Cubs after Anibal Sanchez? (Signs with Tiger 5/$80mil)

[Guest]

Again, you have to keep in mind that we're only on 12/16 here. At this point last offseason our rotation was Garza, a lousy in 2011 Dempster and a huge question mark in Zamrano coming off the suspension at the end of 2011. We still didn't have Rizzo yet. We didn't have Travis Wood yet.

 

You can say we're just shuffling deck chairs, but we are WAY ahead of where we were on 12/16/11.

 

Well, I'M comparing the team for 2013 on 12/16 vs. one they started the season with last year, though even saying we're "WAY ahead" of the 12/16/2011 is hardly a ringing endorsement. You're right, I'm sure hoping there's more moves of actually significance to come, but I'm not terribly optimistic that there's another Rizzo deal that's going to happen between now and ST nor am I all that optimistic that they're going to sign someone like Jackson.

If we get to spring training and this is still the team, then I'll be disappointed in the offseason. I still believe we will add a couple more pieces to the puzzle, though.

[Sammy Sofa]

Again, you have to keep in mind that we're only on 12/16 here. At this point last offseason our rotation was Garza, a lousy in 2011 Dempster and a huge question mark in Zamrano coming off the suspension at the end of 2011. We still didn't have Rizzo yet. We didn't have Travis Wood yet.

 

You can say we're just shuffling deck chairs, but we are WAY ahead of where we were on 12/16/11.

 

Well, I'M comparing the team for 2013 on 12/16 vs. one they started the season with last year, though even saying we're "WAY ahead" of the 12/16/2011 is hardly a ringing endorsement. You're right, I'm sure hoping there's more moves of actually significance to come, but I'm not terribly optimistic that there's another Rizzo deal that's going to happen between now and ST nor am I all that optimistic that they're going to sign someone like Jackson.

If we get to spring training and this is still the team, then I'll be disappointed in the offseason. I still believe we will add a couple more pieces to the puzzle, though.

 

I do, too. I just think they'll likely be pretty middling.

[Guest]

I am being honest. Right now I don't see this team very much improved over the preseason 2012 team. The rotation is slightly weaker, the bullpen is stronger, and the offense is basically the same as the 2012 team at this point last year. Again things can (and probably will) change in the next 3-4 months which would affect my opinion.

 

You are correct that the bullpen is stronger.

 

Not really. It's feels like kind of a juggling the deck chairs on the Titanic-type scenario right now. A baseball team has so many working parts it's pretty easy to shuffle around arguments based on expectations whether you're arguing that the team is going to be bad or good. Last year's team wasn't actually as bad as they ended up being going into the season, but they really weren't any good, either, and this one one seems very similar. The individual expectations and questions marks obviously change, but it doesn't really add up to having an actual good baseball team. Better than last year? Sure, OK, I'm on board with that; but that's not saying much when last year's team was "ideally" about a 70 win-team and this one looks to be cruising for the 70-75 range.

 

The massaging of expected production over ~15 players goes both ways too, as Backtobanks is ably demonstrating. And like Tim points out, part of the point is that the team is several wins better than last year(as you're saying here) and by all accounts are actively trying to make moves to push that further. Quibbling over whether it's currently a 70-75 win team or a 73-78 win team right now is an exercise in minutiae I'm not all that interested in going over at a line item level.

[Sammy Sofa]

The massaging of expected production over ~15 players goes both ways too, as Backtobanks is ably demonstrating. And like Tim points out, part of the point is that the team is several wins better than last year(as you're saying here) and by all accounts are actively trying to make moves to push that further. Quibbling over whether it's currently a 70-75 win team or a 73-78 win team right now is an exercise in minutiae I'm not all that interested in going over at a line item level.

 

Neither am I; my point is that a baseline in that area can too easily become disastrous because the team is so precariously balanced to begin with because of the abundance of mediocrity. I think I had last year's team picked at something like 72 wins and said I wouldn't be surprised if they won ten more games than that or when ten fewer games than that. This seems to be cruising towards a similar expectation, but just slightly up the scale.

[Backtobanks]

And as long as we're using wins as the basis for determining "better", there's a good chance that there will be another sell-off at the trade deadline affecting the win total. By August, there's a good chance that some combination of Soriano, Garza, Marmol, DeJesus, Camp, etc. might be gone and replaced by prospects.

[Soul]

Tim, the discussion was about comparing the 2012 Cubs and the 2013 Cubs at this point of the offseason. Nobody expected Byrd and Soto to completely fall off the cliff offensively. Byrd was coming off .276/.324/.395/.719 in 2011 and .293/.346/.429/.775 in 2010 while Soto was coming off .228/.310/.411/.721 in 2011 and .280/.393/.497/.890 in 2010. I certainly expect Rizzo to improve, but will he surpass LaHair (1st half)/Rizzo (2nd half) production? So again comparing what we expected from Byrd and Soto to what we should expect from Schierholtz and Castillo doesn't seem too much of an improvement. 3B is still a question mark since all of the candidates are basically the same as last year.

You're being inconsistent in your own argument. You look at what Byrd and Soto did in 2011 and talk about this being about expectations on 12/16 last year. But then you talk about Rizzo having to beat LaHair's first half (btw - 1st base as a whole had a .796 OPS last year, Rizzo will beat that easily). You also talk about the actual performance of the pitching staff instead of what was expected of them going into last year.

 

Let's make this about expectations then. But we need to compare expectations at the same point in the offseason to be fair.

 

- Byrd did perform much worse than expected going into last year. But he had been declining. He's being replaced this year by a Schierholtz/Sappelt platoon that should out perform Byrd's 2011 .719 OPS easily

- Soriano was hurt and pretty bad in 2011

- Most of us had very low expectations for LaHair

- Samardzija was a big unknown heading into the rotation

- We didn't even have Rizzo yet

- We didn't sign Maholm for another month

- Dempster was coming off a 4.80 ERA season and looked to many to be declining quickly

- Zambrano was still in the rotation and sucked hard

- We hadn't yet traded for Travis Wood

 

So, fundamentally, our rotation was Garza, a lousy in 2011 Dempster, a lousy in 2011 Zambrano and an unproven Shark. We didn't even have a fifth starter at this point last year.

 

On offense, expectations are much higher for Soriano than they were last year. We have much, much higher expectations for Rizzo than we did for LaHair. DeJesus is constant, but I expect more out of a Schierholtz + Sappelt platoon than I did from a declining Byrd. The only spot where expectations are lower is catcher.

 

I'm not sure how you can honestly say expectations are similar to last offseason at this same point. The projections on offense are somewhat better and at this point last year the rotation was in shambles.

 

I appreciate this post, but I still feel rather hollow with our progress so far. I was expecting more by now.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

I don't know if I'd expect a Schierholtz/Sappelt platoon to "easily" pass .719. .718 and lower is definitely inside the fat part of their range of expected outcomes.

[neely crenshaw]

I just don't see the "way better".

Bullpen, added a japanese pitcher to maybe close someday but that is simply a hope right now, it should be an improvement but I am not sure how you can use a stat to gauge it. the rest of the main guys are the same, I just don't see spot guys and long relief changing much in the win total, so slightly better with potential for more

soriano,dejesus,castro,barney, valbuena/stewart all return, the only possible upgrade is if stewart is healthy and bounces back but valbuena wasn't far of of what stewart had done.

Rizzo for a full year BUT lahair was slightly better than in the first half so a full year translate to about the same.

Catcher looks better offensively but worse defensively

starting pitching is worse. you have to look at what maholm and dempster did last year, not their splits. They were better than anyone would have guessed. are we thinking baker-feldman are matching that?

Garza, and Samardzija are back.

wood looks to have a full year over the combo of volstad and wood. so our main upgrade is how much better travis wood will be over that combo.

also keep in mind when we lost dempster,maholm and garza for the year, we were on pace to win 66-67 games. So for as much crud as we saw the least 2 months, we dropped around 6 games.

unless you are trying to guess improvement or someone bouncing back the way better isn't there. It sure looks a little worse right now maybe not worse than the 61 win team but certainly worse than the one that played the first 4 months.

[neely crenshaw]

if you compare on how we felt you have to compare apples to apples, not how things turned out

dempster, garza, maholm, volstad and wells were the probable rotation we didn't even know shark would be a starter

compare the known staff now, samardzija, garza, wood, feldman, baker... shark can end up better but we knew pretty much exactly what dempster would bring, garza also. We don't have that this year, we hope.

Volstad had high hopes of bouncing back last year , many said that he might be better than zambrano last year. So we clearly felt as good with him as we do with wood this year.

The bullpen was one thing we thought would be set, with kerry wood, marshall and marmol. Although we see improvements over what we ended up with, marmol, fujikawa and russell are not as good as we thought those 3 would be last year.

Many felt(or hoped) rizzo would start last year not lahair. I would say that thoughts are a bit tempered after seeing him come up. He'll be good but most wonder of he will be that middle of the order thumper or just a good solid pro. Last year pretty much everyone thought he was our number 3 or 4 hitter for the nest 10 seasons.

Do you have more hope this year that stewart bounces back over last year? Don't know why another underperforming year would help those feelings.

I think we feel better but only after we saw how last year played out but I know people felt a lot better about our team last year at this time. Some were even talking about contending if things broke right because st louis and milwaukee lost their studs. NO ONE, this side of new haven mental center, is talking about contending.

[Sammy Sofa]

LaHair hit out of his mind in April. He managed an insane 1.251 OPS before plummeting to .792 in May and not getting above .700 again until September. Yeah, his first half OPS is .883, but it's clearly hugely skewed. Rizzo ideally hitting much more consistently each month is much more valuable over the course of the season than LaHair's 2011, so let's stop with the "oh, their first halves will probably even out at best;" LaHair was a fat load by some point in May, and it's not like his games in April double-counted or something.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Why is consistency more valuable than awesomeness that averages out to the same production?

[Sammy Sofa]

Why is consistency more valuable than awesomeness that averages out to the same production?

 

Because his early production is skewed by these monster games in a relatively small period; it's not like the Cubs get to win any of those wins twice. Then, pretty quickly, he became a liability and a hole in the lineup. How would a guy consistently hitting well throughout the year not be more valuable in terms of trying to win more games over the course of the season? LaHair was a 0.1 WAR player last year, and Rizzo ideally projects to be about 4-5, right?

[Guest]

Why is consistency more valuable than awesomeness that averages out to the same production?

Because by may he was a platoon player and you have to average his production with the .750 OPS Baker had taking the other at bats at first base.

[CubInOK]

Why is consistency more valuable than awesomeness that averages out to the same production?

Really? I mean, you don't understand the answer to this?

[neely crenshaw]

If you talk stats you can't use "hope" that rizzo we be more consistent. Also the fact is Rizzo had some serious downs in his half. I am not sure unless you know game by game when hits are going to come that you can downplay the actual stats. If you have 9 hitless games in a row, vs 9 spread out over 30 games...it's still 9 games.

i get the argument but hitting 280 with 15 hrs over 80 games is pretty much the same no matter which games he hit in. You could actually say bunching up hits in fewer games could help a bad offensive team more than spreading them out.

[seanimal]

Why is consistency more valuable than awesomeness that averages out to the same production?

 

you're kidding, right?

[Sammy Sofa]

i get the argument but hitting 280 with 15 hrs over 80 games is pretty much the same no matter which games he hit in.

 

No, this is simply wrong.

 

And you ideally can basically count on Rizzo to exceed LaHair's production; LaHair was THAT bad.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Why is consistency more valuable than awesomeness that averages out to the same production?

Really? I mean, you don't understand the answer to this?

 

I don't think there is an answer to it other than "well, it kind of seems like it makes sense." It's an intuitive idea that may or may not hold up under examination. Baseball is a notoriously counterintuitive game.

 

LaHair's inconsistent performance still allowed him a +1.94 WPA on 6.1 BRAA in 380 PAs.

 

By contrast, Rizzo's 9.0 BRAA in 365 PAs translated to +0.91 WPA.

 

That's obviously not any sort of actual study, but I'm not at all convinced that a real study would show that steady performances are more valuable than hot/cold performances if the total production is the same.

[Sammy Sofa]

You should be.

[Rob]

With a skilled bench and a good manager, I'd rather have inconsistent players. The good manager should be able to recognize when to play guys on hot streaks and bench those who are cooling off. Maybe that gives an opportunity to squeeze out a bit more.

 

That's purely theoretical, of course.

[Sammy Sofa]

LaHair had A hot streak.

[Rob]

LaHair had A hot streak.

 

Hence the whole "that's purely theoretical" disclaimer.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

You should be.

 

And strikeouts are *obviously* way worse than other outs. Strikeouts can't advance a runner!

[Sammy Sofa]

Amazingly bad analogy.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Amazingly bad analogy.

 

So ... you'll be showing me that study that shows that consistency is better than equivalent inconsistency any minute now?