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There's not a single player out there this winter that's better than Ramirez. I'd take a combo of D-Lee/C-Lee/Soriano/Barrett most games of the year over D-Lee/Aramis/Barrett (on a catcher's schedule). Aramis is better in every way than either of those 2 players. Why not just sign one of them and keep Aramis? Regardless, you can't trade Aramis now anyway. The latter: I know, this is all hypothetical. The former: I think the 2 combined would be better, more productive and more consistent than Aramis. I also think they'd be able to hold up if another big hitter goes down for an extended period of time. Sadly, I don't think the Cubs can hope for any significant improvement unless they sign both players, or 2 players along their lines. Hendry has created a sucking black hole of offense between 2nd base and SS and the OF has so little power between the corner spots it's not even funny. I think RF could be salvaged next year with a Murton/Jones platoon, but LF needs to the big boost desperately. Murton is not the answer there at this point. I'd sign a big bat for LF longterm, let Murt platoon in RF with Jacque, and then he takes over RF fulltime when Jacque is gone. Hopefully his power has developed enough at that point. By then you'd have Big Bat TBNL in left, Pie in CF and Murton in RF. The problem with picking up 2 players along these lines is it doesn't leave much money to fix up the starting rotation. Hence why I'd be willing to have traded Aramis. Ok, let me go point by point here. Here are the last 3 years for Carlos Lee, Soriano, and Aramis Lee: (age 30 now) 04-.305/.366/.525 05-.265/.324/.487 06-.295/.350/.536 Soriano (age 30 now) 04-.280/.324/.484 05-.268/.309/.512 06-.294/.366/.602 Aramis (age 28 now) 04-.318/.373/.578 05-.302/.358/.568 06-.279/.341/.544 Aramis is 2 years younger then either of these two-his worst year is the same as Carlos Lee's 2 best years of the 3, and his worst year is also much better than 2 of the 3 years of Soriano. Why are these other 2 players going to stay more productive than Aramis? Second-yes, the offense in the middle infield is bad right now. However, the power specifically is not terrible at all in RF. Jones is 4th in HR, and 5th in SLG percentage among right fielders in the major leagues. I do agree that a Murton and Jones platoon would be excellent, but if you're already signing Soriano to provide power at 2nd, Murton would be fine in LF without the power (you have 2 positions now providing power that are not supposed to, C and 2b, and only 1 position that is not providing power that is traditionally supposed to, LF). Sign another platoon partner for Jacque, and you have 30-40 HR's out of RF, while increasing the OBP of RF also significantly (Jones's OBP against right handers makes him a dangerous weapon when combined with his SLG-.309/.350/542 against right handers this season-slightly better than Carlos Lee-just have to find a player who can kill left handers to combine him with) Then, you only have to pick up 1 full-time player and 1 platoon player, and that still leaves you with money to fix the starting rotation and having an extremely productive offense.

I said it before, and I'll say it again. Those same champion Red Sox were a few innings from getting swept in the ALCS. The previous year's Red Sox were a bad Little decision and an Aaron Boone homer away from going to the WS. If you tell me the difference between those situations was Orlando freaking Cabrera, I cannot in any way take you seriously. Exactly. The Red Sox losing the offense of Nomar to pick up the defense of Cabrera might not have hurt their title chances, but it wasn't the championship move that propelled them over the top either. I always wonder about some fans who say they have to rebuild their team after a loss like that (the Red Sox losing to the Yankees in the ALCS, for example). A bounce here or a bounce there puts them into the WS-you just have to put out a team that is capable of winning it, and sometimes hope that certain playoff situations go your way instead of the opponents in order to win.

Looking through the batter-pitcher matchups (which are the best indication for who Dusty starts) I would be extremely surprised if Barrett, Jones, Cedeno, or Mabry was not in the lineup. We know Pierre will be, and we pretty much know that Ramirez will be as well. Izturis and Neifi have similar numbers against Suppan, so expect Izturis if he's healthy and Neifi if Izturis's hamstring is bothering him. As far as the matchup you wanted to know about-it's hard to tell. Pagan has never faced him, and Murton is 0-4 with a BB against him. Murton usually plays about 2 of every 3 games, but even with those limited numbers Dusty might play Pagan today (I'm not saying if he should or not in this post, this is about what predicting what he will do). I would still predict Murton plays, but am only about 65-70 percent sure about it-even if he does not, he probably will come in on a double switch late.

you just provided the most compelling reason I've heard for his promotion. I'm still waiting for him to call Theriot "The Riot" Actually, I believe he has. I recall him saying "The Riot" twice within a minute the last time Theriot was up. Yup-the other day when Theriot was in the starting lineup he called him The Riot when they were announcing the starting lineups.

There is the old Cardinal effect..join the Cardinals and within an hour you become a much better hitter.

Was the total there for the defense 3 outs that should have been-(Marquis ground ball to start, Eckstein at the plate, Pujols in the rundown) and an extra base given up just in that inning? That's a whole series worth of defensive mistakes in one inning.

What's with all the pop outs today? That's 5 pop outs for the Cardinals and 2 for the Cubs through an inning and a half-in addition to the 1 fly out.

It looks like Murton is sitting about once every 3 days. It is bad for his development, but probably will actually inflate his numbers this year-he has tended not to start when he has any bad indicators against the opposing pitcher. It is not as big of an effect as other days (he's 0 for 5 against Marquis with a BB), but it is still following the trend.

Everything I've read says that 26 is peak age. 26-29 is typically peak time frame, and guys will on occasion have career years later in life. But expecting a player to be significantly better than he already is at 26 is unwise, especially when that player has been the same terrible player each and every year of his professional career. He's shown absolutely no signs that he's capable of more. I think a 600 OPS is probably low, although I haven't noticed many people writing that as his peak. I think 650 is probably more likely, maybe a bump up to 675 or possibly 700 some year, but all of that is still god awful. Exactly..he is at the start of his peak age, exactly as Tiger stated-he's entering the prime of his career. He's been terrible throughout his career, but he definitely hasn't been the same at age 22-.232/.253/.303 at age 23-.251/.282/.315 (29 point jump in OBP, and 12 point jump in slugging) age 24-.288/.330/.381 (48 point jump in OBP, and a 66 point jump in SLG) age 25 is a completely washed out year because of the injuries-optimists will point out his .342/.388/.425 numbers in April and May, while others will look at the entire injury filled season as a downgrade of .257/.302/.322 (notice-I am not comparing him to Lee's production here-but looking at this season's overall numbers is like looking at Lee's 2006 numbers so far-the numbers with the injury and the numbers without the injury are dramatically different) age 26-Overall-.259/.314/.341-with a bad BABIP He may still not even be close to an average major league hitter, but he hasn't been consistently the same. He was a shortstop brought up only for his defense whose bat consistently got better before he got hurt-and now we will have to see if he can continue to get better as he enters his prime.

Respectfully disagree - the Cubs problem is not a general lack of offense, but lack of offense from the corner positions. Murton and Jones are both 4th OF in my opinion, Ramirez had a terrible first half, and Lee has been disabled for most of the season. The Cubs were 5th in baseball in defensive efficiency before trading for Izturis, thus his defense can only improve them marginally. Furthermore, regardless of what the team "can" spend, they will only spend somewhere in the $100 million range. As such, you can't waste $4 on a defensive player who provided minimal offense when you've already got that same player on the roster (Perez). Perez's defense is roughly equivalent to Izturis', as is his offense (.650 OPS). You simply can't have two of the worst offensive players in baseball occupying the same roster because they might happen to save a run with their defense every third or fourth game. Furthermore, when a team is last in the league in runs scored by over 100 runs, I would say the team's problem is a lack of offense in total, not just from the corner positions. Over 100 runs from the next team? It's actually 14 runs-I understand your point though (although I still don't understand how we're 5th in defensive efficiency watching this team play defense everyday (especially the OF and catcher and the middle infield earlier in the season, and then see the differences when watching other teams, but that has been beaten to death :D). I happen to think that Izturis will surprise some people offensively next season, but for that we will have to wait and see. "watching this team play defense everyday" just isn't a reliable way to judge the team. True, but I saw one of the metrics that had the Cubs high in defense this year this morning. Pierre was rated as the top defensive center fielder in the National League this year. Do you believe that? defensive metrics are far from an exact science...but so is your memory of watching a bunch of games. and i'd be curious as to which metric rated pierre that highly. True-I like to use the metrics in combination with my memory and other people's memories to get the best results. Cheapseats posted this metric earlier that has Pierre at the top: http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/dialed_in/discussion/defensive_rankings_by_position_and_league_200_innings/

Respectfully disagree - the Cubs problem is not a general lack of offense, but lack of offense from the corner positions. Murton and Jones are both 4th OF in my opinion, Ramirez had a terrible first half, and Lee has been disabled for most of the season. The Cubs were 5th in baseball in defensive efficiency before trading for Izturis, thus his defense can only improve them marginally. Furthermore, regardless of what the team "can" spend, they will only spend somewhere in the $100 million range. As such, you can't waste $4 on a defensive player who provided minimal offense when you've already got that same player on the roster (Perez). Perez's defense is roughly equivalent to Izturis', as is his offense (.650 OPS). You simply can't have two of the worst offensive players in baseball occupying the same roster because they might happen to save a run with their defense every third or fourth game. Furthermore, when a team is last in the league in runs scored by over 100 runs, I would say the team's problem is a lack of offense in total, not just from the corner positions. Over 100 runs from the next team? It's actually 14 runs-I understand your point though (although I still don't understand how we're 5th in defensive efficiency watching this team play defense everyday (especially the OF and catcher and the middle infield earlier in the season, and then see the differences when watching other teams, but that has been beaten to death :D). I happen to think that Izturis will surprise some people offensively next season, but for that we will have to wait and see. "watching this team play defense everyday" just isn't a reliable way to judge the team. True, but I saw one of the metrics that had the Cubs high in defense this year this morning. Pierre was rated as the top defensive center fielder in the National League this year. Do you believe that?

Sarcasm or not, I'm in the camp of in any sport, defense wins championships. Cliches don't win championships. It makes for a cute little point on the championship video, but in baseball, defense makes very little difference. If you'll look at defensive efficiency, fielding percentage, etc., you'll see that very few playoff teams, World Series teams, or World Series champions have been at or near the top in defense. Some have, but not nearly enough to draw some kind of correlation. It's not a cliche just because it's repeated. Maybe it's repeated because professional sports people, with experience, generally believe it. Why else would you hear it so often? edit: Again, I'd like to clarify that when I refer to defense I'm specifically referring to 'up the middle defense'; especially range in CF, the middle IF's ability to turn a DP, and the C's ability to call a game and manage a pitchers emotions. You're right: its not a cliche because its repeated. Its a cliche because it doesn't have any merit other than something people like to say because it sounds nice and team oriented. In fact, in baseball, defense means so much less than offense, especially when a player is one of the worst in baseball offensively, as are both Izturis and Perez. Izturis is a little better than Neifi is offensively (at least at this point of Neifi's career)-about 50 points of OBP. Izturis is also about 40 points better in OBP then Ronny. So this is an upgrade offensively for now-was it worth the money? That's a much harder argument to make-but it is an upgrade, and now we will have to see if Hendry upgrades the other positions over the winter.

Respectfully disagree - the Cubs problem is not a general lack of offense, but lack of offense from the corner positions. Murton and Jones are both 4th OF in my opinion, Ramirez had a terrible first half, and Lee has been disabled for most of the season. The Cubs were 5th in baseball in defensive efficiency before trading for Izturis, thus his defense can only improve them marginally. Furthermore, regardless of what the team "can" spend, they will only spend somewhere in the $100 million range. As such, you can't waste $4 on a defensive player who provided minimal offense when you've already got that same player on the roster (Perez). Perez's defense is roughly equivalent to Izturis', as is his offense (.650 OPS). You simply can't have two of the worst offensive players in baseball occupying the same roster because they might happen to save a run with their defense every third or fourth game. Furthermore, when a team is last in the league in runs scored by over 100 runs, I would say the team's problem is a lack of offense in total, not just from the corner positions. Over 100 runs from the next team? It's actually 14 runs-I understand your point though (although I still don't understand how we're 5th in defensive efficiency watching this team play defense everyday (especially the OF and catcher and the middle infield earlier in the season, and then see the differences when watching other teams, but that has been beaten to death :D). I happen to think that Izturis will surprise some people offensively next season, but for that we will have to wait and see.

For those who are really unhappy with Izturis, I have a question. What numbers offensively would you acccept from him to make him a decent overall player for the team that brings value to the team? What are the numbers he needs to reach?

When we're paying his contract for a .600 OPS next year, I don't think I'll agree. Isn't that a bit overstating it there? From his last 3 years and splits, he is likely to at least be at 650 OPS next year, and possibly better. Still not good at all of course (and I expect more out of him, but it's a longer explanation why) but when the median shortstop has a 740 OPS, it's a lot better to be a 650+ OPS then to be a 600 OPS. 2005 was the only year in the last 3 that he didn't reach that number, and if you look at his splits where he was playing hurt (same as that you have to throw out Lee's numbers this year because half of the time he played he was playing hurt) Cesar's numbers are well over 650 for 2005 also.

That's almost 3 games worth of runs, that's a huge difference between the 29th and 30th teams. I don't understand the rest of your post, it's stating the obvious as far as the Cubs being streaky. True about the 12 runs-I guess I am comparing to a month ago when we were 30-40 runs behind the next to last team. The rest of my post was just that the Cubs haven't been going up and down all season, but that their season was lost in 3 long streches where they just collapsed in big losing streaks. I'm not sure how many teams you'd find over the years who were this far under .500 and who had more winning months then losing months. That can partially be put on the manager as in my last post, but it can also partially be put on pitching. Many times in a long losing streak a team needs a couple of pitchers who will shut down the opponent and stop the losing streak in order to start the momentum the other way-the Cubs only had 1 possible pitcher to be able to do that in May or June, and that hurt. The offense was still the biggest factor in May and June being so atrocious though-in April, July, and August they have been a middle of the pack offensive ballclub in average runs scored. One just has to wonder if a couple of those games the other way that momentum would have made a 6-7 win difference for this team so far, which would still be under .500 but hanging right in there.

I think it's a matter of Lee wanting to come back and get to playing again even if its for a couple of weeks. This is his first injury, and if it is safe I don't really want him to stew and wonder if he'll ever be the same again until next season. The Cubs organization needs to make sure though that if he steps on the field this season that he is 100% besides of course being rusty at game action. Basically, I think they need to have extreme care to make sure he is healthy before allowing him to step on the field, but I don't think they should hold Lee back who wants to play so bad if they clear him as fully ready.

The Cubs have scored the fewest amount of runs in MLB by a pretty good margin, better pitching would not overcome that. Well, 12 runs behind the next team, but I can understand what you mean-and they were much farther behind the rest of the league just a month ago. Pitching would have made us better this year, but it wouldn't have solved the problem of May when we couldn't score to save our life. We've actually had a very strange season as far as record: Here is our record by month April-13-10 May-7-22 June-9-18 July-14-12 August-9-6 I would not have thought that if we finish the month decently, we'll actually have more winning months then losing. 3 long stretches destroyed us this season. April 26th-May 14th-3-15 Friday May 19th-Sunday May 29th-1-9 June 13th-July 4th-4-17 Record in all other games: 44-27 That's a big reason I want Baker to go-if our losing streaks could have been stopped a little sooner each time (and for example, the second losing streak the last series was that Atlanta series where the 2 run sac fly was on Friday and the Ramirez pop fly off his head in the 11th was on Sunday-both games we could have won, and there were places earlier in the game where we could have won those games), we could easily be right in the race. I think part of a manager's job is to make sure that the team does not go down and keeps playing hard during a losing streak, and if you analyze these losing streaks it is obvious the team gave up at times after losing a few games.

i hope he was joking. Wow, if he wasn't kidding, that reaches whole new levels of pathetic. Wowza. Even if he was joking it's not a wise thing to say given the circumstances. I guess I'm not understanding why this is a big thing. He was walking by the family, and he said one of those funny polite things to say-I'm sure the family got a big kick out of it and that's all.

How do you figure out? If we sweep and the Reds sweep, we'll still be 9 1/2 behind them in both the WC and division-of course then we'd only be 9 games out of the WC (with St. Louis then leading the WC because the Reds would be 1/2 game ahead in the division)

Jones isn't going anywhere, so scratch that idea. I'd love to see Lee and Soriano hitting for the team, but I think it would work best, given who is running this team, with Lee in LF and Soriano playing 2nd again. wow, if you thought walker was a poor defensive 2b . . . The way I see it, that's the only way keeping Izturis makes any sense. His defense combined with Aramis and D-Lee make up for Soriano's defensive shortcomings, and Soriano's bat makes up for Cesar's. there are worse options, that's for sure. Soriano is a bad fit for a team sorely lacking obp though. I'd like him a lot more as a #6 hitter on a team loaded with guys that get on base. He would definitely have to play 2b to be worth what he will make. Seems like Soriano would be a good pickup if he wasn't going to be so overpaid. I'd go for Loretta. Yes-I think you can go either way with this. Soriano at 2nd, Murton in LF, and a platoon partner for Jacque in right-or Lee in left, someone like Loretta at 2nd, and Murton platoons with Jacque in right. I am assuming they resign Pierre (no point in speculating otherwise the way they are talking)-so that leaves a lineup of either Pierre Murton Lee Ramirez Jones/PP Soriano Barrett Izturis or Pierre Loretta Lee Ramirez Lee Jones/Murton Barrett Izturis I think either of those lineups would be a very good lineup, one that in fact is probably the best lineup in the division.

To be fair, remember ione game was 18 innings. It is 6 BB/9 IP That's the funny thing also-we only gave up 6 walks in those 18 innings, and gave up 24 in the other 27 innings.

You can try out different lineups here: http://www.baseballmusings.com/cgi-bin/LineupAnalysis.py According to the simulator, Murton and Barrett would be the ideal 1 and 2 hitters for the Cubs, but as goony said, the difference in runs per game isn't very much (about .7 runs) no matter how you shuffle the same 9 players around. .7 runs total, or .7 runs per game? It's per game. And I don't understand how you can say .7 runs per game isn't very much--is a pitcher with a 3.80 ERA not much better than one with a 4.50 ERA? Yeah, that's why I asked. .7 runs a game would push us from the 20th best offense last year to the 5th. It would have pushed Pittsburgh from the 28th best offense to the 7th best offense. I know we probably don't have the absolute worse lineup, but even a .2 to .5 difference per game is signficant over the course of a season.

How do the A's keep winning ? I mean, they are so young and inexperienced, they don't play small ball, and they have guys on pitch counts. It makes no sense. Great pitching in a terrible division will do that for you. That's all they have-their offense is only marginally better then ours for the year.

You can try out different lineups here: http://www.baseballmusings.com/cgi-bin/LineupAnalysis.py According to the simulator, Murton and Barrett would be the ideal 1 and 2 hitters for the Cubs, but as goony said, the difference in runs per game isn't very much (about .7 runs) no matter how you shuffle the same 9 players around. .7 runs total, or .7 runs per game?