CubsWin

That's the station my train of thought left from. Can anyone recommend any hotels? Don't know what your budget is, but the two closest hotels to Fitch Park that I know of are The Marriot and The Best Western. Here is a link to a list of Mesa hotels with a map of where they are, their addresses, phone numbers, etc.

If Pie is ready, that's the smart way to go, IMO.

Cubs odds are always like that because they get a ton of action. Vegas needs to cover itself so they give them bad odds in the off chance that the cubs actually win. I'm assuming that by bad odds you meant good odds because otherwise this sentence doesn't really make any sense, unless I'm just not getting what you're saying. If, as you say, Vegas is covering itself in the off chance the Cubs actually win because so many people bet money on them, then they would want to give the Cubs better than their actual odds (lower number:1), so that if they did win the payout would be smaller. Bad odds or worse than actual odds (higher number:1) would increase the amount the casinos would have to payout. you couldnt just infer that? Bad odds are bad odds. I've never heard good odds referred to as bad odds before. You're a little late, though. He explained it already. He was coming at it from the bettors point of view. I get it now. :oops: What am I to infer from your post, IMB? Hmm, I wonder. Certainly nothing of a personal nature. Oh, and thanks for your response to the evidence on Rusch that you requested and that I PM'd you. You're right, the evidence is undeniably clear and my statements about Rusch are irrefutably supported by them. It was big of you to take the time to respond as graciously as you did. Ohh Ohh, whats the Rusch argument, I want to get in on that! He said that Rusch was good 75% of the time he was a cub. I asked him to go ahead and explain himself. He wasn't secure enough in his facts, so he just pm'd me. The pm was basically word for word his post from an earlier thread that I had already responded to, so I didnt feel the need to go through it again, especially since it was just in pm form. Oh, this was months ago, so this whole thing is pretty childish and expected. Way to go cubswin, you reached new low. Your ridiculous Rusch argument has nothing to do with you expressing your pathetic desire to feel superior to someone (nilo) who was harmlessly stating something that only a complete mongoloid couldnt figure out on his own. Ain't amateur psychology grand. For the 2nd time, I misunderstood nilodnayr. He explained it. I got it. In the post in which I supposedly desired to feel superior to someone else, I wrote,"unless I'm just not getting what you're saying". Yep, pretty superior sounding to me. I PM'd you the Rusch evidence so as to not hijack a thread anymore than had already happened and you know it. I suggest we do the same in this thread. Mods, does it get anymore needlessly personal than this? What is this guy's problem?

Cubs odds are always like that because they get a ton of action. Vegas needs to cover itself so they give them bad odds in the off chance that the cubs actually win. I'm assuming that by bad odds you meant good odds because otherwise this sentence doesn't really make any sense, unless I'm just not getting what you're saying. If, as you say, Vegas is covering itself in the off chance the Cubs actually win because so many people bet money on them, then they would want to give the Cubs better than their actual odds (lower number:1), so that if they did win the payout would be smaller. Bad odds or worse than actual odds (higher number:1) would increase the amount the casinos would have to payout. you couldnt just infer that? Bad odds are bad odds. I've never heard good odds referred to as bad odds before. You're a little late, though. He explained it already. He was coming at it from the bettors point of view. I get it now. :oops: What am I to infer from your post, IMB? Hmm, I wonder. Certainly nothing of a personal nature. Oh, and thanks for your response to the evidence on Rusch that you requested and that I PM'd you. You're right, the evidence is undeniably clear and my statements about Rusch are irrefutably supported by them. It was big of you to take the time to respond as graciously as you did.

Cubs odds are always like that because they get a ton of action. Vegas needs to cover itself so they give them bad odds in the off chance that the cubs actually win. I'm assuming that by bad odds you meant good odds because otherwise this sentence doesn't really make any sense, unless I'm just not getting what you're saying. If, as you say, Vegas is covering itself in the off chance the Cubs actually win because so many people bet money on them, then they would want to give the Cubs better than their actual odds (lower number:1), so that if they did win the payout would be smaller. Bad odds or worse than actual odds (higher number:1) would increase the amount the casinos would have to payout.

That would mean that I don't take any position on the matter, but I do. The evidence that I've seen suggests that Hendry has succeeded at improving this team. That he does care about OBP and SLG. I think he has taken gambles that have failed, and it has cost the Cubs dearly. I think he has been unlucky in the scale and scope of the injuries the team has suffered over the last 3 seasons. Basically, I think an honest look at all the evidence shows that he has been a good, but not great GM to date who has definitely made mistakes, gotten unlucky and yet still improved the team over the last 4 seasons. That's my position. Can't be a perpetual devil's advocate and have a specific position at the same time. Its impossible.

The problem is he doesn't have any accomplishments. Thank you, goony, for in just 8 words crystalizing my argument that your opinion of Hendry is unbalanced to the negative and mine is a well-thought out, middle of the road view that includes both the good and the bad of his career as GM. You are truly a beacon of rationality. With the factual argument to back it up. No doubt, you're kind of a big deal. People know you. Nope. They don't. But if ridicule is all you got, good for you.

How do you know that for sure? No offense, but I doubt Hendry tells reporters all the deals that he's discussing. OK. Believe what you will. I think my track record holds up pretty well. No offence, but the last thing I consider is your track record. I don't care. I care about the Cubs making themselves better. It may be all BS, but maybe not. I'm only reporting what my buddy told me. Either he's all wet, or you are. Time will define the truth of the matter. What does your "buddy" do that qualifies him as a Cubs insider with special knowledge of who the Cubs are in trade talks with? Does he work for the Cubs front office? Is he a member of the sports media? Does he work for the Mariners front office? MLB? No offense intended, gus, but without providing a link or your buddy's creds, I'm going to have to go with Bruce Miles on this one. If someone is wet here, Bruce is as dry as the dusty infields at Fitch Park after a long, hot afternoon practice. He already said his source's connection, I'm pretty sure it was the Player's Union. Cool, thanks. I went through page by page looking for it, but must have missed it. Player's union. Well, we'll wait and see, but my dime's still on Miles.

The problem is he doesn't have any accomplishments. Thank you, goony, for in just 8 words crystalizing my argument that your opinion of Hendry is unbalanced to the negative and mine is a well-thought out, middle of the road view that includes both the good and the bad of his career as GM. You are truly a beacon of rationality. With the factual argument to back it up.

How do you know that for sure? No offense, but I doubt Hendry tells reporters all the deals that he's discussing. OK. Believe what you will. I think my track record holds up pretty well. No offence, but the last thing I consider is your track record. I don't care. I care about the Cubs making themselves better. It may be all BS, but maybe not. I'm only reporting what my buddy told me. Either he's all wet, or you are. Time will define the truth of the matter. What does your "buddy" do that qualifies him as a Cubs insider with special knowledge of who the Cubs are in trade talks with? Does he work for the Cubs front office? Is he a member of the sports media? Does he work for the Mariners front office? MLB? No offense intended, gus, but without providing a link or your buddy's creds, I'm going to have to go with Bruce Miles on this one. If someone is wet here, Bruce is as dry as the dusty infields at Fitch Park after a long, hot afternoon practice.

The problem is he doesn't have any accomplishments. Thank you, goony, for in just 8 words crystalizing my argument that your opinion of Hendry is unbalanced to the negative and mine is a well-thought out, middle of the road view that includes both the good and the bad of his career as GM.

You say that like there haven't been any major injuries to big time players over the last three seasons. If the Cubs suffer the league average type and amount of injuries over that span, they certainly make the playoffs in '04 and possibly some of the other years, too. Its difficult to say. Having Sosa deteriorate so quickly made it hard. Hendry had to rebuild on the fly. Before Hendry, as Sosa went, so went the Cubs. Now, the team has several good hitters. That's improvement. That's results. Wins and losses are not the only way to judge a GM. In fact, they're not even a good way to judge a GM. Look, Hendry has signed guys that I hate. He has failed to provide a good bench, got bit taking gambles on some players like Nomar, failed to go the extra mile on Beltran, made a dumb trade for Pierre, failed to do what it took to get the Cubs in the playoffs in '04 and waited a year or two too long to stop counting on Kerry Wood. The list goes on. He's made plenty of mistakes. I list them often. But I also list his accomplishments. You make a good point about wins and losses not being the only way to evaluate a general manager. Again, I don't think he is much better or worse than other GM's in the players he's signed and traded for. He's done some good, Barrett and Ramirez in particualar, and Lee to a somewhat lesser extent. He's done some bad, Jacque Jones, Neifi Perez, Juan Pierre. He's had some things that should have been good backfire because of injury, like Nomar. I basically agree. Though, so far, I would put Jones in the good catagory. Its not like he had a lot of RFers to choose from that off season and looking back, he did pretty well. Jones wasn't who I wanted him to sign. I was pulling for Brian Giles who apparently never wanted to leave San Diego. And a good thing that was, too, when you look at the numbers he put up last season. First, you seem rather convinced that Hendry doesn't value OBP. I have to ask on what evidence do you base this opinion? I agree that he may not value it as much as some might want him to, but I believe there is a lot of evidence that he is trying, but failing, to improve it on a team wide basis. Hendry took over in July of '02. He didn't really have much time to construct the team in his image that season so lets call '02, the last MacPhail season. That year, the team put up an OBP of .321 which was most influenced by Sosa's team-leading OBP of .399. The next season the Cubs team OBP gained two points on its way to .323 even though Sosa's OBP dropped to .358 and his team lead in that catagory was taken over by Hendry acquisition Mark Grudzielanek's .366. Grudz's trade partner Eric Karros put up a .340 OBP along with Hendry-guided farmhand Hee Seop Choi's OBP of .350. Next, Jimbo traded for Derrek Lee, who had posted OBP's in the mid-.370s the previous two seasons. Lee produced a .356 OBP in his 1st season with the Cubs. Still an improvement over Choi/Karros/Simon of the year before. Aramis Ramirez, another Hendry acquisition and still a younger player just coming into his own in '03, exploded OBP-wise in his 2nd full season with the Cubs posting a .373. Hendry traded for Michael Barrett that off season and his .337 OBP was a sizeable improvement over Damien Miller's .310 the year before. Hendry also brought in Todd Walker to split time with Grudzy. Walker posted a .352 OBP in his first year with the Cubs. Hendry had struggled to find the Cubs a decent SS all year long so at the trade deadline, he pulls off a miracle and gets Nomar Garciaparra (and Matt Murton) for next to nothing. Nomar posts a .364 OBP in August and September which was a vast improvement over the OBPs of Neifi Perez (.295) and Ramon Martinez (.313) that season. And even though Cubs lynchpin Sammy Sosa's OBP plummeted all the way to .332, the Cubs still managed to improve their team OBP for the 2nd straight year in a row to .328. No great shakes to be sure, but when you factor in an offense that was built around a dying superstar, the improvement that Hendry is providing becomes clearer. They are still 11th in the league in OBP, but Hendry has managed to move the Cubs to 2nd in SLG and 6th in AVG when they were 8th and 15th respectively the year he took over. Now comes the injury-riddled season of '05. The Cubs had put together the greatest infield the northside had seen in my lifetime and had finally freed themselves of the incredibly shrinking superstar. Sosa's OBP in Baltimore that year was .295. Burnitz was not the Carlos Beltran I was hoping for, but his .322 OBP was 27 points higher than Sosa's. Unfortunately, injury struck the Cubs infield hard. Walker missed 52 games. Ramirez missed 39 and Nomar missed 100, and wasn't himself in the 62 he played, posting the worst OBP of his career (.320). Hendry's weak bench came back to bite him as Neifi saw major playing time filling in at all 3 infield positions. Couple that with the absolute collapse of Corey Patterson who had been posting OBPs in the .320s, but in '05 only managed one of .254 and it explains the Cubs poor team OBP that season of .324 which would have been much worse if not for Derrek Lee's breakout season in which he had an OBP of .418. Despite all those injuries, the Cubs still managed to finish 2nd in SLG for the second year in a row and 2nd in AVG. That brings us to 2006 and we all know what a disaster last year was. Some of it is Hendry's fault for not having a stronger bench...again, a lot of it is losing Derrek Lee for the basically the season. Along with Prior, Wood, Cedeno playing as bad as he possibly could given his two previous seasons, etc. Clearly, the evidence shows Hendry is attempting to improve the OBP of this Cubs team. Injuries and his weak OBP bench players have lessened the impact of his efforts. I agree that he might not value it as much as some would like him too, but to say that he doesn't value it at all simply doesn't mesh with the facts that clearly show him acquiring players with the ability to get on base more often than the guys he is letting go. I would agree that not considering those stats in the eval of your roster would definitely be a flawed approach. I haven't seen the evidence that shows that that is what Hendry is doing. In fact, given that the Cubs SLG% went from .413 in 2002, still the height of the Sosa HR hey day, to .416 in '03, .458 in '04 and .440 in '05 with the Cubs finishing 2nd in the league in that catagory '04 and '05, I would say the evidence shows that Hendry rather strongly values SLG%. Save major season-ending injuries to key hitters again this season, and the Cubs should once again be among the league leaders in SLG% this season.

This is the type of thing you do every freaking time you try to defend Hendry and the Cubs. Anyone can play the "if" game. It doesn't change history. Since you removed the context of the above quote, allow me to put it back in. I agree that Hendry could have done a better job of having a back-up plan for Wood. But going into '05, Kerry was just one year removed from two fully healthy seasons in '02 and '03. Using straight statistical analysis and no scouting info or medical reports, leading up to the '05 season Kerry was averaging 27.3 starts per season. Not bad. In '05, he started just 10. That's clearly an unpredictable, tough luck loss for the Cubs. The same goes for Nomar in '05. He was averaging 123 games per year going into '05 which means on average he missed about 35-40 games a year. In '05 he missed 100. And in the 62 he played, he produced his worst numbers of his career, so it was really like not having Nomar on the team at all, yet the Cubs were still paying him his full salary. If Wood and Nomar still get injured, but play their normal amount of games and perform to their norms of the previous 3 seasons, the Cubs are going to win a lot more than 79 games. That was the context of the sentence you quoted. It was in response to a post about how Hendry wasn't able to produce more wins despite spending 90 million plus in team salary which is a position that completely ignores the magnitude of the injuries incurred by several key Cubs over the last 3 seasons. I wasn't saying just magically remove these two large salaries and the Cubs would be near the middle of the pack of team payrolls. I was saying that since wins are being used as the sole judge of Hendry as GM and because happenstance caused two all-star caliber Cubs to basically be taken off the team, it is only fair to look at their team payroll as if Nomar's and Wood's salaries weren't on it when comparing team payroll to team wins. If I remember correctly what they each got paid that year, removing their combined salaries would have dropped the Cubs near the middle of the pack in team payroll and their 79 wins would also have been near the middle of the pack that season. Now, other teams also had to deal with injuries, but it would be difficult to come up with another team that lost a starter the caliber of Kerry Wood for all but 10 starts and a hitter the caliber of Nomar Garciaparra for essentially the whole year that still finished well above .500. Any thoughts/response, CubinNY?

You say that like there haven't been any major injuries to big time players over the last three seasons. If the Cubs suffer the league average type and amount of injuries over that span, they certainly make the playoffs in '04 and possibly some of the other years, too. Its difficult to say. Having Sosa deteriorate so quickly made it hard. Hendry had to rebuild on the fly. Before Hendry, as Sosa went, so went the Cubs. Now, the team has several good hitters. That's improvement. That's results. Wins and losses are not the only way to judge a GM. In fact, they're not even a good way to judge a GM. Look, Hendry has signed guys that I hate. He has failed to provide a good bench, got bit taking gambles on some players like Nomar, failed to go the extra mile on Beltran, made a dumb trade for Pierre, failed to do what it took to get the Cubs in the playoffs in '04 and waited a year or two too long to stop counting on Kerry Wood. The list goes on. He's made plenty of mistakes. I list them often. But I also list his accomplishments.

At a bare minimum we'll need another $20 million unless we have an unexpected bumper crop of productive rookies. That figure assumes we have no health disasters with our expensive guys. Well, we don't really know what the financial future of baseball as a whole looks like right now. 4 or 5 years from now 17 million a season might be a somewhat reasonable amount. The Cubs have untapped revenue potential with the parking structure/museum/restaurant space that has yet to be built next door to Wrigley. Lots of things could happen between now and 2009/2010.

Unless someone is traded, the Cubs will have all three of Lee at 34/35, Lilly at 34/35 and Soriano at 34/35. Above you mentioned that ideally the core players in or around their prime should be supplemented by past prime vets. It seems you agree that having some past prime vets on your roster is an inevitablility unless you are the Yankees. So what is the problem with Lee's, Lilly's and Soriano's contracts? Are 3 past-prime vets too many? I agree it will likely be a problem if the Cubs don't come up with players at other positions that are in their prime and carrying the production of the team. Are you assuming they won't have any of those type players in the future? That they won't be able to afford them with the money being paid to Lee, Lilly and Soriano? You described the ideal situation (unless your team is the Yankees) and then described the Cubs situation and they didn't seem incompatible. So what is the problem? Also, this post is a bit off topic. The Cubs were kind of known for bringing in way past prime non-star vets to fill major spots (1B, 3B, SP, LF) until something better came along. And yet, right now, no one fits that description on the roster. Hendry has people in or around their prime at every position save proven back-up catcher and proven lefty and righty set-up men. So I posed the question have the Cubs changed their ways/philosophy?

You ain't kidding. The teams of the 90s really sucked. There is no comparison to the teams that Hendry has been able to put together. That's not to say that he is genius or anything, just that he's had more money to play with. He hasn't necessarily spent it in the wisest ways, but I don't think he has done a terrible job either. When I went to the Cubs.com's stat page and clicked on historical stats in the lower left hand margin, I had access to the team stats of every Cubs team going back to 1871. The team's preceding the Hendry era were built on Sosa, Sosa and more Sosa. Chris Stynes and Mark Bellhorn split time as the primary 3B in '02! In 2001, Sosa hit 64 HRs. The next highest HR totals were 17 for Rondell White and Matt Stairs and 12 for Michael Tucker. Oh, lest I forget, Ron Coomer added 8. A 33-year-old Matt Stairs? A 34-year-old Ron Coomer? McGriff, who was acquired in July of that year was 37. Girardi was 36. EY was 34. At least McGriff was still pretty good when they got him, but that is sad and old.

I'm setting the bar pretty high for this season to be called a success. The Cubs are going to have to make the playoffs, period. Anything less than that, with the money they spent, will be considered a failure.

This is the type of thing you do every freaking time you try to defend Hendry and the Cubs. Anyone can play the "if" game. It doesn't change history. Since you removed the context of the above quote, allow me to put it back in. I agree that Hendry could have done a better job of having a back-up plan for Wood. But going into '05, Kerry was just one year removed from two fully healthy seasons in '02 and '03. Using straight statistical analysis and no scouting info or medical reports, leading up to the '05 season Kerry was averaging 27.3 starts per season. Not bad. In '05, he started just 10. That's clearly an unpredictable, tough luck loss for the Cubs. The same goes for Nomar in '05. He was averaging 123 games per year going into '05 which means on average he missed about 35-40 games a year. In '05 he missed 100. And in the 62 he played, he produced his worst numbers of his career, so it was really like not having Nomar on the team at all, yet the Cubs were still paying him his full salary. If Wood and Nomar still get injured, but play their normal amount of games and perform to their norms of the previous 3 seasons, the Cubs are going to win a lot more than 79 games. That was the context of the sentence you quoted. It was in response to a post about how Hendry wasn't able to produce more wins despite spending 90 million plus in team salary which is a position that completely ignores the magnitude of the injuries incurred by several key Cubs over the last 3 seasons. I wasn't saying just magically remove these two large salaries and the Cubs would be near the middle of the pack of team payrolls. I was saying that since wins are being used as the sole judge of Hendry as GM and because happenstance caused two all-star caliber Cubs to basically be taken off the team, it is only fair to look at their team payroll as if Nomar's and Wood's salaries weren't on it when comparing team payroll to team wins. If I remember correctly what they each got paid that year, removing their combined salaries would have dropped the Cubs near the middle of the pack in team payroll and their 79 wins would also have been near the middle of the pack that season. Now, other teams also had to deal with injuries, but it would be difficult to come up with another team that lost a starter the caliber of Kerry Wood for all but 10 starts and a hitter the caliber of Nomar Garciaparra for essentially the whole year that still finished well above .500.

First off, I don't appreciate the personal tone of this baseless attack post. You are making assumptions about me that are simply incorrect instead of responding to something specific in my post that you feel is inaccurate or uses faulty logic. If you would like to challenge a point that I've made, bring it. But you provided nothing other than your own opinion. You're going to have to do better than that. The "if" game is the point, CubinNY. I am (and you should be too if you want your arguments to hold water) assessing Hendry's decision to sign Nomar at the time he signed him. By your "it doesn't change history" statement, you show us that you are judging his decision by how it turned out. That is 20/20 hindsight. Use it if you must, but your argument suffers greatly when you do. Just because Nomar missed about 2 1/2 times the amount of games he usually did and had his worst season production-wise of his career in '05, doesn't mean that signing him was a bad decision. Yes, the history is what it is, but it doesn't mean that Hendry or anyone else should have been able to know that it would turn out that way and go a different direction. And it also doesn't mean that the '05 injury to Nomar (which caused him to miss 90-95 games when he previously averaged missing just 35-40) wasn't one in a long line of major injuries to star players over the last 3 seasons. So I guess I too could baselessly exaggerate and attack you personally by saying that you use 20/20 hindsight "every freaking time you try to bash Hendry and the Cubs". But I see no need to sink that low.

Agreed. It's fun having someone to argue with. Thanks, guys. It is fun. And Danny82, Bertrand Russell is a wise man. :wink:

I agree it's got a good chance to be an albatross towards the end, and Hendry should have broke the bank for Beltran and not Soriano, but it is impossible to know if he had the green light to do so back then. Plus, with the way Soriano is built and the shape he keeps himself in, he might not be so terrible at 37 and 38. Unfortunately, you can't pick and choose who is going to be the best free agent in a given off season. I believe Hendry when he says that if the Cubs didn't pay Soriano that much money, someone else would have. We see it happen every year. Why should this season be any different? So given that, the choice isn't between Soriano at 8/136 or Soriano at 6/90. The choice is Soriano at 8/136 or not Soriano and who knows who else. Maybe Drew, maybe not. There was no clear overture from his camp that he was willing to play for the Cubs. If not Drew in CF or RF, then who? The drop-off was pretty steep after J.D. So it seems to me that you aren't looking at these contracts from a realistic point of view. Of course Soriano is overpaid and in comparison to other FA contracts signed last year or the year before, it looks ridiculous. But in reality, every market is different and impossible to anticipate. And who knows what a bargain will be next year or 2-3 years down the road. Plus, if you had to choose between Soriano or who knows what else, which in reality may have been the choice Hendry faced, which would you choose?

Nomar was a known injury risk and the Cubs should've stopped counting on Kerry Wood a whole lot sooner than they did. I couldn't agree more with you on Kerry. And, yes, Nomar was an injury risk and I believe I acknowledged that Hendry took a gamble and lost, but when the facts are reviewed, Nomar's average games played per season going into 2005 was 123 games. He played in half that many in '05 (62 games) and had his worst year statistically because he rushed back and was still playing injured. So the 62 games Hendry did get out of Nomar weren't very Nomar like, thus is was like not having him there at all. Had Nomar missed his usual 35-40 games and performed like he had the previous three seasons, the Cubs would certainly have won more games. Its not fair to call Nomar an injury risk and then stop the discussion. The facts show that while he clearly was/is an injury risk, the Cubs got unlucky with the extent of his injury and his performance level when he returned. Expecting Hendry or anyone to know that Nomar would have his worst year of his career in '05 (or 2nd to worst if you consider '01 worse) is kind of crazy. I seriously doubt that there exists a statistical analysis that could have accurately predicted Nomar's '05 outcome. I did, but I may not have been clear about it. The payroll I was referring to was paid to Wood and Nomar in '05. If you remove their salaries from the Cubs payroll that season, they drop into the middle of the pack. But every team, even high priced ones rely on some cheaper, younger players to contribute to their success. Maybe only the Yankees can afford to have 10 million dollar plus veterans fill every position. Even the Red Sox with their payroll still needed more than what Jonathon Papelbon could give them last season to get into the playoffs. Imagine what their record would have been had he gotten injured for a large chunk of the season. Prior's injury counts because of how good he was and how their really was no reason to think going into '05 that he wouldn't be completely healthy. If there was reason, Hendry would have had the chance to do something about it. Of course with the way he dragged his feet in preparing for the eventuality that Wood might get injured, he might not have done anything at all. :wink:

To answer your question: it wasn't ever implied that Murton was not going to be the starting left fielder. In fact, Hendry has been quoted saying basically the opposite that he is not looking to replace Murton in LF. As far as Dayn Perry's list is concerned, I'd call it pretty darn embarrassing. FoxSports.com must be pretty desperate for content to keep paying this guy.

I'd love to find the won-loss records of managers in their first years and compare those numbers to the won-loss records of rest of their careers, especially for managers who have managed before and are not joining an expansion/obviously rebuilding team. I don't have any stats that suggest this, but it seems to me that veteran managers seem to get the most out of their teams in the first couple of seasons they are with their club. Baker's time with the Cubs certainly followed that pattern. Leyland with the Tigers. But there is just something energizing about how a new manager can wipe the slate clean and start fresh leaving any past failures behind. Of course the Cubs have added a lot of talent this off season so it will be near to impossible to determine whether any gains in wins are due to Piniella's presence. Unless, of course, I can find those very specific and obscure stats I was talking about...