Transmogrified Tiger

So, if it was his throwing shoulder, he'd be going under the knife right now? That doesn't sound too promising. Yeah, I don't get that one. I'm guessing they mean the wear and tear of throwing would eventually force this into a surgery issue. Which also begs the question, wouldn't a Right handed swinger be putting just as much use into the left shoulder as a right handed thrower?

Do you think the high-fived when they passed each other? "Cubs players tear labrums during salutation"

What are you basing that on? Fergie put up some pretty sick numbers from 67-72. I don't have the numbers in front of me - I will post them tonight Fergie's best three consecutive years(he had a couple others juust better than his worst of these 3: 1969: 126 ERA+ 1970: 133 1971: 143 Zambrano's last 3 years: 2003: 136 ERA+ 2004: 165 2005: 131

There's something to be said about being efficient, but let's not pretend that strikeouts are a bonus. A pitcher can only control so much, and striking people out is the best he can do in that regard. When you start pitching to contact, you open up a lot of variables outside the pitcher's control. I'm not saying that you try to strike out every hitter, but when you have the stuff conducive for it(and possibly stuff/control NOT conducive to hitting spots and getting poorly batted balls), K's and power pitching should be the route taken. As far as pitch counts go in general, there is no magic number of pitches a pitcher should go over, that's been said. There's exceptions on both ends of the spectrum(Livan, the aforementioned Lieber), but generally you're opening yourself up to injury the more pitches you throw, because the more pitches you throw the more likely your mechanics will break down. That's the thing. One day Zambrano may be focused and still be going strong with good mechanics at 110 pitches, another day he may have had a rough night of chatting online and starts losing his arm angle at 90 pitches. Now, as this applies to Baker, he pretty much ignores common sense in this matter. People who are much better at identifying mechanics than me(UK for example), have pointed out when one of our guys is losing his mechanics at a lower pitch count, and when he still looks pretty good at a high pitch count. However, Baker has continually pushed the envelope. There's no sense in sending Zambrano out there to rack up 120+ pitches when we're winning in a blowout. There's something to be said for making sure he gets his work in, but we could find multiple examples of unnecessarily sending starters out for an extra inning when it's not needed. Add in the fact that we carry a 12 man pen where it appears that someone always gets lost in the shuffle for extended periods, it's even more inexcusable to risk the health of one of our prized arms. Ack, sorry about the length, just wanted to address the various topics brought up.

What are you basing that on? Fergie put up some pretty sick numbers from 67-72. Adjust for league/era. Jenkins' best three years were back to back, but they weren't as impressive as Z the last 3 years.

NONONONONONONONO

Lol @ jinxes. Bringing them together just encourages them to multiply.

With our pitching we only need a decent offense!

You know what injury threads bring? INJURIES Find last year's thread for more verification

Modzilla is a friend to all.

Delete this thread ASAP

What I want to know is the thought process that leads to "I'm going to register at a Cubs site and make fun of their misfortunes", especially when most of the people here are cynically making fun of it themselves.

Zambrano/Guzman/Pawelek/Marshall/Hill, let's go for it on the centennial anniversary.

Maybe it wasn't so bad after all that Hendry had an abomination of an offseason and lowered my expectations.

Bold prediction: Duke doesn't make the second weekend.

I disagree with this argument 100%. What did the Cubs draw pre-98? And what was their highest selling year? '04, when playoff expectations were at a peak. The Cubs haven't gone more than 2 years since '98 without fielding a winning or playoff team (98, 01, 03, 04). A few more years like last year - maybe just one or two more - and all of a sudden it mightn't be so hard to get Wrigley tix again. There's often a few years lag between the onset of losing and an associated drop in attendance (see Chicago Blackhawks - remember the roar?). I'm not saying the Cubs must have known Prior was hurt before tix went on sale. But it's certainly not implausible. But we aren't talking about the future ticket sales, we're talking about this year. Whether Prior was hurt or not, the Cubs were going to sell tickets, lots and lots of them. Will Carroll's source on Prior's shoulder problem also tipped him off about the Achilles, so it's hard to believe this was just a lucky guess on Carroll's part. You can argue about why the Cubs lie, but it's plain that they do in fact lie. I was only responding to the people who claimed the Cubs did this as some sort of scam to sell more tickets.

If Korea beats Japan, all the US has to do is win their game -- no tie-break is needed to decide who advances. If Japan beats Korea.... we need that to be a high-scoring game. Yep, if Japan beats Korea we need either: Japan to give up 7 runs(6 ties them with the US) Korea to give up 8 runs(7 ties them with the US) If either team ties the US, it goes to earned runs. Japan is the only one to give up an unearned run so far, so if the Japan-Korea game has no unearned runs, Korea and US would go to the batting average tiebreaker.

I disagree with this argument 100%. What did the Cubs draw pre-98? And what was their highest selling year? '04, when playoff expectations were at a peak. The Cubs haven't gone more than 2 years since '98 without fielding a winning or playoff team (98, 01, 03, 04). A few more years like last year - maybe just one or two more - and all of a sudden it mightn't be so hard to get Wrigley tix again. There's often a few years lag between the onset of losing and an associated drop in attendance (see Chicago Blackhawks - remember the roar?). I'm not saying the Cubs must have known Prior was hurt before tix went on sale. But it's certainly not implausible. But we aren't talking about the future ticket sales, we're talking about this year. Whether Prior was hurt or not, the Cubs were going to sell tickets, lots and lots of them.

Lavin just made fun of Bill Walton during the play-in game. My respect for him has now multiplied by a magnitude of 50.

I don't know what your definition of significant is, but I think they'd definitely sell less tickets in that scenario. Like Jon outlined above, it'd be a drop in the ocean. It's next to impossible to get tickets to see a particular starter pitch, so even if people did buy tickets for the exact purpose of seeing Prior pitch, they were in for a crapshoot anyways. Not that I think that knowing about this before would've significantly impacted ticket sales, but there's another way to look at this. The overall ability of this team to compete is definitely hurt by injuries, especially to one Mark Prior. Some people (maybe not a significant amount) would be soured on seeing the team, period, with this type of news, regardless of who would be pitching the day they'd be going to the game. That would hold more weight if the Cubs' ticket success was linked to them winning, but they sell the tickets regardless of the team's prospects for the year.

I don't know what your definition of significant is, but I think they'd definitely sell less tickets in that scenario. Like Jon outlined above, it'd be a drop in the ocean. It's next to impossible to get tickets to see a particular starter pitch, so even if people did buy tickets for the exact purpose of seeing Prior pitch, they were in for a crapshoot anyways.

Hm. They did it with Wood. At least in that case they had a doctor's assurance that he couldn't further damage it, as backwards as that sounds.

Did anyone even see him throwing? I wouldn't put it past them to have lied about that too. Yes, I know The Score reporters in Mesa saw him because they talked about it. Hasn't Miles also seen him? There's pictures in the ST picture thread of him throwing.

If the Cubs came out and said "Mark Prior is hurt. We don't know how long he'll be out, or when he'll be facing hitters, but he's not alright.", do you really think the Cubs would sell significantly less tickets? I mean, let's think for a second people.

That's ridiculous.