David

I'm always gonna miss that Mark Prior. (and that Kerry, for that matter, but at least he's still here and supposedly healthy)... :cry:

I was at that Cardinal double header and the Moises Alou foul ball game. Also was at the JD Drew grand slam, Cubs comeback game.

Works much better with vol turned down and the Straight Lines (every 2007 Cubs video compilation's song) by Silverchair playing instead.

Des Plaines according to B-R. However, just because someone hails from an area doesn't necessarily mean they ever want to go back to that area. A significant part of my family still lives in the surrounding areas of Peoria, but a week long visit at Thanksgiving each year is about all I can take. I'm sure if your visit was closer to Chicago and not in the winter you'd probably mind it a bit less... :)

I'll likely be ridiculed for this, but here goes anyway... So, a message board poster has it right, and ALL of baseball has it wrong? Come on, it's really not too difficult to figure out. The reason that the 9th is a much more important role, and *usually* the best place for a closer is due to the fact that you are down to your final 3 outs, if any, by that time in the game. You give up the lead in the 7th, you still have 6 or 9 outs offensively. In the 9th, the game is over, or you have 3 outs to play with. That is INCREDIBLY different, and it's why great closers are hard to come by. Pressure is much different in that situation, and it's why guys like Farnsworth can be very good middle relievers and subpar closers. Okay, NSB groupthinkers, flame away. At what point do you think a victory is more in jeopardy and a run is more likely to score.. in the 9th, with a 1 run lead (basically the most difficult situation a closer will face), nobody on, and nobody out... or, say, in the 7th with a 1 run lead with runners on first and third and one out? Extremely myopic point of view. At what point are we more likely to score a run or two and take the lead? In a game where we have 3 innings (and therefore, an at bat for everyone in the lineup) or in the 9th inning alone? Coming back at that point in the game is highly unlikely anyway. I'd rather use the best possible protection for my lead when it's in greatest jeopardy than to sacrifice some of that certainty (i.e. using a lesser pitcher) because I'd have a better chance of coming back if I blew it that early. That's completely backwards and makes so little sense to me that it is making my head hurt. I'm pretty sure the numbers would back me up, too.

Why would he walk a lot more? The additional number of at bats he would get over a season would seemingly mitigate the number of times he leads off an inning. Furthermore, I would assume that pitchers would be much more likely to pitch to him if he lead off an inning than if there were runners on, assuming that the worst damage he could do would be a single run. I don't see how, over a the course of 600 ABs, the difference would be statistically significant. As far as I know, the only long-term study of the batting order issue was done by Baseball America, and I believe it was found that batting order is relatively insignificant. From what I remember, they basically advocated putting the players in order of OBP from highest to lowest, but seemed to say that in the grand scheme of things, there wasn't a significant difference regardless. Someone else could probably fill in the details better than me here. As long as you aren't doing something extreme and completely stupid like going from worst hitter to best. I just want to point that out before people start to nitpick and question it.

I'll likely be ridiculed for this, but here goes anyway... So, a message board poster has it right, and ALL of baseball has it wrong? Come on, it's really not too difficult to figure out. The reason that the 9th is a much more important role, and *usually* the best place for a closer is due to the fact that you are down to your final 3 outs, if any, by that time in the game. You give up the lead in the 7th, you still have 6 or 9 outs offensively. In the 9th, the game is over, or you have 3 outs to play with. That is INCREDIBLY different, and it's why great closers are hard to come by. Pressure is much different in that situation, and it's why guys like Farnsworth can be very good middle relievers and subpar closers. Okay, NSB groupthinkers, flame away. At what point do you think a victory is more in jeopardy and a run is more likely to score.. in the 9th, with a 1 run lead (basically the most difficult situation a closer will face), nobody on, and nobody out... or, say, in the 7th with a 1 run lead with runners on first and third and one out?

You would expect Hendry to say Roberts's name specifically? As for whether or not he's working on moves, he seemed to imply it pretty strongly to me in his comments about still wanting to improve this team before spring training or at least before breaking camp. He went on to talk about how much harder it is to make trades (compared to free agency) depending on your trading partner and pointed out how quickly he got deals done with Atlanta and Oakland (to me that implied, "It's the O's fault that this is dragging on so long, not ours," but I could be reading too much into it). They might not have shown that in the segment on SportsNight. Plus, when Crane Kenney goes on the radio and flat out says that Hendry is still working on deals for two higher profile players, I'd take that as a pretty strong indication that something is going on.

Meh, even if Johan gets what he's asking for, it's no match (overall) for the contract ARod got 7 years ago. And Hell, Michael Jordan got $30M/year over 10 years ago (granted, he was being compensated for years of being "underpaid," but yea).... These numbers shouldn't faze anyone anymore.

The mere mention of situational stats like that irks the hell out of me, and he rarely misses an opportunity to bring them up.

Yea, I defend Prior as much as anybody, but I'm not sure I see the vitriol in this one, either.

I hate how we have to keep hoping our GM puts together a good team in spite of himself.

Gotta love his answer to the OBP question. :roll: "blah blah blah on base percentage doesn't say whether a guy can come up in the 7th, 8th, or 9th inning and drive you in a run to win the game..."

ALW Los Angeles Angels Oakland Athletics Seattle Mariners Texas Rangers X (Comiskey) ALC Chicago White Sox WX (Wrigley, Comiskey) Cleveland Indians Detroit Tigers Kansas City Royals Minnesota Twins ALE Baltimore Orioles Boston Red Sox New York Yankees Tampa Bay Rays Toronto Blue Jays NLW Arizona Diamondbacks W Colorado Rockies W Los Angeles Dodgers W San Diego Padres W San Francisco Giants W NLC Chicago Cubs WX (Wrigley, Turner Field, Miller Park, Great American Ballpark) Cincinnati Reds WX (GABP) Houston Astros W Milwaukee Brewers WX (Wrigley, Miller Park) Pittsburgh Pirates W St. Louis Cardinals W NLE Atlanta Braves WX (Wrigley, Turner) Florida Marlins W New York Mets W (Wrigley) Philadelphia Phillies W Washington Nationals And for the heck of it... Montreal Expos W

because pitchers have egos and think saves mean something and you're going to piss off mariano rivera or trevor hoffman or whomever by bringing them into the game in the 7th while letting Kyle Farnsworth mop up in the 9th Luckily, we don't have any established closers on this team, so we shouldn't need to worry about that. If it were me, I'd leave Dempster in that role (and I know that's not happening), and that's more of a reflection of my indifference toward the closer role than any faith I have in Dempster. Let the big guns come in when it matters. Dempster is perfectly mediocre enough to get those final 3 outs. More realistically, I'd let Wood have the spot, assuming he can handle the inning load, (more for emotional reasons than anything else) so that he can have the glory of the saves and sort of bring his name back into the spotlight. Let Marmol and Howry come in in the actual tight spots. Again, no real logic behind it, because I'd rather have all three of them interchangeably used when available and rested for real tight situations. But the situation (both specifically to the Cubs and in the landscape of baseball and bullpen use) is what it is.

Chicago is the exception to the rule that is the midwest. To me, it's like saying Florida is part of the south.

Why people continually insist that you should put your best reliever in some of the easiest spots you would bring a reliever into is beyond me. The closer is up there with the leadoff hitter among the most overrated roles in baseball. They come in in the 9th, with a lead, often of 2 or 3 runs, and nobody on and nobody out. Meanwhile, you're bringing other (supposedly lesser) guys into tight spots with men on and often less comfortable (and sometimes no) leads. Where on earth is the logic?

Turn #2 into a trade for Greene instead of another righty reliever and you're getting somewhere.

In other words, it's in the Mets' best interest to sign him, so they will cave. It is not in Johan's best interests to sign unless he gets fair value. It's not in both their best interests. The Mets have little to no leverage. Johan can just wait it out another year in Minnesota and get a monster deal on the open market.

:shock: For once, I'm agreeing with you a little bit. I don't necessarily think that Soriano NEEDS to be out of the leadoff spot nor do I at all think he was the reason for the Cubs fizzling out in the playoffs last year. The Yankees seemed to do OK with him there. Granted, they haven't won any WS since 2000, but they made some deep playoff runs. I don't see any need for Nathan, though. We already have 3-4 pretty strong righty relievers, two of which are being paid pretty well.

I think Meph/Deucebaseman/Wrigley23 are all the same person. Possible...especially Wrigley23. If true, would be pretty damn funny.

You're pretty obsessed with this Santana thing, huh?

Tell sanchito that if he knows what is good for him, he best go run and hide

prove? i wish you graded my homework. "it's got numbers, well i'm convinced!" this tool is fun for discussion and comparison, but it's so divorced from reality that you shouldn't put too much stock in it's accuracy. last year's results had brad ausmus batting leadoff. good idea, give one of the awful-est hitters in the entire sport 140 more PAs. i know its en vogue for us to think conventional wisdom is always wrong, but imagine hitting your run producers at the top of the order, burying your speedy on base types at the end, giving your pitchers more ABs, and various other types of backwards strategies. you'll have managers asking players to do things diametrically different than they have the previous 10-20 years of their career and you'll breed a team of malcontents as a bonus to reduced offensive production. and don't the other sabermetric studies argue a minimal impact from the lineup order? this has a 100+ runs difference impact based on the batting order for the Cubs example. I'm not sure how any of this is a response to what I posted or how you could take what I posted as an endorsement of the validity of the tool. I'm not going to bother much responding to this post either except to ask if you realize the max run differential is between the extreme worst possible lineup against the extreme best possible lineup (which should be pretty obvious)? When lineup order is talked about or dismissed as making little to no difference, it should be understood that you're speaking within reason and you're not talking about having your absolute worst hitters at the top of the order and your best hitters at the bottom vs. the opposite...

Yup, I called this. :-"