Wood back; Eyre out
As expected the Cubs activated Kerry Wood off the DL at noon today, just the time when lefty reliever Scott Eyre cleared waivers. At that point, the Cubs designated Eyre for assignment. GM Jim Hendry has seven days to trade Eyre (a likely possibility). If they can't make a deal, they'll then release him.
Eyre could have complained about his handling by manager Lou Piniella, but he didn't. As close as he came was this before he headed for his RV to drive home: "I think I did that to myself last year in the first half. I don't think Lou ever got over that. But that's fine. I have no ill feelings, and I mean that, truly...I like this place." Eyre became a little emotional at that point.
Eyre got off to a rough start last year, drawing Lou's ire, and "ire" is how Lou pronounced Eyre's last name for much of 2007 until Eyre turned it around and pitched lights-out in the second half.
Piniella did not meet with the media either after last night's game or before today's, but Hendry did. "Scott's been really a good member of our club now for two and a half years and had a terrific year in '06. It just became a decision once Woody came back and once Samardzija's come up done such a good job. Gaudin's done a terrific job since he was acquired. It's just a matter that we felt like going forward to Sept. 1, that was the 12 (pitchers) we felt rounded out the bullpen the best."
The two lefties who survived were Sean Marshall and Neal Cotts. Cotts is more of a one-inning guy, and Marshall can go long. Hendry admitted it would be folly to send Marshall back to Iowa to get "stretched out."
Other than that, the field looks in great shape after last night's biblically proportioned storm. Cubs go this way:
Soriano, LF
Theriot, SS
Lee, 1B
Ramirez, 3B
Johnson, CF
DeRosa, 2B
Fukudome, RF
Blanco, C
Harden, P
You still have a 50 -50 chance of winning a game, I'll go with odds Vegas puts out, they have a much better winning %. Formulas are great for actuaries, who is likely to die first , women have less accidents etc..Baseball doesnt work that way. Now if want to look at tendencies, say Bob Howry is likely to give up a home run with two outs and throw down a C note he does, you would be right on..E=MC squared times the speed of the light-(d=v=x14,982mph)=mass will tell how fast a team will enter the vortex of a black hole and revert time back into todays time..Geezuz...Howry is bad and I dont need a formula to tell me so. Reality is reality..
Cubs have outscored the Astros 11-9 so far this series. So does that mean that Pythag is broken? Nope. Or that Pythag doesn't work on small samples? Again, nope! I'll go ahead and use the Patriot variation on Pythagorean:
11^1.94 / (11^1.94 + 9^1.94 )
[I figured 1.94 as ((RS+RA)/G)^.287, for those curious where those numbers are coming from.]
So, that gives the Cubs a win expectation of the series so far of .596. What do you think is more accurate, ignoring for just a moment the specific pitching matchup - the Cubs having a 60% chance of winning tomorrow's game against the Astros (their Pythag W% this series) or a 50% chance (their actual W% this series)?
If you vote the later, then go ahead and ignore Pythagorean.
(Of course we have a lot more games on which to base our estimates of the talent level of each team than simply these two games, which would be even more accurate still.)
...That a beat writer's blog would be the place for this kind of stuff? Times are a changing. Maybe not, but it's a start, and happy to be a part of it.
Seriously? What will it take for Piniella to STOP putting this guy in any game that is within 3 runs? The man is awful. I don't care if he had a great season last year. He is awful, and is killing this team by getting destroyed each and every time out. Again, today. A tubed heater to Carlos Lee. He has no confidence, and should join Scott Eyre on the DFA list.....
I like Piniella, but this is getting old really fast. DL him, and put Jon Leiber in his place, or whatever, but stop putting him in the game.
Here Bruce,
Give this to Lou and ask him to read it before he goes ballastic when you or Sullivan, or Levine ask him why keeps rolling out Bob Howry daily...
March ERA: 9.00---he gave up the winning run on opening day against Milwaukee.
April ERA: 8.03--the highlight of the month? The bomb he gave up to the back up catcher to lose a game vs Washington
May ERA: 1.76---a minor miracle.
June ERA: 4.50---tried to lose a game vs LA when Kent homered, but Fukudome bailed him out.
July ERA: 6.75---pick any game
August ERA: 7.82---today or even Saturday when he had 3rd and 2nd with 1 out, and got out of it.
My point is even when he somehow doesn't give up a run, he pulls a Rod Beck and escapes leaving a village on the base paths.
If they are going to alienate Scott Eyre, and send down Michael Wuertz, then why does Bob Howry get a free pass each time out? That's what I would LOVE to know...........
Here is the perfect example of how screwed up this whole debate is. Cubs have outscored the Astros 6-3 so far in two games. Assuming they hang on and win this game, the expected record would have been 2-0 based on the run differential, but in real life it's 1-1 because some how the Cubs got mowed down by Brian Moehler.
If that makes any sense......
Do you draw similar conclusions about the validity of batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage when a guy goes 0 for 4 one day and 4 for 4 the next?
We're talking about two games here, one that was cut short by rain. Over a long season, you can draw some general conclusions about run differential. It's not perfect, but no measure is.
That's why I just argue that I would take 4 runs for 7 straight games and the Cubs would probably win 5 of those. that is asuming that Marquis only pitches once. This whole roller coaster of scoring 8, 0, 6, 2, 7, etc is just maddening. That's all that I am saying.
Plus, come playoff time, it's huge to be able to manufacture runs and while up 5 now is nice, guys have to get bunts down (theriot) and move guys over, and get guys in from third with less then 2 outs (Ramirez). They start doing that daily, and they could very well run away and hide and end any drama until the postseason begins.
Easier said then done, but the Anaheim Angels are the poster child of how successful that style of baseball is. So were the Sox from 2005 and 2006.
They hit the living heck out of the ball for home runs and got dominant starting pitching. They were in no way a "small ball" team. That all came from the trade for "Scotty Pods" or whatever the Hawkeroo called him. Konerko, Dye, Crede and the boys hit a lot of homers. I'll bet they ranked in the top three or four in the AL in homers and runs.
They finished 4th in the AL with 200 hrs, but 13th in runs. Go figure.
What has happened to the comfortable 6-1 lead? Not good at all.....Of course, when you stop hitting after 2, bad things start to happen.......
I said last inning the Cubs weren't out of the woods. I don't know if Harden was getting too predictable or if his velocity was starting to drop. But the Astros seemed to be sitting on the fastball and connecting.
Well, I'm glad to hear that the Cubs didn't send down Marshall or Cotts, especially after how well both have pitched. Sadly, Scott eyre was a casualty of a numbers game. Hopefully for his sake, a team with dire need of bullpen help in the AL, will give the cubs something for him.
I just heard on the WGN pregame show, Lou mentioning about going to a possible 4 man rotation here for a bit with the numerous off days? He then added that somebody would head to the pen (Marquis)? Very interesting. I guess Harden must be feeling fantastic for this to even come up at all, which could explain his shortening up on pitch counts recently for the starters.
Need to win here and put some more pressure on the Brew crew. If the Zambrano vs Barrett thing tought me anything, it's that big league clubs usually rebound pretty well after an in-house fight. I expect the Brewers to go on a mini tear here.....Hopefully the Cubs can take care of their own business and continue to win series that they SHOULD.
Lou handled last year's fight very well. Yost, on the other hand, has a tendency to get increasingly uptight as these things happen. But yes, this will be interesting to watch.