Jehrico

Didn't see it...what happened?

I'm surprised EPatt made it, I didn't think he had that great of a year at AA.

That's not entirely fair at all and you know it. Dempster wasn't a closer his whole career. but he's been a pitcher his whole career. and not a very good one. i don't know why people expect some miraculous turnaround out of a guy becaues he's now pitching one inning instead of five. it's still the same pitcher. I think everyone knows that right now, he's not pitching close to that. Other than one other funky two week stretch earlier in the year, he's pitched much better than that. Dempster's problem isn't that he's good enough...it's that he gets in these funks that jump his stats up that he can't seem to get out of quickly.

Has anyone really taken the time to do a good lie down on how his performance varies with usage? Without taking alot of time to look real deep, it seems he started out the year pretty good, didn't get used for awhile, then stunk for a spell. He came out of it, had another decent streak, didn't get used for a while again, and now he's stinking again. I don't know if there's any correlation, maybe I'm reaching for straws. I just can't believe he's this bad. There has to be something else going on with him.

He was horrible during ST, and during his one or two appearances he had in April before being sent down, he looked like he hadn't gotten back on track yet. I don't blame them for sending him down, he obviously had something he needed to straighten out at the beginning of the year...but he fixed it within a few weeks in AAA and dominated out of the pen (dominated like Rich Hill was doing down there) from there on. But for some reason, they never wanted to bring him up, they left him down there FAAAAAAAR longer than was necessary. Oh, due to the timing of this thread, I thought something had happened. This is a topic of discussion for, say, I don't know, 2 months ago. I brought it up after seeing he had another outing with more Ks than innings pitched...there's nothing wrong with bringing it back up now, especially considering all of the pitchers we have had, and continue to put on, the DL.

He was horrible during ST, and during his one or two appearances he had in April before being sent down, he looked like he hadn't gotten back on track yet. I don't blame them for sending him down, he obviously had something he needed to straighten out at the beginning of the year...but he fixed it within a few weeks in AAA and dominated out of the pen (dominated like Rich Hill was doing down there) from there on. But for some reason, they never wanted to bring him up, they left him down there FAAAAAAAR longer than was necessary.

Can't do any worse than Dempster has been doing lately. I think we could have the next Rob Nen if we'd give him a shot.

Wuertz has been mowing the competition down as of late. Since being recalled to the majors, his ERA is around 1.7 with 26 Ks in 21 innings with a BAA below .200. This isn't any different than he was doing in Iowa after taking a couple of weeks to get his stuff back together. We all thought he was going to have a dominant year after last year, and he's doing it again, just most of it was in AAA. I can't believe that there's not another reason he took so long to get recalled to the majors when Aardsma, Novoa, and others got considerable opportunities while not doing nearly as well as him.

Barrett gets 10 days for punching another man in the face. Outside of a baseball park, that's assault. Young didn't go at the ump with that intensity. Instead he threw a bat. Big whoop. The only problem is he assaulted an authority figure instead of a peer. I guess that's worse...but only b/c the authority figures have the power to punish you. Wanna guess what Barrett's suspension would be if the Sox clubhouse got to pick the punishment? * Personally, I love that Barrett clocked AJ. The difference is, if you pretend both of them happening out of the park, if you want to make the comparison of Barrett's incident with assault, Delmon Young's equivalent transgression would be assaulting a police officer. I think that's a fairly significant difference.

I thought Riggs got shafted.

Is it just me, or does the concept of timely defense imply that there's also a good time to make an error when there is no one on base?

He's also 19. You're also discounting any possibility of him putting on any extra bulk/velocity. You're also discounting the learning curve. Right now, I agree, the stats do not support a strong likelihood of him keeping up what he's doing now as he progresses. But your analysis is entirely too one-dimensional. Your coin example doesn't relate to either side of the argument whatsoever, as there's far more variables than what you'll get out of a coin-toss. Your condesencion isn't making you look any smarter either.

Right or wrong, there are schools of thought that think college picks are considerably safer than high school picks. I don't know enough about Wilkins to say whether he's in that camp or not.

Welcome to the BABIP/xFIP/xDIPS world. I already backed up my remarks. HR/OFB rates are not consistent. They can be predicted relatively well. If the guy is giving up a lot of flyballs that aren't going for home runs, we can expect him to regress to the average. When analyzing minor league players it is imperative to look at everything in context. Take for instance the HR/FB rates. For Peoria this season the park factor for home runs per outfield flyball has been 1.05. This is in line with past season's HR park factors. In the majors, a flyball is a home run between 11 ad 12 percent of the time. Of course there are different figures for different parks. But if a player's HR/FB is way over their predicted figure, then it's flukishly high. Ditto for under. Over time it's going to regress to the main, just like BABIP. Now, in the minor leagues this is especially vital with leagues such as the California League where the offensive contexts are different. Along with Peoria the next two steps for Taylor will be pitching dominated leagues due to altitude and parks. This will surpress FB's. Now, the definition of a flyball may differentiate here compared to the ones that HBT uses. But here are the league averages for the leagues with Cub full-season affiliates save the PCL. I will put the IL because it doesn't have as many parks in the moutains: 6.9% Midwest League 8.0% Florida State League 8.7% Southern League 9.7% International League Remember, the Major Leagues are going to be between 11 and 12 percent. So it's a pretty linear progression moving up about 1 percent at each stop. 7 for the MWL, 8 for the FSL, 9 for the SL, 10 for the IL, and at least 11 for the NL. This is pretty rational. Obviously as you progress through the minors there is going to be a weeding out process, and your HR hitters are the best hitters so they'll survive the cuts. Also many of the players in the lower rungs are young and power is often the last tool to develop, so they strengthen as they progress through the minors. After the normalizing Scott Taylor's HR/FB rate for his home park we get a figure of 4.6%. This is way below the major league rate of 11 percent. This is something that IS a huge concern. It's already 2.3% below the league rate. There is no way humanly possible he keeps this up. He's not a groundball pitcher and he's not a strikeout pitcher. Look at his K rate, it's currently at 4.45 K/9. That's terrible. There are very very few pitchers in the major leagues that could survive for long with a K rate that low. The ones that do are extreme groundball pitchers - Scott Taylor is not one of those. Also, hitters become progressively harder to strikeout as one rises through the system. The K/9 rate in the Midwest League is 7.46 K/9. Again, that's a considerable figure which will more than likely only get worse. Sure he's got a good WHIP, but his HR rate is helping that. His BABIP is certainly helping that. It's 20 points below the league average. Again this should regress to the mean in time. If you want to factor in the extra hits and HRs his WHIP is over 1.30. Factoring in the HRs his ERA is well over 4.00. Keep in mind that the league ERA is in the mid 3's. He's fairly average there. Only two teams in the entire league have ERA's over 4.00. Scott Taylor has two things going for him, he's young and he's got decent control. I'm not even sure it's his control that's good. His stuff doesn't wow me. If you can't miss Low ****ing A bats you won't survive. Right now Scott Taylor's pitching recipe for success is pretty simple. Throw the ball down the middle. Let the weak strenthed Low A hitter hit it as hard as they can in the air, because well it's not going anywhere. I am pretty sure I backed up my assertions sufficiently. The Jaime Moyer comparison to whoever said it wasn't really good. When Moyer was in Low A his ERA was under 2.00 and his K/9 was over 10.0. I wasn't looking for a dissertation, and I'm not wasting my time reading all of that. I don't know why some of you guys feel like educating everyone who doesn't agree with you. It's like you said to open that post, HR/OFB rates are not consistant. You can't just go and assume changes to someone's stats because they lie outside the norm. You can predict with a probability (but not certainty) that someone will trend towards the norm in the future, but you can't just go and judge someone on what you think their stats should be without flukes. Some of his stats are promising, some others aren't. It'd be risky to bank on him keeping it up, but it wouldn't be unprecedented if he did.

I thought the whole "Hill needs to get away from Chicago" bit was just downright stupid. You don't make a comment like that without at least a short 1-2 sentence follow up.

I would have liked to have seen this pick used a few different ways, but obviously, since we were missing 2,3, and 4th round picks, Hendry wanted a safe #1 pick over a high-reward pick, and Wilkins followed his marching orders. The far majority of his #1 picks have gone on to be useful major leaguers. I doubt Wilkins drafted Colvin with the hopes he could be a future all-star, I think he saw him as the safest bet available to progress into an everyday OFer in the majors at some poing down the road. I doubt that pick would have been made if we had not lost 2nd, 3rd, and 4th round picks. Even if Colvin never pans out, I don't know if he gets all of the blame, or if Hendry gets any part of it for directing a safe pick rather than a high reward pick.

I rather suspect that given more time to mature and develop he'll do that. In fact, and I know you'll agree, he *should* have been given the time *this* season to do so, rather than be yo-yoed back and forth. At the expense of innings for Glendon earlier in the year? Are you insane :wink:

his low HR total is a fluke. About 12 percent of outfield flyballs should go for HRs. Anything less or more is a flukish, right now Taylor is at 4.7%, meaning he should allowed about 3 times as many HR. THe 16 additional HR would add to his WHIP and BB/9 (less outs) and more importantly, using just linear wieghts it would add roughly 20-25 runs allowed, all of sudden his ERA is around 4.90 give or take. It's all a fluke and I am not impressed. That's a pretty strong assertion without anything to back it up. Not that I'm that strong on him, but it's pretty out of line to go ahead and pencil in 3x as many hrs and judge him off of what you think his stats should be.

Any chance we could get the occasionally-maligned Burrell for Pierre? Move Jones to center, Burrell in right, and our OF is significantly improved.

I have a few problems with this post... 1. He hasn't had a few good consecutive games since 2004. 2. His blow ups are, by far, more the norm, than the exception. 3. You make it sound like his DL trips have been regular, and not mysterious. He only went on the DL this year because he was stinking so bad, they figured there had to be something wrong with him that needed some rest. The DL isn't part if his normal cycle, only sucking, with a random decent appearance every once in a while, just often enough to justify keeping him on the roster. 4. I don't like the fact he doesn't show any emotion. He certainly hasn't exhibited that he is working to get himself in better shape so that he can perform better. He also doesn't show any disgust in his performances when he regularly gives up multiple runs in short stints. 5. Like what was said above, he's making millions to basically do no better than my wife could do.

He played nearly 450 games in CF in his career. Where'd you get that number? Baseball Reference lists 57 games in CF, out of 2850 games played. BP says 446. Baseball Reference lists him as an "OF" for over 2000 of those games. Yeah, I noticed that. I wonder why that is. Anyway, 2,421 games at left versus 446 games at center supports the spirit of neely's post. If you're looking at the fielding stats on Baseball Reference and it just says "OF" rather than RF, LF, or CF, follow that stat line to the far right. It gives the breakdown of games played per OF position. And while the numbers may support the "spirit" of his post, nearly 450 games at a position is a far cry from never playing it. There were two seasons with the Yankees (1985 and 1986) where he was pretty much a full-time centerfielder. I put him in CF becuase I would have Bonds in LF and Gwynn in RF. Rickey could play CF very well, as he did for three years. 400 plus games is a far cry from 0, spirit or not. If Ernie Banks is considered a SS, then Rickey Henderson can be considered a CFer. Rickey may be a little more drastic scenario, but it's not an out-of-line comparison.

Are you referring to my comment? No. I'm referring to Walrond starting tomorrow. It was him or Jerome Williams after Ryu was used a few days ago. The Cubs want Sean Marshall and Wade Miller to get one more rehab start each. As disappointed as I am with Williams, I would rather have seen him than Walrond, and that's without figuring in the 40 man implications...

I didn't want to see him go that far. I was hoping to see him go about 3 hours away down I-55.

If only Z hadn't been in that funk coming off of the WBC...He'd be well out front.

For a quick second, I thought you were referring to, and misspelled, Ron Cey :lol: