Bull

I love that the Cubs are the proverbial prettiest girl at the ball, but don't tease me like this. They are more like the sluttiest girl at prom. The new guy is guaranteed to get laid that night, but if things aren't handled the right way, things can get crazy in a hurry, and he may wind up regretting that prom night the rest of his life. So you're saying the Cubs have herpes?

It's not so much the 200 hits. It's the 200 hits prior to age 22. Which would make him the 10th to ever do that... Ty Cobb, Al Kaline, Joe DiMaggio, Buddy Lewis, Vada Pinson, Alex Rodriguez, Garry Templeton, Hal Trosky, and Lloyd Waner. I think we all know that Starlin needs to improve his defense, take more walks, and hit for more power. Luckily, at least the first and third of those things tend to get better as players enter their prime, which Starlin is probably 2 or 3 years away from. or 4...or 5. He's really young.

Our Cubs have quietly gone from absolutely putrid to merely very bad.

Taken from the comments section: PTBNL

so when cub management goes down to iowa or tennessee to see how guys are playing and evaluate whether they might be able to make a positive contribution to the big club, what is that called? "watching"? davearm, you've allowed your argument to be derailed into what he does, but your original point was right on. Wilken and Fleita serve in totally different roles.

Ricketts hired him back in July, but has kept it secret.

It is all relative. He is with the Red Sox now. No its not relative. You said the Cubs are tight with spending and they have the 6th biggest payroll in baseball, 3rd last year. Sorry if the Cubs didn't shell out an extra 20 mil during a period where ownership changed and inherited an extremely flawed and overpaid team. 20 mil probably wouldn't have made this team a playoff team so theres no point in adding more high priced and potentially disasterous contracts. Rickets did the right thing and invested the money in scouting and the draft. Epstein would love smart ownership like that, possibly because it reminds him of the team he's currently with and not the bumbling band of morons that have symbolized the cubs front office for several decades. His wording was flawed, but his point stands. Epstein has no motivation to jump ship. He has a situation that is already good. Everyone credits him with making it good, and while the Cubs' payroll is high the one he has now is higher than high. why leave?

I'm in favor of banning this... if it help us win a championship awesome

Pagan

Kenney Gets What Kenney Wants!

I'm SO glad that Mr. Soriano doesn't regret signing a bloated contract that will probably keep the next 3 generations of his family very rich while he gave us 2 good seasons, 2 productive seasons, and 1 bad season plus whatever else is to come. And here I was feeling sorry for him. Why feel sorry for him? Because (according to the quote) the team has been a disappointment and Soriano thought hewas signing on with a winner. I was just stating the ridiculousness of anyone even asking him if he regretted the contract to begin with. There are a lot of people who should regret that contract, but Alfonso isn't one of them. agreed.

That's all fine and good if that's what they're thinking. I just pray they're not buying into all this leadership BS. Eh, the person that is gonna make the first base decision next year is likely not even working for the Cubs right now When did Kenney get the boot?

leave it alone. it's better that way.

I'm SO glad that Mr. Soriano doesn't regret signing a bloated contract that will probably keep the next 3 generations of his family very rich while he gave us 2 good seasons, 2 productive seasons, and 1 bad season plus whatever else is to come. And here I was feeling sorry for him. Why feel sorry for him? Because (according to the quote) the team has been a disappointment and Soriano thought hewas signing on with a winner.

If that's the case, we should be able to compare the number of really bad starts Zambrano has compared to other pitchers in some way, and see if it's really out of line. That's a lot more involved than just saying "He had some really bad starts, so let's not count those." 40.5% of Dempster's earned runs allowed came in 6 of his 26 starts 62.7% of Garza's earned runs allowed came in 7 of his 24 starts 50% of Zambrano's earned runs allowed came in 6 of his 24 starts I'm sure if we looked at all the more or less reliable pitchers in the league, you'd see most of them fall into the same "boom or bust" pattern. 10% more in the same number of starts is a huge difference between Demp and Z. and Garza has an ERA a full point lower than Z. I think you reinforced my point. and again, I'm not saying the original statement was true...I'm saying IF its true, its relevant. Also those percentages mean very little (to this particular discussion) as Demp may have surrendered 7 runs in 6 innings and Z 7 runs in 3 innings. Again I'm not arguing the numbers, just the logic. IF it is true, its relevant.

Avoiding the disastrous outings is a pretty important skill. Every pitcher looks amazing if you let them take out a few bad starts. I'm not sure this is true. If you take out outliers on both ends, I think some pitchers will look very different than others with comparable overall stats. That's probably true, but it's subtly different from "He'd be his normal self if not for a few terrible starts." But its critical to the point. If Zambrano gives you 25 above average starts 4 ridiculous amazing and 4 ridiculous bad start, but randy wells gives you 10 above average, 5 average, 10 below average, 3 great, 1 amazing, and 4 ridiculous bad, who is your more valuable pitcher even if their ERAs and other overall numbers are comparable. In 29 games Z has you with a chance to win and with wells its only 18. I know you know this, but the mean and the median are not the same. ETA: All of this is theoretical, and not based on any observance of the stats other than a cursory glance at Wells game log. Insert names James Wilson and Gregory House if anyone has a problem with the above.

He's been pretty bad this year. Teams taking him on are going to be doing so out of the hope that he rebounds at least somewhat next season. I havn't been following as closely as I have in years past, but hasn's Z actually been pretty close to his career averages but been brought down by a handful of disasterous outings? Avoiding the disastrous outings is a pretty important skill. Every pitcher looks amazing if you let them take out a few bad starts. I'm not sure this is true. If you take out outliers on both ends, I think some pitchers will look very different than others with comparable overall stats.

I was also at the game. It really didn't look like he was throwing at him. What did you guys see in tv land?

streak was nice. one good moment in a pathetic season. Now back to watching the fecal league standings.

I'm waiting for the day Fred stats post reads: The Cubs are... bad.

What do you mean good for him? In a variety of ways. He's constantly taking to him, and Starlin seems to listen. Especially after an error. Starlin seems like the kid who could get mistakes in his head and barney talks him off the wall. Does anyone else see this or am I making it up? Their rapport on the double play still makes me stand up and get excited occasionally. ETA I originally mistyped Starlin as Stalin. Stalin Castro.

I suspect I'll be lit up for this chemistry comment, but I get the impression that Barney is really good for Castro and will be over the next two/three years. While he is hardly an offensive force, and still tradeable, I like these two staying together up the middle. I probably stand alone in the trade anybody not named Barney or Castro camp.

even if your sarcasm detector is completely broken, it's safe to assume that an NSBB moderator is not going to be a meatball who thinks that aramis is lazy and zambrano is one of those fiery latins. That's sarcasm, right? I know Tim is about as Pro-Cub as I am but I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't hold that kind of standard to be a moderator. "I'm sorry, you think Ramirez is lazy? You're fired." Regardless, I would have had to have opened Laura's profile to even know that she is a moderator. I don't even open my own profile. Hey, maybe I'm a mod! If you have a problem with my "lack of a sarcasm detector" PM me. Or create a new thread "Why Does Scotti Suck So Much?" Hint, mods have green names. Which is why they are always so sarcastic.

Why does this ridiculous notion keep getting repeated? Did you mistake that as his him saying that Hendry's replacement would be likely to get a PERMANENT promotion to GM? Because what he actually said isn't "ridiculous" at all and is what usually happens when a manager is fired midseason. I took that as him saying the only option for replacing Hendry right now is with an internal interim GM. It's technically not the only option, but it's by far the most likely one. What is to stop Crane Kenney from handling things until the new guy is hired? Isn't that what happened last time? After Lynch was fired, MacPhail (team president) served as gm until Hendry was hired.

The Cubs have had two main problems: they haven't gotten enough from their farm system, and they've been afraid to spend the big bucks on impact players because they need to fill too many holes since they don't get enough from their farm system. The contracts they've given out haven't really been that bad overall (with 2-3 major exceptions), but the problem has always been that they've had to give out too many of them to the good to great but not elite type of players. Which points the finger at Hendry and the lack of player development. Probably scouting was even worse. The Cubs in the first half of the last decade had terrible draft after terrible draft. That meant very few players were available from the system in the second half of the decade. The Cubs are just starting to see some results from the better drafting/scouting over the second half of the decade, but it will still be several years until the results from the Ricketts increasing spending on the draft/internationally shows up. And yes, the horrible treatment the minor leagues was getting was Hendry's fault. I think it's been corrected at this point, but that was a huge mistake that set the Cubs way back. Would you mind to give us a little primer (not being sarcastic) on how bad drafts are anyone's fault and how the minors were mistreated. I was under the impression the baseball drafts were largely a crapshoot and that player development is how you emphasize the minors (though that is a bit of a crapshoot too).