I'm going to say a few things about Steve Bartman here, but before I do, please vote in the poll below before reading further.

Voted?

Okay. Here's what was on my mind. I read this post over at Cubs Stats yesterday about the Bartman story that would not die. As part of its 30 for 30 documentary series, ESPN will produce a documentary on Bartman and game 6. Here's a quote from the article:

"Bartman attempted a public appeal, but his fate was already sealed by the Cub fans' need for a scapegoat to explain a near-century of losing. Although Cubs Nation has since moved on to other seasons and other losses, Bartman remains ostracized from a community he lives in and a team he once loved. Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney will explore this relationship and try to answer the question, can Steve Bartman ever forgive Chicago?"

For what it's worth, I don't blame Bartman for what happened, or really anyone else (Alou, Prior, Gonzalez, Baker) - it was just some crappy luck. But it got me wondering - all the Cubs fans I know have nothing against Bartman - they either don't blame him or did but have moved on from the 2003 drama. It seems to me that this whole Bartman saga is largely driven by national media and non-Cubs fans. Am I right here?

I think it would be a great moment for Cubs fans and baseball in general if they brought Bartman back, either in a playoff game (preferably), or in a regular season game (for those of you who might think he would jinx things). How do you feel, and how do you think the crowd would react? Or is Bartman just doomed to never return to Wrigley? Reportedly Bartman is still a Cubs fan, and he may be a bigger one than all of us to remain so after what happened to him

Derrek Lee (link) and Kerry Wood (link) voiced their support for Sosa in separate articles in the Trib today.

Continue reading this post »

Let's take a step back and look at a few things that have been happening to our underperforming batters (Lee, Soto, Bradley, Fontenot). For those who don't know, here's a brief intro to the stats quoted below. BABIP  is Batting Average on Balls In Play). In general it averages out around .300, though batters with a higher line drive percentage (LD%) tend to have higher BABIPs. IFFB% is the percentage of all fly balls hit by the player that are caught by infielders (basically, popups).

What does this table tell us? These batters have been exceptionally unlucky, especially Bradley. All four of these players are underperforming their projections, but there's simply no way that all four of them are this bad. Derrek Lee has in fact been heating up lately (.353/.405/.559 in the past 14 days), but these guys' overall numbers are so weighted down by their poor start magnifies any at-bat in which they fail to get a hit.

BABIPs this low are just unsustainable by hitters as good as this. Even Aaron Miles has a career BABIP of .312.

I say good riddance. I stopped watching non-Cubs Morgan-Miller broadcasts after listening him commentate on an A's game in the 2002 (?). The smugness was just OOZING out of the TV screen when the "3 run homer A's" couldn't win in the playoffs.

Some snippets:

His likely Sunday night replacement would be Rick Sutcliffe. If there is a switch, it is not a given Miller would stay in the "Sunday Night Baseball" booth, either. He too could be moved to another night or over to the radio side.

This would be pretty cool, if Sutcliffe doesn't end up broadcasting for the Cubs. He's not that much better than Morgan as a color guy, but at least he's not a spiteful jerk (Banks Boulevard indeed)

What's coming to light is how unpopular Morgan has become with many of his ESPN colleagues, who are less than thrilled with the way he prepares for a telecast. Some of them also don't respond well to what they call Morgan's haughty attitude, which he has displayed during some of his more outspoken performances in internal ESPN meetings.

Prone to on-air mistakes, Morgan also has come under some intense media scrutiny. And during those moments when he's made a mistake, the give and take between him and Miller can sound strained.

I guess he's started wearing thin on other people. I hope they don't sack the Fremp on accout of Morgan's downfall within the network

Edit: Whoops, had the screen open and forgot the Source. Also check out the columnist's CRAAAAZY moustache

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/19/opinion/buzz1.html?ref=opinion

I don't really follow college baseball at all (mainly because my university doesn't have a team), so I'm not really concerned with all of the 'tradition' etc. This is some pretty low stuff though - I can't see how the NCAA isn't making money hand over fist already, since they don't have to pay any of the players/teams.

The bit about the camera at the end was pretty low too - what a bunch of jerks.

We just gave up a pupu platter of prospects to get Harden...but do we still have the stuff to get Burnett? If we could send Cedeno + Marquis + some minor prospects to the Jays we could have a rotation of:

Z

Harden

Burnett

Lilly

Dempster

*makes goggly eyes*

And we still would keep Pie and Vitters, our top two prospects. Of course, we would need a backup SS for Riot, but they are a dime a dozen. Maybe we could get one of their scrapheap SS (who are all suited to be backups anyway). Just so long as we don't get Eckstein back...there would just be too much Scrappy on this team.

H/T to GROTA for first suggesting the idea, thought I would move it over here...

An interesting article by Shysterball today about the impending Cubs sale. Here's the key point of what he says:

 . . . what would happen if you had the perfect storm in the form of (a) a current owner who doesn't feel loyal enough to Selig and Co. that he feels the need to pre-screen buyers; and (b) a determined enough buyer -- a maverick if you will -- that doesn't mind fighting his way into the club? In light of Piazza -- a non-binding case but one that is oh-so-ripe for citation -- wouldn't that cause major headaches for baseball? Would they dare put the antitrust exemption in peril in order to keep out an undesirable owner?

The Piazza case that he mentions was a case I hadn't heard of - basically some people tried to buy the Giants in 1993 and move them to Florida, and MLB quashed the deal. The buyers sued, and the judge ruled that anti-trust does not apply to the sale of teams. MLB quickly settled out of court.

Basically, if he has the highest bid then MLB has no recourse. He's proven that he's a successful owner of another team. Add to the fact that Zell / The Tribune have an obligation to their shareholders to take the highest bid and it is baseball's nightmare scenario.

Rob Neyer added his two cents in his blog, and feels that what will likely go down is that MLB will name a price, and several people will make offers before MLB picks the one it prefers (since everyone is making the same bid). I'm not really sure how well that will work either though, it really does seem out of their hands to me.

I'm all for Cuban becoming the owner - he can be quite the egotistical sideshow, but there's no doubt that he can wear the owner and fan hat at the same. His time owning the Mavs has been especially encouraging - he's great at marketing the team and the players love playing for him (he really has jazzed up their clubhouse, travel, etc). Put him in a league without a real salary cap, and watch out - I think he could combine Steinbrenner's ability to open the checkbook with the common sense to leave baseball matters to baseball people.

The latest article by Bruce Miles makes it sound like Pie may be on his way to AAA soon. If it gives him a chance to work on this 'new swing' of his I'm all for it (though I'd rather he was actually starting in the big leagues). Onedec has been hot lately, and the way things are going I like his bat better than Johnson's as well. I'm not sure how well he does defensively out there, but it's not like Johnson is all that great either.

Source:

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=185212

I've been using the 'old' player for all of ST to get the Cubs games (and others) on Gameday Audio. However, today when I tried loading up a game it went immediately to their fancy new Silverlight player, which my system cannot support, so no audio stream for me. There used to be a button to switch back to the old on and it's gone now. I've tried dumping my browser cache and cookies but no dice. Has anyone else had this problem?

I just tried calling MLB.com's useless technical support and no dice. I just want to switch it back to the old player. If no one else has figured this out I'll just have to try to carve my way up their tech support bureaucracy...maybe someone can tell me the logic of embedding a simple audio stream in an a schmancy new proprietary display platform.

Link: http://www.azcentral.com/sports/diamondbacks/articles/0328davis.html

It sounds like they caught it early, so he should be okay. I know he's a 'Cub killer' but I wouldn't wish this on anyone. Here's hoping for a full and speedy recovery.

Rotoworld is saying that the Cubs have interest in Felipe Lopez. Let's look at the Pecotas

Lopez: .271/.344/.396 11 HR 59 RBI 23 SB

Riot: .270/.330/.347 2 HR 40 RBI 20 SB

And, in case they're (god forbid) thinking of putting him at 2B

DeRo: .286/.360/.439 12 HR 59 RBI

Clearly Lopez is better with the bat than Riot...however his defense at short is much worse (and it's not like Riot's known for his glove either). If they get Lopez as a utility guy who can spell Riot when he's slumping this would be a good deal.

The buzz about the internets this morning is that Crisp may soon be a Cub. Fuld and Marquis would be going to the Red Sox.

I'm not too wild about this...I'm glad to see Marquis go because he's likely a man without a position right now, but picking up Crisp would give us the same problem in the outfield. Instead of Marquis being unhappy about not being in the rotation, Crisp will be unhappy about not being a starter...or if we do make him a starter then we'll be blocking Pie yet again. I think now is the right time for Pie to start - if we continue to show a lack of confidence in him he will just turn into Corey Patterson 2.0.