jersey cubs fan

Would they play 2 tomorrow if this game is canceled? No They dont play tomorrow anyways I always thought the extra off days on opening week were for specifically filling in rain outs. No reason why they couldn't just play the game tomorrow.

But the people running the Cubs are some of the same baseball geniuses that miraculously led the Cubs to back to back .500 seasons a few years back, so anything is possible.

So he's repeatedly shown he's only willing to put his worst hitters in 37.5% of potential lineup spots?

Not everyone.

God knows what it was thinking. Did you pre-rank or have players in your queue? I went to the prerank thing, and moved up a couple starting pitchers and moved down some position players. I never even touched those names it gave me. That damn bachelor party trip really screwed me over.

why did the draft bot go out of its way to F me?

Just thought of that, huh? Except Lou has been quite adament saying his CF has to hit in the 8th spot, which means Ronny would actually hit 7th.

Come again? I've heard lots of people admit they believe in the curse.

It's not unheard of, but it's rare for a guy to come up at that age and perform well. The greats do it, but not many others. Orlando Cabrera hit .280/.325/.414 in his first substantial exposure to major league pitching at 23. But at 24 and 25 he hit: .254/.293/.403 .237/.279/.393 Before turning it up in his late 20's and becoming what I would assume people would call an above average major league shortstop. The bolded sparked my interest. Is it really that crazy to think that Theriot could put up the numbers that Cabrera has in most years (aside from his one fluke year in 2003)? Granted, defensively Cabrera wins, but it just got me thinking. Maybe not crazy, but completely unlikely. Cabrera was a regular doing better than Theriot at 25 and 26. FYI, Ryan's closest br.com comparable is Tony Womack.

It's not unheard of, but it's rare for a guy to come up at that age and perform well. The greats do it, but not many others. Orlando Cabrera hit .280/.325/.414 in his first substantial exposure to major league pitching at 23. But at 24 and 25 he hit: .254/.293/.403 .237/.279/.393 Before turning it up in his late 20's and becoming what I would assume people would call an above average major league shortstop. The Reds' version of Alex Gonzalez hit .200/.229/.319 at age 23. I think he more or less falls into that line of average SS nowadays, although on an inconsistent basis. Michael Barrett came up at a younger age, with initial success, but hit .214/.277/.288 at 23, and continued to struggle for a few years, before turning in a few solid well above average years. Baseballreference.com has Davey Johnson as the closest comparison to Cedeno at age 23. He hit .257/.298/.351 before turning in a really nice career. Ryne Sandberg hit .261/.316/.351 at 23. It's hard to find a lot of comparables, because most guys got either sporadic play at most at that age (or weren't even up) or the guys who became superstars were already showing signs. As I've said before, I have my doubts about Cedeno. The worst thing that happened to him was being added to the 40-man roster so early, thus forcing a rush to the majors. Now he's in limbo, having played behind some truly awful SS in recent years. If he had more options it would have been nice to ease him in at a later age, and then hopefully have him ready now, but with the comfort of an option to go back to AAA.

In an organization that stresses swing early and swing often, hitting not walking your way to the majors, and with a manager who ridiculed patience, being young sure as heck is meaningful.

lots of teams playing more or less games in the regular season...just an fyi. *edit* maybe not "lots", but a few Predicting rain outs that don't get made up and a playoff game to determine a champ is as ballsy as it gets.

Floor and ceiling talk is nonsensical. It's meaningless scoutspeak and has no place in a rational baseball discussion. If either one or both of those two are playing poorly they should be replaced. It doesn't matter if its .290 OBP vs. 270 OBP or whatever numbers one wants to use. Just because you say it doesn't, doesn't make it true. There is definite merit to compare a low-risk, low-reward player to a high-risk, high-reward player. If you know you are getting between a .320 OBP and a .340 OBP with one player, but the other player could give you between a .290 OBP and a .360 OBP, it's worth considering the safer player, especially if you can't afford the low-end production of the risky player. I don't get this line of thinking. Why would anybody want to lock-in mediocrity and forego the opportunity to achieve real success? The goal is a championship. I could see, maybe, if this was a 50% of the league gets in the postseason type of sport where maybe, possibly, that approach might make some sense. But it's hard to make the baseball postseason, even if you are in the weaker league. Plus, while OBP is important, it is not the only thing. Cedeno offers the higher upside in every meaningful aspect of the game.

Who is saying that? Hendry is bad because 5 years in and he's barely managed to field a mediocre squad. The problem is he put himself into a position where he felt he had to sign Soriano. The way you phrase it suggest Hendry was put into a tough spot by somebody else's actions, as if he inherited some poorly constructed team after the 2006 season and decided he had to make an early splash with Soriano. It ignores the fact that he's been very much involved in the organization since 94, and closely attached to all transactions since 2000.

That illustrates the problem. Normally, you'd like to introduce a player like Soto into an already stable lineup. Same with Pie. But they are introducing Soto and Pie into a lineup that is already plagued by Theriot. That's 3/8 of the lineup filled by guys who are either a question mark, or certain to stink. Doesn't leave much room for error. And that's quite pathetic on a team that costs $100m+ and has had problems at C, SS and CF for several years. I don't know about having a problem at C for several years. We had Barrett for 3.5 seasons, and considering the life of a catcher thats pretty stable. Of course one could argue how much Barrett actually contributed to the Cubs when you factor in his defense. And Barrett was Hendry's big crush, he worked out briefly, but fell apart quickly. It's been an unstable position for years. 3B was a problem for years, but it no longer is because Ramirez has been a steady presence for 4+ years and looks to be for the foreseeable future.

With Marquis and Dempster in the rotation, we're going to need a 12-man staff. I don't think so. Lieber is stretched out enough to pitch 3-4 innings in mop up if needed. If Marshall is on the staff, he also should be able to do more than an inning. Furthermore, we have enough arms with major league experience at Iowa that we can just shuttle them back and forth if the bullpen gets over worked. I think having the extra bat on the bench would be of greater value than the arm in the pen. Exactly. There are going to be off days and rain outs in the first few weeks. Everybody is going in fresh. The worst that can happen is you realize in two weeks you need another arm, then you call somebody up. But there's no reason why you can't get by with 5 starters and 6 relievers right now.

True. Hopefully it ends one way or another. If this talk is just something to try and get the other side to move, it'll probably either happen within a day or two, or not happen at all.

For some reason that sounds less definitive than Sullivan's take. Yeah its been overblown. I wonder if Hendry dumping Cintron was a tactic, and MacPhail coming out with this news is a counter tactic....but mostly I'm just going to pretend this is going away. Not that I necessarily believe it in this case, but a lot of times when deals are stalled, you hear this kind of talk just before something happens.

That's as good a time as any to go out.

So I'm dumb? Personal attack. Someone ban this guy. You aren't bothered by high cost mediocrity?

That illustrates the problem. Normally, you'd like to introduce a player like Soto into an already stable lineup. Same with Pie. But they are introducing Soto and Pie into a lineup that is already plagued by Theriot. That's 3/8 of the lineup filled by guys who are either a question mark, or certain to stink. Doesn't leave much room for error. And that's quite pathetic on a team that costs $100m+ and has had problems at C, SS and CF for several years.

It better not be, or that is one hell of an expensive platoon player. I wasn't suggesting a traditional platoon. What I was suggesting is that it might make the most sense for Lou to fit in Fukudome's 1 or 2 days off per month on games when there's a tough LHP going. These happen to be days when we should anticipate Pie to be sitting also. Thus, Silver's plan to have Fukudome in CF when Pie sits pretty much falls apart. Fukudome better not be sitting more than a handful of games this year. When he does sit, there's no reason Pie couldn't play. You can't sit him against all lefties.

that's often what happens with new stadiums. extort the city into paying for it, then fall into mediocrity (see: Pittsburgh, Cincy, Seattle, San Francisco, Houston....) Wasn't SF's park privately financed?

What you're doing is excusing all of Hendry's past mistakes by saying he had to get Soriano. Hendry never had to get Soriano. This should have been a 90-win team years ago. If Hendry was any good at seeing the value of his assets, and could plan beyond today, he wouldn't have been in the position he was in when he grossly overpaid for Soriano. He could have easily fit Murton into a championship caliber team a long time ago if he wasn't just so incredibly incompetent. Instead, he throws good money after bad by continually forcing himself to cover up his own mistakes with bigger and more expensive ones. If it were up to the people on this board, the Cubs would have something more than a barely above .500 record during the Hendry era. It's hysterical how accepting of failure some fans on this board are. It's not the high cost that bothers smart people, it's the very inefficient use of that high cost that results in nothing but mediocrity that bothers smart people.

you win