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But it would still be a bad trade. Neifi Perez, who is already signed through 2007, is a better defensive shortstop than Izturis. His career fielding rate is 111, better than Izturis's best season. If Ronny's defense at SS weren't acceptable, Neifi could be inserted at SS. Izturis is redundant, and it's offensive that Trib sportswriters are trying to sell him like he's the second coming of Ozzie Smith.[/b] I can understand how you can think this is a terrible trade if you think Neifi is a better defensive shortstop right now. From watching the two, I can't believe it myself-Izturis's range is so much greater than Neifi's at this point. Also, Izturis hits better than Neifi this year, when Izturis is coming back from his injury. The likelihood is that Izturis will improve at least slightly from his numbers this year, and that Neifi will continue to decline-which will make Izturis a much better shortstop next year than Neifi.

BP doesn't have a stance on Izturis. Christina Karhl does. She writes for BP. Gee, thanks for the clarification. So what makes the author of the article an authority on who should and should not be an everyday SS? Her unqualified stance makes her opinion look myopic. BP still put her article on their website so it reflects poorly on them, too. The points I made still stand. Whether it is BP or Christina Karhl doesn't matter. Defense at the SS position still went unquantified and Karhl's claim that Izturis "shouldn't be an everyday player" is inaccurate which you agree with in your quoted statement below. Then why bother making the claim that Izturis is not an everyday SS? Also, how do you or Ms. Karhl know exactly what the line-up of the Chicago Cubs will be while Cesar Izturis is on the team? Your response doesn't make any sense. If what this uproarious 80-page thread is all about is that neither Izturis nor Cedeno are great offensive middle infielders, I readily agree. They, by themselves, will not score a lot of runs. I was simply pointing out that there are many different writers at BP, and they don't always agree. And you ought to read the entire thread. Izturis may have value, but he won't contribute much to the Cubs. Believe it or not, the Cubs already have one of the better defenses in baseball. They're currently ranked #6 in defensive efficiency, and they've been as high as #4 in the recent past. They don't need more players who can catch the ball. They need more players who can get on base and drive in runs. Izturis fixes a problem that doesn't exist. For somebody that values defense as Henry does, this does allow him the flexibility to go out and sign somebody like Soriano to play 2b. Izturis and Lee will make up the defensive shortcomings of a player like Soriano, and Soriano would help the offense tremendously-this move by itself cannot be judged very well because it is really hard to tell what the rest of the team will be like. If by this they determine the defense is fine and are free to sign some great offensive players, then it is a very good move. I don't know if they are thinking this, but it is reasonable that something like this could be their plan.

Wow..I didn't even see that statement about how Izturis shouldn't be an everyday player. That really is quite a statement-especially considering 8 of the 27 qualified shortstops this year have under a .700 OPS, and 6 of those shortstops have under a .300 OBP-and that doesn't count Izturis. Is 1/3 of the league just missing all these extra shortstops out there? I doubt it-it's just that good hitting shortstops are scarce-almost as scarce as a good hitting catcher.

And that's something else. We're talking about 6 games here. Izturis hasn't hit well, but has looked good at the plate in most of his at bats (2 or 3 times he's hit hard low line drives right at people already). He has done his job in the field, but hasn't looked particularly good doing it yet. Both of these seem to contrast with the reports on him, and so we just need to wait and see what continues and what doesn't. I'm happy with his work at the plate the last two days (even if the stats don't show it for Saturday, he still helped the team twice)-and we'll see about his defense at Wrigely-we just don't know enough to be sure of anything yet.

Well, he'd probably also never consider a platoon for Jones, in which case we'd enjoy more of that .198/.214/.344 line he has against lefties this season or .201/.247/.370 of last season. We have to see that he doesn't hit lefties with our own eyes before we can believe it. Maybe we'll see JJones sit vs lefties more for the remainder of the season. Which would be nice. I doubt he will still sit against all lefties, but I think he will a lot more now. We will have situations like the other day with Murton in left and Pagan in right, which gives the added benefit of getting them both in the lineup and at-bats to add to their evaluations.

It looks like the Cubs did not claim him. Will Carroll, in today's Under the Knife column, mentions that he was told the Astros had the prevailing claim. Well, then it looks like it wouldn't have mattered. The Astros were pretty desperate to make a deal before the deadline to improve their offense-if they didn't make the trade for him, the Braves must have been asking for entirely too steep of a price.

And the Reds and all the other teams ahead of the Cubs have to seriously implode. Technically, if everyone else stayed playing at the same baseball they have for the season and the Cubs won at the same rate they did on the homestand, they would win the wildcard. Of course, just because something is possible doesn't mean it is going to happen-and winning almost 80 percent of your games over 50 games is incredibly hard for any team, and almost impossible for this team.

Jon, one question about the graphs-why do all the lines go down while Pagan is hurt? In the couple months that he was hurt, the line is sloping down-why would the graph do that? It seems like it would be simple enough for the graph to draw the straight line, but it doesn't. I just thought that was very interesting.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

Shh...not yet. Now? lol..Good win Cubs-make it 4 non-losing series in a row tomorrow (3 series won, 1 split)

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.