CubColtPacer

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.