soccer10k

Comedy on NSBB. Neifi gets brought up and a huge argument ensues. It's like clockwork.

I'm not all of a sudden saying he's a great 1B. Remember he's only substituting, he's been good as far as just helping us win games while Lee is gone. I don't want him to become a 1B. :) I'd prefer your second scenerio. I want TWalk at 1B and JHjr at 2B. I want to give Hairston some major palying time at 2B to see if he can recapture any of his 2002-2003 offense. He said he feels great and is ready to contribute. Now's his chance to prove it. I just don't think Mabry is going to put up very good #'s at 1B. I think the combo of Walk and Jerr will give us better offense than the combo of Mabry and Walk. And we need as much "O" as we can get. Walker isn't great at 1B but we will be able to survive with him there.

I agree with the no strikeouts thing. But, and I think somebody might have used the word already, Neifi is a backup. Last year he started but he was supposed to be a backup. So it's like somebody filling in. Jacque and Patterson were starters. I personally tend to hold the starters to higher expectations than I do backups.

That's just stupid to start Rusch. Why not start your best pitcher so far on normal rest? Baffling.

I wouldn't call the Reds "an otherwise great team." I agree with lousy starting pitching, but they don't have a bullpen. Offense is great though.

This will be the 3rd day in a row they've discussed Maddux :D Maddux is on toss up. Also they just showed Z breaking the bat again. That will never get old.

Not to be nitpicky again Fred, but the first stat you have shows the Cubs having played 20 games and the second you have shows we have only played 17 games. The Cubs have played 18 games. Like last time, I may be misinterpreting your stats. Definitely looks like a bug in the program. Oh well..... back to old drawing board. edit: seems like both stats should be 10-3 and 1-4. Now, to find where bug is !!! I have the Cubs at 10-1 when they score 4 or more runs and 1-6 when they don't. I have the Cubs at 10-2 when they draw two or more walks and 2-4 when they don't.

This is starting to remind me of '89 more than any other year because they're getting it done playing a few younger guys and getting production from some no-names. Plus Zimmer really had the horseshoe that summer. Seemed like everything he tried worked. That was a fun team to watch. In '89 Jerome Walton broke camp with the club as a rookie and hit lead-off hitter. Dwight Smith got called up about a month into the season and platooned in left with Lloyd Freakin' McClendon, Maddux was in about his third season, Grace was in his second or third. Third base was shared by Vance Law and Angel Salazar. Sutcliffe was in the rotation but I can't remember who the other three starters were. HAHA. Lloyd McClendon. One of the best headlines I ever saw was a few years ago when I was visiting my grandparents in Minnesota. I picked up the sports section in the summer and one of the headlines read "McClendon Steals First Base." I'm thinking how on earth did somebody steal first base. He was managing Pittsburgh, got angry over a call and ripped the first base bag out from the ground and carried it away. It was awesome.

Nice =D> The best thing about Betancourt's single was that Ozzie intentionally walked the previous batter to get to him. That was the other reason I bought MLB.TV. I was just sitting at my computer and I noticed that the game was still on so I watched the bottom of the eleventh. It's really nice being able to watch any game you want.

I saw that and I couldn't believe they screwed that up. ESPN idiots.

Cincinnati being blacked out for you is weird. I live about 7 hours from Los Angeles and 8 from San Diego but I'm not blacked out on those games. I only get the A's and Giants blacked out.

I was quite pleased with how Z composed himself. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come.

Excellent. Let's see what he can do.

That's a strategy that some managers/coaches try to employ. You always hear of basketball coaches purposefully saying the right things to referees to get themselves tossed in hopes of firing up their team. They usually figure that the team can't play any worse so why not get tossed. Same thing in baseball. Either to fire up your team or make the umps thing about certain calls. Definately an interesting strategy though.

Very insightful. It's the gist of the original post. There is some merit in the thought that it saves starters pitches, but Dusty has been given decent pens in the past and still abused his starters and relievers to oblivion. Obviously a good pen is better than a bad one, but is it any more important than the difference between a good starting rotation and a bad one? A good lineup and a bad one? No, in fact it's significantly less important. It's great that our pen has been solid so far and looks to continue to be that way, but it's no different(possibly worse) than if we were more skilled in other areas and weaker in the pen. I may be wrong on this, but I would think it would be much more demoralizing for a team to lose a lead late and have their bullpen blow it than to just have the starter pitch horribly. As I said, I may be wrong in assuming this and either way, a loss hurts, but personally I think that if you are going to lose, it's better to just lose early than lose a heartbreaker in the end. You tend to remember those heartbreakers more, at least I do as a fan. I'll never forget a Sunday Night game in 2002 I believe against the Cardinals where we were leading 9-4 going into the ninth and the Cards scored six runs in the bottom of the ninth, capped by a no doubt Edgar Renteria 3 run homer to win 10-9. Maybe that's just me. I do see your point though. My main reason for doing this was to separate the bullpen debate from the Jacque Jones thread. And I always appreciate insight from the Tiger.

Hey if we have to have two Cubs on the DL, might as well be them. I mean, it could be worse, it could be Prior, Wood, Miller or Lee on there. Oh wait... :( If any two guys were going to be injured, I would care the least of the two did, especially if they hit each other. Then again Jones is playing a little better. Did he really injure his hand high-fiving guys in the dugout after his homer? How many people on this board would seriously be disappointed if Jones and Neifi would have collided on that play and been injured? I wouldn't have felt much for Neifi, but I'm giving Jones more time to turn it around and become a decent contributor.

Pictures anybody?

Very insightful.

I'm not going to lie, I did absolutely nothing to help the Cubs win today. I didn't do anything to help them lose either though. Which would mean I helped them win. But I said I didn't help them win. Wait, I'm confused. Screw this, I'm getting a beer.

I do agree that the Cubs need to work the count against Willis. They proved they can get to the Marlins bullpen and a lack of a left handed reliever isn't going to help them at all.

At Wrigley the Cubs haven't done much against the D-Train. He's 2-0 with a 1.01 ERA in his career. Frankly, I don't care if they beat him or their bullpen. Just win. I love the Cubs Huh. I thought we hit Willis pretty well. We do. He's 2-2 with a 4.64 ERA, .299 BAA against the Cubs overall. But he does have nice stats in Wrigley. Your recollection, however, might be even more influenced by the beating he took from us in the 03 playoffs. I thought we had one or two good games against him in the regular season and that screwed up his ERA. I might be wrong though.

I'm going to criticize Jones when he's not playing well but I'm not going to criticize him any more or less than I would any other Cubs player. I'm going to give him his due when he gets a clutch hit or makes a good play and I will continue to hope for his success as a Cub. I understand why he feels this way and I think Cubs fans should do the same. If you are going to boo Jacque then you had better boo Aramis just as much because he is hitting just as bad, if not worse, than Jacque currently is.

I started this thread based on the following quote: Now, I know that a good bullpen isn't going to win a World Series for you just by itself. You have to have a good team anyway. But I firmly believe that having a good bullpen is a key to winning. I also thing that if we had our 2006 bullpen back in 2003, that we would have had a better chance to win than we did for a few reasons. 1. With a good bullpen, Baker could have taken out his starters earlier in games during the year and used the pen a little more often and could have spread out the appearances more. I don't like Farnsworth, but he had a decent (not as good as 2001 though) year in 2003, but he and Borowski were the only relievers I trusted. This year I have complete faith in Dempster, Eyre, Howry, and Williamson and if Ohman can return to his 2005 form, I'll have faith in him. That's a big difference. By taking out his starters earlier during the season in 2003 that would have led to... 2. Wood and Prior not being drained in the NLCS. It was obvious that they had run out of gas and if you take off an inning a week, that's about 30 less innings on the season. Then maybe Wood pitches better in Game 7 than he did. And even if Wood and Prior are tired... 3. Dusty has faith in his bullpen and has numerous choices in the eighth inning of 2006 if he wanted to do so. Under the circumstances, I think Dusty made the right move in Game 6 by sending Prior, our ace and Cy Young candidate, out for the eighth because he was better than anyone in our bullpen. But I wouldn't hesitate to put in Howry or Eyre in that situation. But would you put Alfonseca in the game there? How about Remlinger? Absolutely not. The bottom line is, I can't even count how many times our bullpen has choked away quality starts by our relievers in years past. Did Hendry make the best offensive moves in the offseason? No. But he deserves to be given his due for putting together one of the best bullpens in baseball this year and I guarantee that they will save the team numerous times this year. If we make the postseason, I don't think the bullpen will be the sole reason that happens, but I guarantee it will be a big part especially with Lee going down. Bottom line, a good pen is more valuable than one might think.

I'm starting a new thread talking about the importance of a bullpen.

Not to be nitpicky again Fred, but the first stat you have shows the Cubs having played 20 games and the second you have shows we have only played 17 games. The Cubs have played 18 games. Like last time, I may be misinterpreting your stats.