Magnetic Curses

well, he can't hit the way many think he can. he's not a premier CF, he's an ESPN hero, that's it.

overrated more then Pierre??? no, I dont think so. he may be slightly overpaid, but the guy can hit...and I think Wrigley would help his power #'s. he can't hit. and if the homer-dome didn't help his power numbers, i don't know why wrigley would.

He's going to sidearm the ball to the cutoff man? I think Nomar's only value to this team is at SS. It's a position where it's hard to find good offensive players, so I'd be willing to take the risk. At RF, it probably wouldn't be very hard to find a player who can outproduce him and play at his natural position. i completely agree. bring back nomar at SS and forget an overpriced furcal.

don't want him, we could do better. hunter is more overrated than pierre is. he doesn't get on base terribly adeptly, he doesn't steal bases very efficiently, he has a little power but not enough to make up for what he doesn't have. he'd be regularly booed at mid-season

Spoken like a sellout. Amen. This entire organization is one giant sellout. This team will never amount to anything until it stops being a line on a corporation's income statement. 100 million dollar pyroll is too low? :roll: i guess, for some. but it's still very popular to blame the trib, even though they've pumped plenty of money into this franchise over the past few years. one thing they are not willing to do would be to take a loss, which is understandable given that they have stockholders. the trib will NEVER divert funds from other holdings to field an all-star team, the chicago war chest is not infinite, and it's not the trib's fault that hendry brought back macias and neifi or that hollandsworth started in left field for much of the year. this is a badly run baseball team, and the only problem i have with the trib corp is that it hasn't fired macphail yet.

grieve is my boy, but murton needs the experience. i'm so torn.

he can take wuertz with him, too.

i think the baltimore sun is unaware of just how much money we have to spend. and again, the yankees will sign every free agent available, when they become available. this simply does not happen.

Oh joy, the Don Baylor "tip your cap" attitude has returned to the Cubs. Excuse me while I beat myself over the head with a tire iron... yep, forget the fact that Cain only threw 105 pitches. THIS IS A VARIABLE THAT YOU, AS THE MANAGER, CAN AFFECT, DUSTY! but nope, he'll just sit back and watch us flail away at everything under the sun. maybe if cain had thrown more pitches, dusty you genius, he'd be (gasp) tired in the 9th. please, someone, realize what is wrong with this manager and fire him. hendry should be gone for the fact that dusty's still here.

i think the point is that wins aren't going to be consistent without whip, which isn't really a complicated stat anyway. if you have a consistently high whip or ERA+, you're going to lose, and lose a lot. maddux has had a consistently low whip for his entire career. he never allowed many baserunners, which lead to runs against, leading to an even higher ERA, leading to losses. pitchers with high career whips don't make the HOF or come close to 300 wins. why? because they aren't good.

thanks, B, that's a great illustration. over the course of the season, the team that sees more pitches, i'd imagine, would be more successful.

Haha, I was thinking the exact same thing, but I didn't want to say anything. sosa's 2001 season is probably one of the 10-15 greatest single seasons ever.

how mad will everyone be if murton doesn't start? i wonder if hendry really cares at all. If he did, dusty wouldn't be there. now, he's understanding what happened with magowan and sabean.

While I agree in principle with your statements, I don't agree that good patience can be taught (at least not at the major league level) with much success. With this said I believe the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of those who put the team together and not the manager. The manager is like the person leading a team hacking through the jungle with a machete. They are just blindly cutting and chopping, making progress, and the manager's job is to most effectively lead the team through the jungle. It's the general manager's job to climb a tree and point out the direction in which to go. The manager may say "We're making great progress," and indeed they may be, but it's up to the GM to say "Yes, but the road is the other way!" I think in order to make a big league roster, you need to have the fast hands, good eyes, and excellent coordination that it takes to put the bat on the ball. If you can do this, you can shrink your strike zone down. yes, it must be taught system-wide, but I don't think it's too much to ask Corey to take a pitch with a 3-ball count and strike out looking if need be. i think it would be interesting to see the numbers reflecting how many times Cubs batters have hacked away with a 3-ball count and how many times their opposition has. There are some Cubs that it's darn near impossible to walk, even at 3-0. the only reason they seem to take pitches is to get a pitch to hit later in the count, and regardless of whether they get a hitter's pitch, they BELIEVE that they absolutely will get one. and they always assume that they'll get a juicy fastball, so they're ever flailing away later in the count. I could be wrong on this one, though. just take the pitch, walk on down to first and try to score some freaking runs.

so, it's not the trib's cheapness anymore, it's the management's cronyism? that's a reach. the cubs suck because their managers don't have a very good philosophy of winning.

i think bellhorn is a low-talent, cerebral hitter, a guy who knows what he's doing and gets the most out of his talent. the anti-corey patterson. bellhorn had a higher OPS than the ultra-talented alfonso soriano last year. was he having a terrible year this year? of course and he paid for it with his starting job. he was quickly snapped up by the yankees, who have many perrenial +.400 OBP guys, and are always successful. our problem is that we don't draw walks, one in which the blame should beplaced on the coaching staff. it's dusty's fault our team IsoD sucks, it's his coaching staff which allows the lack of patience to continue. BBs are a very approach-controlled variable, one can be taught to take walks. as for going up there looking for a walk, maybe we need to. I see plenty of teams do it against our pitching staff. the book on prior, zambrano, and wood is to make them throw a lot of pitches and get to them later. it's no coincidence that we rank high in our own starters' pitch counts and low in pitches seen per PA. we simply don't get the strategy involved with the game. there is more to game startegy than bunting with your #2 guy after a leadoff single, there's more to the game than hitting and running and taking unnecessary risks, more to strategy than giving the other team outs. we should probably change our strategy to "make as few outs as possible per hitter", instead of playing "fundamental" ball.

hasn't dusty demonstrated that he can't use neifi correctly? I like having guys like him on the bench, but when they're repeatedly misused, i have a problem with it. neifi's fat .025 IsoD should be a big sign that if dusty wants walks, he won't get them from starting neifi.

don't make me bring the -drink- references back. i'll expand them to include time zone references. :P

Sad? How is it sad? You think the numbers he is putting up now, which will likely be worse next year, are worth $9 mil/year? exactly right. i won't bash maddux, but i'll bash hendry and laud his agent.

giving dusty a good bench is begging for disaster, but giving him a bad bench is probably worse. the best bet is to give him a young bench. giving dusty promising rookies who are intended to start and then a veteran bench is like giving a toddler an XBOX 360, the kid will just end up playing with the paper you wrapped it in and pooping on the video game.

i don't know what solutions there are, but i know that i'll feel better if someone gets fired. fire hendry while you're at it, and maybe macphail. how many organizations have an equivalent to macphail's position anyway? does he fulfill the owner's duties or what? throw as much money at billy beane as you can and hope he takes it.

Become Albert Pujols? Seriously though, he could cut down some of the K's with his power, but a pretty high strikeout rate is the likely price for his power. What I'd like to see are some walks along with those K's. true, his IsoD is pretty low.

ESPN is reporting it as such. what are they reporting? that he broke his ankle and is out for next year. there is a God, and he hates me.

okay, i'm sorry guys. i literally posted this seconds before.

okay, why are people saying that nomar is hurt?