Soul

Yeah, catch 'em while ARod is in a slump. Another hit. Cotts is junk.

You'll see more of that. He's just not all that good.

Yeah, let's shuffle the roles in the bullpen a little, give Cotts more innings. Great idea! :roll:

2 out, nobody on. Now bases loaded, 1 run in. Only the Cubs.

When the headline reads "Scrub beats Ace" you know the article is about the Cubs.

Wow that sucked. I don't think Z is going to get back to where he was in previous years.

Come on you had this inning Z.

Ack, that's not good.

Next time a scrub pitches for the first time, I'm laying money against the Cubs. It's like freaking clockwork.

Wow Soriano made that way tougher than it needed to be.

We probably would have. Thanx go to the Sox for handing us one.

Mike grounds out, not a real good AB.

Yeah, I don't think even LaRussa and all that magic pixie dust can dig the Cards out this time.

That pitch was a strike. [-( Looked like a good strike at the knees to me, too.

They'll strand him.

Unfortunately we seldom get what we want as Cub fans.

I see the Cubs have decided to suck against a first-time pitcher again. Nice work guys.

He'll stick around because of his defense in Center...If Taguchi has a job in the bigs there is a place for Cpatt. I wonder if he'll take a paycut then. $4.3mil for defense-only and a black hole in the lineup isn't all that palatte-able. Of course, maybe the market will catch up with his salary.

Updated, .227/.290/.318 Jesus, moving away from Chicago hasn't helped one bit. I can't see Corey sticking in the majors much longer with that kind of production (or lack thereof). Another classic "athlete" pick by the Cubs. Unfortunately, baseball is very much a game of skills and CPatt appears either unwilling or unable to develop good baseball skills, namely hitting skills.

oh yeah i really hammered that point home didn't I? By saying, "pressure hendry or something." wow how could anyone resist that terrifically supported premise. Alright, next time I'll be sure to whip out my mind reading apparatus to better discern which arguments you are serious about. i was sort of serious about it, but i was never really on the argument to begin with. i briefly mentioned it in one post. still besides the point though. guzman to the pen is a bad idea. You know, the funny thing is, I really don't like it either. I just don't see how the other options are much better. Certainly not worth making Lou out to be some kind of bumbling idiot. Actually, I read the original post on this thread and didn't find an article link. The closest I could find was a cubs.com article which says Lou promises changes on Monday or Tuesday. So I'm not sure we even know exactly what Lou has planned.

oh yeah i really hammered that point home didn't I? By saying, "pressure hendry or something." wow how could anyone resist that terrifically supported premise. Alright, next time I'll be sure to whip out my mind reading apparatus to better discern which arguments you are serious about.

Marshall has lost effectiveness on his fastball, has just as many durability issues as Guzman, has worse stuff and command, and does not possess the ceiling that Guzman has. I don't see how you could not consider Guzman the better option. We don't know Lou is bringing Marshall up. For that matter, we really don't know exactly what is going to happen at all, or for how long it might be, or what will happen as a result of it. This is alot of hubbub with little facts behind it, at this point.

hahahaha, is this for real? At least two different posters, maybe three came up with roles for the pen to be effective without the madness of demoting Guzman. Hilarious. All of them are ridiculous, and would quite simply result in more burnout on the good arms we do have. Either that, or they wouldn't result in much change at all. You can't have it both ways. You either lean on Wuertz, Ohman, and Dempster more and risk burning them out quicker, or you pitch Eyre and Howry and give up leads. Lou is making a move that provides a new resource in the pen. I don't like it, but these other ideas are woefully inadequate. You can't carry deadweight in your pen, TT. That's just a fact. so how is moving guzman to the pen a good move? just because other moves are bad doesn't mean you make a different bad move. Let's get back to the original point. How is calling Lou stupid a valid assertion when you don't have a better solution? The best thing to do would be to swap roles. Move Wuertz to late inning guy with Cotts and Howry getting work earlier in games (with Marmol being used some in the same situations). Make Eyre the mop-up guy (or the role that Cotts had early in the year). That makes the bullpen slightly better. The best thing to do would be for Hendry to not spend money on relievers willy-nilly, but that isn't about to stop, so there isn't anything Lou can do. My solution would be to change the usage roles and experiment with minor leaguers (like Cherry and Marmol). Moving our best option for 5th starter (aka not tom glavine) to the bullpen to "solve" the bullpen problem isn't an actual solution. I've already been over that, it's a stab in the dark, not one bit more demonstrably better than Lou's option, none of you have a clue if it would work or not. It would likely just result in too many innings for Wuertz and Cotts -- with Marmol walking guys like water through a strainer. But hey, don't let that stop you from declaring Lou to be stupid. LOL. You just got done arguing that Hendry should be "pressured" by Lou. Backtracking off that one a little, eh?

He's not been determined to be an "effective starter" based on 2 starts. what? I'm determining him to be effective based on his talent + his 3 starts this year + a body of minor league work. And it doesn't really matter if he's effective or not, his replacement is probably going to be worse than he would have been in the same situation. His ERA was over 10 in the minors this year. What on earth are you talking about? He's had 2 good starts this year, last year he was terrible. You seem to want to put him on the level of a Lilly or a Marquis. He's a young arm who recently had a couple good starts. Hopefully it turns into more.[/quote] No one is saying Guzman is dominant or equal to Lilly/Marquis/Glavine. [/b] Those are effective starters. What is Guzman then? He's a young guy who is still getting himself together, far from a sure thing as a starter. So let's quit pretending Lou's throwing sure-fire starter stats out of the lineup, alright?

hahahaha, is this for real? At least two different posters, maybe three came up with roles for the pen to be effective without the madness of demoting Guzman. Hilarious. All of them are ridiculous, and would quite simply result in more burnout on the good arms we do have. Either that, or they wouldn't result in much change at all. You can't have it both ways. You either lean on Wuertz, Ohman, and Dempster more and risk burning them out quicker, or you pitch Eyre and Howry and give up leads. Lou is making a move that provides a new resource in the pen. I don't like it, but these other ideas are woefully inadequate. You can't carry deadweight in your pen, TT. That's just a fact. Every pen has guys who aren't very good. For us that's Eyre. He can pitch when there's blowouts or our starter gets rocked. Cotts, Howry, and Marmol are plenty adequate for short/middle relief, Cotts has been effective, Howry is better than his results this year, and Marmol has great stuff. Ohman's around to get out a LH too, giving you two options from either side. Then you have the straight forward setup-closer situation with Wuertz and Dempster. You've got it in your mind that Howry is an abomination beyond saving and that any solution to the pen that keeps him and Eyre in it will result in burnout. That's wrong. And you're ignoring Howry's poor performance this year and declaring Marmol to be a major-league competent reliever with little or no basis for that assertion.