soccer10k

Agreed.

Heh. That Seinfeld episode was great as was this move by Vernon.

An outfield of Soriano-Jones-Floyd vs RHP/Murton vs LHP gives the Cubs a better chance to win every day than Soriano-Jones-Floyd.

There wouldn't be a point to taking out his best starts, because what you really want is a guy who consistently goes out there and puts up quality starts. I don't know that Marquis fits that description, but I find it reasonable to remove a few real stinkers and leaving his best starts in there as an evaluation tool. To look at it from an extreme, a pitcher who shuts out his opponent 30 times in a season, but has 5 starts where he gives up 30 runs each is actually a pretty valuable pitcher, even if his ERA is going to be way up there because of those 5 starts. Why exclude his 5 best starts if you are just attempting to see what his body of work looks like if you exclude a small handful of really bad games? Pitchers are going to have really bad games that are outside their norm, but they're also going to have really good games as well. If you want to exclude the 2 worst performances as some sort of an aberration, then the 2 best should be considered the same. It's not very often that a pitcher allows 12 ER in a game and it's even more rare that he has a performance like that twice in a season. This is beyond an aberration. That being said, I wasn't trying to justify Marquis' contract or say that without those two starts he was a good pitcher. I was simply showing how much those two starts affected his ERA for the season. His ERA jumps by 0.69 just by him giving up 5 runs in those games. EDIT: His 2006 season was flat out bad no matter which way you look at it.

It worked so well he got fired! That was my first thought as well.

Wonder if it hits 10 games then BB and Len will switch facial hair like they promised... Wait, what? I didn't hear about this, please explain.

If there's one argument I hate hearing right now (and will have to hear about for at least 3 or 4 more weeks - at least through the Western Conference finals) is that the NBA should reseed the teams. Now, I don't necessarily hate reseeding (though I wouldn't implement it), rather I just hate the reasoning some people are using. I've heard a couple times how horrible it is that the Suns and Spurs are playing in the conference semifinals and should be playing in the conference finals. Now, this isn't like Dallas and San Antonio playing in the conference semifinals last year after having the two best records in the Western Conference. The Suns and Spurs are the #2 and #3 teams and would have played anyway had Dallas beaten Golden State. Had Dallas advanced, nobody would be saying a single word about how it is a shame that San Antonio and Phoenix had to play in the conference semifinals. Also, the other reason why I don't want reseeding is it wouldn't be fair to the underdog. Hey, guess what #7/#8 seed, you just beat the #2/#1 seed in the first round and do you know what your reward is? The #1/#2 seed. Have fun. :thumleft: If a big underdog like the Warriors this year can actually pull off a huge upset like that, they shouldn't be penalized for it - which is essentially what would happen by making them play the Spurs instead of the Jazz (in GS's case this year).

I caught that too. Since when is a 2.82 ERA merely decent?

Wouldn't the Cubs have had to keep Hamilton on the MLB roster the whole year if they had kept him on the team. I'm guessing not too many people would have been pleased with that going into the year considering nobody had any idea he would hit like this.

Well they did win the World Series last year which means they should have a bunch of all stars.

Aside from Eyre and Cherry, the pen has been great. The strange thing about Cherry is that he's got the second best WHIP (1.07) by a Cub reliever this year - only Demp is better. Three of the four runs Ohman's given up came in the Cubs' 12-4 win over the Padres. Howry has been solid as well. Cotts, Wuertz, and Dempster have been great.

You can go a long way towards 90+ wins just by beating up on the crap teams and playing 500 against the good ones. Especially in the NL where there's an abundance of crap, and not a lot of the goods. agreed. Back to the old saying, "beat the teams you should". Last year's team sucked at that. It doesn't work when you're one of "the teams you should beat" I bet if somebody did a simulated matchup on a video game to predict the outcome of a game pitting the 2006 Cubs against themselves, the game would crash.

With no head-to-head games between the two teams, this will be tough to do but I would LOVE to see it happen. I'd be satisfied with the gap closing by a couple games.

really really glad I traded Carlos Lee for Andruw Jones and Jake Peavy. Stupid Astros fans :o :shock: Wow. I can't believe you pulled that one off.

come on, you know it will be. It seems like it always is. I think Bonds has already gone on the record stating that if he's close to the record while on a road trip he will wait until the Giants return to SF to eclipse the HR record. Classic weasel that he is, he won't have to be showered with "boo's" and instead be serenaded by the delusional SF fans. I'll be in the bleachers for one of the Giants games in July. Hopefully he won't be close so he plays and we can all deride him for the loser that he is. That's not surprising. I'm sure there's a ton of pressure by the Giants management because they brought him back this year for Bonds to break the record in San Francisco. The only other place I could see Bonds breaking the record is in Oakland. Other than Oakland and SF, I don't see him breaking it anywhere else.

Didn't someone go through Jason's game log for last year and determine he would have had a lot better numbers except for a handful of real stinkers? Granted, I certainly didn't want him on the Cubs and I'm not quite ready to step on the bandwagon just yet, but he has shown to be an effective pitcher at times in the past, even if it was 1/3 of an inning at a time. :D I certainly like what he's done so far. And I won't complain if he keeps it up. Well, he had the two starts where LaRussa basically left him out to dry because the bullpen was completely taxed from the game before. On June 20, Mulder only went 2 1/3 and the Cards lost 20-6 to the White Sox. The next day Marquis pitched and gave up 13 runs in 5 innings. On July 17, Weaver only went 4 innings and the Cards lost 15-3 to the Braves. The next day Marquis went 5+ and gave up 12 runs. If you take those two starts out of the equation, he ends up with an ERA of 5.13. If he only gives up 5 runs in each of those starts in the same number of innings pitched, he has an ERA of 5.33. While these ERA's certainly aren't great by any means, they're a hell of a lot better than the 6.02 he put up. BTW, as an extra little stat I didn't notice before, Marquis game scores for these two games were -11 and -7 for the two games.

Stupid Nationals.

I'll probably tune in via MLB.TV while I work on a feature. This is the longest Cubs winning streak since July 8 to July 15, 2005 (All Star Break in between) which was also five games. Of course, that 5 game winning streak was preceded by an 8 game losing streak. If the Cubs win, it will be the longest streak since they won 7 in a row from May 27 to June 2, 2005.

Well, you're officially on the hook for the loss.

Same here. I mean, how often do you see anybody get sent down directly from the MLB level to single A when their not injured? I'm guessing not too often.

he do your girlfriend or something? Quite an assumption you're making there Derwood saying that he actually has a girlfriend.

Damn.

Game 1 going down the the wire here. Jazz up 2 with 1:14 to go.

Warriors-Jazz should be starting in a few minutes.

That was Jermaine O'Neal.