third eye

Interesting story on the best division race I can remember. Also some insight into Dusty's (non)use of rookies down the stretch. I'm guessing his choice of Torres in game 162 had some impact on his veteran preference in later years. Is this the Torres that beaned Sammy in the head? http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=93pennant

F-Yeah!

hahaha, what are you using it to chase? Maybe the shot wasn't conducive to being chased?

My word that lineup was awful. How the heck did they win that game? Guess it shows how flukey single games can be. Hopefully the Cubs get the expected outcome tonight and the Brewers/Cards game gets the flukey one.

ah, makes sense given the Cubs crappy opponents in the central.

I saw on another site (ESPN.com, I think) that the Cubs were only around .513 in 3rd order. Why is that? I would've expected their actual record to be below every predictive metric out there. I don't have access to all of the BP info. Thanks.

Ender, i'd have to agree with you. He should get very serious consideration.

I think the mirrored site for nsbb is http://www.baselineabilityistheonlyfact ... fgames.com ha, nice.

An exogenous event that relaxes a team into playing to its abilities can certainly be characterized as a momentum-turner. When the Cubs were white-hot in the middle of the summer, players were playing expecting to win, and as such were playing at or above their overall ability level. If we say a player is locked in, why can we not say that a team of players collectively is locked in or has "momentum" on its side. Just because a team loses when it runs into another starting pitcher that is also locked in doesn't refute that the team collectively may have been playing loose, with confidence, and thus had momentum previously. Is this a question of semantics or are people arguing that baseline ability is the only factor in a player or team's game or series of games?

I only got to watch the last couple of innings tonight. Can anyone tell me whether Dontrell was really on his game or the Cubs got themselves out? I'm guessing by virtue of him only giving up 2 hits that it was the former...

Great work by Hart. I've been super impressed by him.

The insane humidity? The inherrent shame of living on America's wang? :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

ARam - the money he left on the table this winter spoke volumes Rich Hill DLee - smooth as silk DWard Geo Soto - took me a while to get on the bandwagon, but damn he's been awesome Not to derail this thread, but can anyone with a better knowledge of the minors explain why they expect his upswing this year in the minors and majors to continue long term? What separates his early success from Cedeno's? My bad if the explanation was posted in the Geovany soto thread. I just saw a lot of repetitions of his name.

Cubs won the division in 89. I'm pretty sure you are thinking of 87. While I agree on some level, he was more valuable to his team in the games they did win. Just because last place is the floor of where they could finish doesnt mean they wouldn't have been many games worse without him. In that sense he was still the most valuable player to his team. The award seems much more correlated to team success in recent years, so I doubt we'll see it again unless a player's numbers are way beyond the next best player.

Hah, seems like that was the only way they were going to score that run from third. Oh well, I'll take it.

Great numbers and he seems like a really likeable guy. The kind you love to root for.

HUGE! Way to go Sori! The right players getting hot for the Cubs right now!

I feel your frustration, but look at the Cards last year. Let's just get there and see what happens. Making the post season is great no matter what your record is. Have people not figured out yet that this is a .500 team and no matter how upset you get with them they are still going to be a .500 team? If by some stroke of luck being a .500 team is good enough to make the playoffs they will. Then they will probably lose in the first round in 4 games. No point in getting all worked up about it every night like this some awesome team that is way underachieving. The problem though isn't that people are expecting a .500 team to overachieve. It's that people expect this team to earn their $100 million+ salaries. And frankly, a .500 record ain't cutting the mustard when you have hundreds of millions committed to franchise players over the next four seasons or more. At this point it doesn't matter what the payroll is, after 140+ games you know what this team is. Maybe they will get lucky and run off a 10 game winning streak, or maybe they will get unlucky and run off a 10 game losing streak. But most likely they will be 10-8 the rest of the way and hope that Milwaukee fades. The argument could easily be made that our 3 best hitters are all having down years, at least in terms of power. And our best pitcher is having by far his worst year. So in that sense, you could expect more than a .500 team. I understand that Lilly and Marmol are certainly outperforming expectations, but on the whole, its not like the individuals here are playing at their career norms and keeping the team at .500. They are in fact underperforming. I did expect better than .500 out of the team, and I think even average years by the veterans would have had them 2-3 games up right now. Anyway, its hard to ever expect better than .500 from the Cubs. Dunno why I never learn...

Molina flied out. Game over. Phew.

Cards scored one in the ninth. Bases loaded, two out with Molina up for the Cards.

Pat and Ron engaging in potty-humor banter. Ron seems uncomfortable with it . :lol:

Two guys that have historically hit Snell well have come within a couple of feet of homers. I have a feeling they will get to him today.

Haha, I'm not much of a game thread poster, but that cracked me up. Usually last year it was Fred doing that. On a game-related note, Z's looking pretty good so far today.

I think he had a terribly built team. despite the HRs, they finished ninth in the league in runs scored. the pitching was some of the best in the league, which was accomplished by a staff that had no history of pitching so well. Jenks was a nice move. other than that, he got lucky. look at how far out of line most of that pitching staffs numbers were from their career numbers, and if someone can honestly tell me they would have predicted it, than I posted too late, because I would have gotten the MegaMillions and Powerball picks from them. Right, it reminds me somewhat of the staff that the 1993 Philles put together. Outside of Schilling, it basically had career years out of all of the starters. Though that offense was pretty nasty too.

Yikes, the years have not been kind.