Hairyducked Idiot

Marmol's arm is gonna fall off Don't bring him out for the sixth, then. we have three long guys. no need for marmol now. Bases loaded is not a situation for your long guys. Bases loaded and one out has about as much run potential for the Pirates as the remaining four innings.

Marmol's arm is gonna fall off Don't bring him out for the sixth, then.

Dempster needs to fake an injury so we can bring in Marmol.

Shoot, I shouldn't have waited to see what the call on the vines was before my Pie reference :(

Wait, is Murton OVERMATCHED for being 0-for-3 or GRITTY for two productive outs?

I'm getting bored with crushing the Pirates. It's too easy.

Do any of the likely NL playoff teams have lefty-heavy rotations? We just crush lefties.

Aggressive hit-and-run followed by aggressive baserunning that I would have ripped had it not worked.

Awesome Odd... He is out to start the ninth. I wonder what the rational was for letting him bat. Weird... unless it was a mistake on account of gameday. With the uncertainty involving Sheets right now, the Brewers are carrying 14 pitches. That might be why.

If the Brewers reach an NLCS and have a 10-run lead in game two and let their 22-year-old stud with an already-flogged arm throw 116 pitches, we'll talk. :)

Was this his 1st start off the DL? I believe so, yes. And he's batting for himself in the 8th.

Was this his 1st start off the DL? I believe so, yes.

Yovani Gallaro threw 112 pitches today for the Brewers, giving up 1 run in 7 innings. It scares me that there are so many good young pitchers in the NL Central, but it makes me glad to know that Baker and Yost are out there handling them.

I wonder what you get if you take Theriot's numbers to this point and project him to perform at exactly his career averages till the end of the season. You'd get a decent year out of him.

Even when they don't score, these Cubs make pitchers earn it. I like it.

Now I wish we had Soriano leading off :(

It is pretty important. That's why you don't lower your chances of doing it by bunting. I would actually say that you raise your chances of scoring by bunting him to third there. If you got a guy that hits .300, there's a 70% chance he's getting out. Might as well make the out productive by moving the runner over to third, where an out, which again is 70% likely, can still score the runner. Given, I realize this entire discussion is based upon odds and an individual's baseball theory prefernce. First, there's not a 70% chance of him getting out. And there's a less than 100% chance that an out will score the runner (only two specific types of outs will, deep fly balls and groundouts not right at a corner infielder). People have already crunched the odds for you. You are more likely to score a run with a runner on 2nd and no outs than a runner on 3rd and one out. That's not really debatable.

This has been discussed a lot, but there is no tendency for AL pitchers to hit more batters than NL pitchers, or for pitchers whose careers cross leagues to hit more when they are in the AL.

How are they any less racist than references to Pearl Harbor? I keep hammering this point, but racism is the belief that some races are inherently superior than others. Neither a plane nor the slanted eyes shirts are racist. They are insensitive, rude, offensive, stereotypical and wrong, but not racist.

Same point as above: When relative speed is no longer a factor in the selection of the players. If catchers' speed becomes so irrelevant that a catcher with literally no ability to run is considered fine, then sure. Edited to add: Courtesy runners aren't unheard of in MLB, though: http://www.retrosheet.org/courtesy.htm

He keeps complaining that he's not getting good pitches. That's funny considering we are batting Fukudome in a non-optimal spot to protect him.

Yes. I suspect that Marmol's leverage will get higher as the season goes deeper, but I won't use that as an argument. If we are getting into the specifics of Marmol rather than the generics of dominant relief pitchers versus dominant starters, then there's a few questions we need to ask ourselves: 1) How likely is Marmol to maintain his performance from last season, or that last season represented a true ability level? Pecota is not kind to Marmol at all, projecting a big regression to the mean. Similarity scores on baseball-reference.com come up with three players that I consider good comps for comparable points in his career: http://www.baseball-reference.com/w/wettejo01.shtml http://www.baseball-reference.com/s/scanlbo01.shtml http://www.baseball-reference.com/p/plunker01.shtml We're not likely to be getting another 300 ERA+ season from Marmol, to be sure, but I think it's reasonable to expect him to continue to be a top-notch reliever. A top-notch reliever with a good but not great leverage index pitching in the 80-90 IP range is generally worth 4-6 wins above replacement (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/sortable/index.php?cid=208950 for a list of last season's relievers, Marmol was at 3.7 with fewer innings and worse leverage than we can expect), so I think that's a good base projection for Marmol as we have him now. 6.0 wins above replacement last season was Erik Bedard, 5.0 was Carlos Silva, 4.0 was Doug Davis. 2) Would "starter Marmol" be in that range of pitchers? PECOTA is pretty harsh on Marmol, projecting him to about a 3.83 ERA. ZIPS has him at about 3.77. I think both of those are a bit high. Some of those comparable players I think point to an ERA in the high 2s, low 3s. On average, a pitcher gains about .8 runs in ERA when he goes from relieving to starting and loses it when going vice-versa, but that's a very generic number and varies a lot from case to case. But we don't have anything better to go with on Marmol, so I think that's a fair assumption. Depending on whether you are using the statistical projections or the comp projections, that would put Starter Marmol at anywhere from an ERA in the high 3s to the mid 4s. I don't think he'd be an innings-eater, so even our most optimistic projection as a starter puts him as a 190-200 inning, high 3s ERA type of guy. That's a lot closer to Doug Davis than Erik Bedard, using our above baselines. So I think that lays out a good case that moving Marmol from relief ace to starter would be essentially a wash at best. 3) Do the Cubs need to make such a move? The Cubs are really deep in both the rotation and the pen. I'm going to assume he replaces Dempster in the rotation (and not something stupid like replacing Hill), which would make the most sense despite Hendry and Piniella being buddies with him. A pessimistic view of Dempster would be something like what Milwaukee got from Dave Bush in 2008 (186 innings, 5.12 ERA). That was worth 2.2 wins above replacement, so I'd put replacing him with Marmol at about two wins worth of improvement to our starting rotation. We could probably get the same improvement from Marshall, and almost as much from Lieber, but that's a real improvement. If Marmol replaces Marquis, that's a little less improvement. So would taking Marmol out of the pen cost more than the 2 wins we'd gain? I think so. We have a deep pen with good relievers, so everyone right-handed and not a long man behind Wood moves up a notch. Howry replaces Marmol, Wuertz replaces Howry, Gallagher? or someone replaces Wuertz. Hart and Lieber probably stay in their current roles. I'd say that's a net loss at each switch, and it'd only take an average of 2/3rds a win above replacement loss per move to cancel out the gain from Marmol in the rotation. All in all, I don't think the risk of the move is worthwhile for a team that is already playoff-worthy on paper.

"You know, Ron, the PR people asked us yesterday if it would be alright for Marisa Miller to come up to the booth today. I said 'you know, we could probably squeeze her in.'" "Well we could squeeze her alright..." "Careful there, Ron." Am I wrong to guess between that exchange and the laughter afterwards, two plate appearances went by without comment?

I'd say it's pretty close with catchers. Of course it probably won't happen anytime soon but I could see a time when they added a 2nd DH so that Catchers didn't have to hit. Actually that would be a lot more interesting than 1 DH for the pitcher if you allowed the team to choose which position didn't have to hit that day. Mike Piazza and Jason Kendall say hello. Catcher is a highly defensively prioritized position, sure, but when will we ever see the Mike Piazza of pitchers? A guy who is kept at pitcher because he can be barely functional at the position while providing a big plus bat?

And along with it the wins. Even if his leverage index increases, I can't imagine that he'll pitch enough innings to make his value as a relief pitcher comparable to what it could be as a starter. You are still operating under the assumption that starters are inherently more valuable than high-leverage relievers, which I don't think the numbers bear out. Last season, he was worth 3.7 wins above replacement, primarily because he was used mostly in low-leverage situations (leverage index of 1.08 is pretty bad for a reliever). Zambrano was worth 5.6, Hill 4.8, Lilly 4.7, Marquis 3.4. 2007 was sort of a down year for relievers, but there were still six worth more than five wins above replacement, and there is no reason Marmol can't join that list this season. If you start looking back at the leaders throughout the years on the links I posted, the standard for a truly great (tops or nearly tops in the league) season is about seven wins above replacement for both starters and relievers. In 2003 (Eric Gagne, 9.23) was worth more than any starter, in 2004 Brad Lidge's 8.1 was behind only Johan Santana, in 2005 the starters dominated. In 2006, F-Rod's 7.3 wins were behind only three starters. In 2007, J.J. Putz's 7.4 wins were behind only Peavy and Hudson. I think if you look at the data, you'll find that top-notch, high-leverage relief pitchers are very comparable in value to top-notch starters. It's just that they have more variable careers and there's really only room for one per team.