CubColtPacer
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Doesn't sound that terrible of a day? I guess you had to see it... It wasn't that terrible of a day. That foul ball was one of those tough plays near the mound and stands-it was a play Izturis should have made only because he is so good defensively-but as Len and Bob mentioned, he is still learning how unique the foul territory is in Wrigely, so that's not that big of a deal. The bobble was more concerning to me, but he did recover to make the out, so it wasn't that big of a deal either. At most, you can call it a terrible day for Izturis-he won't make even those defensive lapses all that often. BTW, a bright spot of the day also was that Cedeno finally looked comfortable playing 2nd base-he really looked better out there.
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What's so wrong about what he said there? I can't find really anything wrong with either statement-what do you think is so wrong? He didn't claim that how he used Murton was the only reason Murton is doing better, and a case can be made that it certainly has helped him a little bit-and all Pagan has done since he came back has been to hit and hit some more, so I don't see any problem with giving him some of the playing time there.
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They still do...Haren/Zito/Street/Swisher/Bradley/Kotsay/Crosby, they may not be as "sexy" of names as the previous regime, but that talent level is still unbelievable. Um..that's like saying the Cubs talent level is unbelievable because they have Z/Ramirez/Dempster/Lee/Jones/Pierre/Murton. For example, Kotsay is 2 years older than Pierre and is putting up just about identical numbers to him this year (they are within a point or two of each other). He's been a little better, but not really that much better than Pierre at the plate since 2002. Bradley has been better than Jones, but he never plays anywhere he is...he's had 1 year in his whole career with more than 400 at bats, and that year he put up a .786 OPS-which is just about Jones's career average. Murton has been just as good as Crosby and is 2 years younger..Crosby has a .318 career OBP with a .724 career OPS over 2 1/2 years, and Murton has a .369 and .820 career over just about 1 year now. Swisher is not quite to the same level Lee was when he was 26, and Swisher is having the best year of his career so far-also, even if he does get to the level that Lee was at 26, he'd still have to break out again to get to the level Lee is at now. Z matches up well with Zito-I don't think I have to prove that. So then we just have Street/Haren vs. Ramirez/Dempster, but they are hard enough to compare that I'll leave them alone for now-suffice it to say it's not an obvious choice which pair you would rather have on your team. Also, this was done for the Cubs without including Barrett or Prior or any of the young pitchers. The talent level of Oakland is just not that unbelievable.
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I readily and freely admit that I did. Granted, this is only 2 games, and one of them was against the stankin' Pirates, but he has looked fantastic in both of those starts. Like I said when he was called up this time, I hope he makes me eat a buffet's-worth of crow. It's only good for the Cubs if they have a slew of young pitching/trading options going into next year. The stankin' Pirates are 4th in the NL against lefties in OPS and runs scored. True-but 2 of their main players against lefties Casey and Wilson are now both gone. This season against LHP: Casey: .311/.350/.500 Wilson: .313/.376/.535 Also Freddy Sanchez did not play today: his numbers against LHP this year Sanchez: .466/.484/.636 So Hill made a great start, but that Pirates stat is slightly misleading-because they didn't have 3 of the 4 hitters who were a major part of making that stat true. Whoever it was against though, Hill still dominated them.
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I think Gameday may be broke for a week after that baserunning play..how are they going to explain the third baseman making both outs? Izturis seems to have a pretty nice opposite field hitting-remember, he got robbed twice by Tracy on the same sort of line drive in the Diamondbacks series.
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Why do you think that is? There have been plenty of teams with 2 hitters like Cedeno and Izturis that have made the playoffs even in the last 5 years-the trick is what you surround hitters like that with. That's the rub. The rest of the lineup isn't close enough to being that good that it would take quite a retooling to bring it to that level. Much easier to get an offensively competent middle infielder. True-and I'm an advocate of replacing Cedeno. Teams like the Cardinals and Astros last year though had 3 players who couldn't put up a .700 OPS, and in fact the Astros had 3 players where the highest player had a .654 OPS with OBP's of .319, .299, and .294 and slugging of .324, .323, and .293. The rest of their offense wasn't as good as ours either. No, we don't have as good of pitching as they did, but teams can contend and even make the WS with 2 or 3 bad hitters, depending on the rest of the team.
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Why do you think that is? There have been plenty of teams with 2 hitters like Cedeno and Izturis that have made the playoffs even in the last 5 years-the trick is what you surround hitters like that with.
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I thought he was too the first couple of times I saw it, but when replaying it a few times more-he was out, but not by much-a very, very close play.
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BTW, Pagan's average is now over .300..at least for the time being-of course 1 out next at-bat would push it right back under.
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Very good inning by Hill again..he is using his fastball much more now I think. Of course, the WGN gun has been spotty..especially on that last high fastball-no way that pitch was 86 miles per hour.
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Very good inning by Hill..he went right after those Pirate hitters, as well he should. The Pirates lineup is so unbalanced that you need to be careful with a couple hitters, and just come in and throw strikes to everyone else-keep it up Rich!
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But going 2 for 3 with a homer, walk, and 2 RBI is enough to get Pagan benched? Exactly-right now it's hard to argue with either of them being played.
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Why would we want to get rid of Pagan right now for a 32 year old who Pagan has outproduced this year in limited at bats? I'm not saying Pagan is going to be anything special-we should give him some more at bats to find out what he is though. Why give up on him to get a player who is almost 100 points worse in OPS this season and 7 years older in a lost season?
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With everyone in the NL playing crappy baseball, and the Cubs 11 games out in the wild card, it remarkably isn't out of the question. That's the crazy thing-it's not going to happen of course-but to not even be basically mathematically eliminated is crazy in the NL-the wildcard race is one thing, but we're not even much farther out of the division-13 out right now. You just think about games like those Braves games earlier in the season where we didn't care about losing them (The 2 run sac fly, the Aramis ball off of his head in the 11th)-just a few of those, and we would actually be a possibility for the division. Just a very strange year. Don't forget about todays game, when Cedeno was thrown out at 3rd before the runner crossed the plate. True, but for once this season, we held on to win a game like that. We were playing some pretty bad baseball overall in May and June, but we always seemed to save our worst for games that were in our hands-those two Braves games, the Padres game where Maddux was throwing that 2 hitter, even that Nationals game a couple of weeks ago-we just found too many ways to lose games we had won earlier in the season.
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With everyone in the NL playing crappy baseball, and the Cubs 11 games out in the wild card, it remarkably isn't out of the question. That's the crazy thing-it's not going to happen of course-but to not even be basically mathematically eliminated is crazy in the NL-the wildcard race is one thing, but we're not even much farther out of the division-13 out right now. You just think about games like those Braves games earlier in the season where we didn't care about losing them (The 2 run sac fly, the Aramis ball off of his head in the 11th)-just a few of those, and we would actually be a possibility for the division. Just a very strange year.
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Shh...not yet. Now? lol..Good win Cubs-make it 4 non-losing series in a row tomorrow (3 series won, 1 split)
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I know, man. How long can he keep this up? How many at-bats should we give Pagan the rest of the season? How much should we play him in order to find out what we have? As much as it takes. I just know Jones is going to get his at-bats-so Pagan might get a few starts in RF the rest of the season, but otherwise Pagan and Murton will be fighting for playing time-I know many people have been upset about Pagan playing over Murton in the past.
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I know, man. How long can he keep this up? How many at-bats should we give Pagan the rest of the season? How much should we play him in order to find out what we have?
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Well, we decided to pinch-hit for Ohman the previous inning-that's why he was taken out. Oops. Thanks. Sorry. I'm trying to follow along on Gameday today, and its really slow. It stops for several minutes and then jumps ahead. If you don't go back to read what happened, you wind up asking stupid questions like that one... No problem..I certainly know how Gameday can be..yesterday I was happy when the Pirates had gotten a third out, and then Gameday changed its mind and the Pirates went on to score 2 or 3 runs. So it can be easily confusing sometimes.
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Well, we decided to pinch-hit for Ohman the previous inning-that's why he was taken out.
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We seem to always do that..even when we make the right move and start the runner we still hit it hard enough to get a ground ball double play.
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Pat and Ron were just raving over a play made by Izturis..was it really anything to get excited about?
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Pagan has quietly had a pretty good season in very limited at bats: 81 AB's-.287/.337/.438 And of course he gets picked off as soon as I try to make a good post about him.
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He would have had a lot more value in the past offseason. A lot of smart baseball people thought he had a bright future before this season. He may still have one, but his value is much lower at 2B (where more offense is expected) than SS. The trade for Izturis is awful b/c we've already got Cedeno at 1/10 the price, and it makes Cedeno expendable at a time when his value is lower than it used to be. In short, I expect Hendry to go out and get an Andy Pratt type talent. His trade value will be lower than last season-but if he is traded, I expect it will be for his value as a SS not a 2b..so I don't see that as much of a problem. The best way to get value for Cedeno might be to package him in a deal with another player for a LF/2B.
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Really? Pat and Ron said that Dusty came out to argue-at least that's what I thought I heard. They also said it was clear that he came off the bag too early, so that the ump made the right call. I have not seen the play, but when was the last time an ump ruled that the fielder missed the bag on the double play pivot? I've seen it so often where the fielder misses the bag (where it's not really even close), yet he is given credit for the putout. I hate when the umps decide to selectively enforce the rules. The last one I remember is when we lost a game in the 9th because the ump called we missed the bag at 2nd-we did by about 4-5 inches, but like you said, they never call that-anybody remember that game? 2-3 years ago approx.