TheDude
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Everything posted by TheDude
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Not even close, and has been shown ad nauseum by the numbers. You have dedicated threads to beat and bash the players you dislike. Take it there.
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Good to see (Dusty pulls Cedeno, Murton from lineup)
TheDude replied to Careless's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
It was just a night off. Nothing more. -
5 runs on the 6th. That's June 6.
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Talk about a trade
TheDude replied to larhur's topic in MLB Draft, International Signings, Amateur Baseball
That is pure and undefensible speculation. That was my point. It irks me when people constantly assume a young kid from the minors came come up and immediately perform and outperform established players. More often than not they don't. Pierre is here to stay. So is Jones. It's better to start rooting for them to get on pace than to constantly hound them and make unsubstanciated claims on career minor leaguers abilities at the big league level. -
Talk about a trade
TheDude replied to larhur's topic in MLB Draft, International Signings, Amateur Baseball
Pie or Coats should be brought up anyways, just to replace slappy Pierre. We still would need a big bat. Wait, so you want the team to score even fewer runs than it already does? It's a wonderful idea to replace the guy leading the team in Runs scored. -
Wouldn't that be true of most teams? No, not necessarily. Perhaps I should have changed the wording from blowout to something less dramatic, like 3+ runs. My primary point is that it is not easy to have a winning record with a negative run differential, which makes it vital that the team thrive in close game situations, which it has. Many of us knew this team would have to win a lot of 4-3 or 3-2 type games. And the fact that they are leads me to believe the "good sign" line.
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I was going to start a new thread, but saw this one. Maybe a title change would help clue folks into what this discussion is about. I was going to comment that the Cubs are 14-10, but have given up more Runs (113) than they have scored (111). Is it luck or timely performances in the games that matter? This team seems to have great intensity and focus in close games, but little in blowouts.
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Why are the young guys getting a shot this year?
TheDude replied to CubfaninCA's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
I think this is a very unfair post. Bobby Cox last season had his back to the wall with no choice but to play unproven youngsters to fill the void and he gets applauded. Dusty does it, going against his past history (which would have been to dig up some fossil to temporarily play, ala Ordonez, Grissom, Wilson, etc.), but gets no credit. And yes you do praise the manager for pulling the veteran starter. How many other teams are going to pull one of their starters after 3 or 4 bad starts? It is not a very commonplace thing, and once again Dusty went against his prior history in Chicago (Estes anyone?). -
I'm so sure Dusty is calling for the bunt. There are several hitters on this team that occasionally drop bunts attempting to get hits. I also think asking the question without surrounding it with proper scenario is misleading. What is the score, inning, and number of outs Dusty supposedly is calling for all these bunts with Pierre on 2nd?
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Why can we produce great pitchers, but not great hitters?
TheDude replied to badger1679666666's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
There are assumptions made in this thread that all good young hitters are like Murton when it comes to plate discipline. That is a gross assumption. Murton is the exception. Most young hitters do not have that level of plate discipline. Some organizations promote a better hitting philosophy than the Cubs system, this I won't deny. But that doesn't mean that orgainzations notorious for better plate discipline in recent years, or notorious for producing hitters that succeed at highest level are producing bunches of hitters with that level of discipline year after year. I think best answer to the original thread question is that the Cubs as an organization draft pitching first and hitting second. -
Hinske for Williamson (Rumor)
TheDude replied to Quakers's topic in MLB Draft, International Signings, Amateur Baseball
It was never great to begin with and very much overstated on these boards. -
I don't have a problem with the article other than the fact that it was probably the easiest write in his career.
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-8 teams are over .500 and 5 of them are in the NL Central -8 teams are under .500 and 4 of them are in the NL East -The Cubs have a .632 win % and are in 4th place in the division (5th in NL overall) -Houston is the only Central team with fewer than 13 games in division (they have 6) So the Central has been playing primarily against itself and yet they are all winning and killing the rest of the league in April win percentage. Typically when an entire division is above .500 folks point to lots of in-division games to even the spectrum, but that isn't the case here. I stated pre-season that I expected the wild card to come from the Central and that this division would prove to be the most competitive. Thus far it has been. So I ask, what record is it going to take to snatch each of the divisions this year, and then what record for the wild card? Is it possible the wild card team will have the 2nd best record in the NL?
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I was one of the few folks advocating this trade. I wish Baltimore would have jumped on it.
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All those numbers mean is that he is due for a hot streak to get back to career norms. The team has been winning despite his struggles, so hopefully they continue winning when he comes around. Same canbe said for Aramis Ramirez.
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One of the interesting things about Day is that throughout his big league career, his earned runs given up has been nealry identical to his walks given up: 2002 - 15 walks 15 ER 2003 - 59 walks 61 ER 2004 - 45 walks 51 ER 2005 - 32 walks 36 ER He only gives up 1 HR every 10 innings for his career, so that isn't a major problem (though Montreal and Washington as home stadiums). With K/BB totals of 176/161 in 361 innings for his career, it's clear his issue has always been control and lack of a dominant pitch. Who knows, maybe th guy can figure it out. He's only 27 and pitchers sometimes have late clocks, particularly finesse guys. A pitcher of his style has to recognize that big league umps are only going to give you the corner if you earn it. Keep walking 4 guys every 9 innings, and you won't get that corner.
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Very well said. I too never had issue with the money and contract Maddux was given. The league in the last couple years has established a baseline that says average pitchers with .500 records and average stuff are worth around 7 million a year. Maddux has been slightly better than average for the first 2 years, and so far vastly superior to that average this year, which makes the money pretty much spot on in terms of production per dollar for established pitchers.
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This has nothing to do with post D-Lee. If he is in the lineup, the score is still 7-0.
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That is definately the worst feeling and my biggest pet peeve about pitching.
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All offseason people were trying to convince me this kid Williams is the #3 starter on this team, and better than Maddux :? . I don't care about giving up hits to Pujols - you walk the pitcher to score a run and you don't deserve to be in the sentence with Maddux.
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BTW - I was very stunned to get back from lunch and find a thread started in my name. It wasn't my intention to start a new thread, but the split makes sense as it's only tangentially related.
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Cheers to you. Here's hoping Dusty continues making solid game lineup decisions this season. In the end, I have no issues with dogging Dusty for placing Neifi in the two-hole last year and denying Cedeno at bats in the middle of the season. These are accurate and legitimate complaints. I'm on that bad decisions wagon. But Dusty hasn't used Neifi that way this year. Walker and Cedeno have the large majority of starts at 2B and SS respectively. Hairston and Perez have spot starts. So it seems premature for anybody to think that an injury to the starting 1B will result in the 3rd-depth-chart-2B/2nd-depth-SS suddenly gettng all the starts over the guys in front of him.
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This is flat-out wrong. Read the first 5 pages of the thread again. How many games has Neifi started in favor of Walker and Cedeno this year? Before the season started, multiple people on this board guanranteed Neifi would be higher on the depth chart than those two and would get more at bats than either even if/when all are fully healthy, and that Hairston never had a chance to start over Neifi. They were wrong. Dusty's first choice this year has not been to insert Neifi into lineups - unless you're talking about last night, in which case, as a late inning defensive replacement - he was the correct choice. Neifi hasn't been the first bench option. It seems to me that the Neifi-hate is a comfort blanket for people anytime something on this team goes wrong. How many games has Neifi started since Lee was injured? Zero, yeah? So that makes the Neifi concerns pre-emptive. Can't people at least cry after Neifi starts, if that is even the case (which is unlikely anyway)?
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This stinks. The team had so much momentum. Hopefully it's just two weeks out and then another week of in-game back-to-speed adjustments for him. It sucks also because it brings out a gatling gun's worth of Neifi responses which have thankfully been quiet for a week. I swear some people are addicted to Neifi-hate like it's crack - it doesn't matter what the topic is, or how distant from Neifi the converstaion is, people will find a way. It's more likely that the triumverate of Mabry, Walker, and Hairston fill the majority of playing time at 1B and 2B. If Dusty proves otherwise, by starting Neifi in several games in row, then people can hate all they want. But the constant pre-emptive (and usually wrong) crying around here is ridiculous.