Magnetic Curses

it seems that our hitters are bent on getting into a pitcher's count and gambling on the fastball. they have no desire to work a walk and will generally swing, no matter the location, at a 3-1 pitch.

oh jeez, you beat me to it.

Wait. I was reading this thread, and I completely thought this was sarcasm or a joke until I read the rest of your posts in this thread and started to suspect otherwise. You can't be serious, can you? Were you seriously predicting that Lee would go all year without a home run? he is one far out dude that is for sure... watch where they are pitching lee and where he is hitting it too, i've seriously seen them pitch inside on him about 10 times and about 5 of those have been rocketed for doubles and his 1 homer. He's hitting like .380 for christ sakes the pitchers will adjust and come inside more and his power will show up. his BABIP is like .500, neauxb. that's bound to come down a hair. if you want to know what that means, it means that 50% of the balls he puts in play are going for hits, which means he's getting incredibly lucky--even with a LD% of 30%. i know i'm a newbie to ur lil site here, but i understand what babip is, and he has been putting up an astronomical number. call me confused, but are you arguing with me or agreeing with me? BABIP helps to capture the amount of luck involved after the bat makes contact with the ball. lee has been lucky, he's also been hitting the ball hard, just not hard enough to earn a .500 BABIP. lee has been lucky, that luck will go away--what happens if his power doesn't return by then? why would his BABIP plummet if he was pitched inside more? that's not why it will go down. it will go down because he'll stop getting so lucky. most likely it would go up if he's pitched inside more. as for harsh words, if you want to personally insult me, i guarantee you'll get them.

i admire castro for his resolve during the cuban revolution, defeating an army of 10,000 with 300 guerrillas. regardless of what cuba has become, i prefer to think of it as better off this way than what it would have been, anyway. i also know no one who admires stalin, and as a socialist, i hate him for giving us a bad name. my issue was with characterizing castro as "murderous". there's no need to further mislead people on this board by doing that. he ia and was in no way shape or form a "murderer". and for your last part, if the united states were the size of cuba and a victim of a pointless embargo by a world super power, i hardly think that being capitalist or having a more liberal democracy would save it from people who were unhappy trying to flee.

i agree with everything you say except the timely hitting part. the phillies last season led the NL in runners LOB yet still led the NL in RS (i think). if you give yourself a ton of opportunities, you will score a lot of runs and get a lot of wins. right now, it may not seem like it, but the BA w/ RISP will even out over time.

Wait. I was reading this thread, and I completely thought this was sarcasm or a joke until I read the rest of your posts in this thread and started to suspect otherwise. You can't be serious, can you? Were you seriously predicting that Lee would go all year without a home run? I mean, he has a murderous dictator in his avatar, which unless sarcastic, doesn't leave me to believe reason stands in his way. who's the murderous dictator in my avatar? OOOOOOHHHH IT'S ON!!! i just want to know how anyone could confuse the guy in my avatar with a murderous dictator. who did he murder?

Wait. I was reading this thread, and I completely thought this was sarcasm or a joke until I read the rest of your posts in this thread and started to suspect otherwise. You can't be serious, can you? Were you seriously predicting that Lee would go all year without a home run? he is one far out dude that is for sure... watch where they are pitching lee and where he is hitting it too, i've seriously seen them pitch inside on him about 10 times and about 5 of those have been rocketed for doubles and his 1 homer. He's hitting like .380 for christ sakes the pitchers will adjust and come inside more and his power will show up. his BABIP is like .500, neauxb. that's bound to come down a hair. if you want to know what that means, it means that 50% of the balls he puts in play are going for hits, which means he's getting incredibly lucky--even with a LD% of 30%.

Wait. I was reading this thread, and I completely thought this was sarcasm or a joke until I read the rest of your posts in this thread and started to suspect otherwise. You can't be serious, can you? Were you seriously predicting that Lee would go all year without a home run? i wasn't predicting he'd go all year without a home run, i was using a sort of superstitious pessimism that i'm sure most cubs fans are familiar with. it worked, i guess. anyhoo, we're still in trouble if he can't find his power stroke on a consistent basis.

Wait. I was reading this thread, and I completely thought this was sarcasm or a joke until I read the rest of your posts in this thread and started to suspect otherwise. You can't be serious, can you? Were you seriously predicting that Lee would go all year without a home run? I mean, he has a murderous dictator in his avatar, which unless sarcastic, doesn't leave me to believe reason stands in his way. who's the murderous dictator in my avatar?

no way he goes out with theriot playing so well.

what does that mean? he went the other way with a low line drive that stayed fair. he's hitting into some incredible fortune, as his BABIP has to be well over .500 at this point. that isn't going to last.

10 bucks says he doesn't hit 30.

ah good, i was worried nobody was going to make a snide comment about those of us who are concerned about lee's lack of power. For the record, that's what, 1 in 20 games? Soriano's on pace for 0 HR this year. your point? You're premature in your cliff jumping. i fail to see what soriano's complete lack of power has to do with being worried about dlee.

yeah, he could hit a 500 foot bomb off a cub pitcher into a 100 mph gale.

ah good, i was worried nobody was going to make a snide comment about those of us who are concerned about lee's lack of power. For the record, that's what, 1 in 20 games? Soriano's on pace for 0 HR this year. your point?

because he hit one home run? he's on pace for what, 7 or 8? uh, but he hit one in this game. That means we're being irrational. yeah, all of the sudden he's a machine. it's going to take more than one, and i'm hoping this means he's about to go on a power streak--but he's not anywhere close to easing my mind.

because he hit one home run? he's on pace for what, 7 or 8?

Did you post this right before Lee's HR? yep.

okay, so how many plate appearances was that?

okay, so i was wrong. :D

bad feeling. very bad feeling.

what would it take for you to believe, sarcastic? would it take the rest of your life of seeing bizarre things happen to the cubs or would you still not believe?

Nobody's saying the Cubs are going to win the division this year. But if they end up in last place, it will not be because they never won a 1 run game, it will because they were outscored, maybe with a little bit of help from a bad record in 1 run games. they're outscoring people this year and look what's happening, just look. if you refuse to look and see what has always happened is happening once more then that's your prerogative. If you refuse to listen to what I am saying that is yours, but I will repeat myself more clearly. If, at the END OF THE SEASON (that was implied in my last post) they are in last place, it will be because they were outscored. Anybody can suck in one run games in a sample size like this. Believe it or not, the Cubs are not the only team to have ever had a run like this. not consistently, year in and out. Show me the data. Even if the team has the worst club record in 1 run games in the league, I would bet that it is not a major aberration from the expected bottom of the lot. The Cubs have not, I remind you, been terrible in 1 run games year in and year out. no, they find new and exciting ways of doing the same old stuff. whether having all of their players injured or losing 1 run games, the ball going through leon durham's legs or bouncing off alex gonzales's glove, dusty baker or lou piniella, jim hendry or larry himes, it doesn't matter. a curse is a curse. it may change it's method of hurting you, but it still does.

Whats your evidence that curses aren't real? The wonderful thing about curses is that, like all other things falling into the irrational realm of human thought, they cannot be proven or disproven. This is because they have no defined impact on the real world. Anything can be interpreted as evidence for or against a curse. In a way, it is a form of spiritualism. You might as well pray to the Sun God to give you a boutiful harvest. If you want to believe in curses, that is up to you. Realistically though, curses have nothing to do with the real, material world. Believe it or not, that is where baseball is played. you talk as if everything about the "material world" is already known. it's not. not by a long shot. the "material world" is not an absolute, it's closer to a concoction created by the mind and the collective minds of other observers. True, but that doesn't mean we can start making up forces that act in purely unpredictable, irrational ways and say that they are perfectly rational because our current understanding does not fortell every element of the future. That is essentially what a curse does. It is random, unpredictable, and irrational. There is no way to EVER give evidence for the existence of a curse, simply because it has those properties. we can say that there are forces at work here that we don't yet understand. because that's what it appears to be. i prefer to call it a curse, it's what's comfortable to me. the facts are that the cubs haven't won in a very long time, and haven't been in a WS since sianis vowed that they wouldn't be. that's a coincidence, a very large one. you don't have to believe in it, not at all.

Or.....maybe the wrist thing was worse than described? WHat a shock that would be. i had the same injury in high school, i still don't have full mobility.