Magnetic Curses

yeah, but he just traded a very valuable, long term-inexpensive commodity for a guy who's due to make a killing. yes, a jones's deal is up and he'll be more than replacing that production next year--but i think salty is an all-star sooner than later. both teams got what they wanted.

If you're the Cubs you would. the sox have soured on anderson, who could benefit from a change, iand dye is gone after the season, why not improve their bullpen with a reliever who can actually get people out on occassion?

i'd trade wuertz + fontenot for dye + brian anderson. fontenot is expendable with the call-up of cedeno, and the acquisition of dye. that puts derosa permanently at 2nd base and gives us a backup option in center if pie is floated around this offseason. i still like anderson and think he could be a very good player. and call me crazy, but i don't think that richard is the answer for the sox at second. a free swinging 2nd baseman that will be exposed in the majors.

That's definitely true. All you can really do is build a team that makes the playoffs. And all you can do to build a team that makes the playoffs is have a team that scores more and gives up less than most of the rest of the league. I would say it's possible to build a team that could and should win 90+ games, without relying on luck. And that is what GMs should be striving for. Give yourself the best possible chance, so that, if you are a team that "should" win 98, but if you hit some bad luck you can still win 90-92 and have a chance to make it. i think this accurately sums up the feelings of people who try to think rationally about baseball and how teams win the world series. of course teams with more skill are more likely to win in the playoffs, but it's very hard to quanitfy with such a small sample size. look at the cards last season, this may sound blasphemous, but i was kind of hoping that they would win, just to prove a point about randomness in sample size.

Are people really saying this? I haven't noticed people saying this Cubs team is just lucky. To be honest I can't quantify it (pun intended), but I have seen it in several places on this bd. i think the cubs aere very unlucky earlier this season and that luck has been evening out a tad over the last month and a half, which wasn't necessairly inevitable, but likely. the cubs are a pretty good team that scores more runs than they allow. their skill is definitely the deciding factor right now, and it's shining through. i just wish they were hitting home runs on a more consistent basis, that would make me feel a lot better. home runs are really the ultimate way of negating luck. just hit the ball out of the park and there's nothing variance can do about it.

In the words of Slappy the Squirrel, now that's comedy! :D Actually, that's true. Think about it, are you going to be able to walk much without working deep counts? Dunn's MLB rank in P/PA: 2001 - did not qualify, but his 4.12 P/PA would have been #7 2002 - 2 2003 - did not qualify, but his 4.33 P/PA would have been #2 2004 - 5 2005 - 5 2006 - 11 2007 - 14 You work that many deep counts, odds are very good you're gonna strike out a lot. You're not gonna go ahead 3-0 before the walk each time. it's a plate strategy that seems to be designed to get the most out of his talent. i always thought that bellhorn got the most out of his talent when he was starting everyday. he wasn't a very good player, but he squeezed every single OPS point out of his body because he worked deep counts, got on base a lot and hit for some power. strikeouts are just a necessary evil with that kind of approach, i applaud it. that said, it's not an approach that should work for every player or that every player should attempt. i think dunn would be much less effective if he tried to cut down significantly on his strikeouts.

I think what he meant is that we don't have a good way of objectively dentifying what caused the Cubs to begin to play up to their "pytg. potential", if you know what I mean. Therefore we wind up attributing everything to "luck", a sort of catch-all phrase we fallback on when we can't explain the reason for or meaning behind certain phenomanon. I think the hope is that we can find a way to objectify that analysis in the future rather than saying "they just got lucky", which is demeaning in its own way. Luck is just a different way of saying variance. Players who hit .250 don't go 1 for 4 every day, and pitchers with a 4.50 ERA don't give up 3 ER over 6 IP every start. In the same way(or, "as a result" works better I guess), .500 teams don't alternate win-loss-win-loss all year. A different way to say it without using "luck", is that they "played to their potential". People say luck because the close games that make and break teams' records have a LOT of variance. well put, moddy. luck is a much bigger part of baseball than team chemistry and possibly even skill. "variance" is a good way to look at it. some people may not want to face it, but baseball is one of those games that is significantly effected by circumstances completely out of a player's control. which is why a long season is necessary.

and i'd say Anthony Adams is > or = to scott and boone himself. plus add in the potential of a healthy dusty dvoracek, and this DT rotation is about as impressive as it gets. yeah, i meant to mention adams and dvoracek. which pretty much negates and more than makes up for the loss of the other 3.

what a deal, a solid starting d-lineman to put next to harris. and i love his name, too. however, my wife won't let me name my kid darwin. bears get stronger. this team is better than last year, walker by himself >>>> scott, johnson, and boone.

no. i think percentage is generally meaningless and much less predictive than total runners left on base.

exactly.

runners LOB is symptom of good hitting. the more runners you get on, the more you strand. leading the league in runners LOB generally means that you have scored a lot of runs.

....is a good thing, people! i was reminded of this by a post in the game thread. discuss.....

no no no no. leaving runners on base is a symptom of scoring a lot of runs. teams that score a lot of runs leave a lot of runners on base. by and large, year after year, the teams that leave the most runners on base make less outs and score more runs. i think it's a very positive thing, the cubs aren't relying solely on hitting in the non-existent "clutch". teams that do that generally don't have any staying power.

hill has looked terrible against belisle, sheez.

I've argued the same thing in the past. Seems to me, you get a lot more chances to throw LF to home/2nd than you do RF to home/3rd/2nd. Cause and effect though. Is that because there are more opportunities, or are there more opportunities because the weaker arm is traditionally in LF and the stronger in RF? To the same effect, plays where a guy easily scores/advances on the weak armed guy are going to have a play on them with the strong armed guy. My thought on it is based on my assumption that LF is getting more action than RF, and therefore would have more chances at making the throws. that's pretty much how i feel. edit: let me just clarify that when i say "chances" i mean any time a hitter gets a basehit with a runner on second or hits a fly ball with a runner on third or hits something down the line that could be stretched into a double--regardless if the runner is thrown out or is held up.

Pie, Jones, and Veal for a guy who hasn't won a game in months and has a +5 ERA? Horrible. It would be a typical Cubs move, though; trade a player before his peak and make up for it by reacquiring him after he starts to fall. veal is losing his perceived value, though. we shouldn't assume that he'll ever reach his peak if he can't get over his control issues. He meant Willis. yeah, i should have been paying attention, my bad.

i know what you mean, though. just speaking from my own personal experience, how many times did alou get run on when he was playing left? a ton, and how awesome would it have been if he could have actually made the throws or held the runners at third? that's purely subjective, but it's nice having an arm in left that can routinely gun down players at the plate if that's where more of the balls are hit.

Pie, Jones, and Veal for a guy who hasn't won a game in months and has a +5 ERA? Horrible. It would be a typical Cubs move, though; trade a player before his peak and make up for it by reacquiring him after he starts to fall. veal is losing his perceived value, though. we shouldn't assume that he'll ever reach his peak if he can't get over his control issues.

i'd let veal go while he still has some sort of "prospect" status. not pie though.

if you're referring to the doubleheader, they could only have built it to 3.5 games with the Cubs win i think he's talking best case scenrio for the brewers. if it had gone the other way, it could have been 4.5. but you know that.

If he has been talking to the front office about wanting out I think they will let him go. they don't draw very well as it is, though. yesterdays game was the 4th largest in GAB history--a late june game against a team that's never really been any kind of rival to the reds. and that's only because of cubs fans. they need griffey.

i'll echo a sentiment that abuck has brought up before: if soriano actually knew what he was doing at the plate, he'd be unstoppable. unfortunately, he doesn't, he's impulsive and impatient. you can get him out consistently with the slider in the dirt. until he corrects that part of his game, he'll always be a very streaky player.

that's not my question though. i realize that. but if hits with a runner on second or fly balls with runners on third and less than 2 outs go to left field with much more frequency--how far would that go to nullifying that advantage?

i've always liked branyan, but i'm not sure if he would fit on this team. he's still fairly young and only a year removed from a very productive part-time season.