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The Sox have a slightly better stolen base percentage than the Cubs, but they're barely at the break even point of 70-75%. Anything above that range helps the team, and anything below hurts. The Sox do lead the league in sac flies at 29. The Cubs have 16, so the Sox have 13 more sac flies than the Cubs. The difference in total runs between the two teams is also 13. I don't know where I could find stats on first-home and second-home runs scored, but I doubt that there's a dramatic difference. Paul Konerko leads their team in runs scored, for example, and I doubt he goes first-home very often. I really think the difference is that Ozzie gives his run-producers chances to drive in runs, and Dusty doesn't (and Jack McKeon isn't do a very good job of it for Florida, either).

The pitch to Cedeno was low. The pitch to Barrett was a strike.

With runners on: Sox: .342 OBP, .284 AVG Cubs: .340 OBP, .280 AVG Runners in scoring position: Sox: .341 OBP, .266 AVG Cubs: .347 OBP, .276 ABG I don't think the Sox get more hits with their guys on base.

Baker would hit Dunn 8th to protect Hollandsworth.

Jim Leyland wants to manage again.

Neifi with runners in scoring position, 2 outs: .226 BA, .250 OBP. That's clutch!

Farnsworth has been maddeningly inconsistent, but this season he's been far better than any of our relievers. Baseball Prospectus has his VORP at 12.2. Dempster is the highest rated Cub reliever at 8.0. Kent Mercker is at 8.7, by the way.

In the Brewers series, Lee had two plate appearances with runners on base. In the White Sox/Tigers series, Frank Thomas had PA's with runners on base. Lee's not going to produce every time, but I'd rather give him 8 chances than 2. Putting our worst two OBP guys in front of Lee is moronic.

Yep. sportsline says that macias is still in Sportsline is wrong.

He's right, you know. But I couldn't believe he said it out loud. In a perfect world, we'd get a new CF and a new LF.

They're not two OF the worst, they ARE the two worst. :evil:

Good question. Team OBP is probably a misleading stat. Sabermetricians will often argue that batting orders don't matter much over the course of a year, but I'm not so sure about that. Ozzie Guillen bunches his high OBP guys together. A typical White Sox lineup: Podsednik .363 Iguchi .343 Thomas .328 Konerko .353 Rowand .339 Dye .323 Pierzynski .310 Crede .301 Uribe .279 Of course Thomas's OBP will go up a little as the season goes on, but as you can see, Ozzie pretty much arranges his lineup in order of descending OBP with the exception of his power hitters in the 3 and 4 spots. Florida's typical lineup (as used in the Cubs series, for exaple): Pierre .306 Castillo .431 Cabrera .398 Delgado .401 Lowell .270 Lo Duca .354 Encarnacion .346 Gonzalez .327 Two things jump out: the White Sox have two high OBP guys in front of their power hitters. The Marlins have one. Secondly, Lowell is a big hole in the lineup. Ozzie Guillen might arrange the lineup something like this: Castillo Lo Duca Cabrera Delgado Encarnacion Gonzalez Pierre Lowell That lineup would undoubtedly score more runs for Florida. The Cubs should be going with something like this: Walker .364 Burnitz .331 Lee .456 Ramirez .363 Holly .316 Barrett .306 Perez .299 Patterson .276 Burnitz hitting second might seem odd, but the Cardinals like to hit a slugger in the two spot (Larry Walker right now), and it worked well for Houston with Beltran last year. Burny wouldn't be a traditional 2 hitter, but he doesn't ground into many double plays. He'd be a much better choice than Perez, who is among the league leaders in GIDP.[/url]

Although he's only playing part-time for Philly, you can easily make the argument that Lofton is having a better season than any centerfielder in baseball. His OBP is .445. That's more than 60 points above Johnny Damon's OBP. Lofton's slugging percentage is .476. We can't expect him to keep that up, but he's currently hitting the ball harder than Carlos Beltran, Vernon Wells, Steve Finley, Aaron Rowand, Mark Kotasy, and...Corey Patterson. We wouldn't even need him to keep up his hot hitting for long, anyway, as his contract is up at the end of the season. I guess we could put him in LF, but his defense is actually much better than Corey's so far this year. I would be happy to see Lofton become a Cub again. He'd be a much better pickup than Wilson, for example.

It's obvious that we have too many sluggers? There are 8 LF's with better OBP than Podsednik (whom I like), and they're all sluggers: Cabrera, Delluci, Luis Gonzalez, Adam Dunn, Jason Bay, Ryan Klesko, Pat Burrell, and Hideki Matsui. All of those guys have double digit homeruns. What type of player do we need? Would you rather have Adam Dunn or Randy Winn? Pat Burrell or Coco Crisp? I'd rather have Brady Clark or Johnny Damon in center than Preston Wilson or Vernon Wells. But if I could have Jim Edmonds or Andruw Jones, I'd snatch them up in a second. I wish all of our guys had high OBP, but they don't. The problem isn't that we have too many sluggers, it's that we're not putting people on base so our sluggers can drive in runs. Dusty should shoulder the blame for that. We'd do better with Walker and Holly or Barrett in the 1 and 2 slots than we'll do with Corey and Neifi.

Yep, according to his stats, Clement lost 4 games more than he should have last year had he gotten just average run support.

Estes in 2003 was horrible. He had a -16.6 VORP. Clement in 2004 was very, very good. He had a 36.9 VORP, putting him in the top 40 in MLB. He contributed more to the Cubs than any other pitcher besides Zambrano in 2004. Yes, he had a bad September, but he was consistently good up until then.

One of the biggest myths I've seen repeated on this board is that Aramis wasn't playing well when he was traded to the Cubs. He actually had a better average and OBP with the Pirates in 2003 before he was traded. There are some guys who do well when traded midseason (Orlando Cabrera last year, for example), but it's not as if coming to Chicago kickstarted Aramis's season. He was already playing well. More often than not when a guy is traded midseason, he plays at the same level or worse for his new team. After having a very good 2001, Aramis had a down 2002. He was bad for the entire year. I hope Huff can turn things around midseason if the Cubs do acquire him, but I wouldn't be surprised if he continues to struggle.

Why wouldn't Dunn want to hit 2nd? As for a "true leadoff hitter," there are four leadoff hitters with higher OBP than Dunn: 1. Brian Roberts 2. Brandon Inge 3. Derek Jeter 4. Johnny Damon We're not getting 1, 3, or 4. Would you rather have Inge or Dunn?