sneakypower

i was just saying, it hasn't exactly hurt the team in the past to put him there (also, he's .350/.381/.538 career with bases empty, vs. .167/.248/.255 with men on...it may just be that when pitchers focus a more concerted effort on retiring him, they have had a relatively easy time with it) regardless, i feel like his offensive skillset is best suited to the top of the order, considering the lack of better options in this lineup

Lake has a career .405/.436/.649 line in the leadoff spot

sacrifice bunt attempts 3/31: Jeff Samardzija, 5th inning, runners on 1st & 2nd; -.142 WPA (unsuccessful) Junior Lake, 8th inning, runner on 2nd; 0.00 WPA Welington Castillo, 9th inning, runner on 1st; -.017 WPA 4/2: Edwin Jackson, 5th inning, runner on 1st (ROE); .056 WPA 4/3: no attempts 4/4: Travis Wood, 3rd inning, runner on 1st; -.014 WPA 4/5: no attempts 4/6: no attempts 4/7: Ryan Kalish, 7th inning, runner on 1st; -.034 WPA 4/9: Jason Hammel, 4th inning, runners on 1st & 2nd; -.025 WPA 4/10: no attempts 4/11: Bonifacio, 8th inning, -.022 WPA Schierholtz, 11th inning, runner on 2nd, .005 WPA ------ so, that's 4 position players (all successfully) attempting bunts who have totaled -0.068 WPA (or -0.017 per attempt) 3 pitchers (with 2 successfully) attempting bunts who have totaled -0.100 WPA (or -.033 per attempt) it's worth noting pitchers as a whole have averaged -0.019 WPA per PA, and the hitters who were asked to bunt are at -0.003 per PA on the season; basically, in the 9 times hitters have made sac bunt attempts, our chances of winning have dropped about 1.4%-1.5% on average, per try...that seems like kind of a miniscule blip and certainly unworthy of the exaggerated outrage it gets in game threads on here also, we admittedly haven't been particularly good at bunting for hits so far, but i don't know how you blame the manager for that; even so, Lake (53.8% career), Bonifacio (36.4%), Kalish (37.5%) have certainly shown enough ability in the past where it's not predictably hurting the team if they try a few

a "sacrifice hit" is a sacrifice bunt last year, we were dead last in non-pitcher sac bunts top 5 Rangers - 44 Astros - 43 Reds - 37 Royals - 36 4 tied with 35

he's still only bunting primarily in close & late situations, and with the appropriate players it hasn't bothered me too much, yet

oh, my

hitters with a 53.1% contact rate against Strop so far this year

Matt Lolliday

hey would you look at all these productive outs

so Castro pops out and that Castillo grounder ends the inning with a grounder that would have been a sure DP anyway

i don't really mind that call, but that's mostly because i hate all the following hitters due up

we bunt here, right?

oh, that's a strike...it all makes sense now

pretty sure the ump was just watching Carpenter dive out of the way like a fool instead and just went with it

give this ump a raise for rightly calling that a strike despite the missed location

i was half listening to Cards broadcast because i was too lazy to switch over and they said it was a tribute to his grandfather or some [expletive]

BASEBALL 101 CHAPTER 1: Sometimes Players Slump

this isn't remotely close to being true

I'm really tired of Lake being on an MLB roster and variance's continued propping-up of him. Well, not really, I hope variance props him up forever. "i'm really tired of the guy who's probably been the most productive position player on the team since his call-up being rostered!"

what are you even basing this on? his sub-.300 wOBA projections? they're both likely to be below-average players, but Lake's upside is tangibly much higher than Kalish's "decent 4th OF/bad LF starter"

yeah that's old, i saw a retweet a little while back where he said he was just reminiscing

not a real big fan of letting Lake face a high-whiff pitcher, and sitting him with a pitch-to-contact guy going

Joe Kelly has a career .800/.650 OPS split, but it was dead even last year (in 2012 lefties destroyed him), so who knows what lineup we'll use he has a 2.61 ERA in 7 games (4 starts) against the Cubs

gimme the leos