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Remember before I say this that I like walks much better than Dusty seems to..but what if I came on the board last Sunday and said see...the Cubs took 0 walks, and scored 15 runs! It looks like they should keep preaching agressiveness. I would be roasted for looking at that one game as evidence, because the 2 stats are not well correlated. So it's silly to look at this game as evidence of the other side, however a help it might have been. except the stats are well correlated (that is obp and runs) Yes, but OBP is not exactly what we are talking about here. Most of the correlation between OBP and runs is inherent in the correlation between batting average and runs. For example..there are 11 teams with over 300 walks this season. 6 are in the top 10 of runs scored, 2 are between 11-20, and 3 of those teams are in the bottom 10 of runs scored. Out of the bottom 5 teams in walks, 1 of them is in the top 10 of runs scored, 2 are in between 11-20, and 2 are in the bottom 10. Also, look at this. The average number of walks by the division of 10 Top 10: 313.2 BB's 2nd 10: 277.2 BB's Last 10: 280.4 BB's Do walks have an affect on runs? Definitely. Does it have as much of an affect as a change in batting average? Not a chance. That's why OPS is such a good stat in evaluating runs for a team. The top 10 teams in OPS are also the top 10 teams in runs scored. That has direct correlation-while walks do not. And remember, it is walks alone we are talking about, since the original posted did not say that we had 9 walks and also had so many hits, which would be the components of OBP. Instead, he singularly wanted the Cubs to walk more, and walks have only a slight to moderate correlation to runs scored. except the stats are well correlated (that is obp and runs) Ok, that's fine. I will say that it is irrelevant to this discussion however, since the original poster was talking about the effect walks have on runs, not overall OBP. When I said that the stats were not well correlated, I was talking about walks as well, so therefore your statement is irrelevant to the current discussion and has no impact on my original statement. The primary reason that OBP and runs are decently well correlated is the difference in batting average (and still not nearly as well correlated as OPS). Differences in walks play a smaller role in run production, which is what I was saying to the original poster.

Remember before I say this that I like walks much better than Dusty seems to..but what if I came on the board last Sunday and said see...the Cubs took 0 walks, and scored 15 runs! It looks like they should keep preaching agressiveness. I would be roasted for looking at that one game as evidence, because the 2 stats are not well correlated. So it's silly to look at this game as evidence of the other side, however a help it might have been. except the stats are well correlated (that is obp and runs) Yes, but OBP is not exactly what we are talking about here. Most of the correlation between OBP and runs is inherent in the correlation between batting average and runs. For example..there are 11 teams with over 300 walks this season. 6 are in the top 10 of runs scored, 2 are between 11-20, and 3 of those teams are in the bottom 10 of runs scored. Out of the bottom 5 teams in walks, 1 of them is in the top 10 of runs scored, 2 are in between 11-20, and 2 are in the bottom 10. Also, look at this. The average number of walks by the division of 10 Top 10: 313.2 BB's 2nd 10: 277.2 BB's Last 10: 280.4 BB's Do walks have an affect on runs? Definitely. Does it have as much of an affect as a change in batting average? Not a chance. That's why OPS is such a good stat in evaluating runs for a team. The top 10 teams in OPS are also the top 10 teams in runs scored. That has direct correlation-while walks do not. And remember, it is walks alone we are talking about, since the original posted did not say that we had 9 walks and also had so many hits, which would be the components of OBP. Instead, he singularly wanted the Cubs to walk more, and walks have only a slight to moderate correlation to runs scored.

Remember before I say this that I like walks much better than Dusty seems to..but what if I came on the board last Sunday and said see...the Cubs took 0 walks, and scored 15 runs! It looks like they should keep preaching agressiveness. I would be roasted for looking at that one game as evidence, because the 2 stats are not well correlated. So it's silly to look at this game as evidence of the other side, however a help it might have been.

But it's not. There are guys who could be worse, and there's no way to tell if he really is THE worst, but it's not hard to support the claim that he is among the worst. The defense that he can't control his playing time doesn't mean a thing. He got the playing time, he negatively affected his teams simply by playing. That's enough to judge the player. Just about any reasonable replacement player would have done better. A spoiled little brat of a kid might not be to blame for the way his parents raised him, but that's not to say you can't criticize the kid's actions. If Neifi didn't play for the Cubs I wouldn't care about how crappy he is. But he does play, and he has hurt the team because he's been so bad. So maybe Macias is worse. But he's not in the game anymore. Augie Ojeda is worse, but he's in the minors. It says something when the few guys that are worse are guys that can't compete at the major league level. As a rule, you can assume that every criticism of Neifi is a criticism of how the Cubs use him and the fact that they even employ him. But the complaints about his play are very real, and very much justified. Ok, here are the players who have roughly comparable stats, or in some cases, significantly worse to Neifi, and play as much as he does or more this year. Jose Guillen Vinny Castilla Kazuo Matsui Geoff Blum Yadear Molina Mike Matheney Reggie Abercrombe Jason Larue Adam Everett Brian Schneider This is just a sample of players who have had comparable production to Neifi. This is also with Dusty's misuse of him. Just against lefties, Neifi is around these players JD Drew Paul Lo Duca Barry Bonds Andruw Jones Chipper Jones Neifi is not even close to the worst player in the league. When not used correctly, he would be one of the 5 worst starters in the majors, although not necessarily the worst. For bench players, he is slightly below average-but his work against lefties would make him a great bench player. Even using his career numbers against lefties make him a pretty good bench player. As far as the comment about .275 average not being decent, if every hitter on the team had a .275 average, they would rank 10th out of 30 teams. So how is a .275 average not decent? Yes, the OBP is low-that is why he is a bench player, just like all the benches around the league.

I bet that Pierre will be ahead of Patterson in 2 of those 3 categories by the end of the season. He is catching up-very fast.

You support the idea of not letting Cedeno hit against lefties and then advocate letting Neifi play a lot next year if Cedeno continues to not hit lefties. Sounds like a plan designed by somebody who wants Neifi to play a lot. Neifi sucks, left handed or right handed. A small portion of his splits against LHP where he was a little better than incompetent is not nearly enough to plan, on purpose, to have Neifi get regular time. There is not justification for giving Neifi playing time. Neifi should only be a last resort. He should never play into preseasons plans as a guy who will be getting regular playing time. He's awful. His presence on this team severely limits the chances for victory, and the more he plays, the lower the chances become. Goony, are you then calling Neifi the worst player in the major leagues? That is certainly the implication of saying that playing a player severly diminishes their chance of victory. Neifi is a fine player for what he should be-a utility player to give players a day off. The people in this thread are showing his career numbers to show that if Neifi is used in this way, and only gives people days off when there is a lefty on the mound, that he is a fine bench player. Let me give you a scenario. I told you I wanted to sign a utility guy for the bench. His primary position is shortstop, a postion where our current shortstop cannot hit lefties. This utility player hits decently against lefties, with a .275 career mark, which is certainly better than our starter. He also is an excellent defender at the position. I want to sign him to only spell this shortstop and occasionally other positions only when they need a day off and only when a lefty is on the mound. Both of these conditions could easily be done. Doesn't this sound like a fine move for the bench? Are you saying you wouldn't take this player? The problem is, people have seen Neifi so misused over the last year and a half that they cannot stand to see him in the lineup at all, even though he does have a limited role that could help a ballclub.

Honestly I don't even care if the Cubs are a top spender. That's not the only way to get it done. I look over at the Cards and they have a much lower payroll, less-than-stellar minor leagues to draw from, yet they're doing pretty darn good year in and year out. How does that work, exactly? I know one thing, it doesn't work if you didn't hire a decent GM. It's really not about the money, if I may toss around a sports cliche'. The Cardinals don't have a significantly lower payroll-their payroll is only 7 million dollars less than ours this year, and that uses Nevin's salary for the Cubs. You are right though, they have made some pretty good moves. Which players though do you think their GM has gotten that have pushed them upward? Players who are at a much better value then the Cubs players?

Ok, like the other people have said, let's take Wood out of it. At the time, it would have been seen as foolish for us to get rid of him-so we can't help if he didn't turn out. So that's 23.6 million for 7 player spots that we would have to fill. What suggestions do you have with 23.6 million to spend? That's maybe 1 star player, a few bench players, and a couple more young guys. So-what options would have given us significantly more production with the money that we had left? Also-let's look at a couple more players on your list. Do you really think Blanco is significantly overpaid or we could have gotten somebody else to back up at the catcher spot? That is simply a position you have to have, and I think Blanco has been what a backup catcher simply is. Finally-Mabry and Miller. Mabry has been slightly disappointing, but do you really think you could have gotten somebody considerably better for that money? Miller also-we can't even evaluate him yet-many people knew that it would probably be after the All Star Break that he would pitch anyway. Let's wait on that 1 million to see if it really is a horrible move. So-what would have been your plan?

Bah, it was a meaningless homerun as the Cubs already had the lead. Jacque = not clutch. :twisted: Trade him for Dunn. A team with Jones, Dunn, and Arod as the heart of the order wouldn't win games because none of those guys hit when it counts. Can't be any worse then the Cubs as currently assembled. I'm not sure if you guys are being sarcastic when talking about whether Jones is clutch. I seem to remember about 2-3 games where a Jock hit was clutch... I'm totally being sarcastic. a) I don't believe in guys being able to "bear down more" in clutch situations like Brenly does. b) Jones has hit better with RISP than just about everybody else on the team. I think you'll find, with nearly any team, the player with the highest BA tends to have the highest BA with RISP. And its no coincidence. :roll: Except that's not true. A quick look at the NL central shows that only 2 out of 6 teams have the player with the highest batting average with the highest average with RISP (with a certain mininum of at bats to take pitchers and bench players out). I bet you could find that is probably true around the league. For example, Barrett is hitting .307 and Jones only .287 normally, but Jones is batting the best on the team with RISP-.288. Then comes Ramirez, Walker, Cedeno, and Neifi before you get to Barrett! Would you like to back up your statement? Small Sample Size. Take a look at most teams' overall OBP and their OBP with RISP and the two numbers are usually quite close. If Jacque Jones or Neifi Perez or Matt Murton had 600 AB with RISP, their numbers would be pretty close to their overall numbers. How close would you say is close? Within 5 percent? 10 percent? I just want to know to see what range would be an acceptable range for this data. I'll let you know that I assembled the data. This year, 16 of the 30 teams have more than a 5% difference between their regular OBP and their OBP with RISP, so more than half have a significant difference between those two numbers. When comparing regular OBP and OBP of RISP w/2 outs, the differences grow even wider. 19 teams have at least a 5 percent difference. 11 of those teams have a 10% difference. Listen to this though: only 8 teams out of 30 went down from their regular OBP to their OBP of RISP w/2 outs. IThe Cubs: 16.9% down, the widest range either way for any team. If you can't drive runners in during key situations, you don't win.

Bah, it was a meaningless homerun as the Cubs already had the lead. Jacque = not clutch. :twisted: Trade him for Dunn. A team with Jones, Dunn, and Arod as the heart of the order wouldn't win games because none of those guys hit when it counts. Can't be any worse then the Cubs as currently assembled. I'm not sure if you guys are being sarcastic when talking about whether Jones is clutch. I seem to remember about 2-3 games where a Jock hit was clutch... I'm totally being sarcastic. a) I don't believe in guys being able to "bear down more" in clutch situations like Brenly does. b) Jones has hit better with RISP than just about everybody else on the team. I think you'll find, with nearly any team, the player with the highest BA tends to have the highest BA with RISP. And its no coincidence. :roll: Except that's not true. A quick look at the NL central shows that only 2 out of 6 teams have the player with the highest batting average with the highest average with RISP (with a certain mininum of at bats to take pitchers and bench players out). I bet you could find that is probably true around the league. For example, Barrett is hitting .307 and Jones only .287 normally, but Jones is batting the best on the team with RISP-.288. Then comes Ramirez, Walker, Cedeno, and Neifi before you get to Barrett! Would you like to back up your statement? Small Sample Size. Take a look at most teams' overall OBP and their OBP with RISP and the two numbers are usually quite close. If Jacque Jones or Neifi Perez or Matt Murton had 600 AB with RISP, their numbers would be pretty close to their overall numbers. How close would you say is close? Within 5 percent? 10 percent? I just want to know to see what range would be an acceptable range for this data.

Bah, it was a meaningless homerun as the Cubs already had the lead. Jacque = not clutch. :twisted: Trade him for Dunn. A team with Jones, Dunn, and Arod as the heart of the order wouldn't win games because none of those guys hit when it counts. Can't be any worse then the Cubs as currently assembled. I'm not sure if you guys are being sarcastic when talking about whether Jones is clutch. I seem to remember about 2-3 games where a Jock hit was clutch... I'm totally being sarcastic. a) I don't believe in guys being able to "bear down more" in clutch situations like Brenly does. b) Jones has hit better with RISP than just about everybody else on the team. I think you'll find, with nearly any team, the player with the highest BA tends to have the highest BA with RISP. And its no coincidence. :roll: Except that's not true. A quick look at the NL central shows that only 2 out of 6 teams have the player with the highest batting average with the highest average with RISP (with a certain mininum of at bats to take pitchers and bench players out). I bet you could find that is probably true around the league. For example, Barrett is hitting .307 and Jones only .287 normally, but Jones is batting the best on the team with RISP-.288. Then comes Ramirez, Walker, Cedeno, and Neifi before you get to Barrett! Would you like to back up your statement?

No, he called Lee one of the best defenders in the league out of all the positions, not only a good defender for a first baseman.

I realize the innings are getting away from us, but do you really want to have Bynum be your best option in a better spot? 2 outs nobody on, I'd rather save Walker for the 8th or 9th where we might actually need somebody to drive somebody in-something I don't trust Bynum to do. If Walker came up there, he might get a base hit, and then it's just Pierre up with 2 outs-and you just wasted Walker.

Apparently $8m in guaranteed cash. Yeowza! Carson Palmer's signing bonus was $10m as the #1 overall pick in 2003. $8m would be one heck of a carrot. Unfortunately for baseball plans, signing bonuses in the NFL are skyrocketing. The 20th pick, where some have Samardzija projected, got 6.7 million in guaranteed money last year (Marcus Spears). Mel Kiper has Samarzija as 7th on his big board. The Vikings selected a wide receiver in that spot in 2005, and T. Williamson got 13.3 million guaranteed. Both of these numbers should be sharply up with the 2007 draft, where I think the 20th pick will get well over 8 million guaranteed. The Cubs best hope is that the same thing that happened in the MLB draft happens in the NFL draft, and teams shy away from Samardzija because of his wanting to play two sports.

I would agree with that. Dunn would easily be our best hitting outfielder. He does have some major flaws in his game. I was just replying to the poster who said that the reason Dunn doesn't drive runs in was because nobody would get on in front of him. Will Dunn hit lots of home runs and also draw a bunch of walks for you? Of course. Is he going to drive a bunch of runs in? No, he's not. Are the home runs and walks worth the lack of other base hits, defense, or inability to move runners along? As a FA, sure. In a trade? I don't know how much I'd give up for him.

Here's the problem with that reasoning. Let's compare Dunn to some other Reds and some other Cubs, just in RBI's with RISP. Dunn has 54 AB's with RISP, and has 21 RBI's. In comparison, Edwin Encarnacion only has 3 more AB's, and has 31 RBI's. Griffey only has 33 AB's in this situation, but has 28 RBI's. Also, let's look at some Cubs. Jones has 24 RBI's in 49 AB's. Murton has 17 RBI's in 47 AB's, which means that Dunn is doing no better at driving anybody besides himself home than Murton is. In summary, the problem is not that the Reds don't get on base enough for him. The problem is simply that Dunn simply doesn't hit enough to drive anybody in but himself most of the time, which is why the guy has only made it too 100 RBI's twice, and his top is 102 even while being a prodigious home run hitter.

No, I don't want Soriano. Not because of talent, attitude or anything like that, but simply because he would be a two month rental. He's not going to re-sign with an NL team unless he got a similar deal that Beltran got. And quite frankly, neither player is worth that contract. Besides....the Cubs are about 20 wins away (10 wins to get to .500, another 10 wins to get to 10 over .500) before they can consider adding talent to this roster. 20 wins? I don't think they should add talent if they're still in the same spot they were now, but don't you think 20 wins is a bit steep? If the records for everybody else remain around the same, that would put us in the WC lead, and 1 game out of the division. I think we should probably consider adding some talent if we can get within 5-6 games of either the division or WC as we get closer to the trading deadline.

And two outs. Edit: How many at bats is that out of? It doesn't seem like that much of a distance between team BA is sustainable. 235 AB's for the Cubs in that situation entering the day-out of 2068 at bats total.

It's amazing. He almost threw a no hitter against the Cubs when he played for the Phillies. He held them practically hitless his last against the Cubs and now he is on that track today. I don't even think he flirted with a no hitter against another team. Len and Bob said over the last 4 games he has only given up 3 runs. Exactly..in fact, over the last 3 starts for him, we have given him the most trouble our last time facing him. Here they are 05/26- 8 IP, 3H, 1ER, 9K-Arizona 05/31-7.2 IP, 6H, 2ER, 1K-Cubs 06/06-7 IP, 5H, 0ER, 3K-St. Louis Sometimes a pitcher is just pitching well-would the other team be doing pathetically if Z was pitching this way right now?

Murton took a strike first, and Jones as of last Sunday according to the WGN blog had a .652 batting average when swinging at the first pitch. With Jones's problem with swinging at sliders late in the count, I'm fine with him attacking the first pitch if it's good.

Fred, can you please post the stats one more time about the Cubs record on WGN vs. the Cubs record on CSN? Thanks in advance for all your work.

Even though Neifi hits right handed pitchers better then lefties, if you want to give Cedeno a night off, wouldn't it make sense to do it against a left hander? I mean, Cedeno can't exactly hit left handed pitching this year either, so we might as well have Neifi in where they are almost equal in order to get Cedeno in against all the right handers where Cedeno is enormously better.

The fact the the Cubs are last in the majors in overall OPS, BB/PA, HR -- well, pretty much any meaningful offensive category you can think of -- causes the lack of runs. The bad luck with runners on base simply compounds the problem and is by no means the primary issue that needs to be addressed. In fact, the Cubs were one of the best teams in baseball with runners in scoring position through the first month of the season. It just goes to show you the unstable nature of RISP numbers and why they hold little to no predictive value. That appears to make my point more than yours. The primary difference between April (through the 28th) and May is hitting with RISP...and what happens...so goes the record. Can anybody post the stats on BA, OBP, and OPS in April and May and RISP in April and May? I think we can probably find the one that changes the most over the two months. Here's the Cub's overall numbers from April and May. Give me a while and I can have the RISP splits over the same period. teamID month AVG OBP SLG OPS XR/PA chn 4 0.256 0.316 0.401 0.717 0.109 chn 5 0.248 0.296 0.359 0.655 0.095 As you can see, the Cubs' component offensive stats dropped about 15% from April to May, just about the same amount their overall run production dropped. I'm not saying that RISP numbers don't have an impact on run production, they do. What I'm saying is that such numbers rarely, if ever, demonstrate much persistence and tend to fluctuate almost randomly. They'll usually even out in the end, leaving a team's overall offensive numbers as the best true measure of a team's abilty to score runs. (Such as the case so far in the Cubs' 2006 campaign, where they were really good with runners on base for the first month of the season but have been pretty awful since.) Thus, the best way to go about improving your offense isn't blaming (or trying to fix) a lack of timely hits, it's going out and getting guys who get on base an can hit with some power. Using total runs for the month, my calculations have the Cubs scoring at a clip of 4.74 runs a game in April (109 runs in 23 games). In May, that was down to 3.206 runs a game (93 runs in 29 games). So isn't that almost a 32.5 percent drop in run production? If that is so, then it seems like the drops in the other statistics would predict a drop in run output of less than half that much-so where is the rest coming from?

OK..here are some of the stats for May. Cubs April May BA .256 .248 OBP .316 .296 OPS .717 .655 Now..all 3 of these dropped..but did they really drop enough to turn us from a winning team to a team who won only 1 every 4 days? I haven't tracked down the difference between RISP over the 2 months..I'll post it if I can find it.

The fact the the Cubs are last in the majors in overall OPS, BB/PA, HR -- well, pretty much any meaningful offensive category you can think of -- causes the lack of runs. The bad luck with runners on base simply compounds the problem and is by no means the primary issue that needs to be addressed. In fact, the Cubs were one of the best teams in baseball with runners in scoring position through the first month of the season. It just goes to show you the unstable nature of RISP numbers and why they hold little to no predictive value. That appears to make my point more than yours. The primary difference between April (through the 28th) and May is hitting with RISP...and what happens...so goes the record. Can anybody post the stats on BA, OBP, and OPS in April and May and RISP in April and May? I think we can probably find the one that changes the most over the two months.