jersey cubs fan

Maybe if this was April 1 and you were still hoping for the flukish start to the season. If you move him to the bullpen tomorrow you won't be able to trade him tomorrow, but you won't be able to trade him as a starter either. At least moving him to the pen offers a chance that he'll show something there. He simply cannot throw a quality start. So why not see if he can throw 4 effective innings now and again? Teams are always looking for relief help even if starters are more valuable. Who cares if he doesn't want to do that? He's done nothing to warrent the coddling of his ego.

If a situation happens like the one you mention above that would still be against league rules. You cannot get a start from a pitcher in the RP spot. This rule change is more for players like John Smoltz, Joba Chamberlain, etc. I still don't get how this is even justified as a rule. A guy is eligible as a starter or reliever, but you can only use him in the role he's actually participating in. But when a guy is a reliever, but not eligible, you can't use him. It's completely asinine and arbitrary, as well as the opposite of how things were done before.

I'm thinking they have to be shopping him and hoping he'll do something that would make him attractive to a team that is desperate for starting pitching. Once he goes to the pen, every once of value he had would be gone, not even the goofiest of GM's would bite then. There's two types of teams that could justify interest in Marquis. 1) Those who just don't have any warm bodies in their rotation. 2) Those who with badass offenses that will make up for his sucking. We already see that he's still a problem for the 2nd type (the Cubs have a great offense but still struggle to get even the mediocre innings they need from him). So you'd need to be able to find a team that's just crazy desperate for a warm body out there. Going by starters' IP, the Yankees and Mets could be candidates. Texas is a pseudo contender who also doesn't get many innings from starters. But I still don't see much room for trade. The best way to showcase him may be to show he can be an effective long man, and then hopefully entice another team to think they can stretch that out into being an effective starter.

With Lee and Soto, I wonder if it's something along the lines of what Ichiro has always said, where he's talked about how he could hit more homers but the rest of his offense would suffer. To me, I agree that it looks like Soto and Lee have been unleashing the big swing more often than not over the last few weeks...that's not saying that it's definitely the case, because my observation can easily be completely wrong...but I wonder if something like that is going on, because they both seem to still be hitting homers or near homers at a decent clip despite their other numbers dropping. My impression has been Lee has been plagued by a load of weak ground balls, not a swing for the fence recklessness.

So at what point to they stop caving in to his threats about going to the bullpen and just assign him to a relief role? He's scheduled to go Sunday and is probably the only option (unless Hart takes that turn), but then the Cubs have three straight weeks with a Monday off-day. If they don't make a move he'd start again on Saturday in Toronto, but then they could start finding ways to skip him. They should be able to find a way to mix-in something like Marshall/Marquis sharing an 8-9 innig load in a few games, as neither is a strong candidate to go 6+ but both are decent bets to last 4 fairly effective innings.

No wonder they make no sense when they can't understand the basics. Non-Save Appearances--11 Saves-16 Blown Saves -4 Save %-75% That's an 80% rate. Wow. That is some tasty irony. That's well beyond basic math.

I'm certainly not defending him, but doesn't that make him the best 5th starter in baseball? Yeah, I threw that in there to say that while perception may make all of us think one of he's the worst we've ever seen, he's really not quite that bad. Right now his numbers are in that frustrating middle zone. He's not good enough to really be productive or to be able to trade him, but he isn't really bad enough to get cut either. That is just a horrible way to look at it. There may be 37 other starters with a worse ERA, but are they spread across all 30 teams? Are the just filling in temporarily. Are those ERA's park adjusted? And are they signed to the type of contract Marquis is signed to? I got news for you, Jason Marquis is not the Cubs 5th starter. He was signed to be more like a 3, and as far as guaranteed spots in the rotation he's a 4 right now. A 5th starter is in danger of losing his job at all times. Marquis has been handed his because of his ridiculous contract, and that ridiculous contract cannot be removed from the discussion. Yeah, I certainly wouldn't argue that Marquis is the best 5th starter in the league. Most of the names behind him are not temporary fill ins though, but many of them aren't usual 5th starters either. They're big money guys having bad years. Verlander, Buerhle, Meche, Penny, Oswalt, Myers, Lilly, Arroyo, Zito, Batista, Snell, Silva are just some of the guys. And no, those ERA's are not park adjusted, but if they were, that is a huge benefit to Marquis. The number grows closer to 50 pitchers if you look at ERA+ rather than ERA. And yes, I realize that Marquis was not signed to be the 5th starter. He certainly wasn't signed to be the 3rd though. In this market, you don't sign somebody for just 7 million dollars to be your 3rd starter. That's more like 4th starter money. 3rd starters have been getting 10-13 million per year. I'm not removing the contract from the discussion either. It's what makes the Cubs decision really hard right now. The decision making would be a lot easier one way or the other if he didn't have that crazy year 3 on there (which is the main thing that I have not liked about the contract...I'd rather have signed Marquis to 2/15 or even 2/16 than 3/21. His career with other coaches and tuning them out after a certain period of time made this type of situation very reasonable to happen after the decent first year that Marquis delivered). The thing is, 5th starter, like leadoff hitter and super utility player, is not actually a position. You employ starting pitchers and relief pitchers. And Jason Marquis is a really bad starting pitcher. Saying there are worse is meaningless, as there will always be worse players at any position.

He should serve a purpose if he could actually last past the 5th. But he's gone 6 only 3 of 11 starts. Lasting 5 and giving up 3 all the time is about the opposite of purpose.

I'm certainly not defending him, but doesn't that make him the best 5th starter in baseball? Yeah, I threw that in there to say that while perception may make all of us think one of he's the worst we've ever seen, he's really not quite that bad. Right now his numbers are in that frustrating middle zone. He's not good enough to really be productive or to be able to trade him, but he isn't really bad enough to get cut either. That is just a horrible way to look at it. There may be 37 other starters with a worse ERA, but are they spread across all 30 teams? Are the just filling in temporarily. Are those ERA's park adjusted? And are they signed to the type of contract Marquis is signed to? I got news for you, Jason Marquis is not the Cubs 5th starter. He was signed to be more like a 3, and as far as guaranteed spots in the rotation he's a 4 right now. A 5th starter is in danger of losing his job at all times. Marquis has been handed his because of his ridiculous contract, and that ridiculous contract cannot be removed from the discussion.

I agree swing hard, but not every pitch in the sequence. Hes been looking like bad Soriano at the plate lately. Soto has looked nothing like bad Soriano at the plate lately.

Wow. He's worked 3 consecutive days at least twice. He has just 1 save in a 3+ run lead. And he has more IP than any closer in the league (exception for Torres, who became a closer less than 2 weeks ago). Lou is actually working him in non-save situations much more than necessary, given how many save situations we have. You just pull this stuff out of your ass, don't you? Do everyone a favor..watch the language. I know you think it's funny to be real brave to and say things like that, but it's not. I'm by no means a prude, but children read this and we need to be grown-ups. Out of Wood's 16 saves and 4 blown saves-11 are 1-2 run lead and 5 are 3+run leads. Those games are: April 3 Save #1 May 6-Save #5 May 15-Save #8 May 16-Save #9 June 3-Save #16 Now that we've settled that..please kerry on. You telling people to be grown-ups? With the nonsense you spout off about?

I disagree. The two pitchers with most chance of injury if you use them tonight are Wuertz and Wood. Those are the pitchers you need to protect most in tonight's game. Marmol's right behind them in the short-term. With him, the bigger concern is the long-term. Once they get the bullpen rested again, they need to start sitting him more in order to get his pace for innings in a season down closer to 90 instead of 103. It would be wonderful if it started tonight, but they shouldn't throw Wuertz or Wood out in a very risky situation for them in order to do it. What's wrong with Wuertz? He's thrown 12, 8 and 11 pitches the past 3 days. Sure you'd prefer not to throw him 4 days in a row, but he's hardly been taxed in those 4 days. And he's not exactly a high priority arm out there either. He's thrown less than Howry, Wood, Lieber and Marmol this year. Marmol is ahead of everybody in the "must care for" department. He's the most important arm and the most abused so far this year.

yeah, it was on this site a while back.

Of course nobody would mind having a shut down lefty. But there's no reason to actually go out and try to trade for one.

Considering it's a season-to-date list, I think they were safe keeping him there regardless of the most recent 12-innings.

Estes is going to have a tough time reaching the 20-year category the original poster talked about. Well, Mr. Technicality, the OP said "over 20 years" and Mulholland pitched in only exactly 20 years and that's assuming you count 3 IP in 2006 as a year (he skipped '87, apparently). So he's disqualified too. Or, we can drop the nit picking and just talk generally about mediocre pitchers who pitched for a long time. Not sure how that's nit-picking, the guy was talking about 20+ year guys and Estes is in just his 13th, having barely thrown at all in 4 of those seasons. If you are comping up against Jamie Moyer, I don't see much similarity.

Lieber threw 1 last night and 53 pitches 4 days ago. I doubt he's good for 2-3 tonight. Cotts, Wuertz and Eyre have thrown the least in the past week and should all be fresh for an inning plus if need be. Howry has also been well rested having thrown only 2 innings in 2 appearances over 5 days.

Estes is going to have a tough time reaching the 20-year category the original poster talked about.

At specific times, yes, especially late in the third.

Stone's proclamation doesn't increase the likelihood whatsoever in my opinion. He likes to guarantee a lot of things. Let's see what June and July brings. If Lilly settles down and Hill returns, we might not have any interest in pitching. And if a bat gets hurt and/or somebody slows down, the lineup may be a more pressing need. Then again, if Lou kills Marmol, Hendry might spend the deadline looking for relief help.

That's a great example of a 20-year pitcher who was mediocre.

Ok Dr. Ease up. not "dr. ease up". I'm referring to this specific situation and you claiming you'd be pissed if he said what he said to your kid. If it was something where he was out of line or mistreating a kid, absolutely a parent should be pissed. But your overly dramatic reaction to his story is silly.

I wouldn't say that was identical at all. If he had tried and failed I would have been glad that he tried. I think the other kids would have been supportive too. They were mad that he wouldn't even try. I think he's insinuating that not swinging equals not trying.

David Wells and Kenny Rogers were the two I was thinking before clicking on the link. He was also far more than mediocre as others have noted. He was above average for his career and pretty darn good in several seasons. But I don't believe he was ever great.

Maybe? He's 9. I'm sure you did the best you could and that's a tough situation. But if I heard you say that to my kid, I'd be really pissed. At 9, the game should be about having fun. I can understand the logic. There's a decent chance one of the reasons he's afraid to go up there is that he doesn't want to fail and lose the game for the team. Pointing out what happens if he doesn't go up there might give him the perspective to step in the box. Explaining the consequences and trying to guilt him into going to bat are 2 different things. Kid's 9 and crying behind the dugout. I don't think the chances are good that the guilt trip is going to get him to say "you know what? I can hit!" Okay Dr. Ease up, the guy was in a tough spot and tried to get the kid to go up there. Any parent that would get pissed at a coach for saying that shouldn't have their kid playing in organized sports.