jersey cubs fan

He is now. He wasn't 24 hours ago. Over his last 100 innings he is, over his last 300 he's not, over his last 500 he is, over his last 750 he's not. Seems to me like he's an average pitcher oscillating around the average. Seems to me he's obviously not consistently above average.

WHIP is such a bad stat. It's the batting-average of pitchers. His FIP going into today was 4.50, almost dead even with his ERA. No BABIP luck or anything like that in there. Is it really? I'm sway-able on this. 1.5 just seems exceedingly high to have such an average ERA. He's 3/4 of a runs over the NL league average ERA.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. What's clear is he can't go 30 starts without a boatload of complete pant crappers. We don't know when those will happen, but history may indicate they are more likely to occur the later in the season we go. As a starter, when he does blow up, it screws up a lot of things because you almost feel obligated to let him go 3-4 and give up 6-8 runs just because he was the starter, even when you know he's toast. That screws up that game, plus forced you to hit the pen early, which can screw up future games. We have no idea if he'd be able to cut back on the suckiness and be a bit more effective out of the pen, clearly that has happened before. Plus, when he does suck, you pull him right then and there. He'd also be available for spot starter duties, and long man situations.

Marquis ERA+ 2005 102 2006 74 2007 101 2008 101 (not including todays game, which will surely push that below 100) I'd call that at or below league average. Calling that "consistently better than league average" is pretty misleading. First, as has been mentioned, relievers consistently post better ERAs than starters. The league average for a starter is around 95. Second, nice arbitrary endpoint that leaves out his best season. He's about 50/50 right now to make this season his fourth in the last five seasons of above-average starterness. The mindless Marquis hate is just that, mindless. He's our worst starting pitcher, give or take a Gallagher, but that doesn't mean he's horrible. That's a very stupid thing to say. There are clear reasons to hate Jason Marquis. Crystal freaking clear.

And yet he was still too much of a liability to keep in the playoff rotation, because he so often disappoints, as he did throughout the second half. Part of being consistently above average is not being consistently horrible over large stretches of multiple seasons.

Marquis ERA+ 2005 102 2006 74 2007 101 2008 101 (not including todays game, which will surely push that below 100) I'd call that at or below league average. Calling that "consistently better than league average" is pretty misleading. Correct me if I'm wrong (as I'm sure many will), but by definition, I think 100 is league average. So while it may not be a great deal better, 3/4 years is "consistently better than league average." Now, he'll probably drop below 100 after today and I want him off the team as much as anyone, but his post wasn't really misleading. So that's 2/4 and clearly not consistent. Why don't we look at this career: 92 128 82 77 115 102 74 101 and soon to be below 100 in all likelihood. Clearly not a consistently above average pitcher by any stretch of the imagination. Making fun of people for disliking what Marquis brings to the table is a foolish practice.

Marquis ERA+ 2005 102 2006 74 2007 101 2008 101 (not including todays game, which will surely push that below 100) I'd call that at or below league average. Calling that "consistently better than league average" is pretty misleading. Starting pitcher average is more like 90-95, not 100. But he's probably going to be worse than that this year after today's outing. He'll be close enough though that 1 good outing will push him back to average. His ERA will have to continue to go up to get pulled though. Except that average includes a significant amount of starts and innings thrown by guys who aren't regulars in a rotation bringing down the cruve, and making the concept of an average pitcher rather meaningless. Marquis is a guy who goes out into a rotation year after year and disappoints.

Lots of ugly numbers by these guys.

Lee and Soto took a seat early last time, how about Ramirez today?

Why is it wrong to yell at an obscenely insubordinate employee? In front of everyone to the point where that person physically assaults you? There was nothing wrong with confronting him...but Wade crossed a line here too. There are disciplinary measures that can be taken for insubordination. What did he think yelling would accomplish? This sounds like something you'd say to a 4th grader. The guy is a well compensated employee who refused to follow instructions from his bosses. He didn't accidentally put the wrong paper in the copy machine.

I think Lou wants him gone, but he can't think of a legit replacement right now. Damn you Rich Hill.

I fail to see the issue.

I think Lou has done more than consider it. On the plus side, the ERA is starting to more accurately show the quality of his pitching.

Why is it wrong to yell at an obscenely insubordinate employee?

Backup catchers play quite a bit, and it would be nice to have a cheap one instead of spending millions on a guy that does very little. Plus, catchers aren't the most durable players.

So it's a big game of whack a mole? I think someone else would notice guys' heads popping up and down depending on the pitch. Actually, it's not impossible. The dugout is angled so it's really hard to look at the game and the scoreboard at the same time (and you can't see the catcher's signs in the first place). So unless the manager/pitching coach are feeding signs to the catcher (which seems rare these days), they're not going to know what pitch is coming. All the members of the other team except the catcher are facing home plate. The catcher has to watch for the ball coming from the pitcher (ditto the ump). The crowd is focused on 1) the infield diamond and 2) talking to each other. If they are looking at the outfield scoreboard it'd be the ball/strike count. If you want to go even more "crackpot" conspiracy theory, since the Cubs own WGN and CSN, they could tip off the production crew not to film the scoreboard during the at-bats. Well there's a half dozen or so guys in the bullpen and another dozen or so in the dugout. It would be incredibly easy for them to track a guy moving in the scoreboard on every pitch. You take 2 guys in the dugout, 1 of them notes what the operators are doing, the other tracks the pitch. If they are standing still during consecutive fastballs then moving when it goes fastball, offspeed, breaking pitch, you can start theorizing. Plus, doesn't the opposing teams production staff have access to whatever camera angles they want?

of course they dont. ](*,) not really bang your head against a wall-worthy.

Especially after this That game was the reason WHY they did it. I couldn't care less about this because the alternating years method that they employed before this was just about as dumb. How would you decide home field? I personally don't have a problem with the alternating years method. The way it's done now with the ASG is flat out dumb. I don't think it's fair to allow the team with the better record to do it because the two WS teams played only a couple of the same opponents during the year. At least with home-field within the NL, the two teams still played a majority of games against the same teams. And if you use interleague record, I don't think that's fair either because you're allowing teams who don't even make the playoffs to help decide which league gets home field. name me a professional sport where every team plays the exact same schedule haha, pretty much every professional soccer league in Europe. They might play extra games that don't count towards the league championship, but everyone plays the exact same schedule for the league. Fairly significant difference. All those leagues constitute the sport when combined. They end up playing each other in a champions league, right? Well, not every league is in the Champions league, and there's other championship tournaments that are played for besides the Champions League. I know there's more to it than that, but my point was there are a very different comparisons for something like the EPL and MLB or NFL.

But there was a need for 5-6 threads to follow the MLB draft? ;)

looks fun but pointless

Especially after this That game was the reason WHY they did it. I couldn't care less about this because the alternating years method that they employed before this was just about as dumb. How would you decide home field? I personally don't have a problem with the alternating years method. The way it's done now with the ASG is flat out dumb. I don't think it's fair to allow the team with the better record to do it because the two WS teams played only a couple of the same opponents during the year. At least with home-field within the NL, the two teams still played a majority of games against the same teams. And if you use interleague record, I don't think that's fair either because you're allowing teams who don't even make the playoffs to help decide which league gets home field. name me a professional sport where every team plays the exact same schedule haha, pretty much every professional soccer league in Europe. They might play extra games that don't count towards the league championship, but everyone plays the exact same schedule for the league. Fairly significant difference. All those leagues constitute the sport when combined. They end up playing each other in a champions league, right?

We aren't arguing minutiae. The GM is the boss's boss. He's got a problem employee who is under contract and refusing to act accordingly. Getting on him for "redassing" a player while eating in front of others is ridiculous.

Eh, it had me fooled. A decent performance by Bautista last year coupled with previous good years from Washburn and Silva. Admittedly, though, I only moved here this year, so I wasn't that familiar with those pitchers outside of general name recognition. In any case, it should have been a decent enough back end behind a strong top of the rotation. A case of a third eye blind if I've ever heard one. Bedard sounds like a heck of a guy as well. ESPN The Magazine had a page dedicated to him in their "the athletes are the editors" edition, and he came across as a guy that didn't like baseball, his teammates or anything involving the game. I never knew anything about him before, but after hearing the stories about him recently, it makes you wonder where his head is.

That's the point, he refused to attend a meeting. He's an employee under contract. The team is obligated to pay him, he is obligated to do his part for the team. The fact that his agent requested a team does not void his obligation as an employee. Simply releasing him doesn't help the team. The fact that he quit is more than enough reason to be confrontational with an employee. His version of quitting still gets him paid. It's not like he walked out the door and refused any further paychecks. He wanted all the benefits of being under contract without performing the duties of being under contract, and you don't see the reasoning for a manager to confront the employee for such behavior?

I don't think there's anything in the rulebook, but I always saw it as that gray area between trying to get an advantage and being classless. Kind of like when A-Rod yelled "I got it!" while approaching 3rd base against Toronto (I think) last season. It also brings up the age-old debate over playing the game "the right way". That being said, a large part of Spygate was over stealing signs as well. They were videotaped in advance and it's a completely different sport, but it's interesting how it can be so clean-cut in football and not in baseball. I guess I understand this. I guess I just think that the signs are used to disguise and if you aren't diguising well enough you should have to pay by having the other team know what your going to do. The only clear-cut thing about in football was the rule against using recording equipment to film the signs. There's no clear-cut rule against stealing signs though.