CubfaninCA

well, his next 2 starts are against another bad lineup, san diego. see how he does against them and go from there.

If a guy who has consistently produced has a bad month and therefore shouldn't be blamed, can any player, then, truly be blamed for anything? For example, Perez has been bad this month. But in his career he has always been bad. He is playing to expectations, and therefore cannot be blamed. Ramirez, on the other hand, has played much better than this for the bulk of his career, and, as this is just a bad month, he cannot be blamed either. So is the end result of this that the only people that can ever be included in the blame for a bad season are the GM and manager? I think a finger has to be pointed at ownership considering nearly $15 million of payroll (wood & prio) could be on the shelf all season. The Cubs could be playing with $79 million of payroll, which places them 14th in spending. This is the 3rd biggest market. cmon! at least go over $100 million. Ownership should have increased payroll like they did last year when they had to eat Sosa's last year.

true, but w/ lee out, it's a really bad time for Ramirez to be so far below past numbers. sure doesn't help that pierre's having his worse season ever too.

Jones are Pierre are getting hammered. Ramirez was a .930 ops guy. He's at .711 now. At least Jones is kinda close to his career ops and plays d. I can't defend Pierre tho. Ramirez should be the one getting the bulk of criticism. He's making $11 million, but is playing like a $2 million player. I altered the title a tad bit.

Jones, Pierre & Neifi are hated so they get the blame, but Ramirez makes a quarter of the budget for offense and has been awful. He has to have the worse batting average of any clean-up hitter, and he never was a good fielder. Yes, Pierre and Jones need to get better, but if Ramirez continues to struggle, this team's done. Can't rely on Maddux, Marshall and Walker to save the season.

Would have been nice if Nef or Walker could have driven in a few of those 7 runners both left on base last night.

should have dealt him tejada. bum

15 at-bats is a little too soon to dismiss him not getting to career norms. restovich isn't a superior option either.

again, in the month after Choi returned, Karros had an OPS around .930. its pretty damn hard to maintain those numbers while only hitting lefties well, so he was probably doing something right against righties. it may have been difficult to be worse that Karros against righties, but Choi sure gave it a run with his pathetic numbers. and again, a three team pennant race is not the time to be working back into shape. if he'd done anything with his opportunities, I'd think the argument is valid, but he didn't. he failed miserably actually. and beyond the stat sheet, it didn't take a baseball guru to see that Choi simply was not catching up to fastballs after his return and was being fooled badly by almost every off speed pitch. prior to getting randall, karros had an ops of .849 in april & may, .870 in june & .936 in july. that's pretty respectable. it's amazing the complaints about sitting choi, and the excuses and rationales for him still exist. choi looked lost after he returned from injury. platooning him with karros for the remainder of the 2003, probably kills the chance of a lee trade and the cubs getting into the playoffs. randall saved us.

Hill was a bust. Grudz was almost certainly the better choice, patricularly in hindsight. ;) I disagree on Dubois. Hollandworth was terrible, and Dubois had/has more upside. As for Choi, I'm going to dig up Tim's comprehensive study on Choi -- who should have been platooned with Karros. the cubs did the right thing by bringing in randall simon. Really? He of the .318 OBP and .485 SLG with the Cubs in '03 (.282 BA)? Through June 7th when Choi was injured, he had a .389 OBP and a .496 SLB (.244 BA). He never got a chance to re-establish himself after he returned from the concussion -- as Tim's post (which I need to find) showed pretty conclusively. Randall Simon was a free swinging machine who did have a knack of hitting just about anything thrown at the plate. Which is why his OBP has always been very close to his BA -- and which is also why he's now out of baseball. Acquiring Simon was only the right thing to do because Baker wouldn't give Choi a fair opportunity to succeed after the injury. This is an old argument. after 2004 & 2005, I think Choi has proven he would have never re-established himself. he looked god awful after returning from injury. thankfully they brought in randall and his .485 slugging, as choi's trade value could have really dropped if they kept him out there everyday, as many here wanted... there could have been no dlee. should have never let randall go. the man brought good luck.

Wouldn't that mean that Dusty is one of the best judges of talent in the organization? He can't predict who will succeed in the majors and then decide who to give playing time to from the very beginning based on those predictions. maybe, but he was wrong about patterson. at least he wasn't 0-4 tho.

Hill was a bust. Grudz was almost certainly the better choice, patricularly in hindsight. ;) I disagree on Dubois. Hollandworth was terrible, and Dubois had/has more upside. As for Choi, I'm going to dig up Tim's comprehensive study on Choi -- who should have been platooned with Karros. the cubs did the right thing by bringing in randall simon.

hopefully the trib sells and cuban buys the club. then the cubs will actually get a big time free agent who can solve a lot of problems. the problems is with cf and rf. cuban afford a guy like giles or abreu. i'm not sure the trib will allow hendry to go after abreu. he's not a "big name" like tejada. he doesn't get on sportscenter much.

so what. baker held back garbage and went w/ guys who actually produced in the majors. maybe people are upset cause baker was absolutely correct on hill, dubois and choi.

going to have to wait until july. unfortunately, right fielders don't grow on trees, and hopefully pierre and aram can return to career norms.

it's not like there's a huge gap from middle of the pack and the 2nd best hitter in the NL is out.

Last in walks? ESPN has them tied for 26th. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/aggregate?statType=batting&group=9&seasonType=2&type=type2&sort=walks&split=0&season=2006

nice to see marshall pitch so well against florida and pittsburgh. hopefully, he can keep it up against actual lineups. florida ranks 28th in runs and pittsburgh 26th.

Saw this on "ESPN Rumors." Guillen's been worse than Jones this year, but if Jones doesn't pick up his production, perhaps there's a chance of getting Guillen during the summer to use as a platoon partner and bat off the bench. Of course, Guillen's a loose cannon so it could be risky bringing him in for such a role. Also, he hits righties better. Given Washington's poor pitching maybe they take deal Guillen & a filler for J Williams. of course, i'd rather have soriano and put him in rf.

Not a surprise with Lee & ARam missing so many games.

tough call. but like you stated, there's lots of catch so probably a 1 in 1000 chance of happening. jmo but the cubs offense is alright if lee comes back & aram & pierre get on track; they hide jones in the 7 or 8 spot; and keep walker in the 3 hole. pierre, cedeno, walker, lee, aram, murton, barrett and jones looks good on paper. lots of ifs and buts tho.

Murton = clutch. doubtful mabry or grissom play over him. ;)

if i'm pitt, i give murton a pass and pitch to jones. it's not like jones will take a run scoring walk.

smart move to walk walker. need hairston to steal 2nd, 3rd and home now. aram's worthless.

Winning 2 out of 3 is always good unless you're playing in the WBC. :) Considering 4 of their 5 best players are either on the DL or AWOL (ARam), 13-10 is good.