Transmogrified Tiger

When people see Derrek Lee hitting home runs they say "that's really good", and everyone agrees so there's not much discussion. If someone says that "Juan Pierre is a terrible player", there's going to be more disagreement, and therefore more discussions.

Yes, it's probably some sort of an anomaly considering how far we're into the season. This also ignores the fact that Pierre has been beyond terrible at getting on base thus far. It's been what, 5 games since Lee got hurt? And again, Pierre isn't getting on base to wreak havoc and distract pitchers or whatever. And what's the deal with the condescension?

cubs as a team, home= 323 obp/420 slg cubs as a team, away= 317obp/415slg educated. I don't see what that proves. Pierre's legs are what gets him a lot of infield singles. Cold weather hurts that aspect of his game, big time, which isn't the case for the majority of the team, which doesn't largely depend on speed to get a base hit. I don't get it. Pierre's not getting thrown out by half a step in half his at bats, he's just making outs all over the place.

Relievers are wildly unpredictable.

Why would the weather have a tremendous impact on Pierre's game? He beats the ball into the ground the majority of the time, and hits very few flyballs that would be significantly altered by the wind.

Down to a .285 OBP.

Looks like the under by an hour.

He's a left handed hitter, there's no outs, stop plz

It's true.

Bunting with Barrett? Seriously?

He beat Restovich in an arm wrestling match for the spot in the lineup. He cheated though, forced it to be a left handed fight.

Lost in all of Pujols' celebration was Edmonds diving (unecessarily?) to stop the bat, then beating said orphan boy with it before breaking it Z-Style and handing him the knob end.

Strikeouts, it's the only reason. EDIT: I shouldn't say only, but it's the biggest reason by quite a bit.

What a huge save on that PK.

Looking at his game log it looks like it came in AB #33.

never

They are both bad, but having played sports all my life, I disliked leading the whole game only to lose in the last few seconds more so than playing the giant with no expectations to do well. That's different than what's being talked about. Tim's talking about if your own team is bad, not if the other team is very good. To attempt to compare across sports, compare it to having a very poor goalkeeper in Soccer or hockey, not going up against a juggernaut.

If the situations are comparable, let's reverse them. Pujols hits a home run in a game he's losing, and pumps his fist as he leaves the batters box. Zambrano K's the last hitter of an inning in a game he's losing, then tosses his glove into the dugout and walks/jogs off the mound.

Very insightful. It's the gist of the original post. There is some merit in the thought that it saves starters pitches, but Dusty has been given decent pens in the past and still abused his starters and relievers to oblivion. Obviously a good pen is better than a bad one, but is it any more important than the difference between a good starting rotation and a bad one? A good lineup and a bad one? No, in fact it's significantly less important. It's great that our pen has been solid so far and looks to continue to be that way, but it's no different(possibly worse) than if we were more skilled in other areas and weaker in the pen. I may be wrong on this, but I would think it would be much more demoralizing for a team to lose a lead late and have their bullpen blow it than to just have the starter pitch horribly. As I said, I may be wrong in assuming this and either way, a loss hurts, but personally I think that if you are going to lose, it's better to just lose early than lose a heartbreaker in the end. You tend to remember those heartbreakers more, at least I do as a fan. I'll never forget a Sunday Night game in 2002 I believe against the Cardinals where we were leading 9-4 going into the ninth and the Cards scored six runs in the bottom of the ninth, capped by a no doubt Edgar Renteria 3 run homer to win 10-9. Maybe that's just me. I do see your point though. My main reason for doing this was to separate the bullpen debate from the Jacque Jones thread. And I always appreciate insight from the Tiger. I don't think you're wrong. I think it's safe to say our loss to the Reds earlier when Rusch was crushed was much less painful than the Marlins loss to us last night. And as Brinoch said the bullpen makes up 26-28% of the complete team. That's significant. A bullpen probably throws about 35% of the innings, and does a minute percentage of the fielding for the team. That means that 65% of pitching, nearly all of fielding, and all of hitting are separate from the bullpen. There's something to be said for the high leverage innings that make up that 35%, but the point is they aren't evenly distributed. A pen loss may be more devastating, but you're likely to have less of them since they compose much less of the team.

Very insightful. It's the gist of the original post. There is some merit in the thought that it saves starters pitches, but Dusty has been given decent pens in the past and still abused his starters and relievers to oblivion. Obviously a good pen is better than a bad one, but is it any more important than the difference between a good starting rotation and a bad one? A good lineup and a bad one? No, in fact it's significantly less important. It's great that our pen has been solid so far and looks to continue to be that way, but it's no different(possibly worse) than if we were more skilled in other areas and weaker in the pen.

A good bullpen is better than a bad bullpen.

You know what would make it easier to fill out the lineup? Never considering Neifi to start.

We are awesome.

Is that why he doesn't give autographs? Wow, that's mind-blowing.

When you've just finished dominating a team in every facet of the game like Neifi did tonight, you deserve to let it show a little bit.