Transmogrified Tiger

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20051022/capt.mojf10510222104.nebraska_missouri_mojf105.jpg The hilarious part was watching the State Troopers take down people at random. They'd let a bunch of people by, then two minutes later they'd be tackling someone to the ground and handcuffing them.

Down come the goalposts! 41 - 24 Brad Smith with nearly 500 yards of offense! Defense shuts out Nebraska in the second half, Taylor picked twice, and sacked who knows how many times. Mizzou still in the lead in the B12 north, all alone if KU beats Colorado tonight. Did they come down?! Surely not. If so, I'm gonna have to head downtown right away and find the guy who's sawing them apart! Both of them, they were proceeding downtown as I left.

Down come the goalposts! 41 - 24 Brad Smith with nearly 500 yards of offense! Defense shuts out Nebraska in the second half, Taylor picked twice, and sacked who knows how many times. Mizzou still in the lead in the B12 north, all alone if KU beats Colorado tonight.

Yes it's possible for a player to make less through arbitration, but it can't be more than a certain percentage of a paycut(the number fails me now). Most of the time a player that would get that much of a paycut will be non-tendered to try and renegotiate at any price, since he's not that valuable to begin with. Patterson is an unusual case. He's put up acceptable production for his position in the past, but he was terrible this year. I wouldn't be surprised if he made less, the same, or more. I don't think you could expect Zambrano's salary to double, but my guess is that he gets a raise to the 5-6 million range. From what I have, Hairston is a free agent.

Mabry's done. He wasn't very good this year. Make sure the infield is good enough that Cedeno is the backup middle IF, Fontenot for the other infield backup(3B/2B). Sign Sweeney for 1B/OF, keep one of Patterson/Hairston, and get a RH power bat that plays a corner OF spot.

I've been pro-15/15 for a while, with one interleague matchup going on at all times. I'd have the previous year's WS participants, and runners-up, play each other early in the season. With the previous season's cellar dwellers facing off at the end. I've backed a 15/15 with an uneven schedule spanning both leagues and eliminating the DH.

I agree. Therefore, I'd like to see him become Arizona's.

No, Walker was a consistent all-star, but no one would call him one of the best players of the era. Plus Coors/steroids/whatever.

You know, it's too bad you couldn't get a community wide effort to ignore him. I think it would be hilarious to have that dude make a bunch of moronic responses like that, then have no one reply at all. Much more fun than typical bannination.

I'm sorry to hear you have a cold CFICT. Dusty sucks.

I'm not saying that the WC team isn't good. But we all know that postseason baseball plays by different rules than regular season baseball. It just seems like the WC teams are better suited to short series. Maybe that isn't as true for 7 games, but it is for 5. A WC team with 90 wins might play a division winner with 115, but that WC team has one lights out pitcher, say Jason Schmidt, and pitches him twice, wins both, squeeks out a third win, and bye-bye 115 win team. If the WC then goes on to lose in 7 during the LCS that seems like an injustice to me. The least they could do is make the divisional series 7 games. It might be a little better if the Divisional Series went 7 games, but you're still going to see upsets. A team that wins 115 games should be able to knock off a Jason Schmidt, and they probably should have one(or more) of their own. Bottom line is in a short(5 or 7) game series anything can, will, and has happened. Sanctioning the Wild Card team isn't going to change that, and isn't fair to them.

Come on, the Wild Card team isn't wildly inferior to the other teams that it should be a surprise when they upset them. They never hame home field, and they have to play the toughest schedule. I think that playing in more of those pressure games can be interpreted as a disadvantage too. You need to win a bunch of them to get in, and eventually the law of averages has to kick in. The argument doesn't make much sense at all to me. The playoffs by nature are going to cause some more talented teams to lose because of the series length. Just because there's been a recent stretch of upsets doesn't mean we should punish one of the 4 best teams in the league.

The Wild Card is already at a disadvantage by having the hardest road to the World Series.

Is that something a notice saying that if Glendon declines his player option, he isn't coming back?

I don't think it's a mistake to take chances on guys like that with creative contracts (Dempster). It's a mistake when you rely so heavily on guys with recent injuries, and don't have a decent backup plan. This is a contradiction to your other notion that Hendry is directly responsible for not improving the Chiacgo Cubs in 2004 and 2005 partially because of signing too many high-risk injury contracts, isn't it? There's quite a difference between taking a gamble on a middle reliever/setup guy who will at most pitch 70 innings, and a starting position player you are counting to play 140+ games without a serviceable backup. By nature bullpen arms are easier to replace, and it's more likely to get better relative performance from the guy filling in for him.

That's terrific, thanks for passing that along.

Edmonds has a "limited" no-trade claus in his contract. I also think his contract is up after 2006 (with a team option for 2007), so I wouldn't be devastated if the Cards try to get something for him. He'd be extremely hard to replace, however. What I have says he has a 23 team no-trade clause. Who knows who the 7 teams are he'd approve a trade to. We also don't know if he gets to change that list every year or if it's set in stone at the time of the signing.

Probably not. Here's the final ERA+ marks from BR: Clemens 221 Pettitte 174 Willis 153 Carpenter 151 Pedro 148 Others of note: Oswalt 141, Zambrano 131, Peavy 134 Santana led the AL with 153, followed by a Millwood/Buehrle tie at 143.

Cubs 2005 numbers, total and with RISP Total NL Rank RISP NL Rank OBP .324 11 .336 15 SLG .440 2 .414 7 OPS .764 4 .749 10 PA 6161 10 1605 15 Aside from the drop in slugging, it seems to be the problem isn't so much as a lack of performing with RISP, as simply getting RISP in the first place. Players and coaches who don't understand the value of getting on base lead to not having runners on base to drive in. I think performance with RISP is very much a problem. 15th out of 16 in the NL in OBP with RISP is a big reason for being 4 games under .500 But I do agree that the organizational hitting philosphy needs to change. How do you fix it though? There's no such thing as a guy who's a "good RISP guy". They call them "good hitters". Improving the offense as a whole will help the RISP woes, and that's about all you can do to fix it. With as impatient as we were at the plate this year, those numbers show we were even more impatient with RISP. Our OBP was 12 points higher with RISP, how were we even more impatient?

javascript:emoticon(':!:') Exclamation It works...but you have to delete a bunch of crap around it, I think. For the more obscure smileys, it's better than keeping the mouse over it so you can see what you need to type.

Hooray!

Cubs 2005 numbers, total and with RISP Total NL Rank RISP NL Rank OBP .324 11 .336 15 SLG .440 2 .414 7 OPS .764 4 .749 10 PA 6161 10 1605 15 Aside from the drop in slugging, it seems to be the problem isn't so much as a lack of performing with RISP, as simply getting RISP in the first place. Players and coaches who don't understand the value of getting on base lead to not having runners on base to drive in. I think performance with RISP is very much a problem. 15th out of 16 in the NL in OBP with RISP is a big reason for being 4 games under .500 But I do agree that the organizational hitting philosphy needs to change. How do you fix it though? There's no such thing as a guy who's a "good RISP guy". They call them "good hitters". Improving the offense as a whole will help the RISP woes, and that's about all you can do to fix it.

I don't think that's true. A pitcher can make a perfect pitch, but the batter still has the ability to do something productive with it. The batter has a slight edge from being the one who acts second. Whether that makes hitting more valuable or important, I don't know. Maybe in that situation the perfect pitch is a breaking ball in the dirt that the batter can't do anything with. There is no such thing as an absolute perfect pitch, only a perfect pitch in relation to what the batter is expecting/trying to do. The batter always has the ability to have the perfect response though, whether that response is taking a pitch for the ball, or hitting it 500 feet.

I don't think that's true. A pitcher can make a perfect pitch, but the batter still has the ability to do something productive with it. The batter has a slight edge from being the one who acts second. Whether that makes hitting more valuable or important, I don't know.

What if the team I like beat the team that played USC like that? And had as many losses as that team, and was ranked over 10 spots worse? Possible reason: Got smeared by Ohio State at home, and lost to Michigan (remember, the bad three-loss team that ND 'barely escaped') at home. Compare to Notre Dame getting rocked(similar in scale to OSU "smearing" MSU) by USC at Notre Dame, then losing agian at home to MSU. There's very little difference. Notre Dame has a tighter loss against a higher ranked team, and Michigan State has a win over someone who's ranked. Similar in scale? O$U won by 11. Not as close as a last second three point loss. If people want to look just at the record and not how ND got there (just because Pitt and Purdue are a combined 5-8 doesn't change the fact that ND destroyed them in their own places, and ND's two losses have come in overtime and with 3 seconds left in the game, both against ranked teams), then that is their business. Having watched every minute of all six ND games this year I feel there's no reason at all why ND cannot be considered a top 10 team. If we are going to credit ND's hanging with USC almost exclusively to a rivalry and to the home field, then where was this when Purdue and Pitt were getting smoked at home by ND and when UM turned the ball over three times in the red zone against ND? The OSU game was close til the end, the scale comment was in response to the hyperbole on your part. Of course Pitt and Purdue being terrible doesn't change the fact that ND smoked them. It does change the fact that smoking those teams implies that the winner is good. I never said to credit ND's hanging with USC entirely to homefield and rivalry, I said that it was part of the reason why I thought it was closer than I anticipated. It was never part of any analysis on my part towards ND. Right now Michigan, Michigan State, and Purdue are 7th, 9th, and 11th respectively in the Big 10 standings.