scarey

When did this actually happen? I feel like it was hyperbole thrown out by someone at some point and has turned into the definitive proof that he would be a terrible manager. Hell, even if that's what the box score actually reads, we don't even know if in that particular situation the number three hitter was someone that had decent speed and thought he could reach by sneaking in a bunt that turned into a SH.

Has Castellanos dropped that far? The guy can hit to all fields with power and should be able to stick at third base. What's not to like?

Really? They've given out bonuses of 500k or more to Jin-Yeong Kim, Wilson Contreras, Dong-Yub Kim, and Kyung-Min Na in just the last year. I know they aren't signing the 2-3 million bonus guys, but that's a pretty decent alotment for international free agents. And it kind of fits the quantity over quality theory. 4 guys getting 500k each instead of one guy getting 2-3m. Well... to be honest only one of those guys got 500k. Dong-Yub Kim got a 550k bonus. The other guys I listed got closer to $1 million. It's a semantics issue, but I just thought of quantity over quality would be more like signing ten $200k-$300k guys.

Really? They've given out bonuses of 500k or more to Jin-Yeong Kim, Wilson Contreras, Dong-Yub Kim, and Kyung-Min Na in just the last year. I know they aren't signing the 2-3 million bonus guys, but that's a pretty decent alotment for international free agents.

You're making the assumption that they are making the decision to promote him based on his stat line rather than other factors like pitch recognition and fielding. For all we know, Vitters may be sitting on fastballs and they want to force him to hit breaking balls against more advanced pitching. I guess what I'm confused about is you seem to think there is some reason that they're promoting Vitters and that it's not a good one. I just don't understand what would be promoting a player for the wrong reason? What are you implying their motive is?

When can we start talking about Bibens-Dirkx as a legitimate prospect? I know he's 25 years old, but it looks like injuries and control problems were his problems in the past and he seems to have overcome both of those issues. All the guy does is get outs. Also, does anyone know what his repertoire includes? I've heard low 90s fastball, slider, curve, change up. Any idea on how effective each of those pitches are? He's getting a lot of ground outs and not a huge amount of strikeouts like he used to. I'm wondering if his changeup is his go to pitch? Or if his fastball has some sink on it?

Dayton Moore is also a dumb person. And would probably loooove Ryan Theriot. Well, in that case I think we should do a Chad Tracy for Moustakas swap too. We're not talking about trading for the Royals' best players, or their best prospects. Kila has been in AAA for 3 years and hasn't gotten any opportunity, it's clear they don't value him. Gordon would obviously be a little different, but they're getting restless with him and his ineffectiveness, and the aforementioned Moustakas is killing the ball. Moore's most recent acquisitions are Podsednik, Ankiel, and Betancourt, he's not good at his job, and it's not unreasonable to think some team could buy low on Kila or even Gordon. My point is you can't just ignore everything in the equation and just chalk it up to "Moore is an idiot". It really makes very little sense for them to trade for Silva. It doesn't help your case by rationalizing it by saying they are willing to give up decent young talent (regardless of if they undervalue that talent or not) for an expensive aging player that is playing way above his head compared to the previous two seasons. Think about it this way, I'm sure there's a reason you would keep Gorzelanny/Wells over Silva, right? It's going to be the same reason the Royals would want to get those guys rather than Silva.

Dayton Moore is also a dumb person. And would probably loooove Ryan Theriot. Well, in that case I think we should do a Chad Tracy for Moustakas swap too.

People advocating trading Silva tot he Royals are not being very empathetic. Silva is a good fit for a contender that has a sudden hole in their rotation, not a young struggling team that's trying to build a sustainable major league roster. The only guys from our rotation that the Royals would be interested in are Gorzelanny and Wells.

You're right. According to this board 99% of the problems with the Cubs this year is Lou and Hendry.

Does anyone know what pitches Hung-Wen Chen throws? I was pretty excited about him going into last year, then he crapped the bed and I lost interest quickly. He rebounded for a pretty decent second half and has started out well this year. I just still worry that he doesn't get a whole lot of strikeouts. If he has a good change up or sinker though, there's hope he could be a Randy Wells type.

When did I say I was a Lou booster? I'm just trying to spread the blame around instead of using him as a scape goat.

I think you should learn a new word other than ignorant. Getting too much of the blame is part of the job. Piniella knows that and expects that and isn't bothered by it. Perhaps he should only be blamed for what he can directly control which is making out the lineup card, pitching changes and substitutions. Seems to me Piniella has done pretty poorly in all 3 of those facets. Maybe I'm missing something. There seems to be a notion that Lou is not using Marshall properly. I think you guys are taking one instance yesterday where Lou used Grabow instead of Marshall and blowing it out of proportion. Marshall has pitched in 21 out of 39 games so far this year. I would have preferred to see Marshall in Grabow's spot yesterday and in the long run it probably would have helped Marshall. Maybe he would have only had to pitch one inning instead of two. However, you can't act like it's crazy for Lou to want to rest a reliever that's been used in more than half of the games so far this year. umm, you know that marshall ended up pitching 2 innings in that game, right? That was what I was saying. "I would have preferred to see Marshall in Grabow's spot yesterday and in the long run it probably would have helped Marshall. Maybe he would have only had to pitch one inning instead of two." To word it better, in a vacuum I would have preferred Marshall to come in during the 7th. If he had come in during the 7th, maybe he would have pitched one inning instead of the two innings he ended up pitching.

I think you should learn a new word other than ignorant. Getting too much of the blame is part of the job. Piniella knows that and expects that and isn't bothered by it. Perhaps he should only be blamed for what he can directly control which is making out the lineup card, pitching changes and substitutions. Seems to me Piniella has done pretty poorly in all 3 of those facets. Yes, getting too much of the blame is part of the job. However, you already acknowledged that he's getting too much blame but you are purposely ignoring that fact and continue to place that superfluous blame on him. I guess I don't know a word meaning the act of purposely ignoring something. Contradictory doesn't seem right. Maybe I'm missing something. There seems to be a notion that Lou is not using Marshall properly. I think you guys are taking one instance yesterday where Lou used Grabow instead of Marshall and blowing it out of proportion. Marshall has pitched in 21 out of 39 games so far this year. I would have preferred to see Marshall in Grabow's spot yesterday and in the long run it probably would have helped Marshall. Maybe he would have only had to pitch one inning instead of two. However, you can't act like it's crazy for Lou to want to rest a reliever that's been used in more than half of the games so far this year. He can't go on through the whole year using Marshall and Marmol in every pressure situation late in the game. Again, he's made mistakes (leaving Dempster in to face Votto comes to mind). But to act like another manager would have this team on the right side of .500 isn't really looking at the big picture.

First rule of being in charge: everything is your fault. Piniella- and every other manager- knew that going in. When things go well they get too much credit. Somewhere Joe Morgan is probably gushing about the great job Dusty Baker has done as manager of the Reds- that is, if he has had a chance to see them play this year. So... you recognize that the manager gets way too much blame/credit, but you're ok with Lou getting a large amount of blame for this Cubs team? That seems ignorant. I'm not a Lou cheerleader, but the amount of blame he gets around here is comical at times. I think 5150 is saying the same thing. In the grand scheme of things, if you had swapped out Lou for whatever you think is the most effective MLB manager, there would be 1 or maybe 2 games difference in the record thus far IMO. I see no problem in criticizing Lou for in game decisions, but to put so much blame on the manager for a 17-22 team is just silly. Also, the bullpen management is so overblown. The rotation hasn't suffered from having Zambrano in the bullpen as Silva and Gorzelanny have been good. The only problem is Zambrano is getting hit hard out of the bullpen and I don't think many people predicted that. If Lou has a hand in deciding if some of the relief prospects come up or not, I think that is problematic. However, if not, he has not been given great tools to manage in the bullpen... especially the overpriced, left-handed tool (pun intended).

I think has some major control issues for a late inning reliever. His BBs per 9 are similar to what Marmol's were and are 1 and 2 BBs per 9 better respectively than Jose Valverde and Bobby Jenks during their minor league tenures. His Ks per nine are a little bit better than Marmol's and Jenks were. Valverde had an insane 12.2 Ks per nine during 7 minor league seasons.

Second base was the base that's open and you don't intentionally walk a guy to put another in scoring position. I don't care what your hindsight says. The wrong decision was keeping Dempster in.

Don't even need to bump anyone up to the rotation. They already have 6 in right now with Archer, Cabrera, Dolis, Raley, Rhee and Rusin. Aren't Rusin, Rhee, and Archer taking turns piggy backing? If Schafer needs to piggy back, that's fine. I just thought it was too early to give up on him as a starter especially given his strong second half last year.

Not only would they demote Wells, which is dumb in and of itself, but they wouldn't use Zambrano to replace him? What a [expletive] bunch of people we have running this organization. Holy hell, this sounds dumb. That is all kinds of stupid, Zambrano in the pen, Cashner starting and Wells/Gorz demoted. Great. The thing here that's all kinds of stupid is that people are buying into a made up story by Sullivan.

I'm more concerned about Flaherty's demotion. I think he could have used more time to work through his problems, and I would think there is still room for him... unless they really want to give Marwin Gonzalez a significant amount of at bats, I think there was enough ABs to go round. Also, I wonder if we'll see a Daytona starter bumped up to Tenn in the next week to take Cashner's vacated place. It's a real log jam in Daytona as it is. Dolis seems to be the obvious candidate for promotion with maybe Schafer going back to starting? Would be great if Schafer can translate his relief production into his starting game.

They also may want to give him an opportunity to play on baseball fields not residing in Florida and see if he can work some kinks out of his defense. He had 5 errors already this year coming into today. I think it's about time to see if he can stick at 3rd and it's not exactly a huge surprise of a promotion. As Tim mentioned, he and many others speculated that Vitters could have started in Tenn this year.

Sending him to AAA does nothing :roll:

Elvis Andrus put up a .702 OPS last year in his first year. I would encourage people to keep expectations there.

There's very little difference between AA and AAA these days. AAA tends to be filled with Hoffpauir, Scales, and Mathes types while AA tends to have more of the up and coming prospects. Also, everyone that's worried about him being rushed missed the boat when the kid was rushed through the lower minors and hit AA last year. He's handled quick increases in competition very well up to this point. There's a huge difference between a 19 year old in AA and a 20 year old in MLB, but I personally think he'll make adjustments like he has in the past and be able to hold his own.

I doubt we'll see a Baker release (more likely to be Tracy IMO if they're going to release somebody) and I doubt you see a Fontenot/Theriot platoon either. They probably see Fontenot and Theriot as close enough against right-handers (which might be true if the Fontenot of a couple of years ago doesn't make an appearance) that there's no reason to start the player who has to be pulled from the game when a left-handed reliever comes in. Theriot would be the full-time starter with Fontenot getting the occasional start. As for Castro, if true the Cubs better give him the time he deserves. If they do that and are patient, then the only reason I don't like this move is that they could have waited a month and not made him a Super 2. I'm not worried much about Castro being overwhelmed by the league and not being able to make adjustments, but those adjustments will take time and the Cubs have to be committed to him for a while now. He being called up right now does not qualify him or eliminate him from being a super 2. We won't know for two seasons assuming he stays up with the big league club for that entire time. Waiting another month also would not qualify him or eliminate him from being a super 2.