Rob

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.

Because he's a poor manager? "What are you talking about?!? He won us back to back division titles and won 97 games last season!" Seriously, Lou has gotten progressively worse since he's gotten here, and has been flat out BRUTAL this season. I'm not even saying he should or will be fired, but come on. There's a very good reason a lot of people want him gone. Stop looking at win/loss records to determine how good a manager is. Look at the moves he makes and what he does. If you do that, it's easy to see that he's been pretty awful. If Lou is terrible and should have won more games with the team he has, then Hendry must have put together a 100 win team. You can't hate Hendry AND Lou AND acknowledge that there have been a ridiculous number of injuries/under-performances. Lou is a great manager despite his flaws. What evidence is there that he "is great"? I don't know if it's enough to qualify him as great... but he certainly does have some great attributes. For one, we know that he absolutely has a positive effect in certain ways. This is Lou Piniella's Cubs everytime the media mentions it. We don't get a bunch of negative attention for showboating players, clubhouse fights, etc... he absolutely takes a lot of media pressure off the team by being the one in the spotlight all the time. Also, I really have to give it to him... he does a fantastic job of handing the workloads of our starting pitchers. He could be a bit better working the back of the bullpen guys into more games... but all in all I have very few qualms about how he handles our pitching staff (aside from the occasional guy like Wuertz or Hill whom gets stuck in his doghouse and can never get out). His lineups generally didn't contain Andres Blanco batting first or second... He brought in Trammell, who has done an excellent job as the bench coach. And I'm sure there's plenty more. Like many of you, he was far from my first choice... but that doesn't mean he hasn't done quite an admirable job of managing... despite the occasional hit and run gone bad.

If Mike Rizzo doesn't get to keep the GM job in Washington, I'd be interested in bringing him in as well.

The numbers fluctuate, but they're usually pretty close to equal. Situations like those are the ones where a manager makes the difference, trying to predict how the opposing manager will respond to having first base open with whatever hitter is coming up.

Earl Weaver really said it best... If you play for one run, that's all you're gonna get. So you had better be sure that run will win you the game.

It was Larry Himes. Sandberg hated him because of Sosa and the Cubs' new video room. He worships DG. yeah, sandberg has no love for larry himes as noted in his biography second to home. if my memory is correct (i haven't read the book in almost 5 years), he was pissed at himes for not re-signing dawson and letting maddux go to the braves. dallas green is the one who insisted that he be a part of the larry bowa trade, so sandberg has a lot of respect for green. sandberg is my all-time favorite baseball player, but his speech at the '05 HOF was just a "back in my day..." rant and him grinding his sammy sosa axe for 15 minutes. kinda disappointing to hear him rag like that on the biggest day of his professional baseball career (so far). Yeah, that was it... Deep down, I knew it wasn't Dallas Green... but I couldn't figure for the life of me who else it would have been. Now I just feel stupid.

Slighty peering towards 2010 for a moment, I'm excited that, for the most part, we should probably have several intriguing guys at each full season level. Peoria looks like it could be fascinating again, although it might be a team that struggles due to youth. Most of the bats in Peoria right now should be headed to Daytona. I'm not real sure I see anyone being jumped to Tennessee. Maybe Flaherty. That said, a long way to go before next spring. Two small dreams I have: a) One day, our GM can stop signing a ton of washed up has beens/never was for AAA. b) That we will be able to fill our "role players" in the big leagues with guys from the system, saving us a bunch of money in the process (certainly, I am hoping for star talent as well, but if we develop the role players, that will give us some help the next years and offer financial flexibility when contracts start coming off, rather than having to pay ridiculous amounts for middle relievers). I said this in another thread, but I think that the system might be the best in the NL Central. Certainly, not something to get too excited on, but a huge step in the right direction and one that could bode well for our future. I dunno... I do kinda like keeping some AAAA guys around in Iowa. Personally though, I much prefer the top prospect washouts like Koyie Hill than junkers like Trenidad Hubbard. And I don't buy our system as the best in the Central. The Pirates still have a nice leg up on us, if for no other reason than Pedro Alvarez... but I'd take our system over the Reds and Brewers... and the Cards and Astros are beyond terrible right now.

I don't have the book on me, but I remember reading a biography of him where he lashed out at... I wanna say it was Dallas Green... for having some computer printouts designed to help dictate strategy.

This.

he was never going to play; reed johnson was the platoon partner for fukudome and the corners were filled by bradley and soriano. pie was never going to "figure it out" in a role where he never played and didn't get to adjust to major league pitching. Agreed. Once we decided to sign Bradley, Pie had no place on this team. I really wish Lou would have given Pie a fair shake last year though... but of course he defaulted to the scrappy veteran Reed Johnson after about 4 games.

You know, I understand the urge to have all your players know how to bunt, hit and run, etc... they can be useful tools to have. But they need to be used sparingly... and Ryno's strategy seems to be to "manufacture" runs... and that's bad.

I'm going to assume that the Cubs were thrown in there by shear laziness. Cubs will almost assuredly take a look, but they wont be major players.

Yep. If someone who isn't pick protected signs him. Even a sandwich pick and a second rounder has more expected value than Ceda.

I said it at the time of the trade, and I mean it now... I'd rather have six years of cost-controlled Jose Ceda than one of Kevin Gregg... but if he's our closer all year and leaves as a Type A FA we've offered arby too, we came out way ahead.

It's just a matter of who gets hot when. Hell, if Soriano gets really hot, he can almost win us a 5 game series by himself...

Ryno was my favorite player growing up... and I think he'd make an excellent bench coach. But I don't want him to manage the team. He's completely backwards.

Entourage

http://www.fangraphs.com/lgraphs/290814116_Pirates_Cubs_138435942_lbig.png