Rothschild Stays, ENTIRE coaching staff to return

[dalgreen]

I just want to give a history lesson to everyone "surprised" that the coaches, GM/ manager will be back, possibly with the GM and manager given extensions. Ed Lynch, one of the most horrendous GM's in Cub history (and there have been some bad ones) wasn't fired by MacPhail. He had to resign not once, but twice before MacPhail accepted it. And from the quotes I remember from MacPhail at the time, he had no intentions of firing Lynch when Lynch resigned. So, why should anyone be surprised that the coaches will be back, the manager will be back and the GM will be back? If the coaches are Baker's "boys" then Baker is Hendry's "boy". And as long as MacPhail keeps Hendry, everyone else is pretty safe.... as long as their mistakes aren't as painfully obvious to fans like Wendell Kim's blunders.

[YearofDaCubs]

I just want to give a history lesson to everyone "surprised" that the coaches, GM/ manager will be back, possibly with the GM and manager given extensions. Ed Lynch, one of the most horrendous GM's in Cub history (and there have been some bad ones) wasn't fired by MacPhail. He had to resign not once, but twice before MacPhail accepted it. And from the quotes I remember from MacPhail at the time, he had no intentions of firing Lynch when Lynch resigned. So, why should anyone be surprised that the coaches will be back, the manager will be back and the GM will be back? If the coaches are Baker's "boys" then Baker is Hendry's "boy". And as long as MacPhail keeps Hendry, everyone else is pretty safe.... as long as their mistakes aren't as painfully obvious to fans like Wendell Kim's blunders.

Umm..Bakers mistakes ARE painfully obvious to the fans, but he doesnt have to worry because he is Hendry's boy.

[UK1679666180]

Tim, who do you think is a better PC between Bryan Price or Rothschild?

[Tim]

Tim, who do you think is a better PC between Bryan Price or Rothschild?

I'd put them on the same tier and answer that between the two of them I'd suggest it just depends on how well they match up with the individuals on the staff. A good question would be if Price would have better luck getting Dusty to take Prior/Z/Wood out of the game after seven innings of great pitching when the Cubs have an eight run lead. I happen to think that's pretty hopeless, though.

 

In the end, I'd say that Larry's probably not the optimal fit with this group and that it is time to make the switch. Price is one of the few I'd consider dumping him for, though. Keep in mind that Price wasn't able to save Soriano, either.

[Proven Veteran]

Why would Larry turn down a three year deal when he is going to get fired next year along with the rest of the coaches?

[BigbadB]

I think it's disgusting to reward incompetence.

[Andy]

Somewhere there's a liberal dying to make a Bush joke in there somewhere...:wink:

[RynoRules]

"Everybody loves the Cubs, everybody loves the Cubs..."

 

*stabs self*

 

*Points to signature*

[Guest]

Tommorow's headline:

 

Entire bench get 3 year deals, raises. Neifi Perez named opening day starter at SS, leadoff

 

Tomorrow's editorial: Cubs were actually good last year. You are all mistaken. Keep buying tickets

After a bit of reflection, I don't think the Cubs were really as bad as their 79-83 record would have many believe. Going by straight run differential the Cubs should have finished 80-82. OK, no big difference there. However, going by their component offensive stats this team should have scored many more runs than it did... to the tune of about 767 as opposed to the 703 runs they actually plated. Using that as the differential, it could be argued that this team played like it should have won 87 games, not 79. No improvement over the past couple of years, but not a huge dropoff, either.

 

The question is who can we blame for the team falling 60+ runs short of its expected offensive output? I'm not sure the coaching staff and/or management can take a lot of that blame. Most of that difference is probably due to (a lack of) situational hitting, something that doesn't seem to follow much a of predictable pattern.

 

I'm not saying that Dusty/Hendry shouldn't be criticized for some of their decisions, just that the 2005 Cubs team they assembled probably wasn't as bad as its record indicated.

[BigbadB]

Tommorow's headline:

 

Entire bench get 3 year deals, raises. Neifi Perez named opening day starter at SS, leadoff

 

Tomorrow's editorial: Cubs were actually good last year. You are all mistaken. Keep buying tickets

After a bit of reflection, I don't think the Cubs were really as bad as their 79-83 record would have many believe. Going by straight run differential the Cubs should have finished 80-82. OK, no big difference there. However, going by their component offensive stats this team should have scored many more runs than it did... to the tune of about 767 as opposed to the 703 runs they actually plated. Using that as the differential, it could be argued that this team played like it should have won 87 games, not 79. No improvement over the past couple of years, but not a huge dropoff, either.

 

The question is who can we blame for the team falling 60+ runs short of its expected offensive output? I'm not sure the coaching staff and/or management can take a lot of that blame. Most of that difference is probably due to (a lack of) situational hitting, something that doesn't seem to follow much a of predictable pattern.

 

I'm not saying that Dusty/Hendry shouldn't be criticized for some of their decisions, just that the 2005 Cubs team they assembled probably wasn't as bad as its record indicated.

 

The Cubs OBP from the lead off spot this year was .299. From the #2 hole, it was .317. Can you correlate what Lee and the clean up hitters might have done if they had an average OBP from the top two spots of somewhere in the neighborhood of .330? And how about again at .350?

 

Assuming Lee has 70 extra runners on base over the course of the season, and that he drives in a runner every 3 at bats that he has runners on base, Lee alone could have had 23 more RBI's alone. Add in Ramirez, Nomar and Burnitz all possibly having more runners on base to advance and I could easily see this team reaching the 60+ extra runs you suggest.

[Laura]

BBB kind of beat me to it ... :)

 

I am interested in your take on this, because I have a really hard time understanding / agreeing with it intuitively.

 

I've heard it said that the precise makeup of a lineup doesn't matter "unless you do something unorthodox like batting the pitcher leadoff." How would have batting the pitchers leadoff have affected the Cubs scoring opportunities in 05? For better or for worse? The Cubs had such horrendous production from the top of the order.

 

Most of that difference is probably due to (a lack of) situational hitting, something that doesn't seem to follow much a of predictable pattern.

 

But if you maximize the at-bats of the worst hitters on the team, shouldn't that affect RISP (or situational hitting, however you define it)?

 

I saw the worst hitters consistently being hit at the top of the order and consistently being played over players that 1) potentially could have hit better, and 2) needed to be evaluated for future use once the Cubs were out of it. Given that, it's hard for me to believe that randomized situational hitting is the culprit for the '05 season.

[dalgreen]

Tommorow's headline:

 

Entire bench get 3 year deals, raises. Neifi Perez named opening day starter at SS, leadoff

 

Tomorrow's editorial: Cubs were actually good last year. You are all mistaken. Keep buying tickets

After a bit of reflection, I don't think the Cubs were really as bad as their 79-83 record would have many believe. Going by straight run differential the Cubs should have finished 80-82. OK, no big difference there. However, going by their component offensive stats this team should have scored many more runs than it did... to the tune of about 767 as opposed to the 703 runs they actually plated. Using that as the differential, it could be argued that this team played like it should have won 87 games, not 79. No improvement over the past couple of years, but not a huge dropoff, either.

 

The question is who can we blame for the team falling 60+ runs short of its expected offensive output? I'm not sure the coaching staff and/or management can take a lot of that blame. Most of that difference is probably due to (a lack of) situational hitting, something that doesn't seem to follow much a of predictable pattern.

 

I'm not saying that Dusty/Hendry shouldn't be criticized for some of their decisions, just that the 2005 Cubs team they assembled probably wasn't as bad as its record indicated.

 

I don't disagree with that. Had Wood and Prior each been able to make at least 26-28 starts, I honestly don't see why the Cubs couldn't have won 90 games at the very least. That's where my problem with Hendry comes in. You can no longer take a chance on guys with histories of injuries being 95-100% healthy all season. I hope he's learned this when he has to sign a utility infielder (a good one) because you pretty much have to assume that Aramis Ramirez may miss 20-25 games next season due to some injury and you better have quality starters available in case Wood and Prior miss starts. The way this team was assembled was that everything would have to go right in order for the season to be a success, and once we began the season without Prior and Wood that was pretty much the beginning of the end. Back to the coaches, I still think coaches get too much credit and too much blame. To me, the players make the coaches/managers look good. Has Phil Garner all of a sudden gotten to be a better manager since moving to Houston? Did Terry Francona suddenly get better after moving to Boston? Did Jim Leyland all of a sudden get bad in Colorado after Pittsburgh and Florida? I think it all begins with getting good players.

[Guest]

The Cubs OBP from the lead off spot this year was .299. From the #2 hole, it was .317. Can you correlate what Lee and the clean up hitters might have done if they had an average OBP from the top two spots of somewhere in the neighborhood of .330? And how about again at .350?

Yes, getting better hitters would have increased the number of runs the Cubs scored, but it would also have increased the number of runs we'd expect them to score. The fact that our top-of-the-order hitters were terrible is already factored into the run estimator, so even with terrible performances such as Neifi and Corey taken into account the team still underperformed by 60-ish runs.

 

Assuming Lee has 70 extra runners on base over the course of the season, and that he drives in a runner every 3 at bats that he has runners on base, Lee alone could have had 23 more RBI's alone. Add in Ramirez, Nomar and Burnitz all possibly having more runners on base to advance and I could easily see this team reaching the 60+ extra runs you suggest.

Lineup construction could (and probably does) have something to do with the shortcomings, and those can more or less be completely blamed on the coaching staff. If Walker had spent the entire season in the #1 or #2 hole instead of Neifi/Corey, for example, that would probably generated several more RBI for Lee/ARam/Burnitz. It would also have decreased the number of runs those three would have scored, however, because the players now hitting behind them were much, much worse offensively than Walker. The net gain would therefore be fairly small, nowhere near the 64 run difference we saw in 2005. A lot of it is simply due to the fact that the team didn't collect hits at the most opportune times.

[Laura]

How does not collecting hits at the most opportune times correlate with batting average with RISP?

[Guest]

BBB kind of beat me to it ... :)

 

I am interested in your take on this, because I have a really hard time understanding / agreeing with it intuitively.

 

I've heard it said that the precise makeup of a lineup doesn't matter "unless you do something unorthodox like batting the pitcher leadoff." How would have batting the pitchers leadoff have affected the Cubs scoring opportunities in 05? For better or for worse? The Cubs had such horrendous production from the top of the order.

For the most part it's true that lineup construction has a fairly small impact on run production. (At least compared to the degree of importance our intuition typically assigns it.) There are quite a few articles on this floating around out there, many of which are in old issues of By the Numbers, the main publication of SABR's stats committee. For the most part the biggest general rule to follow in lineup construction is to try and ensure your best hitters get the most opportunities. Baker sure didn't seem to follow this rule in 2005, sticking with Corey/Neifi for so much of the season. (And as bad as those two were, hitting our pitchers first would have been far worse. Our beloved CF and SS were awful, but not that awful. ;))

 

But if you maximize the at-bats of the worst hitters on the team, shouldn't that affect RISP (or situational hitting, however you define it)?

In an absolute sense, yes, reshuffling the lineup so that better hitters got more chances should have increased our RISP numbers. Again, though, this is really just due to the fact that a larger share of your team's opportunities are going to better players. (Meaning all your stats should go up, not just those in specific situations.) The net gain would again be pretty small, though, as you're really only talking about a handful of PAs. The leadoff hitter only gets 50-60 more times at bat than the #6 hitter over the course of the season. Even with a gap as big as the one between Neifi and Walker -- about 0.05 XR/PA -- that still translates into just 2-3 runs over a full season.

 

I saw the worst hitters consistently being hit at the top of the order and consistently being played over players that 1) potentially could have hit better, and 2) needed to be evaluated for future use once the Cubs were out of it. Given that, it's hard for me to believe that randomized situational hitting is the culprit for the '05 season.

It's not the only culprit, but I'd still say it should take the blame for at least a few losses, if not more. Again, though, I'm not saying Hendry/Baker are beyond blame for the disappointing showing. I still disagree with many of their descisions, even those that ended up working out better than expected. I'm all for some change in the franchise, I just don't think 2005 was quite the disaster we fear it to be.

[Guest]

How does not collecting hits at the most opportune times correlate with batting average with RISP?

In theory it should mean a lower BA w/ RISP, but that's not really the whole story. Failing to convert your best scoring opportunities will partly explain a big gap between your expected and actual runs scored, but there are other things to consider. First and foremost is the distribution or grouping of your hits. As an extreme example, consider two teams that each get 18 hits in a game. Team A gets all those hits in a single inning, while Team B's hits are spread evenly over all 9 innings. Team A is almost certainly going to score many more runs than Team B despite the fact that their box scores at the end of the game will be more or less identical.

[Laura]

I'm all for some change in the franchise, I just don't think 2005 was quite the disaster we fear it to be.

 

It's good to hear that from someone whose opinion I respect, because I don't have hope for the foreseeable future with the current management in place. I just don't think anyone could build a good enough team to overcome the consistently worst-possible-option decisionmaking that apparently will be cemented in place for at least another year.

 

But maybe there's a glimmer. :?

[badger1679666666]

Somewhere there's a liberal dying to make a Bush joke in there somewhere...:wink:

 

Or a true conservative these days.

[Guest]

I just don't think anyone could build a good enough team to overcome the consistently worst-possible-option decisionmaking that apparently will be cemented in place for at least another year.

 

But maybe there's a glimmer. :?

As frustrating as some of Dusty's habits are, it's important to remember that it really isn't impossible to win when he's filling out the lineup cards. The Giants put out consistently good/great teams while he was in the Bay area, and despite a disappointing last couple of seasons his tenure with the Cubs hasn't been a dismal failure, either. Just as one player can only do so much to help/hinder a team's chances, a manager only has so much influence over his team's W/L record.

 

Yeah, I wsh Dusty was gone too, but I'm not ready to give up on this team just because he's sticking around for another year or three. A properly constructed Cubs team can (and hopefully will) win even with an infuriating manager. (Keep in mind my sig when I say that. ;))

[dalgreen]

I'm curious just how many games poor lineups cost us in relation to our poor pitching. I think our bad pitching this season gets lost with the bad offense. Baseball people are always talking about records in one-run games. But I'd be interested to know our record in three, four, and five run games. I believe we had a losing record in two-run games. So, we know the lineups made out have been horrendous, but did the lack of pitching make the lineups look worse?

[erik316wttn]

I'm curious just how many games poor lineups cost us in relation to our poor pitching. I think our bad pitching this season gets lost with the bad offense. Baseball people are always talking about records in one-run games. But I'd be interested to know our record in three, four, and five run games. I believe we had a losing record in two-run games. So, we know the lineups made out have been horrendous, but did the lack of pitching make the lineups look worse?

 

It would take one of the best modern pitching staffs of the era to overcome Perez/Patterson at the top of the order.

[BigbadB]

I still have an argument in regards to placement in the order. I don't necessarily believe that by moving people around in the order, that the runs created just shifts a little bit. Neifi Perez is not an OBP guy. He does, however, hit for a fairly decent AVG. Not only does his 2005 season reflect a .305 AVG hitting 7th, but he also provided an OBP in the 7 hole of .341. In the 8 spot he had a .318/.375. His 3 year splits show he has more success towards the bottom of the order.

 

That being said, if you had Walker/Hairston and Murton batting 1/2 in the order, and they provided a .350 OBP, the runs scored would dramatically increase from the top spots in the order. If you took the good AVG but not so good OBP guys and put them at the bottom of the order (Macias/Perez), you could get run production this way as well.

 

I still think this team could have scored 60+ runs more than they did. I also think that if everyone stayed healthy and there was no need for Macias and Perez, they could have scored many more than that. I think the Cubs had a better offense than Cincinnati if you had everyone healthy and the right person filling out the line up card.

[dalgreen]

I still have an argument in regards to placement in the order. I don't necessarily believe that by moving people around in the order, that the runs created just shifts a little bit. Neifi Perez is not an OBP guy. He does, however, hit for a fairly decent AVG. Not only does his 2005 season reflect a .305 AVG hitting 7th, but he also provided an OBP in the 7 hole of .341. In the 8 spot he had a .318/.375. His 3 year splits show he has more success towards the bottom of the order.

 

That being said, if you had Walker/Hairston and Murton batting 1/2 in the order, and they provided a .350 OBP, the runs scored would dramatically increase from the top spots in the order. If you took the good AVG but not so good OBP guys and put them at the bottom of the order (Macias/Perez), you could get run production this way as well.

 

I still think this team could have scored 60+ runs more than they did. I also think that if everyone stayed healthy and there was no need for Macias and Perez, they could have scored many more than that. I think the Cubs had a better offense than Cincinnati if you had everyone healthy and the right person filling out the line up card.

 

Yeah, but when would those 60 runs have scored? Spread out over the season or bunched over 10 -15 games? I agree with you that I believe we make the playoffs if everyone had been healthy. Heck, I still think we would've made the playoffs had Wood and Prior been healthy even without Nomar and ARam. I think people can talk about lineups or whatever but the pitching cost us more games than the lineups... even as bad as the lineups were.

[CuseCubFan69]

I still have an argument in regards to placement in the order. I don't necessarily believe that by moving people around in the order, that the runs created just shifts a little bit. Neifi Perez is not an OBP guy. He does, however, hit for a fairly decent AVG. Not only does his 2005 season reflect a .305 AVG hitting 7th, but he also provided an OBP in the 7 hole of .341. In the 8 spot he had a .318/.375. His 3 year splits show he has more success towards the bottom of the order.

 

That being said, if you had Walker/Hairston and Murton batting 1/2 in the order, and they provided a .350 OBP, the runs scored would dramatically increase from the top spots in the order. If you took the good AVG but not so good OBP guys and put them at the bottom of the order (Macias/Perez), you could get run production this way as well.

 

I still think this team could have scored 60+ runs more than they did. I also think that if everyone stayed healthy and there was no need for Macias and Perez, they could have scored many more than that. I think the Cubs had a better offense than Cincinnati if you had everyone healthy and the right person filling out the line up card.

 

Yeah, but when would those 60 runs have scored? Spread out over the season or bunched over 10 -15 games? I agree with you that I believe we make the playoffs if everyone had been healthy. Heck, I still think we would've made the playoffs had Wood and Prior been healthy even without Nomar and ARam. I think people can talk about lineups or whatever but the pitching cost us more games than the lineups... even as bad as the lineups were.

 

I think it was a combination of things. Let's also add the mismanagement of the pen to add runs to the opposition.

 

Hendry has to make sure he has a stronger bench if he wants to keep ARam and Nomar around and have more depth at starting pitching with Wood and whoever will be hurt. The Cubs have to be 7 deep at the starter level to cover themselves and why that can't be covered at the AAA and AA levels is beyond me.

[CubinNY]

I agree with you that I believe we make the playoffs if everyone had been healthy. Heck, I still think we would've made the playoffs had Wood and Prior been healthy

 

Nothing against you dal or anyone but I don't think the Cubs make the playoffs even if everyone was healthy. For two years injuries have been a convienient excuse for Hendry and crew. It is BS and smelly BS at that. Every team has injuries. But more to the point, the injuries the Cubs suffered were very predictable (aside from Prior). Even so, the everyday line up this club fielded was not good enough to consistently score runs. That is why we saw the prolonged loosing streaks. In another thread I did some calculations and in loosing streaks of over three games the Cubs scored @ 2.5 runs/game. That isn't going to win a lot of ball games. And this is while Neifi and Lee were having career years.

 

I think MacPhail, Hendry, Dusty, and a number of writiers and fans agree with your position. I however, do not. This Cub team was very medicore comming out of ST and they played that way the entire year. It is a shame b/c I think they will not change the formula one bit and produce similar results next year. I hope I'm wrong, of course.