scarey

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.

The bolded is simply wrong in several different ways. The whole theory about pitchers not being able to control balls in play does not suggest that all pitchers will have exactly the same BaBIP, it suggests that they will all fall within a fairly tight range (which is a little bigger for relievers than starters, theoretically because relievers pitch fewer innings, more often have the platoon advantage, and since they pitch fewer innings they can generally "air it out" more than starters who have to be able to maintain their stuff for 100+ pitches). That range for starting pitchers is around 280-300 generally, and Z's career BaBIP is right at 282, so no, he doesn't have some special power to cause less balls in play to drop in for hits. Also, as far as the whole "BaBIP isn't consistent" thing, I dare you to try and find me 5 non-knuckleball throwing (because it is also acknowledged that knuckleballers have a wider range of potential BaBIP than regular pitchers) starters from the modern era that pitched >1000 innings in their career with a BaBIP of <270. You won't, because they don't exist. Randy Johnson's career BaBIP is 302, Pedro Martinez' is 291, Greg Maddux's is 289, Johan Santana's is 287, Roger Clemens' is 294... and the list goes on and on. You're not going to find a whole lot more filthy pitchers in the last 20 years than the ones on that list, and they are all right smack in the middle of the widely accepted range of what a starting pitcher has control over. Really? So you think a .282 BABiP isn't significant enough to be an outlier? And you don't think a pitcher that has a better LD% and GB/FB ratio than league average isn't capable of inducing a lesser BABiP? It's not a special power, it's common knowledge that if a pitcher can induce less line drives and more ground balls than average, than there's a good chance that his BABiP will be lower than average.

That seems like an irrational fear. Why? Its completely rational. Hendry is on the hot seat, and the major league club has sucked. Hes going to try saving his ass somehow, and about the only way he can is to trade the "kids" for some experienced veteran ballplayers to help the major league club. I'd say there is a very good chance at Hendry trading at least one of out better prospects for a completely overrated valued veteran bullpen arm. Hendry has shown in the past that he does not overpay in trades and is extremely stingy with top prospects (some seem to feel he's stingy to a flaw). Names like Pie, Castro, Vitters, Marmol, Soto, and others have been thrown around in trade talks and he has refused to bite. I don't think he's going to change his philosophy for two reasons. 1. While he is on the hot seat, a poor choice could tip him in the wrong direction with Ricketts who has commented on how much he values a farm system. Everyone wants to assume that Hendry is already on the chopping block and he has to save himself from it. He may have to make a mistake to lose his job for all we know. 2. If Hendry does lose his job, I'm sure he's going to be looking for a new one. I don't think he's going to start pulling desperate moves to save his job and give potential employers another reason to not consider him. As for why Vitters should be valued by the Cubs: If there's one thing the Cubs system lacks it's power. Vitters is one of the few prospects that project for power if he hits his ceiling.

That seems like an irrational fear.

Does anyone have any idea of what's going on with Wilson Contreras? How does the the 50 game suspension work if he's just going to stay in South America this year? What qualifies as a game played at all in terms of the suspension? I would think the Cubs could just assign him to a team and let him attend an acedemy while he gets "suspended" for 50 games.

So, you're claiming to never have passed a judgment on a pitcher based on a negative performance in spring training? I find that hard to believe. You completely ignored his spring training performance by making assumptions about his ability to hit breaking balls and quality fastballs with this line.: "He'll see a lot less fastballs once the season starts, and it's likely the fastballs he sees will be better located." Or... do you have advanced scouting reports on him? Again, I find it hard to believe you do. If you do or have had extensive time watching him, I sincerely apologize for the ignorant remark. I agree that you can make assumptions based on statistics, but it's not exactly a foregone conclusion that he can't hit a breaking ball or a good fastball based on poor plate discipline. I just went back and checked my work, I forgot to include HBP, reached on error, SF, and SH to my plate appearances. My apologies for the faulty math. I don't disagree with that. I don't think it's just me that does it, but I admittedly key in on one or two main points I get from a post and respond to it and may forget a point that may be contradictory to something in my response. For that, I also apologize. Just because you didn't specifically type out an issue I pointed out doesn't mean your post didn't carry that interpretation. For example, if you type out "Samardzija is not happy about missing out on the rotation", it's not ridiculous for me to make the assumption that he's unhappy about pitching relief even though you didn't say anything specific to his being a reliever. I don't see any reason to take it so personally?

It's entertaining to me that people will go through such lengths to provide explanations on why a guy like Colvin is impressive in spring training (pitchers working on pitches, fastball ineffectiveness, etc.) but are not hesitant at all to throw a pitcher under the bus when he gets knocked around and don't recognize the fact that not even everyone is hitting .475/.475/.729. Don't get me wrong. I'm in no way saying Colvin is the real deal. But isn't it just as ignorant to completely write off what he's done the last 10 months as it is to proclaim him ready for the big show? Also, while he hasn't shown it in spring training, Colvin has shown significant improvement in plate discipline. In his first two years he had an IsoD of .041 and improved to .071 in his second two years. His plate discipline fate is not exactly set in stone.

I know it's just minor league spring training, but I find it extremely fascinating that these guys are getting opportunities like this at such a young age. I would think they would only be running drills. I guess it makes sense for Na since he they may be squeezing in as much baseball as possible before he goes back to school. I guess Alcantara has been making his name known.