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champaignchris

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Everything posted by champaignchris

  1. champaignchris
    I don't think anyone was expecting him to hit 30 HR. I think people were expecting him to have a slugging percentage higher than Bobby Scales and Reed Johnson. I think Bradley got a bit of a raw deal in Chicago. I think the media went into the season with its preconceived story that Bradley would be a problem with the Cubs, and then proceeded to chase that story. Milton then handled it as poorly as anyone possibly could, turning things into a self-fulfilling prophecy. His relatively poor performance isn't why he's no longer a Cub. It's his churlishness. Personally, I didn't think that was a good enough reason to ship him away for a contract even worse than his and a player unlikely to make any significant (positive) contributions to the team. But if the linked article is actually the way he feels, then maybe I'm wrong.
  2. champaignchris
    Yes. Coming off the hand, it looks like it's coming straight for your head. The initial reaction is to back off the plate. By the time you realize it's dropping right over the plate, you can only lunge at the ball. Thus the "knee-buckling" curve ball. Now, most hitters who actually make it to the big leagues can pick up that it's going to be a curve from the delivery and release point and adjust. The traditional up and down curve ball is a slow pitch by big league standards and had a looping curve. Kerry's delivery on his curve was well-disguised, was a relatively fast pitch, and had a real tight, whip-like break.
  3. champaignchris
    He threw both. His slurve became famous after the 20k game, but coming into the big leagues it was the straight up-and-down curve that scouts raved about. Yeah. Find a highlight reel of the 20k game. I believe the second and 18th strikeouts are perfect examples. (It's amazing how many of the 20 were just fast balls that he blew by people.)
  4. champaignchris
    I read that quote on Strasburg's slider and immediately thought of Kerry Wood and that unbelievable curve he had when he came up in '98. It's was the old 12 to 6 curve, but it was going about 90 miles an hour. Jaw dropping. I don't know how right-handers even stayed in the box, let alone got up the nerve to swing at it. I hope Strasburg stays healthy and pitches very well against teams other than the Cubs.
  5. champaignchris
    Yeah. I thought he came over with Leon Durham in the Bruce Sutter trade. But I just looked it up on Baseball Reference, and it says he was a rule 5 draft pick from the Cardinals. That's a pretty darn good Rule 5 draft pick!!! 6 year starting catcher, two All Star games, a gold glove, and 122 HRs.
  6. champaignchris
    He's been awful these last two seasons. But up until then, he's generally been a mediocre verging on pretty decent starting pitcher, with a couple real nice years that no one noticed in baseball Hell (the Expos' last two seasons in Montreal).
  7. champaignchris
    It's not just that the NFL was first, it's that the NFL was first by about 15 years.
  8. champaignchris
    Odd to be coming up with this now. Four years ago, there was an 8 year streak where the two came in 1-2 each year. Since then, Toronto came in 2nd in 2006 and TB won the division in 2008. So Boston and NY have been 1-2 in their division 10 of the last 12 years. I don't think that's a reason for re-alignment. Heck, either the Cubs or Cardinals have won the NL Central for 8 years running, likely to be a ninth this year. Should we break them up, too? These things are generational. Go back 15 years ago and Baltimore and Toronto were the big players in the East. Things are much more likely to change than to stay the same. Basically, get back to us in another 10 years. If the trend's continued it might be worth considering.
  9. champaignchris
    Going 11-17 in August, when the team you're chasing goes 20-6, has a tendency to do that.
  10. champaignchris
    30-ish starts, 180-ish innings, generally keeps the team in the game for the first 6 innings. Everything else is gravy.
  11. champaignchris
    2700 hits, 11 Gold Gloves, career numbers that stack up very favorably to Aparicio, O. Smith, and Maranville (all HoFers)... If Ozzie Smith's in the Hall, I think you've got to put Vizquel in there. Now, if you wanna argue that Smith doesn't belong in the Hall either... Well, you might have a point there...
  12. champaignchris
    Why is almost everyone in this thread handing St. Louis the division? They're not quite Albert and the Seven Dwarfs on offense anymore with Matt Holiday, but still have some major holes, especially on the left side of their infield. Their third best offensive player is either a defensive catcher or a second baseman on the wrong side of 34. Franklin had a career year at age 36. He won't repeat that sub-2 ERA. The rest of their pen is solid, but not special. Wainwright and Carpenter are great pitchers with a history of injuries. Carpenter turns 35 in April and Wainwright has yet to prove he can pitch back-to-back 200 inning seasons. After them, they've got Kyle Loshe, Brad Penny - unspectacular innings eaters at this point in their careers - and... ? Mitchell Boggs? If (or perhaps, when) Carpenter or Wainwright go down, they will be in serious trouble. I see more questions on the Cardinals' roster than I do on the Cubs' roster.
  13. champaignchris
    Yeah. Under the Dusty and Lou regimes, the bullpen has generally been right around league average every year, except in 2007 when it was really good. It generally hasn't been the reason we've won or lost. Last year's disappointing season (and we have to remember they only won two fewer games than the division winner in '07) was all about an offense that scored 148 fewer runs than the previous season. That's just an astounding number.
  14. champaignchris
    I wouldn't go so far as "sucks," but they gave up way too many walks last year. Two of the main perpetrators - Heilman and Gregg - are gone, but Marmol and his 65 BB in 74 IP is back. If he can get his walk rate back to what it was in '07 and '08 he'll be fine. But right now, the scouting report on him should be, "Don't swing."
  15. champaignchris
    I'm a bit concerned about the rotation. If Lilly is slow coming back, Wells has a sophomore slump, and we can't find a 5th starter, it could get ugly. But that's a lot of ifs. More likely, we've got a solid starting staff. Hopefully it won't take a quarter of the season to figure out the bullpen roles this year and it doesn't take Marmol half the season to figure out where the strike zone is. I think Byrd and Nady are a step up from Bradley and Johnson. With Soriano rebounding at all the outfield should be improved. Hopefully Ram won't miss half the season again and Soto should rebound back to being at least an above average mlb catcher. We may still have a big black hole at 2nd, but with the improvements at other positions, it shouldn't be as noticeable. Basically, if we get 120 games each of career average performances from Ram, Fonzie, and Nady, 30 starts and career average performances from Z, Lilly, and Dempster, and decent years from Mormol, Wells, and Soto we should be pretty good. First or second in the division and in contention for a playoff spot. Other than the fact that this is the Cubs we're talking about, there's no reason for all these things not to happen.
  16. champaignchris
    Garciaparra had three incredible years, four above average years only one of which occurred after he turned 30, and then didn't play a whole heck of a bunch beyond that. He may have played in 14 seasons, but he really only played 9 seasons worth of games. If Albert Belle's prime was too brief, Nomar's certainly is.
  17. champaignchris
    His well-known reputation for good, wholesome living?
  18. champaignchris
    Dumb deal for the Royals but good for us that he's off the market. There are always mid-season trades...
  19. champaignchris
    I love Fergie, but I'm reminded of the old saying about lobbing projectiles and breakable edifices.
  20. champaignchris
    To ensure uniformity of the name when being reported on would be my guess. So all outlets call it "Twenty-Fourteen", rather than it being called "Two Thousand Fourteen" by some channels. It's to commemorate the uniform numbers of two Cubs greats. Ernie Banks (14) and... uhm... Felix Pie? O.K., maybe not.
  21. champaignchris
    This is the last year of his contract, isn't it? EDIT - He's due something like $13M or $14M, I think.
  22. champaignchris
    Zito's a mediocre #3 starter making elite #1 starter money. He's way overpaid, but will at least be taking the mound on a consistent basis and if not dominating, at least keeping your team in the game. There's no reason to expect that he can't keep giving you 180 IP and an ERA in the low 4's over the course of the contract. Soriano was awful last year. No question. The previous two years, he was overpaid but a pretty good run generator. There's a pretty decent chance that he has a bounce back year and then goes into more of a gradual decline than a free-fall. Of course, there's also a chance that he never OPS'es over .725 again for the rest of his career, but if I had to guess which of Soriano or Wells was going to do better over the remainder of their contracts, I'd go with Soriano. Wells has ranged from mediocre to awful for the last three years. You're paying him Albert Pujols money to put up Colby Rasmus numbers. Wells was 19th among all qualified CFs in OPS this year, didn't play enough games to qualify the year before that, and was 13th among qualified players in 2007. (In his last three years, Soriano was 14th, 6th, and 2nd in OPS among left fielders.) Wells is locked up for just as long as Soriano, but for about $10M to $15M more over the remainder of the contract.
  23. champaignchris
    Again, I don't understand why you let Harden walk if you're going to turn around and pay Sheets $10M for one year. Harden signed for $7.5M for one year with the Rangers. I understand not offering arbitration to Harden if you're not going to spend the money, or if you're going to spend the money on something obviously better or at a different position. However, signing Sheets cheaper than what it would have cost to keep Harden makes perfect sense.
  24. champaignchris
    I understand the bitterness. You take Jack Clark's career, or someone like Steve Garvey or Ron Cey, add steroids, and you've got Hall of Fame numbers. You've got a couple more All-Star games. You've got two or three more years of playing, which back then would have been a couple million dollars, maybe. We all know at the very least Canseco was using as of the late 80's. There's no reason why Clark couldn't have started using about the same time, too and prolonged his career a bit. But he didn't. And he feels like a chump.
  25. champaignchris
    This is a big part of my problem. You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to see something was off when you had 3 guys blow up the single season HR record in the space of four years with numerous other marginal power hitters in the 40's and 50's. But we were are enjoying the crap out of it, and I don't feel the least bit guilty about that. But then you have these sanctimonious douches in the media prattling on about how we were fooled and betrayed by these conniving cheats. After they, the ones who are supposedly paid to explore all sides of the issues, carried on like doe eyed school girls while it was all going on. Seriously, STFU. It reminds me so much of that scene in Casablanca, "I'm shocked, SHOCKED, to find gambling in this establishment!" "Here are your winnings, sir."
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