Transmogrified Tiger

Winner.

Defense is a figment of imagination. TLR's holograms take care of stuff for the fans at the game, and TV magic does that for the people at home. PMR is a good metric, there are several others that have their own advantages. There was a thread UK started a little while back had some good info.

He is an abomination with a bat.

Both of those are pretty bad measures of defense. Neifi is a plus defender(although for his career he measures as nothing special at 2B), and his offense wipes out any of that advantage. There are scores of players that can equal Neifi's production, many with the youthful potential for improvement.

No.

Our starting center fielder, lead off batter is hardly underutilized. The Cubs played Walker at 2B last year, and hit him near the top of the order, yet he appears on the list because the organization doesn't value him. Murton made a Cards fan's list and he's our starting LF.

Baseball Reference says Salazar only played 26 games as a Cub in '89. He came over on August 30th.

That's true, and generally WSI isn't a great place for discussion.

Chris Duffy

The new stadium will be ready this year.

Man @tOSU, Mich, and MSU is going to be brutal. I hope we get 1 of those. yeah I think we can get at least 1, hopefully 2 of those. Izzo said that 5 losses could win the Big 10. If we win just one of those 3 road games and win every other game, that would put us at 5 losses. Even though we lost to PSU, I believe we can beat tOSU on the road as well as Michigan on the road. But isn't Michigan State done with all the "tough" road games? I think we'll (Illinois) beat OSU but lose in Ann Arbor and East Lansing. Wait a minute..... if Augustine doesn't have to guard Dials too much, I think we'll win. Michigan State still has to go to Iowa and Indiana, their schedule is absolutely brutal. I don't have much faith in IU even in Bloomington, but Iowa may beat them in Iowa City. I still think MSU is the team to beat. I'd much rather have their schedule than what we have. Three of our final four games are road games at Michigan, Minnesota (bad team but always 20+ pts. better at home) at Michigan State with a home game against Iowa somewhere in there. Plus, we're in Columbus on Sunday. Maybe the remaining schedule, but MSU drew the worst possible schedule this year. They only get Penn State, Minnesota, Purdue, and Northwestern once each, and get the rest of the top 7 twice.

502 PA's for Walton, 374 PA's for Smith

Man @tOSU, Mich, and MSU is going to be brutal. I hope we get 1 of those. yeah I think we can get at least 1, hopefully 2 of those. Izzo said that 5 losses could win the Big 10. If we win just one of those 3 road games and win every other game, that would put us at 5 losses. Even though we lost to PSU, I believe we can beat tOSU on the road as well as Michigan on the road. But isn't Michigan State done with all the "tough" road games? I think we'll (Illinois) beat OSU but lose in Ann Arbor and East Lansing. Wait a minute..... if Augustine doesn't have to guard Dials too much, I think we'll win. Michigan State still has to go to Iowa and Indiana, their schedule is absolutely brutal.

The what? The article where people couldn't tell if he was quoting Baker, or guessing what Baker would say at the convention.

MSU rolls Purdue at home. A trip to Minnesota Saturday is MSU's last game against the "bottom 4" of the B10.

I really hope MSU gets in the same regional as Florida.

Some numbers from 2005: (Pitcher: RSAA, ΔRE) Farnsworth: 16.0, 18.8 Lidge: 15.8, 16.4 Rivera: 25.4, 28.7 Eyre: 12.7, 26.0 Wagner: 24.1, 24.0 K-Rod: 12.2, 13.6 Gordon: 18.2, 9.8 Dempster: 12.0, 12.4 As you can see, most of these reliever's change in run expectancy was pretty close to their RSAA. (Where RSAA was league ERA-player ERA * (IP/9).) Still, Farnsworth looks to have performed a bit better in high leverage situations as his ΔRE was a few runs better than his RSAA. The only real outliers of this group are Eyre and Gordon. Eyre never seemed to give up a hit with someone on base, while Gordon seemed to enjoy padding opposing batters' RBI totals. jeebers, that's awesome

Welcome! Do you think you could resize your avatar a little bit? It'd be much appreciated.

I'll take that wager. PECOTA for Spivey: 248/322/410 WARP 1.7 PECOTA for Walker: 280/341/425 WARP 2.5 PECOTA for Hairston: 268/342/387 WARP 2.2 PECOTA for Perez 264/296/364 WARP 2.4 I like my chances that Walker and Hairston will play enough to have the Cubs 2b outproduce Spivey. Spivey isn't really that good. How about the loser buys the winner the cap of their choice? You look at PECOTA, but I think Spivey is severely underrated by everyone because of his last two injury marred years. All signs indicate that he's healthy headed into the season who knows how long that will last. I know you're fond of most recent 3 yr. avg. numbers, but for obvious reasons, that's not fair to Spivey. His career numbers including his horrific last two years look like this: .270/.354/.436. The guy just turned 31. I predict a repeat of Grudz and his two heavily injured seasons and then a full healthy season with the Cards (only difference is Spivey's 06 numbers will be better than Grudz's 05 numbers and while Grudz when playing was still solid where Spivey was horrid). That said I'll only take you up on your wager, if there's a void clause if Spivey's injured for three straight weeks. You can have the void clause only if I get one if Dusty insists on starting Neifi at 2b for more than 30 games. Hold on, now you're taking the this out of context of my original wager. My original wager wasn't based so much on Spivey being great or better than Todd Walker for that matter, but rather the mix of players and who would end up with playing time. Besides, you'd expect 30 games at a position for a backup at any position. 30 games is different than 30 starts, especially when there are two backups for Walker.

Again, 2003. Predictably, you bring up Game 6. Farnsworth wasn't great in Game 6. What is neglected is that Farnsworth was also very good the rest of the postseason. Game 2 of the NLDS, Farnsworth comes into a bases loaded, 2 out situation in a one run game, K's the batter to end the threat, then sets down the Braves in the 7th. Game 4 of the NLDS, Farnsworth comes into a 2 run game with a runner on first, one out, retires the side and the first hitter of the next inning without allowing a baserunner. Game 1 of the NLCS, Farnsworth comes in with Castillo on first, one out in a tie game. He retires the next 5 hitters, 3 via the strikeout. He also finished off Game 4 of the NLCS with an inning and a third, giving up only a hit. Our memories remember the bad much more than the good.

That's great. I can't wait until August when he starts to pitch well 8) If you read what I responded to, I wasn't talking about Maddux's mechanics. It was in reference to Maddux's influence. That's why I was referring to his team attitude. Read the post in its entirety before you quote someone out of context! Ken Looked like he agreed, but was just pulling your leg there. Hence the smiley.

Did you watch the 2005 postseason? Game 4 against Houston? What gets lost in the 18 inning marathon was the fact that Farnsworth came in with runners on first and second with no outs, got an out on a fielders choice but the runners advanced. Then he walked Luke Scott to bring up Lance Berkman. I called the Berkman grand slam right after ball 4 to Scott. Then, everybody knows all Farnsworth has is a fastball and Berkman launches it to left field for the grand slam. Even after that Atlanta still leads 6-5 and going into the ninth you think, with the 6-7-8 hitters coming up that Farnsworth is going to get out of it. He gets two outs and then gives up a home run to #8 hitter Brad Ausmus who had THREE HOME RUNS ALL OF 2005 AND JUST 71 IN HIS CAREER. This is your "very very good" closer? You've got to be kidding me. I was so happy to see Farnsworth go. Good riddence to him. The Yankees can have him. So, one incidence makes Farnsworth a choker? Is Brad Lidge a choke artist? Remember, I said Farnsworth in 2003, which was your original comparison to Howry.

I can't say that I could disagree any more.

Farnsworth in '03 was very very good. Better than Howry will likely be in '06. His "choker" label is a myth.

Welcome! The problem with comparing to the '03 team is two fold. First of all, the lineup isn't what won us anything in '03, it was unbelievable starting pitching. We may get that this year, we might not. Secondly, the '03 team wasn't a great team by any stretch. They didn't win 90 games, and barely hung on to the division when the contenders. Being as good as the '03 team may not even get you the wild card in '06. EDIT: If you're talking about '03 v. '06 performance, Farnsworth is likely to run circles around Howry. Borowski was better than Dempster will likely be too.