CubColtPacer

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.

Why would you say that? Our regular starting 8 is only hitting .167 in that category...no problem, right? :(

Just some stats this year for consideration for some Cub hitters: SP (Scoring Position) (First Averages and OBP are the splits with nobody on) Name Average OBP Avg/SP OBP/SP Avg/SP/2Out OBP/SP/2Out Pierre .236 .282 .154 .233 .074 .167 Womack .297 .350 .273 .400 .167 .375 Walker .310 .380 .293 .407 .125 .263 Barrett .301 .350 .214 .340 .150 .261 Ramirez .250 .287 .230 .342 .190 .370 Jones .273 .321 .326 .348 .227 .261 Murton .328 .386 .222 .321 .217 .308 Cedeno .287 .303 .241 .300 .190 .292 Here are our regular starters most of the year. As you can see, the team hits pretty well with nobody on-not great, but pretty decently. With runners in scoring position, the OBP fluctuates (most likely due to the pitcher not caring as much about walks in this situation)...but the average is down among everybody but Jones. With scoring position and 2 outs, the results are incredible-only 2 people in the starting lineup hitting over .200, and only 3 OBP's over .300..and one of those is Womack, and another one is Ramirez who they are walking to get out of the inning. I know clutch hitting isn't thought much of on this board-but how are these huge drops explained? This team simply does not execute when they have a chance to in the clutch, and that causes the lack of runs that lose ballgames. Edit: If anyone could help me clean up the lining up of the numbers for easier reading, feel free. I'm sorry-I'm having trouble making it incredibly readable.

I saw a lot of complaints about taking pitches in the game thread today. We did hit miserably..ok even worse than that, but I'm wondering where this is coming from today? Some people even asked how many players had hit the first pitch at them..well, not really that many today. 1st pitches today 11 strikes looking 13 balls 1 hit 3 outs 2 strikes swinging (Marshall 6th, Ramirez 9th) 2 fouls (Jones 8th, Barrett 9th) So that's 32 first pitches...and only 8 swung at. In fact, out of the 24 people left, only 7 took a swing at the 2nd pitch. So that means 17 of the 32 batters on the Cubs side took the first 2 pitches in the at bat....as opposed to only 13 out of 29 Astros who did the same. I don't think the problem was that we weren't patient in this game..I think the problem is that we got into hitters counts, got pitches over the heart of the plate, and could still only hit weak ground balls...which is sad, but doesn't show a lack of patience.