Ender

With that pinch hit Zambrano was the first Cubs pitcher to bat this series.

As a Brewer fan I disagree, especially last year when it seemed like the HR was the only way we scored any runs.

PECOTA mean projection is an .864 for him. The 75 percentile projection is .904. They project him to be worth $43,450,000 over 2007-2011. But, that is based off of his first half too, correct? Looking back no one predicted him to be an All-Star level outfielder. Hell a few years ago he was behind Dave Krynzel and the other Corey Hart on their prospect list. Nope. PECOTA doesn't change as the season goes on. He was projected to be a 20/20 guy with a good OBP in a partial season of play. He actually put up numbers as good as Fielder in the minors, he just didn't get the hype.

PECOTA mean projection is an .864 for him. The 75 percentile projection is .904. They project him to be worth $43,450,000 over 2007-2011.

Right, if you really believe that guys like Estrada, Hardy, Jenkins, Hart will continue to way outpeform their career numbers. I think they come back to the pack in the second half big time. Hell even Prince Fielder is having a career year. Estrada is actually having a below average year right now, other than his injury plagued 2005 he's been a .770+ OPS catcher. Hart projected as a .900ish OPS player so he could keep it up. Jenkins is doing exactly what would be expected of his 3 year average against righties. Hardy I'll give you though. This team is not playing over its head for the season.

Back to back HR's by Kendall and Stewart has to be one of the most embarrassing moments in baseball.

Yeah the strike zone has been all over the place for both teams today, probably why they each have 11 K's.

Let's ask again after the Brewers. If they don't at least win the series, that's a pretty big setback. Not necessarily season-ending, but it'll really hurt. I don't think a 2-1 or 1-2 will really change things much. If the Brewers sweep the Cubs it will make things very hard on them, if the Cubs sweep the Brewers things are wide open.

I'll take Z vs. any other MLB iplayer n a fight. Z is insane. Even over Farnsie. Yeah I'll take Z there for sure, Sheets is not a tough guy at all.

I'd take Sheets 2004 over Zambrano's for sure. I'd probably take his 2005 as well if it were a full season. Even if you take out just this year which seems to be what your problem is Sheets has been better over the past 3 years, better ERA(granted by .01), better K rate, better WHIP, the one big advantage to Zambrano is he's a ground ball pitcher. I think the two are a push myself because the stats are pretty darn close. There is no way its an advantage Cubs for this season though which is what the original statement was.

When looking at a player most people use their 3 year averages, all I did was add this season to that. Who cares what someone did 4+ years ago? 4 years ago Sosa was a 35+ HR hitter still. One year of good stats can be a fluke so easily you want to look at more than 1, two years can still be pretty flukey especially with a guy like say Peralta who had one good and one bad year. Three years gives you a decent size sample. You guys are really stretching things to try to make your argument. I'm sure Joe Morgan probably likes ERA+. ERA+ is just ERA modified with some half baked park factors and then modified compared to league averages. The park factor part of it is mostly useless because they simply are not detailed enough to be useful. The league average comparison is only really useful when you are comparing pitchers from different era's. Not really sure what the problem is here. It is not a stat you want to be using to compare pitchers of the same season, thats not what its useful for. ERA as a stat takes more than a single season of data to be useful for anything as well, you don't want to just look at two pitchers ERA for a single season and proclaim the lowest the better, thats a horrible way to judge a pitcher

4 years 2004 2005 2006 2007 How is that omitting anything? ERA+ is a crappy stat no matter what, has nothing to do with this discussion, its bad in every discussion. The only time its even marginally useful is comparing pitchers from different era's. I call it a push, but if you look at those stats and say Zambrano is an advantage you are clearly wearing Cubs glasses.

Sheets - 601.2 IP, 545 H, 91 BB, 591 K, 209 ER, 3.13 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, 1.36 BB/9, 8.84 K/9 Zambrano - 752.1 IP, 602 H, 326 BB, 686 K, 276 ER, 3.30 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, 3.90 BB/9, 8.21 K/9 The only stat Zambrano beats Sheets at is hitting and staying healthy. Like I said this is at best a push and if you want to weigh it towards this season more you could make an argument for advantage Sheets. There is no way its advantage Zambrano though. ERA+ is a garbage stat so don't use that to try to prove anything, its based on poorly designed park factors. WARP is a stat that is going to depend on playtime too much. Sheets has K'd more, BB'd less, had a better ERA, had a better WHIP over the past 3.5 years, at best this is a push.

Could easily be a push though I agree I'd put my money on ARam. This is a push, Graffanino is close to DeRosa so even when they rest Weeks wrist its not a clear advantage. There is no reason to believe this, Sheets has been better over the past 4 seasons (albeit with an injury) and he's been better this year. At best its a push, at worse its advantage Sheets. I'd call this a push myself, Bush has pitched better than his ERA and Marquis has pitched worse than his. These types of things never really mean much but I don't think your list is really unbiased at all. The Brewers are as good a team as the Cubs and they have a big lead, the Cubs really need to do well in the head to head games to have a chance in my opinion. The one advantage the Cubs do have is the Brewers are a young team and young teams tend to fade a bit down the stretch.

The ump has been very kind to him today but he's still pitching great.

Fielder is most certainly faster than Konerko so thats worse for sure. Now if someone lets Estrada hit an inside the park HR, that would be bad. That guy turns triples into singles.

Hunter left the game after being hit by a pitch in the hand. Ford was in the OF. Fielder is average speed so not really any stranger than any other non speedster hitting one.

Brewers only play 6 series against teams with a winning record the rest of the season, 5 of those are at home. I'd be worried about them now, they have already played the toughest part of their schedule.

Z was whipping Padres. Heh, unfortunately it looks like Zambrano's belt just broke since half of it was still in the loops.

I'm guessing that Zambrano was holding Giles belt not his own. What Zambrano was trying to do by taking off Giles belt is always going to be a mystery though.

Bobby Higginson post big contract.

I highly doubt we ever know what was said. I'm sure Young will deny saying anything regardless of whether or not he really said it. I'm sure Lee thought he heard something or will just lie about it to try to get out of his suspension.

BABIP is a skill for hitters and nobody ever said it wasn't. BABIP is a way to tell if a hitter is getting lucky or not. You compare their normal BABIP to what they have this season and if there is a huge difference they are getting lucky. If Cabrera has a .421 BABIP he's getting lucky pure and simple. Luck might not be the greatest word for it, its really just variance. If I flip a coin 50 times I'm not going to get 25 heads and 25 tails, there will be variance. The more times i flip it the less variance it is, same can be said with BABIP. Pitchers have a lot less control over it, what they do control is ground ball rate and infield flies which affects BABIP as well as the competition faced, ballpark, fielders behind them etc. There is generally a range where pitchers will end up for BABIP, flyball pitchers will sit around .275-.310 while ground ball pitchers will generally sit in the .290-.325 range. Javier Vazquez has been unlucky the past two years. In 2006 his strand rate was way low at 65.8%. In 2005 his strand rate was normal but his HR/9 was way high at 1.46/9. In 2002, 2003, 2004 he pretty much matched his expected ERA. The problem here is simply one of sample size, 200 IP is not really a meaningful sample of data especially for ERA. If he was always 'getting unlucky' in the same way you would see it in the stats and it would no longer be bad luck, but thats simply not what has happened with him. With clutch I think the conventional wisdom is that if you could not perform in important situations you would have never made it to the majors. Most studies have reasoned that anti clutch exists but clutch doesn't though I haven't seen a really solid study on the subject yet. The problem is you need a good 1000 PA's minimum to get anything close to meaningful data and 1000 PA's of 'clutch' situations is a good 5-10 years worth of stats. As for PECOTA, you aren't really using the stats properly from it. They give different percentiles for how good a player is. It may have been bullish on him but he probably hit his 90th percentile numbers. There is never going to be a system that is going to accurately predict these things but PECOTA does a pretty nice job of it overall.

Blame it on ARod.

Yeah the sample is getting bigger but it still changes pretty quickly. Two weeks ago the Giants had the best in the NL at something like .739 and I told my friend it meant they were just lucky, we had this same basic conversation. Today it sits at .715 and the team ERA has gone up almost half a run and thats with their pitching actually improving with Lincecum brought up. In the Cubs case it also partially points to how cold it has been and to the fact the wind has been blowing in at Wrigley for the majority of the season so far.