Transmogrified Tiger

Hooray. Nonononono, you don't need any speedy hitters at all. It's a luxury and you are overrating it's value. WAY down the list of things you look at when determining batting order. Thing is, Walker is a superior hitter to Cedeno in every aspect of the game. Again, we want Walker getting on base and hitting for extra bases, not taking hittable pitches so Pierre can risk an out with his less than amazing stealing prowess, not bunting or grounding out on purpose to advance runners.

You are right, last years season is nothing to be ashamed of, but his walk rate in '04 was not a ton better than '05. His .099 IsoD in '04 is noticeably better than the .077 he put up in '05.

Yeah, a couple weeks I thought. There was another thread when it happened somewhere.

God forbid it would be a move that would hurt the team. I wonder where Mike is going to play when he's not catching? Well, those are ROTOworld's comments.

Moore had a pretty good year last year, putting up a .281/.358/.485/.843 line at 21 in a pitcher's league is nothing to be ashamed of. He can improve upon that if he got his walk rate back to '04 levels. The thing is, he set a new high in IsoP and had a very high BABIP to go with it. In order to avoid some regression, he'll need to make better contact. So, the difference comes down to walks and better contact, neither of which will be impacted by ballpark.

LeBron James is good at basketball.

From that point on, he was .260/.277/.378 in the 1 and 2 hole, .271/.295/.380 overall.

Unless you are Texas, or the opponent is Baylor, there's no team in the Big 12 that can say they "have no buisness losing to" on the road. The teams are just too close to each other. If Texas wins tonight, there's only going to be two teams besides them with less than 3 conference losses. That's 8 teams hodgepodged with 3 or 4 conference losses. That said, the last 3 games have sucked for Mizzou. Hopefully they can get up for the Texas game. For clarification, I said, ".....probably had no business losing to..." and I still stand by it. Yes, I know the game isn't played on paper, but Mizzou has more talent than Nebraska and I bet looking back two weeks ago you thought that winning at Nebraska was something more probable than possible. I don't see Nebraska just being down right unbeatable at home this year. If Mizzou could beat OU in Norman, why wouldn't you consider yesterday's loss a game Mizzou probably should've won? Sure, it's more winnable than the OU game, but it's still a road game against one of your bigger rivals. Everyone in the middle of the B12 is on a similar plane of talent, and winning on the road is difficult, yet possible because of it. I thought we could've won, but I'm not disappointed that we didn't. The way we got to that loss on the other hand, and the last 3 losses for that matter, I'm very disappointed with.

No, not really. It does underscore, however, what a poor decision Baker made every time he batted Neifi either first or second in the order, which he did 382 times last season. Ouch. Does anybody understand why didn't he play Hairston in the lead-off spot more often? Too bad Hairston couldn't man the SS position last season. Here's hoping Pierre in the lead-off spot will make a difference. Neifi had 335 PA's in the 1 or 2 spot after April(date selected because it removes an abnormal hot streak from Neifi, and I'm not sure when Lee started hitting 3rd. If anyone can find that out I can recalculate from that date). He hit .253/.268/.350/.618 in those PA's. That's unacceptable from any spot in the order(Also of note, his overall numbers in that span: .262/.284/.359/.643). Isn't it also unacceptable to pick and choose which portion of a player's stats you want to include in the debate? He still helped the team win the games in which he hit well, right? I mean we all know that Neifi isn't very good with the bat, but does that mean that when he actually does do well it doesn't count? Come on, let's be fair to the guy. I said before that if anyone can find when Lee started hitting 3rd, or if Fred can isolate games that Neifi hits 1 or 2 with Lee hitting 3rd, I'd do the numbers from there. I know Lee wasn't hitting 3rd to start the year, and my recollection was that it took a little while for him to move to that spot. Dusty didn't see Hairston as an option for SS. Whether it was because his defense would have been too poor, or he wasn't thinking outside the box, or he just plain didn't like Hairston as some have thought, I do not know.

No, not really. It does underscore, however, what a poor decision Baker made every time he batted Neifi either first or second in the order, which he did 382 times last season. Ouch. Does anybody understand why didn't he play Hairston in the lead-off spot more often? Too bad Hairston couldn't man the SS position last season. Here's hoping Pierre in the lead-off spot will make a difference. Neifi had 335 PA's in the 1 or 2 spot after April(date selected because it removes an abnormal hot streak from Neifi, and I'm not sure when Lee started hitting 3rd. If anyone can find that out I can recalculate from that date). He hit .253/.268/.350/.618 in those PA's. That's unacceptable from any spot in the order(Also of note, his overall numbers in that span: .262/.284/.359/.643).

This is exactly why I wanted to get a SS, since replacing the entire OF with quality would be next to impossible. That also would've allowed Cedeno to slide into Neifi's role, eliminating his presence.

that game was at hawkeye, no? Correct.

Sidney Ponson or So Taguchi, whichever is still up there.

After looking at the schedules I don't really care who wins, I just wish evil upon Cartier Martin and Richard Roby. you had to look at their records to know this was an irrelevant game? No, both have similar schedules going forward, so it doesn't matter to me which gets their 3rd B12 loss. My motivation in rooting for either team is for Mizzou to pass them in the standings. LOL! You're in big trouble if you're chasing those two powerhouses! These are trying times, that's for sure.

After looking at the schedules I don't really care who wins, I just wish evil upon Cartier Martin and Richard Roby. you had to look at their records to know this was an irrelevant game? No, both have similar schedules going forward, so it doesn't matter to me which gets their 3rd B12 loss. My motivation in rooting for either team is for Mizzou to pass them in the standings.

The Cubs pen had an ERA of 4.24 last year, tied for 9th in the NL. A 4.00 ERA would've put them alone in 8th last year, between San Fran's 3.98 and Pittsburgh's 4.06. Another interesting note. Aside from the two big pitcher's parks(Washington and SD), the bullpens with the best ERA's pitched the fewest innings. That's not suprising, considering when you have a lot of IP from your pen, it's usually because your starters stink, and middle relief isn't ever good. Which begs the question, if you want to improve bullpen performance, are you better off improving the amount of innings your starters are able to go(whether it's via new players, lack of injuries, new training methods or philosphical approaches) or getting new relievers(especially given the wild variation in relief performances)?

After looking at the schedules I don't really care who wins, I just wish evil upon Cartier Martin and Richard Roby.

The Cubs pen had an ERA of 4.24 last year, tied for 9th in the NL. A 4.00 ERA would've put them alone in 8th last year, between San Fran's 3.98 and Pittsburgh's 4.06. Another interesting note. Aside from the two big pitcher's parks(Washington and SD), the bullpens with the best ERA's pitched the fewest innings.

Unless you are Texas, or the opponent is Baylor, there's no team in the Big 12 that can say they "have no buisness losing to" on the road. The teams are just too close to each other. If Texas wins tonight, there's only going to be two teams besides them with less than 3 conference losses. That's 8 teams hodgepodged with 3 or 4 conference losses. That said, the last 3 games have sucked for Mizzou. Hopefully they can get up for the Texas game.

The disabling of the search is by design. Tim has said once he's able to archive some old posts to cut down on the size of the database, he can reintroduce the search function.

whew, dodged a bullet without Davis.

I agree to an extent. But I would never build a team with walks as my centerpiece. I would much rather have a hit than a walk. Like I said, the best case if to build up a player's pitch selection so they don't end up chasing pitches six inches above their head ala Corey Patterson. Corey's problem wasn't that he didn't take enough walks per se, it was that his pitch selection was crap, which lead to less walks and less hits than he should have had. I never said I'd rather hit than walk. When addressing the problems this team has, it's pretty clear what the team needs. Since you can't plan for timely hitting, and considering the Cubs were 2nd in both AVG and SLG but 9th in runs, it's a very logical conclusion to what's missing. Also, food for thought: MLB Walk leaders Boston Philadelphia NY Yankees Cincinnati Arizona MLB Runs Scored leaders Boston NY Yankees Texas Cincinnati Philadelphia

The timely hitting was there, Jim. The guys who draw the walks in front of timely hitting were not. I'm not so sure that the timely hitting was there. We left a lot of runners in scoring position including a number of basesloaded situations IIRC. It's difficult to have timely hitting when there are not many guys on base to create timely hitting in the first place. Walks are fine but I'd rather have a team that relied on timely hits. You can't build a team around telling guys to walk. You can just try to stress pitch selection, which should lead to better hitting and more walks. EDIT: I wouldn't be surprised if we were in the top five for runners left in scoring position. That happened all the time last year. You cannot rely on timely hitting. You can't get "timely hitters". Everyone would like to come up with the timely hit, but you're just rolling the dice to see if you come up with success. When you build a team that can take a walk, not only do you have more opportunities to come up with that hit, but you aren't as dependent on the luck outside your control.

The A's got Bradley for pennies on the dollar. They got Milton plus another solid bench player in Perez for someone who amounts to Brandon Sing that's 11 months younger.

That puts Walker where most figure he'd be, below average but not at the bottom. Can someone point me to any place where PMR is contextualized more? I understand DER v. predicted, but what does that difference mean in relation to runs allowed?