Power Pros Forum

His last start he went 6 ip 9 k's against the Mets that had David Wright and Jason Bay and he struck out Wright and Bay both at least once, Wright at least twice, this shouldnt be in the BP, he is too good for it. It is just a waste of money if your gonna let him pitch one inning instead of 6-7 a game. Lets not forget the BP involves more emotions and is more pressured than a starter. An 8th inning guy comes in with a 1 run lead, I dont see how Zambrano can hold it. Bad move IMO as its wastes alot of money, its a waste of a good starter on days. Cubs is a win now club and its only early in the season, there is no need to make such a rush, and remember its the NL Central we are talking about. 90 games wins you the division. If you start Zambrano and get about 13-14 wins assuming half his starts are good, you have a good chance of taking second or first.

Zambrano has had NO good starts. We have to do SOMETHING or else we could get absolutely nothing from him. Silva/Gorz can probably make up for whatever we do lose from Zambrano since they've both been impressive. And it's not like we're getting SO many less innings from him. He's not going to wait 5+ days between appearences now and might be used as an innings-eater given his starter's stamina. What's really more of a waste? Giving him 3-4 less innings a week or letting him lose more games for us and restrict one of our better-performing starters to the bullpen? Besides, would it really make any difference if Gorzelanny and Zambrano switched salaries? We'd still be paying 140 mil for the team we have. We lose the same amount of money, it just goes to different places.

Demoting your staff ace after a 15-game sample size is ridiculous.

Paying a guy $17.9mil to be in the bullpen = also mind-bogglingly ridiculous.

Sending a guy where he doesn't want to be, and telling him he isn't as good as Tom Gorzelanny and Carlos Silva, when his numbers at the end of the season will 99.9% DEFINITELY be better than both of them, is disheartening.

Dempster and Wells are serviceable. Gorz is okay as 5th starter material (everyone has hot streaks). Betting on Silva to continue this trend is a bad idea (he's faced the Reds, Pirates and Astros - cmon). Lilly's another #4 guy.

Good front offices don't make huge moves like demoting their staff ace/opening day starter after 15 games. It shows a lack of patience, immaturity, and lack of respect for a guy going through a bad stretch.

Should the sox demote Beckett or Lester to the bullpen based on their April numbers? No, because logic dictates that they will work things out and begin periods of dominance, and regress to the mean for their career performances.

Unless scouts see something drasticall different in Zambrano's mechanics or velocity (and based on his decent starts and K/BB numbers, they aren't), there's no reason to do this. Look at Zambrano's career numbers in April - cold start. Give him one or two more outings and he'll be fine. Instead, they pull the trigger on this insane move, which will only hurt them in multiple ways.

Haven't Cubs fans been through enough? Now they have to deal with poor management.

Re; the money factor - your team should spend well. Spending $18mil on a staff ace that will pitch 220 good innings makes sense. Spending that same $18mil on a guy that will get a max of 80 innings for your team, doesn't make sense. Relievers rarely rack up 80+ innings, and that's if used every other day for an inning or two.

If Zambrano were all washed up, or again had some mechanical issue, or just didn't have stamina, this would make sense. After 3 starts, it doesn't make sense. It's like moving Alfonso Soriano to the bench, so that he's rested up for those few at-bats he will get.

I definitely agree with Alloutwar.

Wow, the Brewers just beat the Pirates 20-0

You are saying that if you move Zambrano to the bullpen it will be a waste of $18 million. I disagree. You are already paying him regardless of what happens, whether he is a starter or a reliever or good or bad. I agree that $18 million is too much for a reliever but you are paying him anyway. Don't you think that it would be best to try to do what is the greatest chance of winning? You have to pay him anyway, at least pay him to do what is going to help the team most.

Thank you, Bobby. Alloutwar and Longball, I get where you're coming from, but I'd like to point out that you can't always rely on history. Here's a few things history told us would happen: David Ortiz would be great, Alfonso Soriano would be great, Derrek Lee would suck, Evan Longoria would suck, Randy Wells would suck, Milton Bradley would be good, Mark Prior and Kerry Wood would win Cy Young awards, Mark Buerhle would continue to dominate after the perfect game (that play he made doesn't count), Micah Hoffpauir and Felix Pie would be the future of the Cubs, heck, history told us that Jackie Robinson would never play baseball.

You've just undone you're own argument. If history isn't relevant, than Zambrano's last 4 games started - all of which now occur in the past - aren't relevant either.

We have to use the tools available to us, which are
1) what we know about Carlos Zambrano that can be appraised by scouts - velocity, motion, movement, stamina, control.
2) what we know about Carlos Zambrano that we can see from statistics. He's had some bad outings this year, but historically has been bad in April and then ramps it up to dominance, once he gets 50 innings into the season.
3) what we know about the Cubs payroll and other players.

You have a guy that's going to get into form and start being his normal self. You're paying him the same regardless, yes. Your choices are now
1) Have him in the rotation, and when he regains his form he then contributes 170 innings of top-notch pitching.
2) Have him in the bullpen, and when (if) he regains his form in those shorter bursts, have him contribute 50-60 innings of questionable relief pitching (new role)
3) give up and release him, or trade him, or attempt to demote him to the minors.

That's it. Those three. Choose your poison. Would you rather endure 2 or 3 more rough starts, and then get some vintage Zambrano, or just cut your losses and limit his workload, but get less out of him? It's risk/reward.

This move just reeks of desperation, which - 3 weeks into the season - is pretty disturbing. Again, my Sox aren't tearing it up. Jon Lester is nowhere near his career line, or what we expect of him. But even though Dice-K is back, Lester isn't moving to the bullpen. That's because we know he will regain his form and start getting guys out. It's wisdom, experience, good scouting, and good management.

The average fan isn't going to have all of those. A guy can be bad for 3 games and short-sighted fans will be calling for his head. That's why fans don't run sports teams. And yet, in this case, it's the odd exception, which is why it's being universally panned.

I agree with Alloutwar. I would move Gorzenallany to the bullpen. He did a nice job there last season and is probably the worst overall pitcher of Wells, Lilly, Zambrano, Dempster, Silva and him. Eventually Silva will stop doing so great and at that point I would demote him to the bullpen, but you have to ride the hot hand and while he is doing well he should stay in the rotation. Gorzellany can be a kind of swingman as he has experience in the bullpen and the rotation. As for the other guys, don't teach an old dog new tricks, especially if they are doing well. Don't fix what ain't broke.

Well I might as well bump this up since we've all been using the Sports Updates thread for baseball..(we could still use it but we have a 2010 MLB season thread for a reason )

But anyways, in his first ever at bat, Daniel Nava of the Red Sox hit a grand slam! I had never heard his name(even in the minors) and he got a surprise start today after being called up the first pitch he saw a grand slam! Another odd thing is minutes before the game, Dice-K was supposed to start then the game starts and Dice-K's on the DL (I think) and Scott Atchison makes his first ever start

I heard that Nava was 70 pounds in high school. He got cut from his college team and became the equipment manager. He played independent ball for a while and then the Red Sox bought his contract for 1 dollar. Wow.

Yeah and he never hit a home run until high school. I've never either so it gives me a little hope on playing baseball later in my life(I'm actually pretty good for my age but nope never close to a homer)

Also I heard that Joe Castiglione(Red Sox radio broadcaster), told Tim McCarver that he told Daniel Nava to swing at the first pitch because you'll never get the first pitch you ever see in big leagues again. That's pretty cool too.

And Strasburg makes another start today, this game is on TBS. The Indians offense is a little better than Pittsburgh's but is still very bad so I think he can have another great game

wow! Pedroia is 5-5 and has hit 3 homeruns against the Rockies tonight and his 3rd one has made it 13-11 in the 10th in a wild game!

But Papelbon has blown 2 straight saves, in 2 straight days, with 2-run leads and he's looking awful out there. I hope he can get these last 3 outs in the 10th though...

Sorry for the triple post but Edwin Jackson has no hit the Rays!
I love seeing the Rays no hit 3 times in 2 years. Not to mention it was their old starter

That's a MAJOR double whammy. Twice this year, and by your own former player.