CubColtPacer

True, but Fassero wasn't hurt..Glendon won't get back before the August 31st deadline. Sit him down for the rest of this year, find out if he has anything left to become the long reliever at the start of next year-and then option him or cut him at the end of spring next year if he doesn't. Give him no chance to be a starter whatsoever.

Izturis has a .302 OBP for each of the last 3 years. Why would we want to bat him 2nd? He's not only not ideal, he's terrible for the 2nd spot. I'd probably put Barrett there, since he get on-base at a good clip. And you might as well put Soriano 5th to drive in runs. Doesn't matter if he gets on base since the guys behind him suck anyway. Bat Izturis 8th. And hope he's injured again next year and Cedeno can go back to SS. Well, technically, Izturis has had a .302 each of the last 2 years-2004 he had a .330 OBP. With that said, I agree with you-he should be the number 8 hitter next season. And if you have Izturis on the team, why would you want him to get injured so Cedeno can play? Even if Cedeno improves his OBP 20 points next season, he'll still only be at .295, which would still be worse than Izturis-so you're still hurting the offense by having Izturis hurt. Jones is terrible huh? So terrible that his OPS is still above Murton's this year? (Yes, I know-Murton is likely to improve, which I agree that he is). Just sign Jacque a platoon partner and hopes he puts up the same numbers against right handers next season-.307/.347/537. Those are approx the same numbers against one side of the plate that Carlos Lee has this year against both sides, and Lee will probably make at least 12 million dollars this year-if you can find a guy that drills left handers, you can save 5 million from that position and still in effect pick up a big bat in right field.

Fred's numbers disagree with yours. What is your source? The difference is that Fred's numbers were from June the 10th, while texas's numbers were only post all star break. Of course those numbers have changed by now, but the day he posted them they were correct.

Yeah, he started out real slow last year too (he was hitting around .230 in the end of May, if I recall correctly) but in 2004, he was strong pretty much all season. 2005 stats by month April-.241/.344/.458 May-.289/.324/.546 June-.365/.419/.656 July-.330/.368/.670 August-.272/.326/.469 He definitely got hotter as the season went along-but the splits were not as pronounced as this year, or lasting as long (this year it lasted through June)

They are expected to call up Bynum. We all know he was going to come up at some point, and Theriot would have probably been sent down-and now Theriot gets to stay with the team.

The threads seem to be slower on weekends... Also, threads can explode when there is disagreement-there has been very little disagreement in this thread, so people have trouble finding multiple ways to express their joy :D

I think we could have actually gotten rid of Rusch if not for his injury-too bad. I doubt we will be able to get rid of him in the offseason because the urgency of needing any pitcher, good or not, will be gone by that point.

True, and out of the top 15 run scoring teams in MLB, 12 of them are in the top 15 in Batting Average (and the other 3 in Batting average are 16th, 17th, and 18th in runs scored). Of course, OBP correlates better to runs scored than BA-and OPS correlates better to runs scored than either of them. I want a high OBP on my squad-I'm willing to sacrifice offense at 1 or 2 positions in order to get great defense in the right positions (unless I can get a great offensive player at the position-for example, I consider catcher to be a position where I would take a great defensive catcher over an average offensive player and poor defender, but I wouldn't replace Barrett whatsoever because his offense is so above average for the position). Also, I'm willing to sacrifice OBP at a couple positions for high SLG players-I'd like to have both in high quantities, but if I can only have one in each player, I'd like to have 5 high OBP players and 3 high SLG players (hopefully I can get one that is extremely high in both to have 5 high OBP players and 4 high SLG players). OBP is a great indicator while BA is a good indicator of runs, but both are incomplete when talking about forming an entire team.

I was all for a Jones/Murton platoon earlier in the season. Now, I would like to have Murton in left, a platoon partner for Jacque in right (where that position becomes a huge + for the team with the right platoon partner), and a n offensive 2nd baseman. I offer Pierre arbitration-if he accepts, sign him to a 1 year deal and prepare to have Pie in center in 2008-if he doesn't, pick up the draft picks for him.

Wow, do you watch games? as for OBP being important, it is the single whole belief of the A's system to 9 OBP monsters...and exactly how many World Series' have they played in with that philosophy??? scoring runs matters, the other team not scoring runs matters more. OBP matters little. awesome, about time the "do you watch games" counter argument came. yes, i watch games. hitting 4 groundouts to move a runner isn't a great game. it's not the worst possible game, but it's a bad game. it'd be a good game if on one of those groundouts, he instead drove a double to score the runner, or even if he drew a walk to prolong the inning. nice try on the a's argument. it's completely irrelevant and ignorant. how many red sox world series titles did they win with "get as good an obp as possible" philosophy? The interesting question is-is an 0 for 4 game with moving a runner up 3 times better than a 1 for 4 game (with 1 single) and not moving a runner up in any of the 4 at bats. Based on game situations, the answer might be yes-it just would depend on the situations those 4 at bats came in.

It depends on the context of the game. 0-4 while moving runners up doesn't add enough to help out the team if they're down by a large margin. (down 4 or more runs and it's more important to play for the big inning. If that 0-4 led to 2-3 runs b/c the batter behind also had a good game, then it should be noted as a positive. Game situation dictates the quality of those ABs moreso than anything else. Also, the quality of the batter plays a key role. There's a big difference between M. Ramirez and Rey Ordonez as far as qualifications of a productive game under those circumstances. I completely agree with this, and the last part most of all. A stronger hitter that moves a runner up in front of a weaker hitter is not doing nearly as much of his job as a weaker hitter moving runners up in front of the stronger hitters. Game situation and matchups play a huge factor in this as well.

I agree that guys like Neifi and Izturis have value on teams that have the ability to score runs. However, playing much of the season without Izturis, the Cubs are the 4th best defensive team in MLB. Playing much of the season without Izturis, the Cubs are dead last in runs scored. Defense was not the problem with this roster. Instead of filling a hole, Hendry has created more holes for him to field. Hendry solved a problem that didn't exist. How did he create more holes with the Izturis trade? Because trading for Izturis moves Ronny to second. I'm not convinced that Ronny is guaranteed a starting job next year. I'm also not convinced about that, and the Neifi trade has reinforced that in my mind. I think they have Ronny penciled in as the backup middle infielder next season in Neifi's newly departed spot.

I'm sure he probably passed through waivers initially. Neifi was probably put on waivers along with players like Nevin and Mabry at the beginning of August after the trading deadline. Nobody probably claimed him then, and then the Tigers came calling after Neifi when Polanco got hurt. I've seen mixed reviews on Robinson so far, but he looks like he could end up coming up in a couple years and being a cheap backup catcher-that's what I would imagine would be his reasonable upside at this point, although others could probably give better information than I can on this subject.

By the way, here are Dave Dombrowski's comments about Neifi according to one Detroit message board. "Perez move helps for next year b/c he is a utility guy. Switch hitter etc. Real good fit for us. -Tigers didn't consider a move for Mark Loretta b/c pitching has got us(Tigers) here."

Hmm..that's hard to tell Outshined. I think many people go against what is prevailing if it is not exactly what they believe. For example, most people would probably say that I hate OBP-I don't-in fact, I think that along with SLG are still the two most important stats one can use. I think OBP is overvalued generally on this board, just as I think it is undervalued in general in the baseball community. If I were talking to Dusty, I would be reminding him of the importance of OBP. When I discuss baseball with people here, I tend to need to stress the importance of other things in the game also. It is a balance in between all the different factors that makes a great team. Great OBP teams, great power teams, and great pitching and defense teams have all won the WS, along with combinations of all of the above. It is true that some people discount OBP completely, just as there are some people who say a bad OBP makes someone automatically a bad player. Neither of those are completely true-but for people like me, I see no need to defend that Dusty is not using OBP correctly whatsoever-because we already have that opinion in spades. Instead, I usually defend the traditional side of baseball-not because I think it's nearly completely right, but because I think too much of it has been lost-some of it should come back (I'm a firm believer in up the middle defense as well, and I've actually heard about new studies that there are certain positions that a great defender can save a great deal of runs with-I should be able to provide a link in a couple of weeks, a friend who I respect greatly has read them), but I certainly want to keep a great deal of the new research as well.

I realize Dusty is probably making decisions based on batter/pitcher matchups. But to make a decision based on 8 ABs is completely friggin stupid. I agree-and I'm not sure I would advocate making decisions off of Blanco's numbers-Barrett's numbers are a much better sample size, and might be enough to give him the day off-if you hadn't given him the day off yesterday against a pitcher who he has consistently hit hard.

I agree with all your other points, but how has Jones been a big disappointment? He has done pretty well for a right fielder in this league-he's an average right fielder making average money for a right fielder. The frustrating part is not getting a platoon partner with him, because his numbers against right handers are just great this year.

My prediction is that we'd have to go 30-10 to win the wildcard-the number of teams don't concern me very much since nobody can seem to break .500-4 or 5 over will probably win the wildcard, and we'd have to go 30-10 to get there. Is that possible? Yes-is it going to take a great deal of luck with this team? Absolutely. It would be interesting though if those 6 games against Cincy in September matter at all.

If Blanco is starting, that's why I didn't understand Barrett's off day yesterday-he kills Suppan, and Blanco didn't. Today, Barrett has hit 2 HR's off of Carpenter, but is overall 6 for 29. Blanco is 3 for 8, so I guess that is why Dusty is starting him today-but if he was going to start Blanco today, he should have started Barrett yesterday. Hopefully the batter-pitcher matchups don't hold true. Usually there is 3-4 people who have hit the pitcher hard-today, Blanco is the only one who is even decent against Carpenter.

Which site? GatewayRedbirds? And if so, where is there game thread located? Hah, it's on Gateway Redbirds. I just read that thread. I guess the real problem is that Tony La Russa made a move that, in the end, didn't work out. They're getting on Tony for not being able to predict the future. Actually, they should get on Tony. Statistically, a DP occurs a little over 10% of the time. Walking a hitter in order to set up a DP is almost always a bad move. Vance, I think they were referencing Tony's decision to take Duncan out in the 9th and pinch hit Encarnacion-that got those Cardinal fans up and yelling at Tony apparently. Also, I think that the walk to set up the DP would be a little different statistically if a team only needs 1 run to win-which makes the walk meaningless if you can trust the pitcher to not walk anyone else. Personally, I don't think they made the right move-because Nevin hits a lot of fly balls-but at the same time, for one thing if he does hit in on the ground he is a prime DP candidate, and even more important than that is the fact that he had struck out 13 times out of 28 at bats in August. While Cedeno has struck out a decent amount, he has been better at making contact in August, and if he makes contact the game is probably over. Tony probably used those recent numbers to think he had a pretty good shot of either striking Nevin out or getting him to ground into a DP-it was a gamble, but a decent gamble. He had about a 10-12% chance it work. It was a poor gamble any way you look at it. How do you know he was looking for the DP though? It was just as likely that he thought that he had a better chance to strike Nevin out than to strike Cedeno out. If he pitches to Cedeno, Cedeno still only has a 10 to 12 percent chance of hitting into the DP (and probably less than that just like Nevin (because of Nevin's lack of ground balls) because of Cedeno's speed)-what does putting him on and pitching to Nevin really change? It's a gamble to pitch to Cedeno-and it's a gamble to pitch to Nevin, and the run is likely to score either way.

Which site? GatewayRedbirds? And if so, where is there game thread located? Hah, it's on Gateway Redbirds. I just read that thread. I guess the real problem is that Tony La Russa made a move that, in the end, didn't work out. They're getting on Tony for not being able to predict the future. Actually, they should get on Tony. Statistically, a DP occurs a little over 10% of the time. Walking a hitter in order to set up a DP is almost always a bad move. Vance, I think they were referencing Tony's decision to take Duncan out in the 9th and pinch hit Encarnacion-that got those Cardinal fans up and yelling at Tony apparently. Also, I think that the walk to set up the DP would be a little different statistically if a team only needs 1 run to win-which makes the walk meaningless if you can trust the pitcher to not walk anyone else. Personally, I don't think they made the right move-because Nevin hits a lot of fly balls-but at the same time, for one thing if he does hit in on the ground he is a prime DP candidate, and even more important than that is the fact that he had struck out 13 times out of 28 at bats in August. While Cedeno has struck out a decent amount, he has been better at making contact in August, and if he makes contact the game is probably over. Tony probably used those recent numbers to think he had a pretty good shot of either striking Nevin out or getting him to ground into a DP-it was a gamble, but a decent gamble.

Lol..well, that video clip won't be on there, but it wouldn't completely be a bad thing if he was on the clips at all-that catch with the Cubs where he was running in hard from center and then slid and hit the ball up in the air and then reached back with his bare hand while he was sliding and caught it stretching all the way back was an awesome catch.

Do the games back count if it is the middle of the day? Right now-6 oclock 08/19/06, we are 9 games out exactly-of course, Cincy hasn't played yet. :D

Eckstein is almost certainly out today..Izturis sounds like he might be unavailable as well-so that makes Bennett the only player left on the Cards bench, and the Cubs have Barrett and Pagan left.

Pierre leaped up into the IVy in dead center to grap the 3rd out with the bases loaded I would also add that you should check out the replay on SportsCenter, but then again they'll be too busy showing REd Sox/Yankee highlights and skip the rest of MLB. Without seeing it, it reminds me of Orlando Palmeiro? jumping up into the ivy in left with the bases loaded in the 9th to rob a Cub in 03-it was the game during the 5 game series, the 1st game of that doubleheader where Sosa ended up winning it in the 15th-was it like that?