jersey cubs fan

Never watched a soccer match, eh? The irony of a baseball fan thinking soccer is slow is hilarious. Oh yeah, standing around is way faster than dudes running, passing, kicking, heading and colliding for two chunks of 45 continuous minutes. Yeah, I'm not a soccer "fan" by any stretch, but I manage to watch at World Cup or Olympic time...and I can't say that it's boring. Not my cup of tea, but not boring. And if you want flopping, try the NBA. Whining, try arguing balls and strikes? I enjoy a soccer match now and again, but it clearly wins the flopping and whining debate.

I have to agree wholeheartedly. Not to be mean or cocky or anything, but eh.

Baseball strategy in general is mythologized way beyond its usefulness. It's pitch ball, hit ball, field ball much more than anything else. Obviously the NL uses pinch hitters more frequently, but the average NL team has had only 98 of their 2445 ABs come from pinch hitters this year, while the AL has had 27 out of 2431. The difference in number of RBI is 12-5, while R is 10-3. Some argue that it's actually a little more difficult for an AL manager to know when to pull his pitcher, because he doesn't have the incentive of getting him out of offensive purposes to save him from letting the guy go to long. I think that's all a bunch of hooey really. I know our resident coaches take offense to such notions, but it's not about strategy, it's about performance on the field by the players playing the game. And even then, the AL can still use SB, sacrifices and all the rest if they want to try and strategize to a victory. The only real difference is they don't pinch hit for pitchers. But they will switch up pitchers and hitters for the purpose of matchups and all that good stuff. So that's essentially 3.5 times the strategic situations (98 vs 27) in the NL vs. the AL. I'll take that. I don't think it's a myth. We all watch a lot of baseball. Obviously it's about opinion. I like NL baseball better, and I enjoy the increased need for strategic switching. I like seeing what the manager will do now that the pitcher's spot has come up and he needs to make a move, or whatever. What I don't understand is why some people can't accept that others like it that way (not you specifically, but in general). That assumes pinch hitting for the pitcher is the only strategic decision a manager makes. And how much strategy is that anyway? It's the 6th or 7th inning, you need runs, your pitcher is up, you pinch hit. That's not much of a strategy. Have you ever watched a Yankees Red Sox game? AL games don't just last 4 hours because of the DH, they last long because managers spend half the time strategizing pitching matchups late in games.

I checked out the daily herald blog today and Bruce's partner in crime, who covers the White Sox, said don't be surprised if Beckham is the starting SS come openind day 2009. Is that really a possibility? I know college hitters are generally the best bets to make it and get called to the bigs early, but he'll have under a half a season of pro ball under his belt by then. How many guys have pulled that off?

Baseball strategy in general is mythologized way beyond its usefulness. It's pitch ball, hit ball, field ball much more than anything else. Obviously the NL uses pinch hitters more frequently, but the average NL team has had only 98 of their 2445 ABs come from pinch hitters this year, while the AL has had 27 out of 2431. The difference in number of RBI is 12-5, while R is 10-3. Some argue that it's actually a little more difficult for an AL manager to know when to pull his pitcher, because he doesn't have the incentive of getting him out of offensive purposes to save him from letting the guy go to long. I think that's all a bunch of hooey really. I know our resident coaches take offense to such notions, but it's not about strategy, it's about performance on the field by the players playing the game. And even then, the AL can still use SB, sacrifices and all the rest if they want to try and strategize to a victory. The only real difference is they don't pinch hit for pitchers. But they will switch up pitchers and hitters for the purpose of matchups and all that good stuff.

http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/pga/news?slug=ap-woodsfuture&prov=ap&type=lgns This wasn't a smart move from Tiger. I mean, what did he really gain from winning this? Only a 14th major as far as I can tell. I could understand if he was going for a milestone that he might not have a chance to do again. Like if he had won the Masters, the U.S. Open and the British already in a year and had this injury going into the PGA Championship. In that case, go for it because you might not have another shot at the Grand Slam. But this seems kind of pointless to me. Sure, you won this major, but now you guaranteed to miss the next two. Not to mention that it wasn't a guarantee that he was going to win this one. What if he didn't win? Then he would have done all this for nothing. Maybe he figured Elin would lose all the pregnancy weight by now and it was a good time to go on a 8-month hiatus.

The cynic in me assumes Omar made the decision to buy himself another couple years with a new manager. If he held onto Willie the rest of the year, the chances that both of them got the ax would have gone up considerably.

Haha. "The poor play isn't his fault. But uh, I'm firing him anyway at 3am." This is the guy that was once called one of the 5 best GMs in baseball. I'm guessing that this wasn't Omar's call. Bad execution but for the right reasons though. What are the reasons though? The Mets biggest problem is that all their very old injury prone players are either injured or completely not performing. A team cannot fire the players. I don't think Willie is a particularly good manager. You can trade or release them. I don't think he's particularly good or bad. But I think the GM made some really bad decisions with some really old and injury prone players. I don't see Willie abusing talented young arms. The only argument I have heard is that the team looks flat or dysfunctional. I think they just look old and injured. The free Metro paper listed 3 mistakes by Willie and Omar. They are: Willie - slow start to season because they "lacked energy to start season". Race comments. And "his young team lacked leadership last September and Randolph did nothing to push them into performing better." That's gibberish, and that's the excuses I've been hearing as the reasons for his firing. He can't push them to perform better or add energy. He's a freaking manager.

He didn't have to make a great play. He didn't make a great play, he made a routine play for major league 3B, including what was a pretty poor throw, and still got the out with plenty of room to spare. Arbitrarily saying you think it had a 50% chance of succeeding means nothing. It was a horrible decision.

this is my issue with it. i don't think the bunt was intrinsically a bad idea but given the context of the night i thought it was an awful one. i was cursing about the play as soon as i heard pat say "bunt." Reed Johnson is horrible against righties with a sub-.300 OBP this season. I'd say there was a better than 30% chance of it working from the time Johnson made up his mind. Unfortunately, it wasn't a good bunt and in between the time he made up his mind and the time the bunt was laid down, Longoria began to suspect that a bunt might be coming and was starting to charge in during Percival's delivery. Your arbitrary assignment of percentage chance for success is meaningless. It was a horrible inexcusable decision.

this is coming from a guy that likes soccer. You know the old saying about soccer and golf. We love to play it because it is so boring to watch. Not even close to the same thing. In golf they hit a shot, walk 200 yards, then stand over the ball for 30 second, then walk around it for few more, talk to the caddy and then hit the shot. Putts are even worse because they walk around the ball for a minute looking at every single angle and slope, then take some practice swings, look at the lie a little more, take a couple more practice swings and then finally shoot the ball. And in soccer, players kick the ball around the field, and the ball is never close to the goal for 95 percent of the match. It's without a doubt the most boring sport I've ever tried to watch. At least the players are doing something on the field (i.e. kicking the ball around) rather than walking for 200 yards in between shots. There's not a chance soccer is more boring than golf. Not even close. If you are talking about a 2-man playoff, maybe. But as others have stated, most golf on TV involves very few shots of guys just walking around. There are several shots shown in any given minute.

Tiger probably done for season, hope it was worth it.

So assuming no major speed bumps, we're looking at a conservative ETA of sometime in 2010? Conservative would be 2012(2009 A+, 2010 AA, 2011 AAA). If he advances well it might be sometime in 2011. Wow, I always thought pitchers could move up the system much quicker than hitters. I realize he is a foreign prospect that is probably extremely raw, and I understand keeping him in Peoria this year, but I figure if he dominates in Peoria, why not bring him up to Tennessee to start next year. And if he does well in Tennessee, why not Iowa to start 2010. And if he's still pitching well in Iowa, and we need a spark in Chicago bring him up during the year. But this is why you guys know the system better than I It really doesn't matter whether he's a foreign born prospect or American. Pitchers tend to graduate one level per year at the lower levels when they're younger (most foregn prospects, HS draftees) while the older pitchers who are more advanced move up at a quicker speed (college draftees). There's no point in skipping Daytona just because he succeeds or even dominates in Peoria, you have to determine he's ready to skip all the way to AA to do that. There's no point in doing that since he's so young and still pretty raw - he has a lot that he can learn at high-A next season (if all goes well this season). I could see a call up to Daytona in August if things continue well well for him this season. what's the standard IP count for high school pitchers coming up through a system before hitting the majors? Isn't it something like 500-600 IP? Rhee will have barely more than 200 IP at tne end of 2009 if he stays healthy and doesn't miss time. I'd think anything before 2012 would be fairly aggressive.

I highly doubt that. Sure his trade value is lower than it was after last season, but it's still going to be somewhat high. And it should be about a million times higher than Coco Freaking Crisp.

Haha. "The poor play isn't his fault. But uh, I'm firing him anyway at 3am." This is the guy that was once called one of the 5 best GMs in baseball. I'm guessing that this wasn't Omar's call. Bad execution but for the right reasons though. What are the reasons though? The Mets biggest problem is that all their very old injury prone players are either injured or completely not performing.

The Cubs played a little sloppy last night, they didn't deserve to win. However, if I had to blame one person it would be Reed. He had his head up his own ass three times 1) trying to stretch the single (worked) 3) stealing third (didn't work) 4) bunting on that turf (didn't work). There's a reason why Tampa has the fewest sac bunts in baseball and it ain't b/c they're managed by an Earl Weaver clone with a lot of big hitters. I don't understand why you're complaining about him stretching that single into a double considering that it worked, but whatever. As for the bunt in the 9th, it was a great idea. If Longoria doesn't make a perfect play on that ball, the game would've been tied. Unfortunately, he did make a perfect play. Nothing wrong with dropping down a bunt there. Yesterday I drove backwards down the highway, it worked so I'm going to try it today too. Whatever works man'. I love Len but he's dead wrong. It wasn't a perfect play it was a routine play and Johnson was thrown out by 15 feet. Johnson should know better than to bunt on a billiard green. Like I said, there's a reason why Tampa doesn't bunt. 15 feet? Boy that's not much of an exaggeration or anything. I'm watching the replay right now on ESPN and as the 1B is gathering the ball, Johnson's left foot is planted and he's making his final step to the bag with his right. So unless Reed has a 15 foot stride, you're off by about 10-12 feet. The firstbaseman was standing on the bag with the ball in his hand well before Reed reached 1st. Probably 3-5 paces. Not only was he out by a very wide margin, but they clearly didn't have to make a perfect play to get the out. it was a horrible throw and he was still out by several steps. Defending that bunt is absurd. It was a horrible decision whose execution was made all the more difficult by the playing surface. People blindly applaud being aggressive, "pressuring the defense" or trying to make things happen, but that was a straight up idiotic move by Reed Johnson.

Freaking Neifi Johnson. What a stupid idea. He was out by a mile and that's a routine play, especially on carpet.

Edmonds everyday? Why?

The whole strategy argument does nothing for me. I don't like the DH, but I'm fine with the AL having the DH and the NL not having it. It's hard to say if it hurts an NL team more to play with a DH in some games or if it hurts AL teams more when they don't have the DH. I would be very disappointed if the NL went to the DH, and the inevitable conclusion to "making the rules the same" is more DH, not less. So status quo is fine with me on this issue.

You gotta love the implication that he has a week to prove what he's already proven over 900+ career plate appearances.

Just wanted to add the NY media treats Beltran similarly to how Rozner treats Ramirez. They talk about him as if he doesn't care, doesn't show up when it matters, and is not a leader. It's somewhat similar to the sports talk coming out of Philly when they pushed Abreu out of town. I'm not predicting they dump him like I predicted Philly would dump Bobby, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that a Mets related overhaul could include dealing Beltran.

Actually: $5.5m from each of the 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 seasons is deferred. To when I do not know, but what that means is his salary paid in those years is $13m, and the team can payout the rest over time, meaning that what's left is a 3.5 year $64.75m deal that actually costs less in real terms. He's also a very good CF who hits extremely well for a CF. His 2005 season, first year in NY, was bad. However, going back to his age 26 season, his OPS+ has been 132, 132, 96, 150, 126, 126. He's a top 5 CF in all of a baseball with a more solid track record than any of the others, with the exception of Sizemore. He just turned 31, so, while he is likely past his prime, his contract will only pay him through 34. If he wants something like a 3-year extension in order to waive his no-trade, then he's probably too costly. But he'd be a hell of an addition to this Cubs team.

Brett Wallace

I think that's rather absurd. 140 innings of starting every 5th day is not the same as 100 innings of relief work every other day. I think you could say that the latter is significantly easier, as it pertains to injury prevention. When it comes to overuse, what's the cause of the injury? Fatigue leading to poor mechanics. When you've thrown more innings than that prior to the usage, and the usage isn't long enough to fatigue the arm and cause mechanical breakdown, then I don't think it's a particularly large risk(while noting the all pitchers are risks because pitching is unnatural, etc.). In your theory, any pitcher who has ever thrown 150+ innings as a starter could throw 140 innings as a reliever and suffer no consequences. I do not know where the danger zone lies, but there has to be one. Being on the very edge of usage patterns compared to all relievers has to be risky. If there's no risk in relieving there would be no relievers that get hurt throwing. I wasn't trying to theorize anything. I'm just stating that Marmol's style and movement is conducive to a high pitch count pitcher. It doesn't matter what role he fills (starter or reliever), trying to get him to be a more efficient pitcher is probably a waste of time, and possibly reduces his effectiveness breaking out of the zone. So for Lou, plugging him in with a 4 run lead to get sharp isn't likely to do anything for him. To protect him from injury, he just needs to be free to throw his game with fewer appearances. I was talking about TT's theory that reliever innings are fine as long as they are fewer innings than a guy has thrown as a starter. I was not responding to anything you wrote.

Marmol will turn 26 this year. He's not 20 or 21, and he doesn't need to be protected like he's that young. I'm not asking for the Joba rules here. I'm talking about not putting him on the extreme edge of reliever usage, which is where he's been since coming up last year.