abuck1220

i wouldn't say that i've ever been ranked #1 by the board consensus.

sorry, but prince doesn't understand the difference between boasting and being excited.

i don't think i've bragged too much about my team since the season started...haven't had much to brag about. maybe i bragged a tad about my THREE straight titles, but i feel that was justified. i wasn't getting the respect i felt was due, so i had to make sure everyone remembered the dynasty that was in progress. you, on the other hand, have been quite the boaster. i showed some of your posts to prince fielder and he threw a tray of carrot sticks across the room. PISSED.

Encarnacion is on the block. What do you want to give me for him? sorry... quit trading good thirdbasemen without checking to see what i can offer first. :D

quit whining about other people's trades while you sit on your butt and brag about your team! :) you must have me confused with someone else.

I love the addition of Pronk... As soon as Granderson comes back, I'm REALLY gonna like my team! Hey Adam, are you as confident now as you were to start the year? :) sure. i'm 2-0, only 100 points or so off the pace, and teix, soriano, and martin are all hitting under .200. hawpe and uggla are under .225, and fielder has 0 homers. hill and liriano haven't done squat. plus rollins and wigginton are hurt. i'm not worried.

quit trading third basemen without checking to see what i can offer first!!

how can the coaches even look hill in the face after demoting him for one bad start when lilly has been out there throwing batting practice for three straight starts. those are the problems that arise when you make rash decisions based on a small sample. but hey, the cubs know what they're doing. they've got the world series rings to prove it, so far be it from me to doubt them.

move this bum to the bullpen. he's been much, much worse than hill.

This is based on a pattern of wildness throughout Spring Training and into the regular season. The assumption on the part of the coaching staff is that it is a mechanical problem that requires extra side sessions that will push back his next start to next Thursday. No one knows anything beyond that. This isn't about "playing the hot hand." It is about getting arguably the 2nd best pitcher on the staff to regain the mechanics that make him the 2nd best starting pitcher. Given that the coaching staff is around him 8 hours per day and watch not only his starts, but also his side sessions, if they feel like they can correct his mechanical issues with side sessions and a couple of no-stress relief outings (which could potentially give much-needed relief to a bullpen that has been taxed lately AND get Hill the innings he missed out on in his short start this week), then they, at the very least, have a significant amount of data from which to base their decision. Based upon sheer amount of evidence, their decision is far from "stupid." so because they're around him a lot, they know what's best? i'm sorry, but we've all watched enough cubs baseball over the years to know that the coaching staff, despite the fact they spend a lot of time with the players, don't always know what's best. i don't understand why he has to miss a start for him to work on mechanics.

He is good right now. Maybe that changes in his next appearance or 10 appearances from now, but right now he is. I say keep putting him out there in positions to succeed while buying time for Hill to straighten himself out. you can't make roster decisions based on one start, ten at-bats or whatever. hill out, lieber in...what if lieber sucks twice? back to hill? what if lilly, who has sucked all spring, sucks again tonight? lilly out, marshall in? then what if marshall struggles? you advocate doing what is "good right now," and that's fine in fantasy baseball or whatever, but it's not practical in real life. it's easy to say, well lieber's pitched five good innings, hill had three bad innings, let's switch them up...but it's an unsustainable strategy over the course of 162 games. you can play the hot hand in a platoon situation, but you can't do it everywhere, and doing it to arguably your second best starting pitcher is beyond stupid.

i've been disappointed in verlander so far. he doesn't seem to be throwing as hard, and he's not striking people out.

what is it with managers leaving guys in too long? in my other league, blanton, verlander and villanueva have all been hurt by being asked to go one inning more than they should have.

because you're assuming that moving hill out of his routine, demoting him to the bullpen and taking away his job is somehow going to fix him. that's the problem with everybody assuming this is some kind of win-win...you're operating under the assumption that he's going to pitch two innings out of the pen and be 2007 rich hill again.

You're just upset because other teams have pitchers in, you know, the rotation and everything. i have the second most pitching points in the league so far. told you i'd get by ok for a while.

What do you expect them to do? Keep throwing him out there every 5th day and watch him melt down again? It's been brought up by him and the organization - Hill has some serious mental/confidence issues and sometimes he's his own worst enemy. This is the smart thing to do. Put him in the bullpen, give him the time and space he needs to correct his issues and let him earn his way back to the rotation. We have a pitcher in the pen who will actually improve the staff until Hill gets back to himself. How again is this a bad thing when the team actually will improve for the short term? you act like hill pooped his pants and ate the rosin bag on the mound while walking 22 straight hitters or something. he's had ONE bad start. ONE. now he has "mental issues"? you can tell a guy has mental issues based on watching him throw a baseball? wow, when i think about the great psychological figures of the past few hundred years, i think of freud, bf skinner and bring stone back from nsbb. honestly, that's some great company. let's just hope that, thanks to you, hill gets the psychological help he needs before he kills again. gotta love the condescending tone from a guy that can't see the difference between hill, a 28 year old pitcher in his third season (following a season in which he was among the NL leaders in a handful of categories) and pie, a 23 year old outfielder in essentially his first big league season. good call though.

ok, i think i have everyone's keepers for the next four seasons memorized by now. just to be sure though, let's everyone list them in next week's thread again. also, thanks to the cubs for putting hill in the bullpen. good thing wang's been amazing so far.

hilarioius. yeah, having him pitch out of the pen, something he hasn't done in years, and completely throwing him out of his routine and warmup process is really going to get him back on track. what a stupid organization.

i'm only one man. if his point was that because people were wrong about brad wilkerson, they may be wrong about ryan theriot, then mark me down as disagreeing with him too.

so because people here wanted brad wilkerson, ryan theriot is good. a bit of a stretch perhaps, but i'm on board. Still trolling my posts, eh? the problem isn't me, it's you. if you want me to stop replying to your posts, stop posting stuff that doesn't make sense.

hill needs to go to AAAA where he belongs.

](*,) sadly, given lou's a.d.d. managing, it wouldn't surprise me if this happened. Come on, he wasn't even finding the strike zone and every guy was hitting him hard. Throw the Brewers out against him and the Cubs get destroyed. If Marquis or Marshall looks strong the next few starts, I would put Lieber in over Hill. good thing you're not the manager.

you know how many wins he was jobbed out of last year due to terrible run support?

just got in. any reason hill was pulled after three? looks like he sucked horribly in the first but semi calmed down after that.

that's why i thought it was stupid to switch pitchers. and i don't like hill's chances giving up tons of flyballs to philly's lineup in that park.