vance_the_cubs_fan

For those not watching, Michigan leads ND 27-7.

After last year, they should've recruited a new kicker. It's in his head.

Auburn misses what should've been a chip shot FG from inside the ten. LSU has the ball, 0-0.

I'm glad I don't know many Michigan fans. I shudder at what they'd say after the Irish smack them around on Saturday. You were saying? :lol:

TD Michigan! :lol:

Go Wolverines!

Looks to be a defensive battle between LSU and Auburn.

LSU-Auburn...it's on!

I dont remember anyone saying that a pitchers mechanics is important for success. But by you bringing it up, yeah it is important. A pitcher with poor mechanics is more likely to break down than a pitcher with good mechanics. Having better mechanics means you have more velocity, and more control with your pitches. Im not a "former" pitcher. Im still pitching. While that is mainly true, it still boils down to performance. When judging performance, I could care little about the mechanics used to achieve that performance. Moving from pitching to hitting... Take Vlad Guerrero. Fundamentally, there's much he does wrong, but when evaluating his performance, there's no doubt he's successful. Another example is Jeff Bagwell. I don't know a hitting instructor anywhere that would think his stance is fundamentally sound, yet he gets the job done. Evaluating peformance is different than knowing the techniques involved. Knowing those techniques may provide insight such as predicting injury problems or projecting a minor leaguer, but they matter little in discerning who has produced.

Hand and elbow are too low, ball facing forward, body is ahead of arm. After just noticing those things, I could tell you that he will land on stiff front leg, and will over-stride or land on his heel. I just notcied that he is not using his hips enough. Which puts stress on the pitching arm. So I was right, cool. I haven't pitched in 6 years. What do you think about Sheets in 2004? Sheets in 04 was one of the better pitchers in the league. He played on a poor Brewers team, which caused his w-l record to be worse than it should of been. I already said there are the exceptions when using wins to judge a pitcher. But, I also said pitchers like Zambrano, Capuano, Johnson had alot of wins on poor teams. Which indicates how good they are by their pitching record. Their whip, k rate, and era are even better indicators. A better pitcher will more likely get more wins, but those other stats correlate MUCH higher to a pitcher's true ability. If you go to page 3 I think it is, I said I used WHIP, BAA, and IP to judge a pitcher also. WHIP and BAA are not bad indicators. Wins and IP add little to it. IP may tell me the pitcher's durability, which does have value. I'd prefer to look at a comprehensive stat like PRC or Pitching win shares. They combine the stats you mention as well as others to indicate how well a pitcher performs. Wins is so far down the list, it shouldn't be mentioned.

I've never doubted you know how to pitch. I'm talking more along the lines of evaluating a pitcher's performance. Back to that, wins are a poor metric of doing that.

Signing Soriano would make up for the loss of power we have in the OF.

Hand and elbow are too low, ball facing forward, body is ahead of arm. After just noticing those things, I could tell you that he will land on stiff front leg, and will over-stride or land on his heel. I just notcied that he is not using his hips enough. Which puts stress on the pitching arm. So, are you saying that you know more about pitching than Ben Sheets?

And thats YOUR opinion. I disagree with that. Is that ok? If you want to be wrong, sure. Im not wrong, and you're not right either. Depends on how a person judges a pitcher. I judge a pitcher by Wins, IP, BAA, WHIP, and the number of starts(30-35). And I'll take Pitching Runs Created along with date of birth, height, weight, and eye color and would still have a better idea who was the better pitcher. I know more about pitching than you do. So I highly doubt you could judge a pitcher better than me. You equate your knowledge with a talent to throw certain pitches. You really don't know whether you know more about it or not. Like many of your statements, this one also is based on faulty knowledge. It doesn't take the ability to do a task to evaluate how to do such a task. I'm pretty sure I can judge a pitcher's performance better than you if you are using wins as one of your primary measures of performance.

And thats YOUR opinion. I disagree with that. Is that ok? If you want to be wrong, sure. Im not wrong, and you're not right either. Depends on how a person judges a pitcher. I judge a pitcher by Wins, IP, BAA, WHIP, and the number of starts(30-35). And I'll take Pitching Runs Created along with date of birth, height, weight, and eye color and would still have a better idea who was the better pitcher.

In essence, that's why I think the Reds would want to start off with a package involving a #4 to slide into their rotation next season, a quality reliever, a potentially solid future 2B, and one of the top 25 prospects in all of baseball. They want to compete now; losing Dunn would go a long way in hurting that That post also illustrates the value Dunn brings to a line-up. The Cubs could use that production in LF. No matter how much he doesn't put the ball in play, that's a hellova lot of production.

I'm not really interested in Pods at all. I wouldn't mind Jenkins if we unloaded Jones. Neither are great options. There are better players we could focus our attention on acquiring.

If putting the ball in play results in a 4-3 groundout every time, yes there is. This isn't little league, if you can't maximize the results (SLG or at least a hit) when you put in play, it makes no difference.

And that's pretty ridiculous. This isn't little league or high school ball for that matter. Even the most defensively challenged major leaguer makes most of the plays. When the ball is put in play, more times than not, an out is recorded. The put it in play mantra is great in little league. I hate 12 year olds that strike out because with that age, 75% of the time when the ball is in play, something good does happen for the team at bat. Not so in the majors. I want production. Dunn makes fewer outs than most other options for LF. When he does make an out, it's often with the K. Big deal because he is still making fewer outs. Outs are the most valuable commodity in the game. The players who make fewer outs (OBP) and make the most of their contact (SLG) are the most valuable (OPS). Ok, you obviosuly didnt understand what I was saying. And there you go again, jumping to conclusions. When you put the ball in play you are putting pressure on the defense. Putting the ball in play means hits, doubles, triples, HR. I dont know why you brought up little league ball? I rather have guys who put the ball in play, then guys who strikeout with a guy on 3b with less than 2 outs. Thats considered a wasted AB. Strikeouts dont help the team. Wasted AB's. A concept you probably will never understand. I like Dunn, but I dont like the fact he will strikeout 200 times a year, and he is a huge liability in the field. Which hurts the team. Ah...so you didn't mean put the ball in play, but rather reach base safely. I prefer getting on base to putting the ball in play. Dunn is in the upper echelon of getting on base which is a lot more important than putting the ball in play. I like Dunn because he's 26 and can put up a 900 OPS. Getting on base and making the most of your contact is something Dunn does better than most in the game. Putting pressure on the defense matters little. You're absolutely right that strike-outs don't help the team. Neither do groundouts to second, fly outs to right, 6-4-3 double play balls or most other outs. Dunn's ability to get on base and hit for power far outweigh any scenario in which "little ball" might be required.

And thats YOUR opinion. I disagree with that. Is that ok? If you want to be wrong, sure.

I have two bleacher box seat tickets ($45 face) for the Sept. 30 game and Oct 1 game against the Rockies. These were purchased a long time ago when I thought I might make a trip at the end of the year to see the last two Cubs' games. I'm not. My one trip is enough. I long resigned that this was moola flushed down the drain....but maybe some Cub fan out there wants them. Who knows? I don't really care if I get anything for them or not. Anyway, if you want them...pm me. Hell, I'm an English teacher. Let's make this fun. If you want them, write me a message telling me why in 200 words or less. Best one gets them. If you want to offer me money for them, go ahead. I'd sure like some cash, but if you have no cash, feel free to ask for the tix none the less. It is fan appreciation weekend....my guess is they give all the fans a swift kick in the nuts and say thanks for being Cubs' fans...but who knows?

With all the good college games starting at 2:30, my guess is that the viewership for this game is around 6.

This seems the most likely. He's the less liked of their three key bats of Tex, Young, and Hank. Matthews Jr. is going to be a FA as is Carlos Lee. They already let go of Mench for Lee. The team will have a different look. I'm curious to see how much money Hicks allocates in the offseason and which targets they pursue.

Dunn is very likely going to be at least a 100 point upgrade in OPS over Murton. Having Murton put up a 780-800 OPS might be more cost effective, but we'd be better off spending to get Dunn to consistently put up a 900+ OPS. I wouldn't say he would be at least a 100 plus upgrade necessarily. Dunn has put up a 900 or more 2 out of the last 4 years-one of the years he didn't do that was this year. He's 89 points better than Murton this year. Murton's numbers still have room to go up, while Dunn is more likely to consistently stay around the numbers he's put up the last 3-4 seasons or so. Dunn is 26, Murton is 24. Dunn makes 7.5 million dollars this year, Murton makes 337,000. Murton plays better defense than Dunn (although Dunn is a little better than some of the mistakes we see him make on defense). Also, trading for Dunn would require more than Murton-so we have to factor in how valuable the other players we'd have to trade them would be, or how valuable those pieces would be in another trade (some of the players mentioned could be used to get Andruw Jones or possibly Tejada for example) It still might be worth the gamble, but it's certainly not an open and shut case. Why would you expect a 24-year-old Murton to improve but not a 26-year-old Dunn? Murton is more likely to improve IMO because he's coming off his first full season. His numbers have the chance to get better as he continues to learn the major league game. Dunn has been up for 6 seasons now. Here are his stats during that time 01 (only 244 at bats)-.262/.371/.578 02-.249/.400/.454 03-.215/.354/.465 04- .266/.388/.569 05- .247/.387/.540 06- .238/.368/.512 If he were 26 and had shown signs of improving steadily during his career, I would say he is more likely to keep improving. He is certainly young enough to improve, but his stats have been falling instead the last couple years (without any injury or something like that to explain it). Do I think his stats will keep falling? Not yet-I think he'll have a series of years that parallel either his 04, 05, or 06 numbers (some of each probably mixed in). Dunn definitely still has the chance to improve, but Murton just coming off his first major league season makes him far more likely to improve on this years numbers IMO. That's a good point, but it also fails to recognize that much of Murton's OBP is elevated by an very high BABIP. If that drops, then so would his OBP. I don't see much room for improvement in Murton's OBP for that reason. The only place where Murton could markedly improve is his SLG. Unfortunately, nothing in his minor league or college performance indicates that it is likely to come anywhere close to approaching Dunn's SLG. I like Murton; he's probably one of my favorite Cubs right now, but the improvement from Murton to Dunn in LF would be remarkable. If Murton could play RF, I'd like to have both in the line-up. I just doubt whether Murton could play RF, and if the choice is Dunn or Murton, that's a no-brainer.

As much as I want Dunn, I don't think its likely either. On the other hand, I don't see why there is a problem discussing why he'd be a great fit for this team. I don't see getting Andruw Jones or Michael Young or Tejada as likely either, but we've had threads on all of them.