Great Quote From Lou Piniella Today | And Arizona Phil
In a recent post, I said that Cubs fans are overly concerned about the rotation for no reason… and that the whole thing will sort itself out.
Well, here’s Lou:
“You know, spring training doesn’t change. It’s the same thing every year. You bring 25-30 pitchers to camp and you watch them throw on the side and you say, ‘Boy, what a great collection of arms we got this year, and we’re going to have a tough choice of paring down.’ And you know what, every year the decisions are made for you fairly quickly.”
Thank god we actually play the games instead of having stats decide the outcomes. Lou knows that Marquis, Lieber, Marshall, and Gallagher aren’t going to make his decision too difficult.
Marquis had a solid outing today going three scoreless innings, giving up 4 hits and a walk.
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In other news, I’m impressed with Jeff Samardzija and Tyler Colvin. The Shark looks very polished this spring with an excellent sinker. He’s showing poise on the hill. Colvin has a compact, quick swing with some pop. We need more lefty bats on this team. I won’t be surprised to see either at Wrigley sometime soon.
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Next, it appears that Henry Rodriguez has resurrected his career as a pitcher for the Oakland A’s. Just kidding.
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And finally, here’s a big FU to all the people who gave me hell over the Kendall deal last year. I hated it, all other bloggers lauded it. Now, all other bloggers hate it… and Jerry Blevins mowed down the Cubs in the 9th today, 1-2-3 inning.
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Update: This time of year, I always like to read what Arizona Phil over at The Cub Reporter has to say. He seems to make it to every spring training game and really knows his baseball. It’s like having a pro scout on hand who reports back to all of us for free.
I’ve often said that for someone to learn the game from a Cubs blog, as opposed to learning how to play Dungeons & Dragons, fictional games with stats, his/her only hope is at this blog or at JBrokaw’s site. That’s a mistake as I sometimes forget that Arizona Phil’s better than all of us. I just tend to ignore The Cub Reporter outside of AZ Phil and that’s probably why it slips my mind. But anyway, here’s a gem from Mr. AZ Phil from yesterday:
“Baseball Prospectus seems to downplay the fact that baseball is played on the field by human beings, not by robots. Sometimes it appears obvious (on paper) that things should work a certain way, but it doesn’t necessarily work that way on the field. It’s the difference between Fantasy Baseball and Reality Baseball.
Remember a few years ago when some said LaTroy Hawkins should be the Cubs closer because he had the “best pure stuff” among all Cubs relievers at the time and the reliever with the “best stuff” should be the closer? It’s like that. It ignores the personality/psychological factors that actually really do have an impact on how a player performs in a certain role and how a team performs on the field as a group.
Not everything is statistics. There is a lot of science and body memory involved in playing baseball, but there is also a lot of art and nuance involved in performing on the field that (unfortunately) just cannot be quantified by statistics.”
Amen. And I’m on record for pleading relentlessly that LaTroy shouldn’t have been made to close at all at the time… even before he failed.
Tags: Arizona Phil, Cubs Rotation, Jeff Samardzija, Lou Piniella, Tyler Colvin
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