jersey cubs fan

The only stats I think that are known about Pagan against LHP besides this year's data is his major league data from last year, when he was terrible against them in 56 at-bats. Hopefully that was an aberration. His 2005 numbers are just as bad.

Barrett, while he has been awful this year, and does occasionally irk me by popping up on the first pitch, is actually one of the more selective hitters the Cubs have. And that's a bad thing, since he's not very selective.

.274/.314/.576 That's what Pagan has done against LHP this year. He sucked vs RHP. It's not great, but certainly better than Jones. Although, for his career, I think he's actually worse against LHP.

Me no likey Pagan, but I'm on board with this move, if true. Pagan and Pie probably bring similar total value to the 2007 team. However, Pie's greatest value to the team is his future, which is only hindered by sitting on the bench.

I hate people sometimes.

huh? That comes from some asinine quote by Paul Sullivan: Sullivan pointlessly threw in Pie's numbers with 2 strikes as a reason why he shouldn't be playing.

Marshall has been banged up quite frequently I believe. He started with the organization in 2003. He threw 86 innings that year in college, then 80 after getting drafted, doubling his previous yearly high. In 2004 and 2005 his seasons were cut short, as he threw just 80 and 90 pitches. In 2006 he was back up to 150, but finished the season with an oblique issue. And of course his 2007 started with health concerns. I think health questions are going to surround him for the foreseeable future. But everything about his minor league success suggests he can be an effective major league pitcher.

I hate that he's such a typically predictable Hendry guy (tools, but bad OBP and low production in general) and that Hendry went out and got him when they needed a completely different ballplayer. I don't hate Jones. He's far more useful than some of the other bums Hendry has brought in. He's just not good for this team, since this team was so desperate for OF production in general, and more OBP in particular. The .300 average is completely meaningless and not even worth discussing. But Jones overall numbers have been bad this year. He had a brief hot streak that propped them up, but by and large, so far he's been bad.

agreed on the offense. Derrek Lee leads the NL in average but is tied for 10th in RBI. That's the season in a nutshell That's as much a problem with Lee's SLG than anything else. He ranks 11th in SLG, and that's completely propper up by an unsustainable AVG. He went 20 games without a HR, and has only 1 more in the 10 games since.

I'd like to see him benched because he can't hit lefties. But I don't like using the 9 LOB yesterday as the reason. That kind of thing happens. And you really can't kill Jones for that. His GM and manager should never put him in a position to do such a thing in the first place, even if Jones feels he should start everyday. You're talking about a guy who, over the course of his career, makes an out 72.5% of the time he faces a lefty. Making 4-5 outs in a row against a LHP is really nothing.

It sucks the offense hasn't been awake often enough to take advantage, and that such great pitching only has them 1 over .500. But hopefully they don't take too far a step back and start taking advantage.

That's a pretty funny defense. A guy can't hit lefties and needs a platoon partner. So the GM is trying to get rid of him. And since he spent so much time trying to find anybody to take him, he didn't try to get a platoon partner. But, because nobody would take him, we have to keep him and play him everyday even though he's a blatant platoon player. It's like the self fulfilling prophecy of negligent management. Either way it's poor planning.

Good heavens no he hasn't. .270/.336/.369 is nowhere close to very good.

Yeah, it would be shocking to me if Blanco didn't start this game: day game after night game Barrett caught 15 innings 2 nights ago left-hander on the mound for the opposition Blanco is 2-5 against this pitcher Z is on the mound All the factors say a Blanco start is coming. My guess is that the rest of the lineup will be the same, but there could be 1 or 2 other small changes. My first instinct would be to think he'd sit Jones, since he's really cooled down after that brief hot streak, and already ranks third on the team in most playing time. And of course since he can't hit lefties at all, and never has. But when you think about how much stock Lou puts into coddling his veterans' egos and the thought of showing faith in Jones by putting him right back out there, I begin to doubt that idea. But it would be smart to give Felix "I've got 6 at bats in the past 7 days" Pie a start before he rots any further, at least taking advantage of his clear defensive edge over Jones.

right. there's no need for them to announce this publicly and make a big deal out of it. I think you're both wrong. Staying silent on the matter was not an option. This is a public show against DUIs more than anything. It's largely meaningless in and of itself. But the fact that MLB has been so accepting of drinking and driving in the past was a big problem. Banning drinking during team activities that occur just prior to players getting in their cars is a smart move. There's still far too much acceptance of drinking and driving in this country. People think of it like speeding, where the only thing that matters is whether you get caught, rather than whether you do it in the first place.

i dont know. maybe because the cubs only have 1 left handed starter in jones or pie when murton plays (which he should be doing every day imo). So? They need more hitters, not necessarily LH. There is no great need for LH hitters. If anything they need a RH bat that can platoon with Jones. i disagree. have you ever heard stone's explanation on why it is important to have several left handed hitters in a lineup? he contends that if a righty only faces right handed hitters, the pitcher is able to easily establish a release point to the outside corner which makes him that much harder to hit. it also goes along with the left right left (or right left right) batting order sequence that some managers prefer. the staggered lineup makes it harder for a starter to get into a good rhythm on his pitches. I've heard the theory, I just don't think it holds any water. The Cubs are much better against RHP than they are against LHP. And it's been that way for a few years, even though the rest of the league generally does better against LHP. They aren't in need of LH bats. They need bats. And if they need anything in particular, it is guys who hit well against LHP, which would mean a right handed bat.

i dont know. maybe because the cubs only have 1 left handed starter in jones or pie when murton plays (which he should be doing every day imo). So? They need more hitters, not necessarily LH. There is no great need for LH hitters. If anything they need a RH bat that can platoon with Jones.

But his 3 year splits are about 300 AB's fewer than Floyds so it's like comparing apples to oranges. That is completely nonsensical. A 300 AB difference over a 3 year period does not mean you can't compare two players' SLG. It's a rate stat, not a counting stat like HR or RBI. Cliff Floyd is playing too much, plain and simple. I like Cliff. I've wanted him to be a Cub for a long time. And I was pro-Floyd this offseason. But it had to be as only a part time player. He's simply not anywhere close to the guy he was in his prime, let alone who he was a couple years ago. He was bad last year, and so far he's been the same. Hopefully he can recover to put up some halfway decent numbers, but that won't happen as an everyday man. Time has not been kind to him. Murton needs to play more than 50% of the time. He's got a far greater chance of putting up a significantly better than average line than Floyd does. His numbers look like crap right now, but that is largely meaningless, as I would never expect an everyday playing young player just entering his prime to be able to handle such limited and sporadic use. Neither Floyd nor Jones are doing anything remotely irreplacable right now. There's no reason why they have to be the default everyday guys. And that's especially true when you consider the type of financial hit the Cubs will take if Floyd does continue to play this frequently.

Maybe. Or maybe they think Leo Mazzone can make a positive impact on one or both of these guys. Really? Why not just bring up a guy from their minor leagues instead of trading for has-beens? I mean, have you seen any Jeff Weaver games? He doing historically bad. I guess I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but it seems even too stupid for the Orioles (and that's saying a lot). Well, teams routinely very stupidly acquire crappy veteran pitchers instead of going with prospects. Maybe they don't want to expose a young guy this early.

I would. Alfonso seems to have a great arm. Bruce Miles has been saying since the day he signed that Soriano should be the everyday RF for this club especially with Pie being groomed to become the everyday CF. Some of that was predicated on the belief that Jones could be dealt, which I still think can happen. He definitely should be in RF.

I still can't figure out why Lou called that. Jones racks up plenty of strikeouts as it is and that was a pitch he couldn't do anything with. The best result he could have gotten with that pitch was a foul ball out of play; that's pretty much it. I'm concerned with Lou's style of managing. While I don't think he's as prone to stupid and head-scratching decisions as previous managers, I think he tries too hard to micromanage the game. Part of this might have to do with a lack of familiarity with his players' strengths and weaknesses, which is understandable, but if this trend continues, I won't be too happy with it. At least he's seemingly figured out Ohman is a LOOGY. Or maybe that's just a coincidence of his overmanaging. Everybody in Lou's bullpen is an OOGY of some sort.

One loss and all the good feelings generated over the past week and a half are gone, huh? LOL I don't know if was the loss itself last night, or the way we lost. The bottom of the 8th was some of the worst baseball I have ever seen in my life. Even the very best teams in the league will lose games looking awful...and the worst teams will look great in some games. It's inevitable with a 162 game schedule and the nature of the game. Last night's game doesn't tell me anything I didn't know about the team before the night began. I agree. And I disagree that the 8th inning was some of the worst baseball people have ever seen. Come on. The worst inning you could see is 3 straight weak ground balls to the pitcher on 1 pitch each. The Cubs threatened but didn't score. Big deal. I've seen much worse. At least they threatened, for one. And two, you have a guy like Murton who is not accustomed to pinch hitting come up and hit a pop up that doesn't get the job done. That's part of the problem of the "just hit it in the air" mentality of playing for sac flies, especially when you have a guy that doesn't hit a lot of deep flies. The pitcher got ahead in the count, but Murton battled, and in trying to hit it in the air he got a fraction of an inch under the ball. It wasn't an awful at bat. It was a bad result, but come on already with the melodrama. Then Barrett is walked and Jones grounds out against a lefty. Well, Jones never hits lefties. Was anybody really surprised. He got tied up. Pittsburgh left many more people on base yesterday. The 8th inning was just an inning that nobody would remember if they made the save. It was an annoying loss since it was the first game in a home series against a bad team and brought them back to .500. But there's no reason for all the angst about the so-called worst baseball people have ever seen.

I'd think they are fairly happy. A couple big market teams, including SoCal. A traditional power in Detroit. Even though Buffalo is upstate NY, it gets considerable play in the metro area. There's a Canadian team as well, to boot. I'm sure they'd prefer Toronto/Montreal against the Rangers and Chicago against the Kings, or maybe Vancouver or even Edmonton. But this works.

By the same token, teams have days where they don't get many chances-it happens all the time. Both are at fault yesterday-the Cubs would have had a .330-.340 OBP yesterday if a run had been knocked in when it was supposed to, but their lack of chances in extra innings was also a big factor in the loss This is their first game out of the last 6 in which they had less than a .355 OBP for the game-if individual hitters can play the percentage card, then so can the team. How does one determine when a run is supposed to be driven in? The point is you can't. Runs can be scored in any situation, likewise, they can be prevented. People blast a hitter for not bringing in a run from third with less than 2 outs, but they'll celebrate a pitcher for getting out of such a situation unscathed. The Cubs have been better getting on base this year. Although they are still just a slightly above average offense. They currently rank 7th in Runs scored, OBP, SLG and OPS among NL teams. They are 2nd in AVG but 13th in walks. That last point is nothing new. It's still a little upsetting to me to see every beat writer talking about what an OBP turnaround they've had, and having everybody chalk up the loss to a lack of clutch hits in a game in which OBP was such a glaring problem. Walk more, get on base more, and you will have more opportunities. With more opportunities, you will score more runs. It's simple, but still something that is plaguing the team. And to top it off, the pitching staff walked 8. Cubs OBP yesterday was .280, Pitt's was .360. In retrospect, it was Pitt that didn't take advantage of as many opportunities, they left 17 on base while the Cubs left just 10. But it's no surprise which team won.

Baseball is about percentages. Just like it doesn't make any sense to get pissed at a player for not getting a hit, because most of the time they don't get a hit, it doesn't make sense to get pissed every time a team fails to drive in a run on a sac fly or something. It's not like it's just a given you can drive such a player in. Teams fail to drive in runners from 3rd with less than 2 outs every day. It happens all the time. When you take 2 walks in a game, whether it's extra innings or 9, you are stacking the odds against you. When you give up 8 walks in a game, you're making it tougher. The Cubs biggest offensive problem is a lack of chances, because you can't take advantage of all, or even most of you chances. The key is more chances. More opportunities. And the way you do that is by getting on base. The Cubs didn't get on base. Pittsburgh did.