Rob

We are all aware of the troubles of our slumping left fielder at this point. Much has been made of his cold streak to start the season. After watching a few few people make snarky comments about his BA only going up due to "bloop hits" during Saturday's game, I decided to dig a little deeper. Then I spent all my money on booze and strippers Saturday night, and forgot all about it for a while. But now my insomnia is back, and one of Colin's insightful posts triggered my memory... so this is what I came up with. THT still hasnt been updated with yesterday's stats, so I was left to my own devices to figure out Soriano's current LD%. Since gameday only counted one of his drives last night as a liner, that's what I used as well. Alfonso Soriano is currently hitting line drives 21.95% of the time at the dish, which is a tick above his career marks. In spite of this, his batting average on balls in play is a mere .244. On 78 balls put in play this season, he's collected base hits on only 19 of those. With average luck, he would have collected hits on 26.5 of those to match up with his expected BABIP of .340. (It's generally accepted that BABIP should be about LD% +.120) We could take the easy route out and give him 7.5 extra singles to see how he'd be hitting. But that wouldn't be very accurate, as Soriano has been robbed of extra bases on occassion. We can easily keep his ratios intact of hits on balls in play when we add those 7.5 hits back in. (Sori is a little more than twice as likely to hit a single as a double). What we end up with is adding 5.1 singles onto his tally, and 2.4 doubles. What we're left with is a player who, with neutral luck, would have put up a .308/.350/.514 line this season as well as he's hit the ball to this point. That's significantly better than his actual .232/.280/.414 line, and does an excellent job of illustrating the point that we need to be more patient in evaluating players with such tiny sample sizes to this point. Is he worth his contract? Almost certainly not... but he's not a problem on this team right now.

I'm sure that's exactly how Hendry and company are thinking about this move. I wouldn't put it past them to be able to recognize that the numbers don't reflect how well he's been swinging the bat. Personally, I think he's lost a good chunk of the power left in his bat. But I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see a Brian Giles type of season out of him, which would certainly have some value.

Quick calculation here... Edmonds has gotten 15 hits on balls in play. Given his LD%, he's missing out on 7.7 hits. If we were to add those to his line (entirely as singles), it jumps up to .263/.340/.319 That's ignoring for a moment that PETCO park has a hugely negative effect on flyballs, and Jim Edmonds (like Khalil Greene) is an extreme flyball hitter. As such, Edmonds would seems to have the potential to gain much more from a move to Wrigley (which significantly inflates home runs) than your average player. I don't support this move... but the front office has some justification for being willing to explore signing him at the league minimum.

Let's cling onto the positives for dear life. I'm turning over every stone here looking for them.

So... since the players have covered for Lou's mistakes, he's excused for all of them?

Also... Edmonds has a 22.4% LD% and a .227 BABIP. It also appears he was a bit unlucky last season, with a 19.5% LD% and a .285 BABIP. Granted, his HR/FB has dropped very steeply, but it appears his decline hasn't been as bad as a casual glance at his numbers would have suggested.

PECOTA's projection: .239/.326/.414 overall .216/.295/.364 vs. LHP .247/.342/.456 vs. RHP I'd say how fried his bat looks probably cancels out any upshot we should give his projection heading from PETCO to Wrigley. Discuss.

This game has taken some of the sting out of that Jim Edmonds fiasco on the horizon.

Zambrano has batted three times in the last two innings.

:lol:

Ground ball behind 3B. Kouzmanoff got it and went to step on 3rd to end the inning, but Aramis beat him there. He makes an off-balance throw to first that flies over Adrian Gonzalez's head, and nobody moves to pick the ball up while it's sitting back by the tarp. DeRosa got to 2nd, and everybody else scored.

No more hustle comments about Aramis this season.

Reed Johnson breaks the streak. :cry:

Soriano is now batting .300 with a .891 OPS in May.

I love it.

My guess at the lineup? LF - Soriano SS - Theriot 1B - Lee 3B - Ramirez C - Soto RF - DeRosa CF - Johnson 2B - Cedeno

It's not a joke though to the best of my knowledge... So homophobia's cool then, just so long as the target actually is a [expletive]? It's also cool if you're too young to understand what's going on. http://www.appletreeblog.com/wp-content/2007/06/god-hates-fags-kids.jpg

If this actually happens, I'm not sure whom I would shoot first... Lou, Hendry, or myself.

I have problems with Lou's handling of all of the following: (in no particular order) 1.) Marmol's workload 2.) Pie getting benched against righties in favor of Johnson 3.) Ryan Theriot getting handed a starting job he didn't deserve, performing worse than our option with a higher ceiling, and still keeping said job. 4.) The copious amounts of hit-and-run attempts, often in extremely poor situations. 5.) Ryan Theriot being given the green light. 6.) Rich Hill's short leash... not exactly the smartest idea to give the guy with confidence problems something extra to freak about. 7.) Marshall as a LOOGY. 8.) Chad Fox getting high leverage situations. 9.) The complete disappearance of Michael Wuertz. 10.) Marmol being saved for late in ballgames, and then pitching regardless of the score. I also have a minor issue with Soto's workload. It'd be nice for his knees to be feeling good come September. I realize he's been a beast, but he's got more PA than anybody but Kurt Suzuki and Russell Martin (with Oakland having played a couple more games than us, and Martin playing 3B for a handful of games)

Troy Glaus just lined into a double play to get Jeff Suppan out of some trouble in Milkwaukee. Score is still 4-1 Brewers in the middle of 6.

How do you get up early to watch a game that starts at 1:20 central time? Even in California, that's not the crack of dawn. Those 11:20 am wakeup calls are rough. :lol: They sure can be. I was visiting a friend and ended up out at the bars til 4 am last night... then I had to get up around 11 to drive the hour back to my apartment. I'm honestly surprised I made it all the way back without A) Vomiting B) Falling Asleep C) Crapping Myself So lay off the man... maybe he was getting his drink on last night too.

Dunn is an upcoming FA. Which would mean two comp picks, almost certainly. And if I knew the first one would be in the #16-20 range, I'd consider the deal a little more seriously... but there's no way to be sure of that.

The Cubs would be better off just playing Pie, Cedeno, and Hill... unfortunately, Lou isn't that smart.

Were some MLB team unfortunate enough to have me in charge, I'd have one pen spot reserved for some worthless AAA guy with little value and I'd abuse his arm like crazy in every blowout. Then when his arm went out, I'd find another one. The weird thing is, I doubt you'd hear the players union complaining. It'd give a lot of guys a chance to make the majors that they wouldn't have had under normal circumstances. You don't think Les Walrond will kill to have a major league gig for two months? Ryan O'Malley? Jon Leicester?

Ball dropped pretty far in front of Upton. Sori was heading to third. Upton had some trouble picking it up, so Soriano was already on 3rd. Upton kinda lobbed the ball back in towards the middle of the infield, and Sori took off. With 2 outs in the inning already, I don't mind the play so much. The odds of us getting that run in anyways weren't great, and success guaranteed a run... so the breakeven point on plays like that is low enough that the attempt was worthwhile.