davearm2

If Castro is pounding down the door to the ML roster come mid-summer, then you cross that bridge when you come to it. One of those nice-problem-to-have thingies. In the meantime Theriot is by far the Cubs' best option at SS, which is why this talk of trading him and weakening this year's team is pretty silly IMO.

Seem to me if Sheets wasn't able to look good throwing today, then he wouldn't be inviting MLB reps to come watch him.

Sounds like ADD as opposed to "chemistry." So I guess the next time we hear about some person or situation in sports being a distraction, we should simply diagnose all of those impacted with ADD. Like the whole 2004 Cubs team during the last week of the season, for instance. Just a sudden, mass outbreak of ADD. That stupid Bartman inflicted a whole lot of guys with ADD too, come to think of it. Friggin bastage.

I agree as it pertains to the posters here. I disagree as it pertains to the players and team officials that see and live the situation daily, although I'd readily admit that the relationship between clubhouse atmosphere and wins and losses is nebulous at best. Put yourself in Theriot's shoes. Let's pretend that while you're in the clubhouse eating a light breakfast, Milton Bradley walks up, unzips, and pisses in your cheerios. You are not happy. In the next week you got 7 for 24 with 3 walks, a handful of strikeouts, and a couple doubles. Are you going to think Milton helped you bat .292 by making you more focused and aggressive? Or are you going to think he kept you from batting .300? I doubt I'd think either of those things, but I wouldn't be the least surprised if my ability to focus on studying film, fielding pregame grounders, etc. would suffer while my mind was stuck on what a &^@!# *#$% Bradley is. How that would manifest at gametime is anyone's guess but it wouldn't be helpful.

It's just as valid a theory as suggesting that it is detrimental to their on-field performance given the evidence (or more accurately, the lack thereof). For all we know clubhouse conflict motitvates players to play harder/better in a "I'll show those [expletive]" kind of way. Why is that any less realistic than suggesting that it causes them to play worse? It worked for the A's in the 1970s. They had a saying, "25 guys, 25 cabs". Or they were talented enough to overcome it.

It's just as valid a theory as suggesting that it is detrimental to their on-field performance given the evidence (or more accurately, the lack thereof). For all we know clubhouse conflict motitvates players to play harder/better in a "I'll show those [expletive]" kind of way. Why is that any less realistic than suggesting that it causes them to play worse? It's less realistic because it is in direct odds with basic human nature. People tend to function better when they're content/relaxed/happy/focused/confident etc. than when they're stressed/worried/angry/frustrated/resentful/distracted etc. This isn't some sly motivational tactic that Bradley surreptitiously invoked, and it's highly unlikely to produce the positive result you're imagining.

I agree as it pertains to the posters here. I disagree as it pertains to the players and team officials that see and live the situation daily, although I'd readily admit that the relationship between clubhouse atmosphere and wins and losses is nebulous at best.

Because in order to prove that all clubhouses will react negatively to a negative chemistry, it must be proven that you don't have a team full of guys who thrive under the discord. As long as you admit that some will react positively, there's always a chance (and one that neither you nor I has any way of quantifying) that the full clubhouse will have enough of that type of player to get a net positive effect from negative chemistry. Only if it isn't helping the team more than hurting it. I've you've already conceded that some players perform better under those circumstances, that's the same as conceding that in all likelihood there have already been teams where that negative clubhouse translated positively on the field, and that there are likely to be teams in that same vein going forward. I think my purpose in that previous post are being confused by some. I'm not trying to say anything about chemistry except that none of us are in any position to judge what is going on. Chemistry may have helped our team, hurt our team, or made no difference whatsoever. And unfortunately, guys like Ryan Theriot who actually have to live through it are probably a little too close to the action for their opinions about the effects of chemistry to be unbiased. We don't know. And we wont know. Those pretending to have any idea are only fooling themselves. If I'm confused, then it's easy to see why by looking at the bolded above. Sure seems like you're suggesting poor chemistry might improve a team's on-field performance.

Prove that Derrek Lee didn't have a great year due to Milton Bradley's presence. Oh my lord. So now we've reached a point where anything at all that can't be disproven must consequently be true. Actually scratch we, and replace with you. I don't think I'd throw that blanket over anyone else here.

I asked this at the time Tim wrote his Theriot article, but I'll ask it again now. Does anyone have a link to the quotes that have gotten so many folks fired up? Because I don't ever recall reading anything particularly noteworthy. In fact I seem to recall that he responded more or less the way you said he should have.

What Theriot says or doesn't say to the media tells us nothing about how hard he's working during the offseason. Training your butt off every day and feeding the media a quote or two once a month are not mutually exclusive activities. Heck for all we know Theriot's working way harder than Soto. More to your point, though, whatever Theriot has said is virtually certainly in response to questions he's been asked. It's not like he's picking up the phone to call a reporter and tattle on Bradley. Sure he could've said "no comment", but as has been said many times, the rather innocuous comments he has made have taken on a life of their own around here.

You're not serious about pursuing an argument that poor chemistry actually improves on-the-field performance, are you?

A fair point that it might matter some. However, if it costs you a game or two at the absolute most, wouldn't you more than likely get back that game or two from poor chemistry in the opposing team's dugout? You know, sorta like winning half of your season's games by 1 run. The other teams benefited from the other half of those 1 run games. That's like saying having a crappy #5 starter is OK because so does the other team. Well you can gain an advantage on the other team if your #5 starter isn't crappy. So let's strive to have a good #5 starter. And by the same principle let's strive to gain games based on good chemistry rather than give them away based on bad chemistry.

Um, someone who lives baseball metrics every day *is* a sabermetrician. You know exactly what I meant. Won't say anything further to you if you insist upon misinterpreting everything. If you meant something different than what you said, then that's a you problem. I think you meant to ask, does a baseball player understand statistics better than a statistician. I would expect the answer to be no.

Why do you need to hear a compelling case that negative chemistry causes *all* players to perform negatively? You said it yourself: when faced with a negative clubhouse, *some* players will perform poorly. That's enough to have a problem, no? I'd like to hear a compelling argument that a negative clubhouse has a net zero or net positive impact on the group as a whole.

Um, someone who lives baseball metrics every day *is* a sabermetrician.

Who said these things? Not me. And not Theriot, to my knowledge. Then it's meaningless. If it's "chemistry" then that implies that it has some kind of cause and effect in terms of some or even all of the players' performances. If not, then it's just everyone not liking one guy (and/or vice-versa) and that's it and it's irrelevant. If there's no impact on performance then it should amount to "tough [expletive], you don't always get to like everyone you work with" and comments like Theriot's are irrelevant and unnecessary. As it stands, it's definitely been all but explicitly stated that Bradley's presence and attitude had a detrimental effect on the team's performance and that's why he had to go so therefore that is the clear context of Theriot's comments. You don't just bench and then trade someone and then have other players trying to diplomatically justify what happened when someone is simply being a jerk. You say chemistry's meaningless. Theriot and other Cubs say it isn't meaningless. Now I fully believe neither side can be proven. Sabermetricians haven't come up with a clubhouse WARP statistic, and they probably never will. The problem comes when folks assume that since there is no clubhouse WARP stat, then that in and of itself provides proof that chemistry is a myth. So having said that all that, I do find it somewhat hilarious that some dude posting on the internet thinks he knows more about this phenomenon than the folks that live it every day.

Who said these things? Not me. And not Theriot, to my knowledge.

I'm assuming a guy who's spent his entire adult life playing, practicing, eating, showering, traveling, and just generally hanging out with 20 or so other ballplayers for ~8 months at a time knows more about clubhouse dynamics than some anonymous fan on the internet. If that's what you thought, then you were right all along.

The fact that you're asking these questions of someone that's not in the clubhouse, ever, let alone every day, is a clear indication that the point I'm making has sailed right over your head.

I don't see any excuses being made and I certainly don't see any of these comparisons being made. All Theriot said (actually he implied it here) was that the clubhouse atmosphere matters. Specifically, he implied that "a light, funny, keep-everyone-on-their-toes type of feeling" in the clubhouse is a positive thing. It stands to reason, then, that the opposite type of feeling is a negative thing. The people arguing that chemistry doesn't exist and none of this off-the-field stuff matters aren't actually in the clubhouse, so I take Theriot's opinion on the matter in higher regard, since he obviously is. It doesn't definitively prove one side's right and the other's wrong, though. That'll likely never be proven conclusively.

Well if a Cubs' player and an internet poster are expressing opposing views on the nature of the Cubs' clubhouse, there is indeed a credibility issue to consider.

What's this? Nobody's been called obtuse yet? You guys are slipping.

For a big-market team like the Cubs, it's smarter to spend $120M on 10, $10-$14M guys than $120M on 20, $5-7M guys. $10M+ buys you guys that are truly impactful. You don't see a lot of impact FAs making salaries in the $5-7M range. Ask yourself this: would you trade Aramis Ramirez for one DeRosa type and one Marquis type? I hope not. Now we can surely argue about whether the Cubs have invested in the right big-ticket guys, but the general blueprint is correct: very top-heavy, a few guys making midrange money, and the rest at or below $1M.

I was for getting rid of the GM who we all knew would target pure garbage in order to get rid of a cheap, productive player. But, alas we couldn't do that. Bradley was traded for reasons wholly unrelated to his cost or productivity. Not sure why you're glossing over this small detail.