Soul

I'll never agree with this, it ignores the plain truth. Getting great performances out of guys is just getting great performances out of guys. No stars coming into alignment. No horoscopes with Moons waxing in Scorpio. Just a really good job by a bunch of people all attempting to get those great performances from those players. A success story. White Sox circa 2005 -- great job, great success story. Regardless of the proof I provided above, don't you think the timing of all of those great performances is lucky? If half of their rotation would have had a great year in 05 and the other half in 06, then they wouldn't have made the playoffs in either year. Heck, pythagorean has them missing the playoffs in both years as it is. You think of it as proof of luck, and I think of it as proof of an organization do a great job for a season. Pythagorean is another of these stat analyses that attempts to determine winners while ignoring all the non-statistical things that have an impact on whether a team wins or loses. A team is not a collection of statistics. That's a video game.

Yowza!! That'll be like Wrestlemania, the Super Bowl, and the World Series all rolled into one!! Hmmmm. Depends on who is on the list, I suppose. If it's Bonds, then yeah that could be a blockbuster. It might be Sosa too. I wouldn't be happy about it, but I think it very likely Sammy juiced and the truth should come out even if it hurts.

I doubt Coughlin will do it, but then again, I would never have believed the Giants (and the Cowboys, for that matter) could wind up such an undisciplined, 'me-first' ballclub. I know they've got egos on that roster, but I thought Coughlin was a different sort of coach than the kind that lets the inmates run the asylum. I think alot of people are thinking they might have overestimated Coughlin. I'm one of them.

What you don't seem to understand is nobody is saying teams only win with luck. Luck plays a part. Luck plays a part in every baseball game. Seeing eye singles and linedrives that are caught have a lot less to do with execution than luck. Luck, or chance, plays a large part in baseball. You don't win 90 games because of luck, and you don't lose 90 games because of luck. And counting on luck to bounce your way is asinine. But it plays a part. I do understand this. But statistically there is no way for little momentary quirks to hold up on one side of the ledger, any more than it's possible to flip a coin 100 times and have it register 100 "tails." Therefore it is not an issue when determining who wins the World Series. I think the real issue here is that some people want to tag injuries, or career years, or exceptional above-the-norm performances as "luck." That's completely off-base. Not luck at all. It's just a great year, and all the things that go into it. A team that gets several great years from guys, or plays "over their heads," or whatever-----they aren't lucky. They just did a great job that year. Okay man, you keep thinking that. 100 consecutive tails is not anywhere close to having the balance of luck being on your side over the course of the season. "All the things that go into it" includes luck. You're right, I will keep thinking that. Nothing anyone says will knock me out of the real world, and into the realm of the "prisoners of hope" who wish, if they could only get lucky (like those darn White Sox), they could see a Cubs World series.

I'll never agree with this, it ignores the plain truth. Getting great performances out of guys is just getting great performances out of guys. No stars coming into alignment. No horoscopes with Moons waxing in Scorpio. Just a really good job by a bunch of people all attempting to get those great performances from those players. A success story. White Sox circa 2005 -- great job, great success story.

What you don't seem to understand is nobody is saying teams only win with luck. Luck plays a part. Luck plays a part in every baseball game. Seeing eye singles and linedrives that are caught have a lot less to do with execution than luck. Luck, or chance, plays a large part in baseball. You don't win 90 games because of luck, and you don't lose 90 games because of luck. And counting on luck to bounce your way is asinine. But it plays a part. I do understand this. But statistically there is no way for little momentary quirks to hold up on one side of the ledger, any more than it's possible to flip a coin 100 times and have it register 100 "tails." Therefore it is not an issue when determining who wins the World Series. I think the real issue here is that some people want to tag injuries, or career years, or exceptional above-the-norm performances as "luck." That's completely off-base. Not luck at all. It's just a great year, and all the things that go into it. A team that gets several great years from guys, or plays "over their heads," or whatever-----they aren't lucky. They just did a great job that year.

I'd love to delude myself into thinking the Cubs have the best pitching in the NL Central, but as of Christmas eve, in my book, that honor clearly belongs to the Milwaukee Brewers. Take a hard look at Capuano's #'s last year..combine those with a full year of Sheets, throw in Suppan, Bush and Vargas and the Cubs have a VERY formidable foe in their division that's geographically North of them. This is also a staff that has 2 pitchers in the pen who have made AS teams as closers (Turnbow and Cordero) along with some good looking youngsters and holdovers....our pen may have a slight edge, but it's real close. Well, maybe you're right. Who knows, maybe if Prior comes back strong and Hill breaks out we'll be OK. I don't know----the Brewers always seem to pull a fade to finish the season, and I wouldn't count on Sheets for an entire year. His rehab didn't exactly go as smoothly as the Crew was hoping. We'll see. Everyone's undefeated right now :wink:

.340 consistently over the course of the season is, I believe, a great improvement over Pierre. Even though it's only 10 points higher than Juan, he was so terrible in the early/mid season it contributed to burying us in the standings. By August it didn't matter if he was getting on base at a good clip---it was all over by then. But we'll see. The thing is, I don't see how Theriot can be counted on for anything. Nobody has seen how he might adjust when teams start figuring out his weaknesses. I'm rooting for the kid, but he only has somewhere around 140 ABs. That's not enough to pin any hopes on or make any plans, IMO.

Don't lump me in with that crowd. I could give a crap if someone said the Cubs were lucky to win the World Series, primarily because I'd be too busy celebrating the fact that the Cubs won the World Series. I personally feel it's very fair to say that luck plays a large role. Any fan who gets upset because someone said their team was lucky to win needs to grow a thicker skin. Luck or not, a World Series title is still a World Series title. I really don't care if the Cubs win on a walk-off homer or a bad-hop grounder as long as they win. Once they win, no one can take that away from us as fans. If people want to call it luck, let them. I will go out on a limb and say that as the current team stands, if the cubs win the world series in 2007 it will be lucky. If they get the performances necessary to win the World Series this year, luck won't have anything to do with it. If there was such a thing as a lucky WS champ, the Cubs would have won one by now (since '08).

Time will tell whether he knows what he's doing. Agreed. They were in a position to be very good with an addition to the roster here and there. They still can be, but if they don't make the necessary moves to be competitive this year, Williams is going to look pretty bad with these moves. Detroit has improved their team this offseason. Proof is the WS ring. There are no lucky WS championships. You win it, you've proven yourself. Cub fans may not like that because it's the WS, but believe me if the Cubs won one and people called it luck, we'd be crying foul. So let's be intellectually honest with ourselves, and admit Williams got it done, so he gets the credit. What happens if the team that won the world series improves significantly in the offseason and then doesn't even make the playoffs the next year? Would you then call it luck? I never call winning the World Series luck, no matter what. And my argument is, neither should you----or you risk being intellectually dishonest. Because you know damn well if someone else called the Cubs lucky for winning it, you'd be upset. Any arguments to the contrary are just fans being fans. In order to win a world championship in any sport luck is involved. However, luck in certain degrees. The 72-10 bulls were lucky that they had no major injuries. The 2005 Whitesox were lucky that their rotation performed significantly better year than the exact same rotation in 2006. So far use of "intellectually dishonest" in this thread is completely ridiculous. If you are going to use it correctly you should say "It would be intellectually dishonest to ignore the fact that the Whitesox won the 2005 WS on the strength of their rotation, who significantly excceded expectations, as those same pitchers regressed to career norms in the 2006 campaign in which they finished 3rd in the division. No luck there at all. Just great coaching, great assembling of a group of guys willing to work hard, and great execution. The fact that they didn't do as well in 2006 simply indicates that they didn't do as good a job. And that's all. There is no luck. Only superior performance vs. inferior performance, and all of the pieces of the puzzle at various levels that go into that.

The Vikings and Giants were both winning teams when we faced them. And there's only 5 winning teams in all of the NFC, and we've beaten the one of those that we've faced, so it's not like anyone in the NFC has faced a lot of stiff competition. Not to mention that if the Giants and Packers hadn't played us this year, they'd be at .500 Ok, I'm reaching here.. Giants were the sure super bowl pick according to ESPN when we faced them. Afterwards, they went into a downward spiral from which they never recovered. And guess what? The same happened to Seattle. They've never been the same since we destroyed them at Soldier Field. A division winner in name only. I think injuries to both teams have more to do with that than us destroying them when we played them. Injuries are no excuse. Everyone has injuries. You either overcome them, or you aren't good enough to. And that's it. You were implying that both the Giants and Seahawks haven't been the same team because they got destroyed by the Bears and all I'm saying is that injuries have more to do with their losses than them being destroyed by the Bears. It certainly seems to have set the tone for the remainder of their seasons. Besides, I doubt Coughlin or Holmgren would dare play the injury card. Using injuries as a reason for failure is a fallacious argument----it supposes that the norm for NFL teams is a relatively injury-free campaign, which is completely false. Teams must have capable backups at every position, or they just simply aren't all that good. When it comes to Seattle and NY----those ballclubs have had many of their injured players returning lately, and are arguably playing even worse now than they did when they were more severely "handicapped" with injury.

Just because that's the average market price doesn't make it a good idea. The idea is to go cheap at certain spots by using young guys so that you can spend the extra cash on real difference makers. Suppan is not likely to be one of those. Yep, and I never said it was a good idea. you cant think this is a bad signing for the brewers, statistically he cannot be that much better/worse than the other pitchers signed in this price range this season. I know we all love statistical analysis, but when pitching is so thin, you cant argue with a guy who consistently pitches around 200 innings and wins more than he loses Unless the Brewers are planning on spending money with the Cubs or some of the other big spenders, then I don't see why I can't think this wasn't a real good signing. If it won't hamper additional moves that the club will make, then I suppose it's alright. All along, the reason the Cubs could pick up mediocre pitching is because there's theoretically no hindrance on future moves (the Trib has no budget---despite what they try to say). I don't think the same holds true for the Brewers, but I will admit to not knowing for sure. Same probably holds true for the Royals, who just picked up a mid-line guy for massive dollars and now will likely have few options to improve themselves further.

I'm not sure Fons will derive a big OBP advantage from batting leadoff with the Cubs. He'll have DLee and Aram batting behind him, as opposed to the lameass Nats hitters from 2006. Pitchers will have good reason to challenge him a lot more in 2007, which hopefully will lead to more HRs, but IMO it will almost certainly lead to a significant reduction in walks. The key to getting Soriano out has always been outside the strike zone. I'm not sure challenging him is really that good of an idea for pitchers. Plus, I don't think having Izzy hitting behind Soriano is going to be much of an improvment over those "lameass" Nats hitters. Walk AS. Get obligatory GB from Izzy. Hope you can get out Lee, or Aram, or both if obligatory GB was not a DP. This sounds like a viable strategy, and not appreciably better for the Cubs than other teams. I would imagine most other clubs will have a decent OBP guy in the 2-hole. So I'm thinking Soriano will be on base plenty with the Cubs. The only catch is whether Lee & ARam can drive him home. Lee + ARam, much as I like them, is not the end-all-be-all of power hitting duos. Opposing clubs will not be weeping and gnashing their teeth, of that much I am certain.

The Vikings and Giants were both winning teams when we faced them. And there's only 5 winning teams in all of the NFC, and we've beaten the one of those that we've faced, so it's not like anyone in the NFC has faced a lot of stiff competition. Not to mention that if the Giants and Packers hadn't played us this year, they'd be at .500 Ok, I'm reaching here.. Giants were the sure super bowl pick according to ESPN when we faced them. Afterwards, they went into a downward spiral from which they never recovered. And guess what? The same happened to Seattle. They've never been the same since we destroyed them at Soldier Field. A division winner in name only. I think injuries to both teams have more to do with that than us destroying them when we played them. Injuries are no excuse. Everyone has injuries. You either overcome them, or you aren't good enough to. And that's it.

I want the better OBP numbers that come with Soriano hitting leadoff. I don't believe we have another good leadoff option. Nobody knows if Ryan Theriot is even a solid everyday major leaguer, much less a leadoff hitter.

I know people will bring out their career OBP's, but we did just add a guy who put up a .357 OBP last year, .351 OBP, and a .380 OBP (though in limited games). And this isn't counting in another aquisition in Ramirez who will give you a .350 plus OBP, and Lee who we didn't have for basically the entire year who will be good for .360 plus (conservative). Add in Barrett who's good for .350-.370. Murton who's good for .350-.370. I'm not thinking OBP will be as big of a problem as it was in previous years. The problem is, most of the guys you mentioned were on the team last year, and our collective OBP was bottom of the league. Most people don't feel DeRosa is likely to repeat his last year performance (I'm sure hoping he does, but I can't argue that he very well might not). His career OBP is more than 20 points lower. Soriano's career OBP also sits under the .330 mark. That leaves few options to pull us up. A solid season from Lee would seem to be our best chance at improving those OBP numbers. Maybe his presence can kick start a few other guys as well.

Time will tell whether he knows what he's doing. Agreed. They were in a position to be very good with an addition to the roster here and there. They still can be, but if they don't make the necessary moves to be competitive this year, Williams is going to look pretty bad with these moves. Detroit has improved their team this offseason. Proof is the WS ring. There are no lucky WS championships. You win it, you've proven yourself. Cub fans may not like that because it's the WS, but believe me if the Cubs won one and people called it luck, we'd be crying foul. So let's be intellectually honest with ourselves, and admit Williams got it done, so he gets the credit. What happens if the team that won the world series improves significantly in the offseason and then doesn't even make the playoffs the next year? Would you then call it luck? I never call winning the World Series luck, no matter what. And my argument is, neither should you----or you risk being intellectually dishonest. Because you know damn well if someone else called the Cubs lucky for winning it, you'd be upset. Any arguments to the contrary are just fans being fans. Why because you say so? That's a poor arguement... No, because I've seen this board after someone disses the Cubs.

The Vikings and Giants were both winning teams when we faced them. And there's only 5 winning teams in all of the NFC, and we've beaten the one of those that we've faced, so it's not like anyone in the NFC has faced a lot of stiff competition. Not to mention that if the Giants and Packers hadn't played us this year, they'd be at .500 Ok, I'm reaching here.. Giants were the sure super bowl pick according to ESPN when we faced them. Afterwards, they went into a downward spiral from which they never recovered. And guess what? The same happened to Seattle. They've never been the same since we destroyed them at Soldier Field. A division winner in name only.

Well it'll make sense when it comes to you. You know, usually when someone discredits a statistic for some reason you're supposed to change the argument. All you did was take the same statistic and show it to me in a different form. It's like you saying that Carlos Lee hits 50 homers per 800 ABs. And then I say that there are other ways to grade a hitter's performance than home runs, then refute my argument with, Carlos Lee hits homers at a rate 25% better than league average. It's the exact same argument and my previous point remains. ERA has little to do with ERA. I wouldn't say a guy with an ERA that's probably going to be five has much if any "production." And yes, Guzman and Marshall can certainly produce the same. Wait. Did you just discredit ERA as a worthwhile stat and then use it to make your point? :shock:

Why is Suppan the tipping point? He's not all that great. If the Brewers can't get Sheets back on track, their rotation will have issues that Suppan certainly can't fix. Much the same as the Cubs if they can't get Prior on track.

Time will tell whether he knows what he's doing. Agreed. They were in a position to be very good with an addition to the roster here and there. They still can be, but if they don't make the necessary moves to be competitive this year, Williams is going to look pretty bad with these moves. Detroit has improved their team this offseason. Proof is the WS ring. There are no lucky WS championships. You win it, you've proven yourself. Cub fans may not like that because it's the WS, but believe me if the Cubs won one and people called it luck, we'd be crying foul. So let's be intellectually honest with ourselves, and admit Williams got it done, so he gets the credit. What happens if the team that won the world series improves significantly in the offseason and then doesn't even make the playoffs the next year? Would you then call it luck? I never call winning the World Series luck, no matter what. And my argument is, neither should you----or you risk being intellectually dishonest. Because you know damn well if someone else called the Cubs lucky for winning it, you'd be upset. Any arguments to the contrary are just fans being fans.

They always do something later in the offseason. It's not a bad guess.

Just because that's the average market price doesn't make it a good idea. The idea is to go cheap at certain spots by using young guys so that you can spend the extra cash on real difference makers. Suppan is not likely to be one of those. Yep, and I never said it was a good idea.

Time will tell whether he knows what he's doing. Agreed. They were in a position to be very good with an addition to the roster here and there. They still can be, but if they don't make the necessary moves to be competitive this year, Williams is going to look pretty bad with these moves. Detroit has improved their team this offseason. Proof is the WS ring. There are no lucky WS championships. You win it, you've proven yourself. Cub fans may not like that because it's the WS, but believe me if the Cubs won one and people called it luck, we'd be crying foul. So let's be intellectually honest with ourselves, and admit Williams got it done, so he gets the credit.

This is the pitching market. If you want even a mediocre starter, it's 10 large per year and that's the starting point. Suppan is mediocre, maybe slightly less. BOOM! 10 mil/yr. It's automatic. Marquis got 7mil/yr because he's below average. So we know what the SP market is. It's insane, but it is what it is.