soapy

I'm sure you realize, of course, that this won't happen.

http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060518&content_id=1460008&vkey=news_chc&fext=.jsp&c_id=chc Oh my God, he's already justifying playing him. Jesus.

Scott, again I applaud your enthusiasm. I don't know where you get it.

I think it's funny (pathetic) that Neifi's defense is basically, "I can't hit, so I tried to get lucky and let someone else (who also sucks) win the game for us". Then Dusty's response is, "Good stratagy, dude".

Dusty: "What can you say? He was due. We just ran into him at the wrong time. You have to tip your cap. Hopefully we'll start getting some breaks like that soon."

:lmao:

One other thing....Miller will hopefully be taking Rusch long relief position when he returns. Marshall is firmly planted in the starting rotation considering the team is 6-2 when Big Sean is on the bump. I'm very concerned about Marshall pitching well past his normal innings pitched total. Having only pitched between 75 and 90 innings per year the past couple years, he's not a good candidate to be in the rotation all season. I've been thinking about this as well. What do the Cubs do if Marshall continues to pitch well? What should they do? (What will do and what they should do are usually 2 different things when it comes to the Cubs) Could they just shut him down? Not without drawing the ire of moronic fans they couldn't. Also it depends on the situation. If they climb back into a hunt, it may behoove the cubs to shut him down (ala prior in 2003 - though that was a couple starts due to the Giles collision) so that he's fresh in september. He's going to get deadarm - it will happen. So let's get him some starts off here and there. They may be able to let him skip a few starts some time this summer. Say maybe between June and August. That may help, but I don't know that they'll even consider it if he continues to pitch well.

At least Barrett is in the lineup. I kind of figured it would be Blanco with the day-game-after-night-game thing. :?

What a freaking joke. Why am I not surprised? Can't wait to see Tony at 2B batting in the 2-hole in a week or so. THAT WILL GIVE US JUST THE "SPARK" WE NEED!!!

All in all, I don't think that this group is a bad bench. Of course, if injuries cause you to play some of these players as regulars, then you have a problem. Mabry- agree Mabry is a 35 year old with a very limited history of success coming off a bad season. Having a decent history doesn't mean a whole lot for an old guy who is slowing down. I don't disagree, but I also don't think he'd be bad as a fifth outfielder (though Dusty doesn't consider him that) and emergency 1B or 3B. If there was a better fourth outfielder in front of him, I'd be happy with that. Having said that, he's likely overpaid for that role. Like a lot of other people, I would have preferred someone like Branyan.

Very true, pretty much any of those choices would have been dissapointing. The problem is, as bad as having Patterson or Burnitz would have been, Hendry went with the worst possible choice from all of those above, signing Jones for three years and giving Perez a multi-year overpaid contract.

All in all, I don't think that this group is a bad bench. Of course, if injuries cause you to play some of these players as regulars, then you have a problem. Hairston- I agree Perez- His production could be easily replace for about 1/4 of his salary. His presence (salary) prohibits other moves Mabry- agree Blanco- There aren't any other defense only catchers available for less then $1.5 million? Pagan- agree Bynum- Fast and versatile? What does that even mean? He's fast getting back to the dugout and versatile enough to play several positions very poorly. He's worthless. One of my biggest problems with the bench is that there is vertially no power threat, especially from the right side.

For one year instead of three. Nevermind, you don't want to hear it. For the 8 millionth time, the chances of Jones being on the Cubs for 3 years are very slim unless he continues hitting the way he has lately. I look for Jones to be traded as soon as Pie is ready to play in the majors everyday. Well, everyone else already jumped on this, but that doesn't justify the signing. Either a) no one will want Jones and that contract; b) the Cubs will be paying him to play for someone else; or c) both. Then Hendry will miss out on another big free agent signing stating that the Cubs don't have the resources to "get into a bidding war" over a player. But hey, we're not the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox or Angels, right?? *shrug* But you go ahead and get excited about the Cubs trading Jones and getting nothing out of it. Then join the likes of Mariotti and blame the Trib for not spending enough money even though the Cubs have one of the highest payrolls in the NL.

Leyland may in fact be one of the reasons for their improvement, but it doesn't hurt to have a healthy Maggs (who's already surpassed last year's HR total) and Rodriquez vastly outproducing his 2005.

Two big games by Walker, indeed. Also, Jones has looked better at the plate the last few games. Ramirez really needs to come around for this offense to really do anything though. Though I still have little faith in your earlier predictions, Scott, but I hope you are right.

For one year instead of three. Nevermind, you don't want to hear it.

Why am I thinking of the Adam Ant song "Goody Two-shoes"? Can't catch, can't throw What do you do? Bob Slydel: "What would you say you do here?"

Who is heaping all the blame on Jones? There's plenty of blame to go around. Jones is the topic of this discussion.

But then Hendry is essentially hoping that Jones will do something he hasn't done in many years, provide meaningful production. I don't understand how one can expect, and really have any reasonable hope that's going to happen. Honestly, I'd rather have seen Patterson or Burnitz in RF for one year then Jones (or Willson or Encarnacion) in RF for three. Saying the free agent market was thin doesn't justify significantly overpaying for what free agents were available. There were other alternatives to signing Jones to a terrible contract. Also, as others have pointed out, it shows a lack of forsight on the part of Hendry to be stuck with this outfield.

I don't disagree with that, but the problem is that Pierre hasn't been getting on base. Hopefully he can turn that around.

If you go back to the first page it was actually you that stated it was not luck. But it isn't my intent to disagree with you or argue. As I stated in my prior post, citing bad luck is fine but if that's all the manager is going to cite than he deserves all the criticism he gets. So we agree on this point. I stated that pitch recognition is not luck. I also stated that BA, RBIs and things of that nature can partially be attributed to luck. In either case, we both agree that there is some luck involved. But "luck" does not explain away 2006 thus far IMO.

Poor Jones. He's just trying too hard. What a gamer.

I don't think anyone is suggesting there is NO luck involved. But Hendry and Baker seem to chalk all their failures up to "bad luck". When the Cubs get swept it's because "we ran into them at a bad time". When a pitcher get's shelled it's becuase, "they were just hittin' em in the holes". When a mediocre (or bad) pitcher mows through a complete game shutout of the Cubs it's time to, "tip your cap".

Why does Baker (and Hendry) insist on attributing everything to luck? It's not luck. It's called pitch recognition. Are the same guys at the top of the league every year in OBP and/or BA because of luck? No. To support the notion that Hendry also thinks it's just bad luck, and not bad planning, read what Kent McDill wrote in the same edition: http://www.dailyherald.com/sports/story.asp?id=189911 Bad stretches at the same time, hoping the ship will be righted? You don't build a team on hope. These guys have always been looking lightning in a bottle. Instead of actually going out and acquiring the players necessary to make this a better team, they go after lesser players hoping for them to have career years. It was evidenced by the completely asinine words Hendry used at the Jones signing. They're hoping Jacque will just magically pull out of his decline and be the player he was at his peak. Bruce addressed this problem in the section of his column called "Fatally flawed philosophy". And he was dead on. This organization is trying to overcome years of ineptitude by relying on good luck, hope and breaks going their way in the form of career years and reversed trends. This is a reactive management group. They see what others did to win, then try and follow that path, but that path changes every year with each new champion. Couple that reactive (ie. late to the party) tendency with a philosophy of hope and you have a recipe for failure. Yeah, I saw the McDill piece too and almost qouted it as well. I don't dispute that luck has some effect on things like batting average from time to time. But there are far more reasonable and sound ways to build your offense. This is clearly why OBP can shed so much light on a players performance. BA can sometimes be attributed to luck (infield singles, bloopers, etc.), same for RBIs. Drawing a walk is not luck. However, it's also not all about walks; it's recognizing what pitches one is likely to be able to drive and swinging at those pitches instead of swinging at everything and hoping you find a hole. That's completely absurd. Bruce made a nice point (which has also been made by others on this board and elsewhere). Dusty continually laments about his pitchers giving up too many walks (because they so often come back to score) but absolutely refuses to acknowledge that his hitters take too few and that this adversely effects his team's ability to score runs. Not to mention the fact that it allows opposing pitchers to often go deep into ball games because their pitch count is so low. I don't have a problem with hitters swinging at pitches early in the count as long as it's a pitch they can drive (i.e. fastball right down the middle).

Why does Baker (and Hendry) insist on attributing everything to luck? It's not luck. It's called pitch recognition. Are the same guys at the top of the league every year in OBP and/or BA because of luck? No.