Rob

I'd say he's near the top. Soriano clearly tops it. But your biggest offseason acquisition disappointing in a big way is a significant problem. The fact that others make more than him is pretty meaningless. Most of those guys have been pretty damn good. Okay.. if the money is meaningless, the fact that he was the biggest offseason acquisition should be as well. So let's just look at production. Bradley is producing like a league average RF despite the power outage. 14th in MLB and 6th in NL in EqA amongst RFs. I bet you can name quite a few players on our team that aren't playing at a league average clip.

Bradley is making the 7th most on the team this year and has an OBP floating around .400. His power outage sucks, and he doesn't exactly look pretty out in the field... but if you're making a list of problems on this team, he's nowhere near the top.

Bah. Flawed is a misrepresentation. Could it be done better? Absolutely. But it still works. See... what you're doing is where I suffer. I can't figure out how to import data directly into the spreadsheets I already have set up... forcing me to type in each and every line by hand each time I want to calculate anything. Best of luck to you though... there's no such thing as too many people crunching numbers. I can't wait to see what you come up with.

You're misinterpreting the purpose of my work slightly. I wasn't attempting to predict values for next season... of course actual BABIP would have a higher correlation for subsequent seasons when taken across such a broad sample size. I'm merely attempting to pinpoint anomalies within this season... a task which this is well suited for. In addition, I am quite lazy. Do you realize it would take me longer simply to calculate xbabip for one batter than it did for me to put all of this together with a simple LD%+.120?

To be fair, I doubt most of the posters in this thread know where BABIP = LD + .120 comes from. To be honest, there's really no reason to. It's used simply because it's a good approximation. If you need more than an approximation, there are better formulas to use that incorporate other factors into the mix.

Ok, that would be pretty sweet.

He's a troll. Why would anybody expect any different from him?

Sickels goes back over the Cubs top 20 from the preseason. http://www.minorleagueball.com/2009/8/19/995012/chicago-cubs-top-20-pre-season

Nice to see Castro getting that. I tend to take defensive statistics with a grain of salt in the minors, simply because the fields aren't always as well tended as they are at the major league level. The scouting reports have always been glowing though, and I like to see they seem to be getting even better.

More recently, Richie Ashburn and Sammy Sosa both put up seasons of 116 walks.

Jimmy Sheckard had 147 in 1911.

I too love Milton.

That flipped the light switch to on. Thank you for bringing me out of the dark. Now I feel even more dumb, lol. Nice work, btw, as everyone has said. Don't feel stupid; I did a terrible job explaining what I was doing. Glad to hear you get it now though.

And thanks for the kind words guys.

I'll clarify a bit, just for you. The process isn't hard. Imagine for a moment you know how many ABs a player has, and their batting average... but you want to know how many hits they had. You simply multiply them together and voila! Well, we're doing the same thing... multiplying the expected batting average on balls in play (which is LD% + .120) by the number of balls in play. That gives you the expected number of hits in that situation. So now you have the right number of hits... you just have to figure out how to add the missing ones back in to the players actual line. Since all I'm trying to do in this situation is neutralize luck (and not bring their career lines into the equation at all), I simply add the hits back in the same ratio of singles, doubles, and triples they already had this season. There are two routes to go from here. Obviously, these numbers are going to be bringing back fractions... so you could either round them off and give the whole line, or just calculate AVG, OBP, and SLUG as is. Since these expected lines are supposed to read as a probability, it's more accurate to just straight out calculate the slash stats.

Bench players up. Really, it looks like our offense has been somewhat unlucky on the whole this year... though it's very interesting to see how many players were almost dead on. Of course, that's just in regards to what happens after we put the ball in play... you can make a whole different argument about who is over and under performing based on preseason expectations.

The crux of it is this... you are extremely likely to get a hit on a line drive... not very likely at all to get a hit on a ground ball... and very very rarely will get a hit on a fly ball. You don't need math to know that... but the numbers bear it out. There's a long and complicated mathematical answer to why batting average on balls in play works out to be about .120 points higher than your LD%, but it's not really necessary to understand... It's a generally accepted rule of thumb in sabermetric circles. As to luck equaling out... it always tries to. It takes time though, and a full season isn't always enough time. I think if you look at players who have run out there for 20 seasons, you'd find very little variation on the number... 10 season players, more variation... 1 season, a decent amount... months or weeks can give huuuge variations. It's encouraging to note than none of our starters have had exceptionally good luck to this point... but if I had to guess I'd imagine you'd see some of our bench players exhibit it (planning on posting those numbers shortly). But players like that certainly exist... Joe Mauer is having this historic season in part because his BABIP is .185 points higher than his LD%. Even in his other batting champion years, he didn't get close to that. He was .115 points over in 2006 and .116 points over last year.

When you realize the years that Soto and Fukudome should be having were it not for them hitting the ball right at defenders, you very well may.

I'm calling for more villification. He's OPS'ng .670 and that's against mostly right handed pitching. It would've been nice to hide him in the 8th spot all year, but due to the sucktitude that is Geo and Soriano there is no hiding. He just picked a really bad year to be truly awful. He picked the year he'd have bad luck? .225/.293/.380 in 351 plate appearances is a little more than bad luck. It's in the final stages of a very bad year. It is a bit more than just bad luck. I pointed that out in what I wrote. But luck is a significant portion of it... as could be a simple case of small sample size-itis. Did you not read what I said... or just not comprehend it?

I'm bored... adjusted batting lines for everybody! For those of you who aren't aware, the process is simple. Most players put up a batting average on balls in play (in other words... batting average on an at bat that doesnt end in a strikeout or a home run) that is roughly equal to their line drive percentage plus one hundred and twenty points. There are, of course, some exceptions to this rule... but we don't have any players fast or slow enough to really stand out in that light. As such, most discrepancy in their BABIP and their expected BABIP can be chalked up mostly to luck (either good or bad). As such, it's pretty easy to calculate how many more or less hits a player has than you would expect, and recalculate their line accordingly. Let's see how our offense has done. (Looking at all position players with more than 50 PA... so basically just leaving out Freel and Gathright). Just doing the starters right now... will update with the bench later. Player - Geovany Soto Actual Line - .220/.329/.386 Expected Line - .269/.370/.451 Comments - His sophomore slump is grossly overstated. He's a fine young catcher who's just had terrible luck this year. Player - Derrek Lee Actual Line - .295/.378/.552 Expected Line - .286/.370/.540 Comments - Pretty close to his expected line... looks like he's had an extra 3 or 4 hits drop in. Player - Mike Fontenot Actual Line - .225/.293/.380 Expected Line - .245/.311/.407 Comments - I covered this in the Jeff Baker thread, but Fontenot has had both bad luck and a significant slump. His line drive percentage for the season is 16.7%. His career percentage is about 19.8%. Whether the slump is all on him, or simply random variation because of the relatively small sample size is an interesting question... but he's certainly a candidate for a significant rebound. Player - Ryan Theriot Actual Line - .298/.349/.408 Expected Line - .290/.342/.399 Comments - 3 or 4 extra hits have dropped in. Nothing significant. Player - Aramis Ramirez Actual Line - .322/.393/.538 Expected Line - .330/.400/.548 Comments - Missed out on 1 or 2 hits. It's a shame he's been injured so much, as he's having an excellent season. Player - Alfonso Soriano Actual Line - .243/.303/.425 Expected Line - .261/.320/.449 Comments - Looks like he's missing about 8 or 9 hits. That hurts, obviously... but the real thing hurting him is the drop off in his HR/FB rate. He's at 10.9% this year... and that number usually floats around 15 or 16%. Player - Kosuke Fukudome Actual Line - .272/.390/.462 Expected Line - .314/.425/.523 Comments - Wow... I did not realize Fukudome had upped his line drive percentage to a whopping 25%. He's been robbed of about 15 hits and changed what should be an MVP caliber season from a CF into just a very, very good year. Player - Milton Bradley Actual Line - .259/.390/.389 Expected Line - .267/.396/.398 Comments - Power Outage. 10.4% HR/FB ratio this year... normally much higher. Having a good year despite the missing home runs... but it makes it harder to justify his contract. Another excellent candidate for a bounceback. Edit: Bench players: Player - Koyie Hill Actual Line - .223/.296/.318 Expected Line - .225/.298/.321 Comments - Dead on. Player - Micah Hoffpauir Actual Line - .233/.280/.422 Expected Line - .284/.327/.488 Comments - This looks a whole heck of a lot more like what we expected from him... Player - Reed Johnson Actual Line - .252/.327/.395 Expected Line - .266/.340/.413 Comments - Pretty darn close. Player - Jake Fox Actual Line - .292/.345/.528 Expected Line - .291/.344/.527 Comments - Dead on. Player - Aaron Miles Actual Line - .182/.220/.245 Expected Line - .281/.315/.379 Comments - A LD% over 20 and a batting average below the mendoza line? Yeah... he's had some terrible luck. Still, I hate him. Player - Andres Blanco Actual Line - .237/.297/.323 Expected Line - .265/.323/.358 Comments - Also quite unlucky with the Royals in 2005 and 2006, there may be reason to believe he's got just enough in his bat to make himself a useful player on account of his glove. Player - Jeff Baker Actual Line - .343/.395/.557 Expected Line - .266/.324/.448 Comments - Our first example of a player vastly outperforming his expected line, Jeff has done quite well... but he's been pretty lucky. When you adjust his and Fontenot's lines, you start to see a pretty nice platoon forming instead of deluding ourselves into thinking Baker is our starting 2B 150 games next year. Player - Bobby Scales Actual Line - .241/.333/.466 Expected Line - .236/.328/.458 Comments - A difference of less than half a hit. Player - Sam Fuld Actual Line - .318/.412/.432 Expected Line - .453/.528/.615 Comments - Yeah... his LD% is over 40 right now. That is so far beyond unsustainable it isn't even funny. But he has been unlucky to the tune of about 6 hits already.

I'm calling for more villification. He's OPS'ng .670 and that's against mostly right handed pitching. It would've been nice to hide him in the 8th spot all year, but due to the sucktitude that is Geo and Soriano there is no hiding. He just picked a really bad year to be truly awful. He picked the year he'd have bad luck?

Just neutralizing Mike Fontenot's bad luck this year: .245/.311/.407 Adjusting his line drive percentage back to his career norms: .268/.332/.438 He's had bad luck and a prolonged slump. Even if you want to weigh his line this year more heavily than the others, you're still looking at a player with an expected OPS of around .750. Mike Fontenot is being villified far too much on this board. Edit: I also forgot to include park factors... as any good Cubs fan knows, Wrigley has been a pain to hit in this year, with the wind blowing in far more often than it usually does. And surprise surprise, Fontenot's home OPS is nearly 100 points lower than his road.

Agreed, although I think they'll keep him. Riggleman might've earned a job with how he's done. Rumor tonight has the Nats about to name Jerry DiPoto GM and let Rizzo walk... which blows my mind.

I think that's probably the case; and there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. It's the same way with how I look at Sosa. It's because of him I'm a baseball fan and so it's a lot easier to look past the negative. That said, never having been a fan of sandberg, that speech was just obnoxious, IMO. Using the most important day of your baseball life to take shots at other players, all while talking about 'respect,' just didn't come off the right way. He did also use it to talk about how Santo should be in the hall.

I'm 24, and I loved it. The things he mentioned in the speech are the reasons why he was my childhood hero. I guess I just thought about how the good things applied to him and ignored the fact he was taking potshots at other players.