Outshined_One

Well, that was quite the exciting night. I had great seats and took a bunch of notes. Some observations... -Ryan Acosta has some potential, but there's work left to be done before he enters the conversation among the top Cubs prospects. His fastball was 86-91 at the start of the night with good movement. His curveball was his best pitch of the night, with very good downward movement. His third pitch (pretty sure it's a changeup) was passable. Aside from one pitch (his first one, oddly enough), he looked pretty good for the first four innings. Once he got into the 5th, his velocity and movement were down. He got through the 5th, but not before the damage was done. The umpire behind home plate had a tight zone with outside corners, to boot. He's a pretty skinny guy and could probably put on some more muscle in his legs. He had a nice play on a comebacker. He did a very good job of repeating his mechanics, although he is treading dangerously close to inverted W territory in his mechanics. -If I were to pick out the guys on this roster who could pass the eye test for major leaguers, I would pick Josh Donaldson and Marquez Smith in a heartbeat. Donaldson has a really thick lower body and noticeably muscular forearms. He has good awareness at catcher, but he needs to do a better job of getting out of his crouch and releasing the ball while in-game. During warmups, the guy displays a nice arm. Smith also has a pretty good build. I wasn't too thrilled with his defense at 3B, but he looked like he was agile enough to handle 2B if need be. -Some guys on this team are selective at the plate almost to a fault. Don't get me wrong, I love guys who draw walks and work counts, but there's also something to be said for being able to drive hitters' pitches. Cliff Andersen and Kyler Burke both fall into this category. They had some good ABs (including a funny one for Burke where he didn't even realize he drew the walk) where they were taking and fouling off the right pitches, but they were letting some good pitches go. Plus, the umpire's zone made it easier for them to work the counts effectively. -Dylan Johnston...wow, what an adventure. He's clearly new to LF. There wasn't much wind tonight, but he was getting himself into and out of quite a bit of trouble throughout the night in LF. He took some weird routes and made some impressively awkward catches tonight. -Jovan Rosa impressed me, although I was honestly expecting someone who was a bit on the taller and stockier side. He showed good instincts at 1B and had some very nice awareness on the basepaths. Some general observations: Holy wow were the Bandits terrible defensively (especially their 2B, Folli, and SP, Fick), Santana had a decent fastball with some nice offspeed stuff, Muschko was overpowering and made the Bandits look bad, the Bandits' C (de la Cruz) displayed excellent defense and a very good arm behind the dish, Samson showcased good defense at SS and nice fundamentals at the plate, Cards' 1st rounder Pete Kozma DHed and looked decent at the plate, Cliff Andersen's choice of "Jammin'" for his entrance music was...odd, and, finally, not a single ball hit by the Chiefs made it to the wall. Overall, it was quite a fun night. O'Brien Park was accessible with lots of parking nearby. The minor league gimmicks were fairly toned down, aside from Methodist Mayham and a segment involving two young girls dancing that got the Chris Hansen signal sent out. It's a nice park with good prices. The ivy in the batter's eye is also starting to come in and should look really nice a few years from now when it fills in. My friend was with me all night and he had a really fun time. If you want any specific comments or notes on the game, feel free to ask here or PM me.

I'm going to tonight's Chiefs game! :yahoo: I've been trying to get my friend to go over the past few days, but he's been back and forth on it. He just called me half an hour ago and told me he wanted to go to tonight's game and possibly Wednesday's game if the weather's good. :D I'm bringing my camera and a notebook, so expect a report from me when I get back tonight!

Its nice and all, but unless they are auctioned for charity it doesn't really mean much. Link

Thanks! I'd rather hope it was a good post given that I've spent much of the past year learning about the legalese involved in that topic. :stickman:

I truthfully have no idea what to make of Samardzija. Part of me thinks the Cubs are putting him under orders to specifically focus on certain things over the course of his starts (kind of like when they told Gallagher to put his slider on the backburner to work on his other pitches). In those instances, the numbers don't always tell the whole story. I've seen his performances from spring training and he looked pretty good. Another part of me remembers that he's still relatively raw and is pitching his second full season in the minors. There's still plenty of development left to do. However, in looking at his numbers, there's not a whole lot to like. My personal belief with evaluating pitching prospects is to first look to the three 9s: K/9, BB/9, HR/9. Currently, Samardzija's 9s are as follows: HR/9: 0.23 BB/9: 5.49 K/9: 5.26 He's been phenomenal at keeping the ball in the ballpark, despite the number of flyballs he has given up. As it has been mentioned in various other threads, a large number of his flyouts have been infield popouts. However, his strikeouts and walks have been fairly abysmal. What gives me a bit of comfort is that half of his walks have come in two starts out of the eight he has had thus far. It's not to say that we should discount those two starts, but I think it's a better thing than having those walks evenly dispersed among his starts thus far. That's not saying a lot, but it's at least something. It looks like his problem might be command rather than control, considering Samardzija has only had 2 WPs and no HBPs. It's not like Rich Hill back in the day when his curveball would regularly hit batters, umpires, backstops, and fans sitting behind home plate on a regular basis. This sounds more like he needs to do a better job of working the strike zone. Whether or not he ever will is anyone's guess. If I had never read any scouting reports on Samardzija, I'd be wondering why he's even in AA. However, since I've read the reports, I just don't know what to make of him without seeing him. Since I likely won't see him in a AA start any time soon, I'll just keep my fingers crossed.

Let me preface this by saying that I think Cuban would be a great choice. However, defending his ability to run a business really doesn't do much to further his cause to non-believers, especially in the Cubs case. The man is going to make an obscene amount of money with the Cubs no matter what he does; the question is, is he going to run his business like Jeffrey Loria or like Steinbrenner? And by like Jeffrey Loria, I would mean keep the payroll the same and not drastically change the team. Loria makes a ton of money by selling his young players high at the cost of the team's (continued) success. My finance major friend says he's the best owner in baseball because of his business savvy. I think he's an a-hole. There could be any number of different ways to define the best owner in baseball, and profitability is certainly one. Most fans would use some variation of wins and losses/playoff appearances/world series titles as the yardstick. The Marlins don't measure up too well on that scale, even after having won the WS in each of their two playoff seasons. Regardless, it's pretty hard to make a case for a guy being the best owner in baseball when his team is perennially at or near the bottom of the league in attendance (MLB ranks since 2001: 29th, 29th, 28th, 26th, 28th, 30th, 30th, 30th so far in '08). Think of it this way. Let's say you have a publicly traded company that is not particularly well-run. It's making a profit, but it's not performing up to its potential. However, the employees are treated well with plenty of vacation time and generous bonuses. Long-time customers get contracts for their goods at below market prices. One day, someone with a boatload of money comes around and launches a hostile acquisition of the company. He buys out all the shareholders at $2b total, takes the company private, fires the Board of Directors, and puts his own people in place. Over the next three years, the guy who bought the company proceeds to cut costs in a huge way. He fires employees. He cuts down on bonuses. Subsidiaries are sold off to competitors. The price of the goods sold gets jacked up twofold. Regulatory compliance costs (OSHA, Environmental, etc.) are cut to the point where the company is still in compliance, but just barely. Now the company is making a great profit. The company's value has increased from $2b to $5b. However, at the same time, employees, clients, and long-time customers are miserable. After carving out a path of destruction, the guy sells the company off at $5b just before the company begins to suffer a downward turn that leads into an eventual collapse due to all of the things I outlined above. If you think of it from a business perspective, the guy who bought out that company at $2b was a great businessman. He made a 150% return on his investment, which is phenomenal. The company is also making a much better profit than when he first acquired it. You can say that his business savvy paid off. However, in a larger sense, the guy completely killed the company. He alienated customers. He fired employees. He did a lot of really bad things that eventually led to the company's downfall. He made a terrific profit, but at the same time, he wrecked what once was a pretty good thing for a lot of people. He didn't care about the little people he crushed in carrying out his business plan. On a personal level, the man acted in a rather disgusting way. Maybe he's a good businessman in the sense that he got a great return on his investment, but there's something to be said for the consequences of his actions.

Holy hell, Greene is 0/13 against Z? :shock:

Box Scores Iowa won 10-6 Box Score 2B E. Patterson 1/5, R, 2 RBI, 2B (5) LF M. Murton 2/4, BB, 2 R, 2 2B (3) 1B M. Hoffpauir 3/5, 2 R, 4 RBI, HR (1), 2 K RF J. Kroeger 2/4, R, RBI, 2B (12), 3B (2), K, Assist (2B), HBP SP S. Marshall 4 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 3/2 K/BB, HR, HBP, 4-4 GO-FO Tennessee lost 9-7 Box Score SS M. Matulia 1/5, R CF T. Colvin 4/4, 2 R, 5 RBI, 2 2B (7), 2 HR (5) LF J. Fox 2/5, R, RBI, HR (1) C S. Clevenger 1/5, K RF R. Harvey 0/4, 2 K 1B D. Deeds 2/4, 2B (7), K PH/RF M. Camp 1/1, BB, R, SB (6) SP M. Holliman 4.2 IP, 10 H, 8 ER, 1/1 K/BB, 4 HR, HBP, 5-7 GO-FO Daytona won 7-4 Box Score 2B T. Thomas 0/3, BB DH T. Wright 1/3, BB, R, K C W. Castillo 0/4, R, PB (6) LF Y. Carter 1/4, R CF J. Wyatt 1/2, 2 BB, 2 R, 3B (3) 3B J. Mota 2/4, 4 RBI, 2B (1) SS D. Barney 0/3, BB, R SP J. Ceda 2 IP, 4 H, 4 ER, 0/4, K/BB, 3-3 GO-FO RP J. Papelbon 1.1 scoreless, 1 H, 3-1 GO-FO RP D. Garcia .2 scoreless, 1 H, 1/0 K/BB, HBP, 0-1 GO-FO RP C. Lambert .2 perfect, 2-0 GO-FO Game Note: Manager Jody Davis Ejected in the 2nd Peoria won 7-5 Box Score CF C. Andersen 2/3, 2 BB, 2 R, SB (4) SS N. Samson 2/5, R, K C J. Donaldson 0/5, 3 K RF K. Burke 1/4, BB, R, RBI, K 3B M. Smith 1/4, R, K 1B J. Rosa 1/3, BB, R, 2 RBI LF D. Johnston 1/4, R, K, 2 SB (4) DH E. Lara 2/4, RBI, K 2B M. Gonzalez 0/4, K SP R. Acosta 5 IP, 8 H, 5 ER, 3/1 K/BB, HR, WP, 7-5 GO-FO RP A. Santana 2 scoreless, 1 H, 4/1 K/BB, 1-1 GO-FO RP C. Muschko 2 perfect, 1/0 K/BB, 4-1 GO-FO OVERALL: 3-1

Sean's first start was against one of the best offenses on baseball on short rest. Sean's second start will be against the Pirates. :D This is great news! I've been hoping the Cubs would give him time to develop. I'm also guessing this also means Hill will get at least one more start down in Iowa.

Zambrano's starting.

Woohoo! SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

Mine!

Gee, that was a strike to Pie.

He just hit the batter. Uh oh.

That's what happens when you face the best offense in the NL. :D

Daryl Ward is back to being the fat kangaroo. He gets on base, and a pinch runner comes out of his pouch. In this case, the pinch runner is Jason Marquis.

Ward!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ward in for Pie? I'm not so hot on that one.

Hoooooooooooly crap.

Hit & Run that was botched.

Um. What the hell? Okay then!

Cue posting of one of the most awesome gifs ever.

That makes two of us. Make it three. I thought I was seeing him re-enact Major League.

They're taking their sweet time getting the fan off the field.

Streaker!!!!