A Saber-Slanted Baseball Community

I like how this author has the balls to suggest that the Cubs trade Carlos Marmol. It's an awesome idea, only if the Cubs are able to get a huge prospect in return. "Like Carlos Zambrano, I have reached my boiling point with the Cubs organization. There have been worse seasons than this one, but rarely has one seemed this disappointing."

Geoff Baker provides a hefty article on what lead to Milton Bradley seeking help for his personal demons. Between this and the upcoming ESPN.com Interview, I imagine there will be plenty of talk about Bradley during the off-day.

James Shields - causing mental anguish among the hitters he faces. The K that Kills

This helps shed some light on Milton's latest ordeal.

I don't like the idea of making a Fanpost on this, so I will hide this here as a Fanshot where it is out of the way. But I want to make a comment about this Milton Bradley thing that we have rehashed 20 times. Milton Bradley had an "incident" yesterday. Other websites are using this to show off how right they were. The problem is that they are arguing the wrong thing. No one denied that Milton Bradley tends to do odd, emotional things as a reaction to baseball events. No one. Lookout Landing didn't. GMZ didn't. Wak didn't. Milton Bradley didn't. He has some serious emotional issues that he has always had and always will have. The thing is: I don't care. And neither should anyone else. His personal problems may seem public, but the truth is that they don't matter. Why should I, or anyone else, care how Milton Bradley reacts to failure? 1) Milton Bradley's attitude has not caused Figgins, Griffey, Lopez, Sweeney or Rob Johnson's offensive struggles. 2) Milton Bradley's attitude has not lost us all of these games. 3) Milton Bradley's attitude has not caused the poor bullpen management. 4) Milton Bradley's attitude did not cause Cliff Lee's injury. 5) Milton Bradley's attitude is not the reason we lost any of these games. His emotional problems have, quite frankly, affected nothing. Zero. Nada. We wouldn't win or lose more games just because he is having an emotional problem. And because Milton Bradley's attitude isn't the reason we have been losing, I don't see any good reason to give a shit if he wants to have an attitude with this team. There is literally only ONE reason to care about his attitude, and that reason is that some times he needs to take a few days off to cool down. His personal issues are nothing more than the equivalent of a recurring injury. Occasionally he gets hurt, except his hurt is emotional instead of physical. That's it. The only reason to care about Bradley's emotional outbursts are because you are upset he needs to miss a few games, and the only way you can be upset is if you are admitting that his bat is worth having in the lineup. You can't have both. Bradley's attitude has not caused this team to struggle and Bradley's attitude is unlikely to cause the team to struggle in the future. He can break as many bats on the plate as he wants, and it won't change the fact that the team sucking had literally nothing to do with his attitude, and everything to do with its good players struggling.

I'm trying to imagine myself hating Milton Bradley. It's not working. Maybe I should try loving him instead.

This story paints the upcoming season for the Cubs as a grand experiment in valuing clubhouse chemistry over paint-by-numbers talent. The team is essentially the same sans a poor-performing Milton Bradley. Silva has performed much better than expected this spring, and is healthy. Of course that complicates my "chemistry experiment" line of thought, somewhat. If Silva performs as an even slightly-better-than-average 5th starter, that outweighs the contributions of what was subtracted. Then again, his addition to the team would've decreased any win projections for the club because his recent history indicates a worse addition than the subtraction of Bradley. Projections aside, the players quoted in this article cite clubhouse energy/enthusiasm as an important factor---players pulling for each other as a vector for increased on-the-field performance. I'm thinking that any chemical addition-by-subtraction argument might only be made in terms of offense since Byrd probably projects as a wash with even an average Bradley. But if the team's offensive numbers improve, then maybe there's something to this whole "chemistry thing." - TL

Seems like an overreaction on the ump's part but on the other hand, it wasn't exactly the most professional move by MB...have fun Seattle.