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BTW, if anybody is interested-Zito had a no hitter going through 7 innings.

I don't know for sure why either-he could have replaced him, put Pagan in right and Murton in left after the inning.

We did a very good job of this in the first inning also..for some reason we forgot after that.

Are they going to bring Flores in? That walk will likely end up being very good for the Cardinals if that happens..let's hope that Jacque can battle him.

This is the 7th inning out of 7 where the Cardinals have had at least 2 people reach base in the inning.

Well, never mind-didn't know they were going to let Weurtz go another inning.

Ok-who's coming in on the double switch that is inevitably coming? Murton or Theriot? :D

I can't believe we are still in this game: LOB numbers-St. Louis-12 (7 in scoring position) Cubs-4 (4 in scoring position)

Yup..pretty embarrassing. The only comfort one can get is that Suppan seems to be an on or off type of pitcher...he's had 4 or 5 outings like this one this season. Still though-you don't want to be on the other side of one of those few outings where he is dominating.

Mateo keeps playing with fire and getting away with it..7 hits and a walk already, but still only 1 run.

Yup, hopefully getting out of the 1st like that will do the same thing for him that it did for Guz the other night!

Edmonds would be a big batter for Mateo to get out for his confidence..similar to Guzman the other night.

Cubs waste a Bynum double as Jones strikes out looking on a 3-2 count. 0-0 heading to the bottom of the first-Suppan with 20 pitches in the first.

Put me down for a prediction of us scoring 7 tonight-Mabry goes 2 for 4 with 2 RBI's, Jones hits a HR, Pierre collects 2 hits as well.

This is what I would do. Offer Pierre arbitration-we would like him to decline, but if he accepts, it wouldn't be that bad to have him play CF for another year. Do not sign him to a multi-year deal.

I don't think anyone here is going to disagree with that. Approx the same in one category and better in the 2nd category is going to make that team better than the other. (Of course that doesn't work for the 2 teams that we've had a slightly better OBP and slightly better SLG and still have less runs than). Increasing either of them will help your team-the Cubs need OBP more, but only increasing one or the other this offseason won't help the Cubs be anything but average offensively. We need to increase both to have a good offense. Look at the A's. They have a slugging about 30 pts lower and an OBP 14 pts higher and they have scored 43 more runs. Simply looking at the OBP appears to be more important. Like I said though, there are two teams the Cubs have higher OBP and higher SLG numbers this year, and less runs. It's hard to tell from just those individual numbers because of the variances (the fact that other things factor in that can influence run totals) We know a higher OBP increases runs-we know a higher SLG increases runs. I believe OBP is more important, but not by that much.

You only put power into the corner OF because usually power hitters cannot field a position like CF effectively. If Pie can do it, than it is a big bonus to get a power hitter at one of the tougher defensive positions.

Our offense is pretty bad either way, but the lack of big hits has caused a little bit of a drop from what would be expected. Look at 3 teams here that are very similar offensively this year Seattle-OBP-.319, SLG-.414 Tampa Bay-OBP-.314, SLG-.419 Cubs-OBP-.319, SLG-.421 From our OBP and SLG numbers, we should be 3rd to last in the league in runs..but we're not. Seattle has 576 runs scored, TB has 555, and the Cubs have 540. So that sort of thing has played a little bit of a part-and we just have to hope it swings our way next year. The return of Lee will increase both of those numbers somewhat-get a big bat at 2nd and a platoon partner for Jacque and both those numbers should go way up.

I don't think anyone here is going to disagree with that. Approx the same in one category and better in the 2nd category is going to make that team better than the other. (Of course that doesn't work for the 2 teams that we've had a slightly better OBP and slightly better SLG and still have less runs than). Increasing either of them will help your team-the Cubs need OBP more, but only increasing one or the other this offseason won't help the Cubs be anything but average offensively. We need to increase both to have a good offense.

Again, you're giving him too much credit. He's proven he doesn't care about OBP. He's proven it over and over. Why somebody would be willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt that he actually wants better OBP is beyond me. He doesn't care about OBP. If he has more of it, great. If he has less, so what. Nomar is not know for OBP ability. He's as big a free swinger as there is. The difference is he's really good at it and has a great SLG. He's one of the very few players that actually fit the Hendry/Baker mold, and are successful. The problem is those guys are very rare. No, it really isn't. MLB is about competing against 29 other teams. It's not enough to win games. You have to win more games than everybody else. It's not enough to score some runs. You've got to score more runs than the others. Everything in baseball is about how you stack up against the others. You could make that argument that Neifi Perez is actually a really good baseball player. The problem is he's one of the worst players in MLB. You could pretend Dusty would like a little more OBP, the problem is he doesn't place enough value in it to get more of it than everybody else. Dusty doesn't value OBP, it's clear as day. To think otherwise is to lie to yourself. There's evidence that he actually thinks OBP is bad, hence the clogging, but that's debatable. What is not debatable is that Dusty doesn't see the value of OBP, doesn't see the need for OBP and that the lack of OBP has been killing this team's offense. I agree with most of what is said here-I don't give him the benefit of the doubt, I just see no need to continue to villify him at this point for a quote that when looked at closely is one of his tamer ones over the last few years. You are correct that he does not value OBP enough, and that is one big reason among several others that he should be shown the door at the end of this year.

And he's right that the SLG needs to improve, but the SLG was not a problem in 2004 and 2005 while the Cubs were still poor offensively. He of all people should be able to see that. I don't think he would have had a problem improving the OBP in 2004 and 2005 while the SLG was good (except for having the middle guys of the order walk more, which would probably reduce SLG, which he wouldn't want-but I think he would be just fine to have the other people walk more, and he'd always be fine for increasing OBP by increasing people's AVG). We were average offensively in 2004 (16th) and below average in 2005 (20th) while being 3rd and 6th in SLG respectively. I wasn't saying there it would decrease his percentage-more that it would decrease his slugging numbers, which Dusty wouldn't like (although I would rather take the walks) Undervaluing it is very much different than putting no value on it. Neither is what you want, but one is much better than the other. Also, I'm not making excuses for Dusty-the quote is not the right way to go, it's just not as bad as even usual for him or nearly as bad as its being made out to be. Agreed on that it has been a problem and is still a problem..of course, now SLG is a problem as well-both need to be addressed in the offseason. The problem has been 1 and 1a for most of the season-only a late season slugging increase has made the slugging number only below average while the OBP has been in the bottom 3 teams in the league. I also think that they have actively tried a little bit to improve OBP. Why did they get rid of Patterson and get rid of Pierre? Patterson has about the same speed-he has more power, and probably better defense. The only thing Pierre did better than Patterson was get on base. The same with the Nomar trade-what does Nomar do better than Gonzalez first and foremost? get on base. You can certainly argue that they do not do enough to increase OBP (which would be a correct argument, they need to do more), but they have taken steps to try to acheive a higher OBP. No he isn't. Quit trying to give him credit for stuff he's not doing. He has no interest in improving OBP. The Cubs had great SLG, but were a mediocre to bad offense when they had it, and they did nothing to improve OBP. There is no possible justification for claiming Dusty wants to improve OBP after SLG. He had the SLG before and ignored OBP, he will always ignore OBP because he's an ignorant dinosaur. I'm taking the wanting to improve OBP straight from that quote. He wants to improve SLG more than anything, which could certainly mean that OBP is a problem. He also said a great OBP is great if you have good SLG numbers-which is not right, but it does mean that he would like to have a great OBP after he gets good SLG numbers. Again, Dusty is not correct on the order, but he is not nearly as far off as is being said-all he's saying here is that you need to have a good SLG to make a good OBP worth it, which is again not correct but at least better than many things he's said before.

I think his swing has changed a little bit too-that's why I'm glad they gave him the time off in June, where he was able to stop and figure out what he was doing wrong and correct it. It certainly has paid off for him since.

And he's right that the SLG needs to improve, but the SLG was not a problem in 2004 and 2005 while the Cubs were still poor offensively. He of all people should be able to see that. I don't think he would have had a problem improving the OBP in 2004 and 2005 while the SLG was good (except for having the middle guys of the order walk more, which would probably reduce SLG, which he wouldn't want-but I think he would be just fine to have the other people walk more, and he'd always be fine for increasing OBP by increasing people's AVG). We were average offensively in 2004 (16th) and below average in 2005 (20th) while being 3rd and 6th in SLG respectively. All Dusty is saying is that we need to improve our SLG, get to average offensively, than we can improve our OBP and become a great offensive team.

After reading this again, these are my thoughts. Dusty never said improving the team's OBP was bad in this article-in fact, he's all for it-but he believes it is secondary to increasing the team's slugging percentage. As he said, a good OBP is great, but the team needs to improve their slugging first-implying that they would then need to improve their OBP. You and I may disagree, saying that we need to improve our OBP first and foremost, but all Dusty is doing here is reversing the order of what we need to do. This article could be a lot worse-Dusty could be talking about trying to improve our RISP numbers. Instead, the one bad point he made was that a great OBP is wasted by bad slugging-but improving the slugging first is hardly a terrible thing, although not ideal.

It is certainly possible that Pagan has started to develop some power. Here are his numbers in the minors: 2000: 0 HR in 72 AB's 2001: 0 HR in 295 AB's 2002: 2 HR in 525 AB's 2003: 1 HR in 441 AB's 2004: 4 HR in 494 AB's 2005: 8 HR in 516 AB's 2006: 5 HR in 116 AB's Before the year, I probably would have said that the 8 HR year was just a fluke..now he really appears to be developing some power with the jumps he has had in HR per at bat each of the last 3 years, especially since most if not all of his home runs as a Cub have not been cheap (at least 2-3 to straightaway center). I think he's a guy who would probably hit 15-20 in a full-time role, and might still be developing even more power. Murton is still the better player for now though, as he is farther along with his power than Pagan has shown with his OBP and is a year younger than Pagan (although with his limited AB's, Pagan's OBP numbers have bounced around wildly these last few weeks and might still the next few weeks).