins ever could have done. We still robbed them. Yet you're very wrong. Aardsma and Williams have combined to do absolutely nothing. Hawkins was actually a very effective relief pitcher. The problem is relief pitchers are notoriously inconsistent and have a short-shelf life. The proven closer label is just an excuse to overpay for inconsistency. Williams did better than Hawkins did for SF last year. Aardsma has almost exactly the same stats as Hawkins does this year (with Aardma being just a tick better). Hawkins makes 4.4 million this year, Williams and Aardsma did not. Hawkins is 33-Aardsma is 24. We might not have gotten that much better-but we certainly got better when we made that trade, if only to get rid of some salary.

Thanks for the help. I actually already got the Boldin+Horn for McGahee+Addai deal done-the person is considering the other deal, but he told me he was strongly considering it (he needs the depth badly). I'm going to wait and see on Vick-I didn't really want to take him, but in round 11 or 12 he was a better option than some other QB's-his running does help at times, and I only hope to start him a couple of times.