Transmogrified Tiger

Replacing Pie with Gathright is a lot more annoying with Bradley in the fold and DeRosa traded. Gathright's a good defender, but Pie is better and offers the potential to be an offensive asset if he needs to play every day(or at least in a platoon) if an injury happens.

Marshall had injury issues almost every season of his minor league career, 16 starts and 94 IP was his high despite being exclusively a starter. That doesn't mean he can't pitch 150 innings It doesn't mean he can't, but the fact that his career high is 147 (2006), that he's eclipsed 100 IP twice, and he's coming off a year where he threw less than 100 casts some doubt on how likely he is to reach it without problems with injuries and/or ineffectiveness.

Dempster made mechanical changes for this year, most notably the glove flip. I believe Ping pointed out something else too(maybe with pitch selection) that was different. Statistically, Dempster isn't quite as good as he was last year, but clearly improved from his previous self before making changes. "He's going to regress to career norms, he's never been this good" doesn't quite cut it for me as an explanation without anything else to explain him falling all the way back.

Marshall had injury issues almost every season of his minor league career, 16 starts and 94 IP was his high despite being exclusively a starter.

Alamo Bowl tonight. Please show why you're the biggest favorite of the bowl season, Mizzou.

The Cavs beat the Heat in Cleveland to go to 16-0 at home. They go to Miami Tuesday and host the Bulls later this week, but after that it's just two poor teams before the big game hosting the Celtics on the 9th. Having already lost in Boston, the Cavs will need that game to keep from losing the tiebreaker for home court.

5-2. And I suspect the answer you'll get is Manny and something about the pitching matchups, although we were 3-3 against Lowe/Billingsley/Kuroda in the regular season, with Gallagher getting 2 of those starts(1-1) for the Cubs. EDIT: And by 3-3 I of course mean 4-2, because it would take a real idiot to claim to lose 3 games against those guys and only 2 against the team overall.

It's pretty disingenuous to say 9 games in a row, the only hitter from 2003 on either of the 2007 or 2008 teams is Ramirez. And yes, I'd say that it's entirely possible to have 6 poor offensive games in a row, especially when you face good pitching. I don't think speed and athleticism is really the missing piece here, considering the Cubs have good speed and good athletes for the position around most of the diamond(Soto, Fontenot, and Ramirez are the exceptions that come to mind). Plus, the Rockies and Phillies aren't exactly loaded with speed and athletes all around the diamond, and the Rockies should be the textbook example that yes, it is possible to get flukishly hot or cold for a couple series at a time. If you want to say that a big left handed bat would make a nice difference in the playoffs as most (good) pitchers are right handed and the good ones can get our RH heavy lineup out, that's not a terrible argument(I'd also buy that failing to get out to a good start with the expectations of the home crowd in a short series is another factor). However, that's much easier said than done and comes with tradeoffs of health(Bradley) and/or defense(Dunn, Abreu). And most importantly, it's not indicative of some wildly flawed approach at building an offense. For years we've had crummy offenses, and now that we have a very good one we shouldn't go about making wholesale philosophical changes because we didn't do well in two playoff series. Related to the point, where's the call for a different philosophical approach to building the rotation and pen? The Cubs have only averaged 2 runs per game the last 6 playoff games, but they're also giving up 6 runs per game over that timeframe.

Isn't that a large part(no pun intended) of what they got him to do?

UZR has Taveras as an average defender, PMR has him a little above average.

If anyone would know, it's Buster Olney.

Hey guys, I wanted to let everyone in on a project I've been working on. One of my chief frustrations with the minor leagues is not having the information about players I'd like available to me. Not stats of course, a variety of sources cover that. What I'm after is the scouting information that can be valuable in following players. Do you know what secondary pitches Justin Berg has? How's Ryan Flaherty's bat speed or Joe Simokaitis defensively? I set out to see if I could create some sort of repository of information for Cubs prospects. It's far from a finished product(never will be with the nature of the information), but here's what I've got thus far: http://cubsminors.wikispaces.com/ There you should be able to find a player page for every Cub minor leaguer that played in the system last year, complete with links to their player pages at several different sites. In addition, you should see that scouting info compiled from searching the forums here, collegiate statistics if applicable, and other miscellany(how they fared in organization/league top prospect lists, etc). This is obviously a substantial amount of information, and I'm far from being up to speed with it. If you want to see the most complete pages, look at the people on the Boise roster. Many of them are missing collegiate statistics, but that's the only thing missing from them, as opposed to that scouting info for everyone else, and collegiate statistics for several other affiliates. With a wiki like this, community is very important. I'd appreciate your feedback on the layout and navigation. If you notice any typos or things like that, I obviously would like to know. And most importantly for the advancement of the project, pass along any info you see that would be applicable in the Wiki. Do that here if you like by PMing me or posting in this thread, or you can pop an email to the wiki at cubsminors [at] gmail [dot] com. I hope that this turns out to be a valuable resource, and hopefully this public announcement will help motivate me to keep up with the work that needs to be done. PS- I'm headed away from internet access until Saturday night in a short while, so I apologize if I'm not around to answer any questions or address any concerns. Several NSBB members have assisted with the project, so hopefully no one will be left hanging as they desperately seek answers about this instead of spending holiday time with their families.

I guess it's better I didn't see any of this. Did Illinois play much 2-3?

I would've thought the Pasadena county lockup had FOX. Must've been tuned to the Rose Parade.

Didn't stop you last year.

This statement loses a lot of meaning when it gets said 2-3 years in a row. Our mascot can dance whenever he wants.

I guess this is the place for this. Emphasis mine. http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/marty-brennaman-is-a-disgrace/

Here's a nice preview of Braggin' Rights(with the half foot of snow in Chicago I might get to see it!). The site used for those graphs, statsheet.com, is pretty nice.

Hes just about the most anti-Angel guy you'll find. High contact, low walk rate, situational hitting, sacrifices, all hustle...thats Dunn to a T, right? Latino too.

I'll take Gregg + Fuentes every day of the week over Wood + Wuertz/Ascanio/etc

Wake beat Baylor.

I'll be interested to see how Anderson approaches this one with regards to pressure(at least I hope so, I just found out I'll be going to a Christmas Eve Eve service tomorrow). Against the likes of Stetson and Arkansas Pine-Bluff he institutes the press since he knows he's the superior team and can just run them into the ground in every way. Against power conference teams a lot of times he's not gone full court except for strategic stretches, although there's almost always full court ball pressure. That pressure is what I'm referring to, while it's not likely to make Chester Frazier roll into a ball and cry, you can get a couple turnovers a game from relentlessly being around the ball and aggressively closing out passing angles in the half court.

One pick.

Like most Mizzou games, this game will hinge on rebounds and turnovers. They've had trouble giving up too many offensive rebounds this year, and Illinois has height on them in the post. On the other hand, Illinois hasn't been all that great at taking care of the ball, especially for a power conference team. If the on-ball pressure can lead to some easy baskets and fast breaks, then Mizzou doesn't need to do as well in rebounding margin. As for a prediction, I really don't have much idea since I haven't seen Illinois play and haven't really the last couple years, so I'm pretty unfamiliar with Davis, Tisdale, obviously Legion, etc. I think Mizzou will be alright(that is, not fighting to keep it a game) as long as one guard has a nice game like typically happens. Some nights it's been Tiller(though he always fills the stat sheet), other nights it's been Denmon or English, a couple times Paul has even done well for himself creating easy buckets for others. That happens and it's likely a possession for possession game down the stretch, and hopefully Mizzou will make some free throws and not choke it away like the Xavier game.

Like what?