David

Looks like the real issue might be that the O's think Jones is damaged goods. They believe he has a degenerative hip condition and they're trying to squeeze more out of the M's.

The last thing I want is for the Cubs to pick up a player more suited to the 8-hole than Ryan Theriot.

No, I'm pretty sure the insiders were full of crap. Yea, you're right. It's not like any other deals by the Baltimore Orioles recently were being reported as done or almost done by legitimate news outlets only to wind up mysteriously muddied up in a flurry of denials and odd half-truths by the organization.

Er, no? I'm pretty sure the Figgins rumor originates from a Kaplan report on WGN Radio. I know the Burnett thing is more than just pure speculation, too, I just can't remember where it came from right now.

Maybe the "insiders" weren't so full of crap, after all, and the miscommunication has got more to do with the incompetence run amok in that front office...

He's really reminding me of Jerry Krause. How the hell is the player pulled from his winter league team in a championship game and informed that he's headed to Baltimore for a physical when there is no deal?

Petco is like Coors Field for pitchers. It's the most extreme pitchers park in baseball. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor - Take a look at the bottom of that list... Also.. http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/SDP/attend.shtml - Below 100 = Good for pitchers... Anyway, that stuff aside, take a look at Greene's splits. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/splits?playerId=5797 2007 Home - .216/.258/.412 (AVG/OBP/SLG) Away - .288/.322/.519 Pretty substantial, right? Let's see if it was just a fluke in 2007 or if it has held true before... Three-Year Splits (2005-2007) Home - .227/.273/.389 Away - .273/.328/.500 Again, pretty substantial. As for how the big pitcher's park hurts his OBP, it's pretty simple. He's an extreme fly ball hitter. He gets more hits and home runs on the road and therefore has a higher batting average on the road. You'll notice his isolated discipline (OBP-AVG) is pretty constant from home to road. He's drawing walks at more or less the same rate, he's just hitting better. Thus, the higher batting average on the road inevitably leads to a higher OBP. Hope that helps. I don't know as much as a lot of others on here, but I tried...

It's funny... lately it seems like there's a new breed of clueless baseball fans that is a little different from before. They value OBP very highly (which is a good thing, at least), but everything else is the same. It's like they caught on to the OBP bandwagon because it's really starting to get out there (on all the TV graphics and stuff), but they still loathe strikeouts, don't know what OPS or SLG is, overvalue speed and basestealing, over-value defense, care too much about batting average, insert whatever other wrong old school ideas... etc. It's sort of interesting, actually. I wonder how THAT sort of fan feels about, say, an Adam Dunn...

Yea, that's what we're doing. I'm getting the feeling that Deuce is 13 or 14. I remember responding pretty much the same way on like AOL message boards at around that age when all of the conventional wisdom baseball crap I thought I knew was brought into question. We should probably go easier on him... :?

LOVE THIS. If you guys were smart you would read it more carefully where I put "since it shows what kind of player they are." HR's and SB's are comparable depending on the player. For instance Greene is a power hitter thus he hit around 28 HR's and had around 4 stolen bases. Theriot is a speedy guy meaning he hit around 4 HR's and has about 28 SB's. See how they are comparable. I'm not saying I would take 28 SB's over 28 HR's, but im saying thats the type of player they are. Greene has a good amount of HR's for the type of hitter he his, and Theriot has a good amount of SB's for the type of player he is. Why is it ok to say that HR's and SLG matter but OBP and SB's dont??? Who the ____ decides that that is more important in baseball? I completely disagree. I think OBP is just as important as stuff like SLG. I think batting average is just as important as stuff like HR's. It's ridiculous to say it is not! The overwhelming majority of people on this board will agree that OBP is a very important statistic. Batting average is not. While I understand the point you are trying to make when comparing SB and HR, they just aren't comparable. A home run equals a run, whereas a stolen base does not, thus making home runs much more valuable than steals. SLG > OBP (slightly) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>BA>SB Flip OBP and SLG. The fact is there is basically little to no marginal difference in Greene vs Theriot's OBP. The difference in their slugging with Greene in Wrigley would be huge. In fact, I'd go out on a limb and say that Green's IsoP as a cub would be 2.5 times Theriot's. I could have sworn that I've read that SLG is marginally (theres that word again) more important than OBP in statistical analysis. I thought that was a critique against using OPS as a comparative tool. It's OBP that is more important and needs to be weighted more heavily than SLG in OPS.

Coming here and making posts that are fairly obviously wrong then insulting people that disagree with you isn't going to make you many friends. There's smarter Cubs fans here: http://www.forums.mlb.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?webtag=ml-cubs. You'll fit right in. I'm not sure even they would think Marmol is almost as valuable as Bedard.

Last Three Years... Player #1 .292/.357/.399 .756 OPS Player #2 .308/.371/.412 .783 OPS Tell me, which one of those is Kenny Lofton and which one is Chone Figgins, and what (other than age) makes Figgins a stud and Lofton not? (Neither one is a stud, FWIW)....

I wish signing Lofton were somewhere on the radar if we're trading Pie somewhere.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3218624 LOL... Angelos and that whole organization are such a joke

FWIW, I think in the scenario where Figgins and Roberts come here, you're looking at Pie being gone and Figgins being the everday CF, anyway, not super-utility. If Lee's power remains where it was in the second half of last year, I think you have a good amount of SLG in the lineup with him, Ram, Soriano, and to a lesser extent Fukudome and (maybe) Soto. I wouldn't mind seeing more, though. More OPS is always good.

I like how he lists two guys with RF as primary positions. I wish we could just put Soriano in CF and Murton in LF (assuming he doesn't go in the Roberts deal). 2B - Roberts LF - Murton 1B - Lee 3B - Ramirez CF - Soriano RF - Fukudome C - Soto SS - Theriot Damn the fact that Soriano hurt his hammy early last year and happened to be slumping at the same time he was playing CF. If we traded Murton in a package for Greene, though, and gave up Pie in one of the deals, I could live with some crap like Sam Fuld in CF.

I love when people bring "and the Cubs management agrees with me," into discussions. Obviously, Cubs management has been highly competent for years now. Everything they do is right.

Usually, you'd expect them to just say "no comment," or something, though. I suppose it's just splitting hairs.

Really? Like what? Whenever I have a pot luck, Ryan always brings a hot side dish and a dessert. Ronny usually only brings a small bag of cookies. If it's a picnic, then Theriot brings the Ketchup, Cedeno maybe the Relish and Mustard. Neither brings the hot dogs & buns. ...only further confirming just how worthless Theriot is. You don't put ketchup on hot dogs.

I'm just speaking for myself, but I always geek out a lot whenever pictures start showing up. I don't care if they are of Kevin Hart and Henry Blanco playing catch. I just like seeing the Cubs unis. Same. That, and 3 second clips of our pitchers on the mounds during the news. Hearing the ball pop when it meets the mitt owns. Last year we got the shaft with the early spring training pictures. Took forever to get Cubs stuff... Hopefully, with Fukudome on the team now, we'll get more stuff sooner.

MacPhail is starting to look as ridiculous as Jerry Krause.

This is pretty odd, considering a player in the trade (or at least, so the Seattle paper reported) flat out said he was headed to the O's, right?

Thank you... Been an irritation of mine as well, but thats how it goes. It's pretty funny. I saw a lot of it going on at RealGM when the Kobe rumors were flying around ("Will you guys give us Deng if we include Kwame?"). It's one thing to refer to your team as "we" as though you're part of the team, it's quite another (and moronic) thing to act like you make decisions for that team. This is the same type of attitude that results in people thinking "if fans stop going to games, the team's gonna have to really try to win the World Series!" The sooner the average fan realizes they have virtually zero impact on the organization for whom they cheer, everyone will be a lot better off. I have no problem with that.. That's only mildly annoying and I do it sometimes, too. What's stupid is saying things like "NO DUDE, oMGZ WE're NOT SENDING YOU PIE," when they obviously have no say in that. And how stupid does it look when the team does wind up doing that? I remember Boston fans telling me they wouldn't "give us" Nomar unless they got Clement back. Heh, right. Just say, "Yea, I don't see the Cubs (or even 'us') giving up Pie," or something. I don't know.

Thank you... Been an irritation of mine as well, but thats how it goes. It's pretty funny. I saw a lot of it going on at RealGM when the Kobe rumors were flying around ("Will you guys give us Deng if we include Kwame?"). It's one thing to refer to your team as "we" as though you're part of the team, it's quite another (and moronic) thing to act like you make decisions for that team.

I'm guessing you clicked the wrong quote button, but I'd say I can't disagree with this at all.