CubColtPacer

I love the K/BB ratio of the offense so far. 25 K's to 18 BB's through almost 5 games now. For a NL offense that's unbelievably good. But of course the Cubs haven't faced any of the high strikeout pitchers in the league yet.

Colvin has struck out 3 times in just 13 plate appearances but he's also walked 3 times already.

Almost certainly Casey Coleman would get the first look which is part of the reason they sent him down to AAA to start.

Oh come on. I'm serious. This isnt the first time he's struggled with higher pitch counts. Why do you think he's been on low pitch counts in the minors? They were trying to build him up slow. But if he cant handle the high pitch counts (and i'm not advocating pulling the plug on him starting now), then I think its not the worst thing if he were to head back to the pen. He was being built up in the minors because he got started a little late his first year. Last year before he came up he was regularly throwing 90-100 pitches in the minors (which is pretty much the limit for most Cubs minor leaguers).

Marshall didn't pitch on Sunday so he's only thrown 6 pitches in the last 2 days. He'll be available for a while if the Cubs need. From what Quade said about yesterday's game, he was planning to pitch Mateo/Grabow/Marshall today anyway.

Len and Bob were speculating shoulder but there really was very little indication of what it was.

No tough plays. 2 ground balls right at him and the throws have been fine to him. He's only had to hold one runner on so far as well.

Apparently he was in the running to start for the Diamondbacks. Let that sink in. Mind-bottling. It's not that crazy-Braden Looper was in the run for the Cubs job after all. Heilman could be one of those guys who could have been a mediocre reliever or a mediocre starter in the league. Looper was in the running in the sense that if he showed up in camp and magically started shooting laser beams out of his fingertips and Cashner and Silva had a slapfight (over Silva eating Russell and Coleman alive) that ended up with both of them needing TJ surgery, then Looper might have been the 5th starter. Well yeah but that could have been the case for Heilman as well. They may have humored him..we know how much he has wanted to start for a long time now. With Cashner possibly on a pitch count today, it's great to see the very good control and quick innings. Did anyone hear how many pitches he threw in the minor leagues last week?

And the Cubs are taking advantage of it. And an Aaron Heilman sighting. Apparently he was in the running to start for the Diamondbacks. Let that sink in. Mind-bottling. It's not that crazy-Braden Looper was in the run for the Cubs job after all. Heilman could be one of those guys who could have been a mediocre reliever or a mediocre starter in the league.

I fully expect him to be. It seems very Cubs to make sure the rookie pitcher has a veteran defense-oriented catcher behind the dish for his starts. Plus one of the things that Hill was credited for in the offseason was helping Cashner specifically. The Cubs are getting pretty good swings early. It's also nice to see that after Ramirez was striking out much more than normal during his slump last year he has 0 strikeouts so far this year.

Still, if ever there was a time to at least give him a start, it would be vs a mediocre righty on a bad team. DeWitt hits left-handers better than right-handers so far in his career, Enright was better against left-handers than right-handers last year (although part of that was probably BABIP luck), and Cashner is a heavy ground ball pitcher. It's not exactly the perfect day to give DeWitt the start.

I'm not sure about a big step. Zeller coming in will definitely help and another year of experience will too. I think IU will win about 4-5 more games than they did this past season. That might keep them out of the bottom but many of the things that have plagued the last couple years will probably do the same this year. That's even more true if there is a transfer or two to accommodate the people coming in 2012. The one exception to this is if Creek comes back and just plays at a super high level again. That would really change the dynamics of the team but right now I don't see it happening. The real jump will come the year after that.

Thank goodness for a reasonable explanation. I still don't think it would have been a terrible move (probably because I feel Reed Johnson might have a little more in the tank than he might actually have) but it would be incredibly unconventional. And part of that reason is that there are a thousand variables to consider in that situation (time/score, splits of both batters, splits of pitcher, defensive change, burning a bench player, possibility of extra innings). It's one of those decisions that is really hard to determine and so going with convention and not making waves is usually called for. Hopefully Pena won't be out more than a day or two at most because while the starting lineup may not suffer that much the bench will be stretched incredibly thin without him.

Castro's not having the best couple of days defensively. That should have been turned.

Carlos Pena 3 year splits against left-handers: .194/.316/.397 Reed Johnson 3 year splits against left-handers: .321/.377/.465 And the pitcher had apparently strong left/right splits in the minor leagues. It's a pretty close call-it's definitely an offensive upgrade and it depends on how much you think the defensive downgrade for 1 inning is worth.

If he is, that makes Quade's bullpen usage in the seventh even more inexcusable. It sounded like Len was just assuming Marmol was unavailable for more than 1 inning because he was speculating who could replace Wood if he ran into more trouble.

I'm trying to decide if Quade is giving his relievers work, if he is relying on the batter-pitcher matchups, or both.

He looked really good in the first 3 innings and has been missing his spots by quite a bit so far in the 4th.

Unless they planned to move the rest of the hitters up and bat Baker 5th or 6th against left-handers it makes sense to put him leadoff. He's wasted in the 8 spot.

Seriously, Quade is really putting that "lineup position doesn't really matter" theory to the test. And I thought Dusty "Catchers hit 8th dude" Baker was bad. I'm trying to think if there is a lineup in baseball with a worst 2-3 than Barney and Byrd. I'm assuming that isn't going to be the full time 2-3 though. No, right now it appears to only be the 2-3 when a right-hander is on the mound, Fukudome isn't playing, and Barney is playing. When Fukudome is playing against right-handers he'll bat leadoff and when a left-hander is on the mound Baker will be in almost all the time. Byrd hitting 3rd is bad but it's really hard to construct the Cubs lineup. Who will be the Cubs best hitter this season? There are at least 3 obvious choices and 3 darkhorses. That's a ton for one lineup. Byrd is almost certainly not going to be one of the Cubs best but he is also less likely to tank than several others in the lineup are. Byrd probably shouldn't be hitting higher than 5th but really the top 7 guys are pretty close to interchangeable in this lineup.

The latest example-Garza has a -.32 FIP after yesterday's game. I'm pretty sure that's a flaw in the formula :-)

Mike Fontenot May 28th of last year against St. Louis.

Clayborn was taken with the 20th pick.

The only positive I see to starting Barney is that he's a plus defender (from everything I've heard). At the same time, there is no plus part of DeWitt's game. He's better offensively overall than Barney, but isn't particularly good either. Thus, since you're going with a young guy anyway, the reasoning would be to go with the guy that already features a plus skill and hope the other side comes around enough. Barney, it sounds like, is Theriot with much better defense and a slightly worse bat. That said, I'd prefer to go with DeWitt. Both are young but DeWitt has shown more offensive potential. With Aramis, Starlin and Pena around the infield, we have good to very good defense at 3 of 4 positions and can afford to put up with poor 2B defense with the hopes that DeWitt's bat comes around. There are plenty of good reasons to prefer DeWitt to Barney, but the makeup of the rest of the infield defense isn't one of them. If over the course of a season Barney's superior defense turns X additional balls in play into outs, then the run-value of that improvement is whatever it is, regardless of what anyone else on the field is doing. Well, the rest of the defense can fractionally help. If Ramirez, Casto, and Pena all had excellent range and Dewitt's main problem was a lack of range they could make that up with positioning. If Castro and Pena were both excellent at catching throws and DeWitt had issues with that then they could help in that regard. But I don't think either of those is particularly true so I don't think the rest of the Cubs defense would help DeWitt much.

If Barney adds just a little bit of power because of his weight gain at Camp Colvin he can become a .650-.700 OPS guy in the majors (or maybe even .725 depending on how much he can keep his average up) That plus his defense will make Barney/Baker a better option than DeWitt/Baker although still one that should be replaced when the Cubs get a chance.