Magnetic Curses

I wouldn't mind giving Hairston the job either if he's completely healthy. His SLG will be lower than Walker's but I think he can match Todd's OBP. i liked your old avatar better.

I'd have to go through my scorecards (yes, I'm so nerdy that I fill out scorecards for every game I go to), but I could have sworn that Dusty had Neifi lay down a sac bunt in the first inning of a game last season. I don't want my #2 hitter sacrificing in the first inning of a game, so I don't care if JH can do that well or not. you see, i like when neifi bunts for some reason.

no kidding. did you see that usher? he had his hands all over her and she seemed not to mind. i swear he was copping a feel. lucky old fart. From what I can tell, she's quite the looker. But she also seems to be just a few steps shy of Mrs. Warner and Mrs. Christie in the full of herself pyscho sports wife category. what about the fromer Mrs. Finley (aka Mrs. Winger, aka Mrs. Hercules)?

no kidding. did you see that usher? he had his hands all over her and she seemed not to mind. i swear he was copping a feel. lucky old fart.

i don't know how the cap restrictions work, but i'd bet he could be had for a draft pick. and since philly is in a terrible negotiating spot, it probably wouldn't even have to be a high pick.

i think moose is a great 2nd receiver, and if TO was brought in, he'd be very successful.

i don't think anyone is arguing that he's not a good backup option. he's fine. he can play 3rd, second, and SS, that I like. he shouldn't be playing everyday, and he shouldn't be the first pinch-hitter off the bench. the conundrum we're in is that dusty doesn't see NOT MAKING OUTS as a valuable commodity and COULD start neifi more than he starts cedeno if ronnie slumps in april. the bottom line is that we cannot value neifi for what he is when he is doing something that he isn't. he isn't a starter and i don't want him starting. on a team that can get by with a player like neifi at short, that's fine. our OBP just isn't good enough to be able to afford the luxury of starting a guy like him at SS.

Well that could be.......interesting. You haven't heard it yourself, so is this coming from another message board? I dont know if it's true or not but I just cant see the Bears making this move. That's what my "Bears." post said before I edited it. I was hearing mixed opinions on whether or not that was true so I edited it. If true, I'm not sure what to think. At least Jerry is exploring all options. \:D/ \:D/ \:D/ \:D/ i've hated TO in the past, but i think that the bears would approach with caution, keeping him at arms length if they reach an agreement with him. the big mistake that people have been making with TO is letting him be friends with everyone. that's the mistake the eagles made, at aleast. bring him in, lay out ground rules for him, let him know that the first time a rule is violated he'll be released, and make sure the cap hit would be minimal.

none have as much value as OBP. as wastra and poudre mouse have made very clear: not making outs is the single most important facet of the game in regards to scoring runs. the stat that measures OUTS NOT MADE is OBP. this cubs team was below average last year when it came to not making outs. consequently is was terrible at scoring runs. this cubs team was not bad defensively, nor was it poor in regards to team speed, and it was very above average in BA. one of the big reasons this cub team was not successful was because it couldn't score. another reason was it's injuries to starting pitchers, but even this could have been overcome with better plate discipline. maybe other teams DON'T need to work on their plate discipline, and maybe it's NOT important to upgrade for teams that have it. however, for this team, there was no bigger hole than OBP, there was no more important place to upgrade. the reason everyone talks about getting more OBP on this board is because the CUBS DON'T HAVE IT. i don't care if bill james is sitting in your living room right now, he'd take one look at this cubs team and say: "they suck at not making outs".

nonsense, everyone knows billy beane wrote moneyball.

wait, you mean to tell me they didn't win by playing "fundamental" baseball? i don't believe it. they won because they executed more squeeze plays than anyone else! You and your fundamentals Sulley. Learning the strike zone is a basic fundamental of the game. Without that basic fundamental, you never get your OBP. fundamentals is such a subjective term. i would say that plate discipline is a foundation for success, whereas speed is not. speed is simply a nice thing for a good player to have and enhances his ability as a ballplayer. there are plenty of great players that aren't fast and plenty of fast players that aren't good.

I don't know if this would be considered improper, since I guess I'm "calling you out", but are any of your 1514 posts not made for the direct purpose of being incendiary? do what i do: put him on ignore.

Perhaps because they aren't fooled into thinking these guys are geniuses with a talent for baseball knowledge that no mere mortal could comprehend. Also, I don't think fans always think they know more, they just know that the decision making process employed by the Cubs has been proven a failure, so they need to find another way to go. yeah, call me crazy, but i think i could do just as good as cubs management over the last hundred years. i don't know, i just have a feeling.

i didn't know that dominant in any way denoted good health. besides the whole point is that the offense could have bailed the injured pitchers out last year if it could have shown more discipline. Please tell me what you would have done differently last year to improve our plate discipline. Traded Corey before the season? Kept Sosa? Named Dubois the LF starter? Have a designated runner that ran for Nomar after he hit the ball? Truth is last season was a disaster. Everything went wrong. The team was good enough to go a long way. Just didn't happen. yep, you're absolutely right, hendry did a great job handling that sammy situation and deciding that hollandsworth was good enough to start on a contender. oh yeah, the burnitz move was brilliant. holy crap, dude, you act like hendry had no other choice than to bungle the last two offseasons. a main part of a GM's JOB is to improve the team during the offseason, "aw shucks, i did my best, but there was no one available" is no excuse to suck like he has.

i didn't know that dominant in any way denoted good health. besides the whole point is that the offense could have bailed the injured pitchers out last year if it could have shown more discipline.

wait, you mean to tell me they didn't win by playing "fundamental" baseball? i don't believe it. they won because they executed more squeeze plays than anyone else!

The big picture for me is Hendry hasn't built a great team yet, and he's been awful the past two offseasons. Unlike some fans, and apparantly the Cubs management, I'm not satisfied with mediocrity. It's hard to have a great team when you build the team around dominant pitching only to have your dominant pitchers not stay healthy. Not to mention when two of your middle of the order guys can't stay on the field consistently. If Wood, Prior, and Z each make 30 starts this year and we don't win 90 games then Hendry is to blame. But until we can keep our best players on the field I don't think Hendry is entirely at fault. well maybe if hendry relied a little bit more on building a team with a top 5 OBP, we wouldn't have to rely so much on pitching. I'll take dominant pitching over top 5 OBP always. Dominant pitching wins championships not top 5 OBP. um.....................okay, but my point isn't to compare the two. i've stated many times before that my recipe for success, in order, is: 1. starting pitching 2. OBP 3. SLG 4. relief pitching i was simply noting that if we focused more on OBP, we would be able to weather the injuries to our pitching staff better. are you suggesting that since we have pitching, we shouldn't care about OBP? because that's ridiculous. and we didn't score alot because we didn't walk a lot. we hit well, but walked hardly at all, consequently, we didn't score very much. is it so hard to admit that scoring runs is conducive to winning games?

The big picture for me is Hendry hasn't built a great team yet, and he's been awful the past two offseasons. Unlike some fans, and apparantly the Cubs management, I'm not satisfied with mediocrity. It's hard to have a great team when you build the team around dominant pitching only to have your dominant pitchers not stay healthy. Not to mention when two of your middle of the order guys can't stay on the field consistently. If Wood, Prior, and Z each make 30 starts this year and we don't win 90 games then Hendry is to blame. But until we can keep our best players on the field I don't think Hendry is entirely at fault. well maybe if hendry relied a little bit more on building a team with a top 5 OBP, we wouldn't have to rely so much on pitching.

okay, so hendry sucks when he's not acquiring former pirates 2 1/2 years ago.

i want hendry scouting players who are able to get on base first and foremost. would i like them to be able to score from 2nd on a single? yes. is it absolutely necessary to have speed when you have an OBP of .400 and an SLG of .550? no. if i have to deceide between derrek lee and a slower guy like albert pujols, i'll take pujols every time because he's a better hitter. we'll just have to agree to disagree here. even a young short reliever has pitched in enough games to be able to deal with a baserunner. even if there is a difference, it's not significant enough to worry about in the long run. the cardinals had 112 sacrifices during the regular season, we had 106. that's a .04 difference in sacrifices per game--and it's a difference that is completely invisible to the naked eye. the cardinal had the exact same BA as the cubs, roughly the same amount of sacrifices yet scored 100 more runs. those runs were created by plate discipline, pure and simple, they took about 120 more walks than we did. beane and his brethren aren't trying to make a "new" game. they're simply trying to exploit statistical trends. the idea that new baseball is any different from old baseball is faulty. the 27 yankees had collins (.407), gehrig (.474), lazzeri (.383), combs(.414), ruth (.486), and meusel (.393). the team OBP was .381. they stole some bases but they weren't very good at it. were the 27 yankees a "new" style team? no, they simply had what was needed to score a ton of runs= OBP and SLG. no team is "new" style of team, because there is no division between new and old school. there are only teams that score a lot of runs and teams that don't.

i'll take a team full of guys with no speed, poor defensive ability, who don't sacrifice, but who get on base between .375-.425 over a bunch of guys who are great "fundamentally" in every area, but can't get on base to save their lives. we'll see who scores more runs. speed means nothing if you can't use it, or use it poorly. the point is that speed is way down on the list when building a baseball team. you want good starting pitching first, OBP second, SLG third, and relief pitching 4th. give me a team that does all of that well and you can have your gutsy little speedy guys who always hit the cutoff man. you'll get crushed. You'll have a hard time getting people out with a bunch of statues to play defense. OBP means little if the guy is left on base. You need a balance so if something isn't working that day you have other options. First step is to get on base, once someone is on base a hit moves the runner along, a hit to the OF has a better chance of moving a runner from first to third and the chance is even better if that guy running the bases is fast. Anyway the answer is balance. A 400 lb guy who can draw a walk isn't going to be playing in the majors. If you have a team full of guys who can get on base, chances are they'll be more effective getting that runner home than all the bunters in the world. it's also likely they're capable of creating more than just one run in any given inning. while you're pesky lil' buddies are busy squeezing that run in, my guys will simply come up next inning and score 3-4 runs because they're good at what really matters in the game. will my guys have bad games? yes. will they go 162-0? of course not. again, marathon, not sprint. you can't win them all. i'd be more than happy accepting those 62 defeats when my team is bringing home 100 victories. i think this is the point, and it's undeniable: speed is a nice peripheral asset, perhaps it's even underrated, but it's not as important as OBP or SLG. a 200 pound guy who's fast and can't get on base or hit for power is called "me", and i'm not exactly tearing up the league right now, while there are plenty of much bigger, slower guys than me who have jobs hitting the ball.

So you think the Cubs need "another speed guy" to pair with Pierre as well? Speed is overrated. Speed is completely worthless without other, more important aspects of the game in your repertoire. Speed is way down the list of necessary ingredients to be a good baseball player. Being an average runner is not a setback in the least. There are a ton of crappy ballplayer's whose speed has hypnotized baseball people into keeping them in the game long past their expiration dates. Speed is nice to have, and all else being equal you'd have to take the faster guy. But all else usually isn't equal, and often times dramatically outweighs the difference speed will make. I think CCF put it quite nicely. Now you respond and tell me why these are not GOOD things. . break a pitchers concentration on the mound... it increases defensive range... (getting to more balls for outs instead of hits) decrease hitting into double plays... put pressure on defenses causing errors... 1. breaking a pitcher's concentration on the mound? did you see my reply? these guys have seen enough baserunners to be okay pitching with fast guys on base. 2. minimally. even then, i've seen just as many people hit the ball up the middle on a hit-and-run as i have hit into a hole vacated by an infielder. there's no proof that it helps. 3. juan pierre takes off from first with no outs, gets caught stealing. next guy grounds out. same thing as a double play. 4. see #1. if you can't field your position with runners on, you have no business playing infield in the big leagues.

i'll take a team full of guys with no speed, poor defensive ability, who don't sacrifice, but who get on base between .375-.425 over a bunch of guys who are great "fundamentally" in every area, but can't get on base to save their lives. we'll see who scores more runs. speed means nothing if you can't use it, or use it poorly. the point is that speed is way down on the list when building a baseball team. you want good starting pitching first, OBP second, SLG third, and relief pitching 4th. give me a team that does all of that well and you can have your gutsy little speedy guys who always hit the cutoff man. you'll get crushed.

I want to know why he thinks speed is so valuable. He's said that we need a speed guy, never explained why, then said that speed is underrated. I know what I think and I want to know why he has such convictions. This subject gets me fired up. I agree with the other dude, speed is undervalued now days. I've read this argument so many times on this board. Tim put up some cool stuff back when Beltran was a FA in a thread we were discussing speed, I'll see if I can't find it. Everything around here gets argued to the extreme. I'm not saying that speed is how you win a World Series, but so many stat heads around here discount it as a non factor - at least that's how I feel they portray it. I've got 16 years experience on the ball diamond, and when I hear someone talk as speed being something not important, I seriously wonder if some of these folks have ever played baseball. I've seen speed: break a pitchers concentration on the mound... it increases defensive range... decrease hitting into double plays... put pressure on defenses causing errors... I could probably go on, there are so many variables, it's almost imposible to assign definite value to speed. Here's a question, who'd you rather have on 1B if Lee hits a line drive to the gap, Barrett or Pierre? and then why? I put speed in with fundamentals - hitting the cutoff man, laying down a bunt, smart baserunning, and on and on and on. These are basic fundamentals you are taught in little league. Speed is a tool, a great tool, but tools and fundamentals will never be the biggest part of the pie on win shares. OBP is such a wonderful stat! OBP, pitching, defense, and power are essential. A good team can survive without speed, but not OBP. Here's the thing though, if you have a solid team built around OBP, tools and fundamentals will only make that team better. I have no idea how many wins it may play a part in, using all the different variables. Even if it were just a game or two, that could be the game or two that cost us a trip to the playoffs. That's why I value speed. I wouldn't sacrifice OBP for speed, but if I can get OBP with speed, I take it. If I can get OBP, power, and speed in a player, I get excited. I really enjoy reading your posts TT, they are usually pretty solid and right on. I don't know that I've read your opinion on this before though. this is a good post. but no one's saying that speed doesn't have any value. it's nice to have a team that can run. however, i will take a team of derrek lees before i take a team of juan pierres. if i had to choose, it wouldn't even be a decision. as far as beltran goes, beltran's not just fast, he's smart. he's a much smarter and more effective basestealer than pierre. although he slipped last year a bit, he still stole 42 bases in 45 attempts in 04 and 41 in 45 attempts in 03, that's an incredibly valuable asset. pierre is nowhere near beltran in terms of baserunning. pierre's faster, but beltran's better. speed without intelligence probably hurts the team more than not. i don't buy the idea that baserunners bother big league pitchers all that much. by the time they reach the majors, they've seen their share of speedy guys on the basepaths and have often developed ways of dealing with them. as far as juan pierre goes, he often makes the pitcher's job easier by taking off prematurely and getting thrown out. as far as bunting goes, there's no evidence at all that it creates any more runs than a team would score anyway. major league baseball is an entirely different beast than high school baseball, college baseball, and even minor league or semi-pro ball. major league baseball is played over 162 games. and to counter your questioning of whether some of us who've never played organized ball above high school really know what we're talking about, i'd argue that people too close to the game often get inundated with subjective BS to have any other kind of perspective on the game. billy beane has done a great job relying on statistical analysis and has been successful hiring folks who've never played the game before. sometimes that's what you need--someone to come around and say: "that's a funny way to do that", or "wait, there's no possible way that the earth could be the center of the universe". a lot of folks close to the game can't think any other way--it's positive to have a different perspective. and only a stat can tell you that 1 hit a week is the difference between .250 and .300

Heath Miller grades out similarly to these players and he has had a very large impact to the Steelers this year once incorporated into the offense. He torched the Colts in the first half on Sunday. Their passing game had more impact (albiet slightly) than last year despite losing their second most productive receiver and injuries to Big Ben. Was this due in some part to Ben's continual development? Sure, but you can not underestimate the impact that Miller has had on that offense. I think a pass catching TE would add a much needed dimention to this team. Simply put, our TE's are a black hole and pose almost no threat to to anyone in any situation. In my mind that's the place where our offense can be improved instantly. I guess we'll agree to disagree here. This is a good/deep TE draft and I wouldn't be upset if we picked one in the first or second round. Agreed. but are any of the TEs projected in the first round the same caliber player as miller?