Transmogrified Tiger

Juice was 6/9 and was looking pretty exceptional before he got hurt. Juice wouldn't have fumbled twice and wouldn't have thrown that pick in the end zone at the end of the game. And I told you that Missouri wasn't going to blow out the Illini :lol: And if Gary Pinkel wasn't an ass, it wouldn't have been close. Doesn't matter. A win is a win, regardless of how ugly it is. When we ran the ball twice in a row on 2nd and 3rd and 1, I was speechless. [semi-irrational rant to crazy talk depending on who's reading]Also, to play blind homer who didn't have much replay benefit, did Mizzou get hosed several times during the game? There were two 3rd down plays that it appeared were caught and then the ball came out after they were down, but both were ruled incomplete. I also thought it looked like Daniel's arm was coming forward on the fumble, we got shafted several times with bogus Pass Interference calls, and U of I didn't get 2 Delay of Games called on their last possession.[/semi-irrational rant to crazy talk depending on the reader] Williams and Daniel both gave textbook examples of why QB's need to slide. In Daniel's case he was already 5 yards past the first down marker, just go to your knee already and stop giving me heart palpitations.

There's a difference between your two pitches being fastball-change or fastball-curve, and your two pitches being fastball-slider.

Too many walks, no third pitch. The large difference between Santana and Marmol is Santana having one of the best changeups in the game and Marmol not having one at all. EDIT: Very well thought out post though.

WHIP over 1.50 and absolutely ridiculously terrible K/BB, what else needs to be checked? He's awful. He was awful last year with an ERA of nearly 5, he was over 5 this year until he started getting lucky in August. He still can't strike anybody out, he's walking more than he strikes out and giving up too many baserunners. He's awful. Again, he's a number 3 or 4 starter if you compare him to his peers. That's not awful. This is pretty simple, I don't understand what's so hard to understand about it. No, he's not. You can't say he's a "3 or 4 starter" by counting up his rank without noting there's not nearly that many qualified starters. He's 79th of 86 qualified in WHIP, 86th of 86 in K/BB, 103 of 103 in K/9, 87 of 103 in OBP against, 72 of 103 in OPS against. Awful.

I think we should let Marshall spend September continuing to be one of the top 4 starters in the rotation, then leave him in the rotation for the playoffs, as opposed to letting inferior players like Marquis or Trachsel take all those meaningful innings.

Re-drafting everything not a possibility?

Braun has my undivided disdain until he quits the Albert Pujols act and starts hitting .280 with a sub-.900 OPS like he should be.

I'm getting some recollection that Prior has(or had) that position, am I crazy?

Roast still has another pick whenever he wants to take it.

Then you aren't looking at this the least bit rationally. Hendry gets crap because he makes crap moves. How else do you barely break .500 over 5 seasons with a top tier payroll? Steve Trachsel is a terrible pitcher. He was decent from time to time earlier in his career, but he sucked last year and he's sucked this year. He was destroyed late in the Mets postseason run last year, because he sucks. He's walking a ton of guys and not striking out anybody, and he's giving up a considerable amount of hits. He's been lucky in August that his ERA is as low as it has been. Steve Trachsel is not a terrible pitcher. I wish, for once, that you'd drop the hyperbole. Opponents have a near .800 OPS against him the past 3 years. I'd say that's pretty terrible. Okay... if you look league wide, an 800 OPS against would rank Trachsel 75th in baseball, which would make him a number three starter. So unless every single 4th and 5th starter in baseball is "terrible", then no, Steve Trachsel is not a terrible pitcher. For pitchers with at least 100 IP.... Trachsel is dead last in K/BB, behind such legends as Joe Kennedy and Mike Maroth as the only players with a K/BB below 1. Trachsel is bad.

We're calling Kentucky and Alabama good teams now?

Umm, okay. To answer the question, no, he won't get any votes. But we wouldn't be in first place without him. there are like 12 guys on the team without whom the cubs wouldn't be in first place. Marmol, Zambrano, Hill, Lilly, DLee, Ramirez, DeRosa, Theriot, Soriano... who else would you add to that list? I hate Win Shares, but to make it simple I used them. Marmol is tied with Floyd and Dempster at 7 win shares. The players with more are Ramirez, Lee (1), Soriano (2), DeRosa (3), Zambrano (4), Theriot (5), Jones(6), Hill(7), Lilly(8), and Marquis(9). Marshall would probably be in front of him if he had been with the MLB club all year too, and Howry is right behind him. So, there's 12 guys you could make a case for.

Agreed on all points, just to add that I saw that happen to Fielder too, or it might've been another one since I thought I remember him popping up. Either way, reinforcing that Fielder isn't immune to getting himself out even when he's obviously being pitched around.

Not to pick on you, Tim, but this gets brought up a lot when talking about Kendall. Nobody seemed to care when Barrett was on the team and couldn't throw anyone out or call a good game. Back then, the majority of the board seemed to think, "Who cares about the defense, his offense is well above-average." Now, with Kendall exceeding expectations with the bat, his defense gets brought up as a reason to bench him. Don't really understand it There wasn't a good defensive catcher winning the AAA MVP with a dominate offensive season when Barrett played here. There was no alternative, starting Blanco everyday wasn't an option. There's also the relative awfulness of the defense we're talking about. People got pissed at Barrett because he made the occasional dumb decision and didn't throw out a lot of basestealers(~20% overall as a Cub). Kendall for whatever reason is physically incapable of throwing out many basestealers, and that knowledge has a tangible effect. Barrett had his worst season of his career throwing out baserunners, and caught 16% of 39 attempts in 52 starts. Kendall has started 32 games, and has caught 7% of 43 baserunners. We're giving away baserunners into scoring position more than once a game with almost no chance of throwing them out. And when you consider that Kendall is far from a guarantee to be even a positive offensive player going forward, and we have a guy known as a defensive catcher putting up a 1.000+ OPS in AAA, there's really no question about the decision.

He'll probably be taking a RB, right? He's got every other starting position and 3 WR. I'll go ahead and take Ben Watson and Jerricho Cotchery, Roast can draft twice now.

33 times with 0 or 1 days rest compared to 13 with 2 or more. 22 outings of more than 1 inning. 16 innings per month which correlates to 96 relief innings over a season. Why are people pretending Marmol isn't being pushed to the limit? If he is not, then no reliever ever gets pushed to the limit. Because he's not being "pushed to the limit", that's really disingenuous wording. There's a very large difference between warming up, throwing 15-25 pitches in 1+ innings of work, followed by 1-2 days off, and warming up, throwing 10-15 pitches in an inning or less for 3 out of 4 days. He's been starting for his entire career, so it's not like he's approaching a threshold he's never reached. He even started right up until he got moved to the Chicago pen, another reason that he's fine with the workload. 4 IP per week is not going to ruin him, not even close.

Marmol's thrown a couple more innings than you'd like this month, but I'm not overly concerned about his usage. He hardly ever pitches back-to-back days(and the rare times he has his second outing has been something like .1 IP) and very frequently gets multiple days off between outings.

I'd be nice if the Cubs could recognize and appreciate lightning in a bottle for what it is, if only this one time.

I PMed him when he was online last night/early this morning, I figured he would've picked by now.

my brother-in-law. if you're a poker fan, this might be one to catch on tv. harrington and David Pham are playing heads up and the final 18 action was pretty intense. Cool. Good for him.

How do you/we know who this is?

Am I the only one not impressed by those numbers? Any of you minor league guys able to tell us more about him? Also, why call him up when Gallagher is fully capable of making a spot start? Hart has been pretty solid across the board this year at Tennessee. At Iowa he had a better ERA but worse peripherals.

How many teams?

Do it Do it Do it Do it Do it Do it Mike Shanahan has one goal in life, and it's to ruin the fantasy teams of people who own his running backs.

[-X Some did. quite a lot actually Heck, Truffle was calling for it for like 2 years.