Transmogrified Tiger

I don't really think there's a ton of people waiting to post in a College Baseball thread in social. NSBB's population is overwhelmingly centralized to places with little following for college baseball and college baseball teams that aren't all that good. I mean, I guess I could make fun of Kansas' ridiculous hats and Snood could try and defend them(impossible, even for him), but there's not a ton of potential for dialogue, it'd just be people who care about one school recapping what happened to their school with very little back and forth that the Football and Basketball threads have.

Kosuke has reached base 13 times in the last 8 games.

That sounds about right.

Fading away, over turkeyglue. Amazing.

The Cubs have lost 5 in a row, 3 of them to the Cardinals, so no one is happy. Lot's of people are really irritated with the team, so let's look at exactly what's caused it. To begin, the starting pitching, which is convenient since it marks a full rotation. Harden: 6 IP, 4 ER, 6 H, 7/3 K/BB, 1 HR Lilly: 7 IP, 3 ER, 4 H, 5/3 K/BB, 1 HR Dempster: 7 IP, 2 ER, 6 H, 3/2 K/BB Marshall: 5 IP, 2 ER, 4 H, 3/1 K/BB, 2 HR Zambrano: 4.2 IP, 3 ER, 3 H, 7/4 K/BB That's an average of about 6 IP per start and an ERA of 4.24. That's not super, but far from a disaster. None of these games have been a blowout from a starter getting rocked, and with the exception of the most recent game with Zambrano coming off the DL, the starters haven't taxed the bullpen. Speaking of the bullpen, they've been excellent in this stretch. 11.1 IP, 2.38 ERA, and a 12/2 K/BB ratio. Blown leads haven't been the problem here. That leads us to the obvious problem of the offense. 7 runs in 5 games, and 2 in the last 4, won't win you games. It's just not going to. However, if there were a stretch where the offense would be to sputter, wouldn't it be this one? The offense scored 5 runs against Moehler and the Astros, not a bad showing. Since then, they've faced Jake Peavy, Chris Carpenter, Adam Wainwright, and Piniero. That's 3 top notch pitchers, and another who stuff-wise had the game of his life. The Cubs only had 7.1 innings against pitchers besides those 4. Looking inward, the offense isn't going to consistently do well against top shelf starts as they currently stand. They don't have their best and most consistent hitter, and while some of the slumping bats are starting to come around, it's been mitigated by having sinkholes at 2B and 3B. So what do you take from all of that? The Cubs picked a bad time to have to face Carpenter, Wainwright, and Peavy in succession, plus have an awesome version of Piniero before that(I know some will think that Piniero's outing is more the fault of the Cubs than his, but the point remains), especially since there were no super duper starts from the rotation to help steal a game. Considering that guys like Lee, Bradley, and Soto are making strides, Fukudome, Theriot, and Hoffpauir continue to hit, and the bullpen is in very good form, I don't think it's cause for huge concern. They really need to have a nice offensive day to get things going though, giving the opposing starting pitchers an abundance of credit loses a lot of steam if Josh Geer goes out and dominates tomorrow night. So if you've made it this far, the moral of the story is don't freak out. Losing without scoring runs sucks, but it's been to good pitchers and we haven't dug ourselves a hole in the standings. These types of aberrations happen, even to good teams.

Don't look now, but Angel Guzman is having an awesome year.

You can't extend your arms outward, especially to the side away from his body where he hit LeBron. And the Magic win because they hit an endless streak of contested jumpers, lame.

Lou don't be stupid, you don't squeeze on the first pitch.

It's the 4th inning, why is the infield in?

LeBron just does whatever he wants, it's ridiculous. Who else can go dunk, swat Dwight Howard, knock down 3 in succession?

What in the world was going through Bradley's head? He stared at Duncan for like 2 seconds after he caught it.

Al Hrabosky makes my ears bleed.

Crazy '08 by Cait Murphy

Playing even passable Major League defense is not easy. It's not something you can work on for a couple weeks and be comfortable with. Fox has been with the Cubs organization for 7 years, and everything from them(aka how they've used and promoted him) and everything from third parties suggests he is a horrible, horrible fielder. He's not going to become passable. If that's something that can be overlooked by an individual or Hendry, that's fine. But please understand that "if he could only be passable at 3B" is akin to asking Rich Harden to play 3B when he's not pitching "if he could just be passable or even mediocre with the bat for 3B".

Given everything we know about Vitters, I'm not super worried until he has a low walk rate and shows that he's not able to hit for a very high average at a given level. It'll obviously hinder him from being an elite hitter at the major league level, but if that's who he is, then that's who he is.

That's Z.

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2009/5/18/878676/who-made-their-1st-round-picks Comparing WAR for 1st round picks for the last decade, the Cubs are 13th.

I think I would go with Longoria.

Vitters' IsoP jumped like 40 points today, and he in all likelihood will get one more AB. Elsewhere, Starlin Castro went 2 for 4, Tony Thomas is 1 for 4 with a HR, and Maestri and Cales both had very nice relief outings. On a less happy note, Shafer got rocked.

I remember last year you kept defending Howry pretty hard too TT. Not really, but that's not relevant. Gregg is an okay reliever, and he's very inconsistent. The previous post is to remind people that for the last two weeks he's been awesome.

Gregg in the month of May prior to today: 7 G, 6.2 IP, 4 H(all 1B), 1 ER, 7/2 K/BB, .174/.231/.174/.405 against, 5 saves

hahaha Pence tried to throw it through the backstop, that was a world class overthrow.

geez that 3-0 pitch looked like something from a pitching machine

Just because you say it twice doesn't mean he did it twice.

yay we can't lose this inning