CubColtPacer

Haha, I love how Lou says "notice how when Wells gets into trouble hes pitching from the stretch". Well Lou, its hard to get into trouble while pitching from the windup when nobody is on base...... He jut means that Wells has pitched much worse with runners on than nobody on. Nobody on: .256/.304/.375 Runners on: .353/.389/.496

That was written on the day of April 15th. Soriano had a 607 OPS and had committed 2 bad errors in the first 8 games. He looked like he was still hurt. Now his OPS is 890. And he has only committed 2 errors since then (errors are obviously not nearly the biggest part of defense but they are Soriano's biggest problem since he has pretty good range and a great arm). Soriano has showed that the injury wasn't the final blow to his career. What about Soriano makes him that much worse than Ibanez and Burrell were when they signed their new deals?

That's it. He's not good enough defensively to play CF full time and doesn't hit with enough power to play one of the corner spots. From what I've seen in both the minors and with the Cubs his arm his strong and accurate and he's a decent route runner, but nothing spectacular. I'm not sure why so many people here are so down on him, I think he might be able to start on a team that gets power else where, but for most teams in the post steroid era he's likely to be a backup. See I think he has plenty of power potential. He has the 2nd and 3rd longest home runs for the Cubs this season and 4 of his 6 home runs have been over 400 feet, so he hasn't hit cheap ones so far. Anybody who hits that many line drives and fly balls who can hit the ball as far as he does should be able to hit for a decent amount of home runs. And the power numbers at Tennessee last year and the greater than average muscle he put on in the offseason would lead credence to his home run numbers being better than earlier in his career. I'm personally concerned about that strikeout rate. It could be a sign that he's adjusting to the league but it could mean there are certain holes that can be exploited in his swing. Coming off the bench a decent amount might mean that he's faced more high strikeout pitchers as well. Colvin's a strange guy. There isn't a single part of his game that hasn't been questioned at some point. Everybody has a different belief about him from poor defense to inability to make contact to poor walk rate to poor power. I don't have high hopes for him being an impact player but he is definitely got me curious about which weaknesses turn out to be more true than others. And he definitely could prove me wrong and put it all together.

There's a massive difference in the two players' offense. Are you saying Hill is better at these other things a catcher is supposed to do to the tune of a .300 difference in OPS? And quite frankly, Soto's defense isn't that much worse than Hill's. I'm saying I don't know, and I don't think anyone else does either. Maybe so, but think about this. The only reason people thought Soto had a chance at the majors was because he played excellent defense at catcher. The scouts repeated it over and over again and so did the pitchers he worked with. It's the reason people were clamoring for him to become the backup catcher after 2006 even though he only had a .739 OPS at Iowa and in very limited time in the majors a .471 OPS. Since then, Soto has lost weight (and then gained some, and then lost some more) which should only help his defensive abilities. So this isn't a case of trying to analyze if a good defense catcher can do enough to outweigh the bat of a poor defensive catcher (Blanco/Barrett is a recent example of that). These are likely two strong defensive catchers. I have no idea which one is better defensively so the bat has to be a tiebreaker, and the massive advantage Soto enjoys is a pretty big tiebreaker.

I honestly think the jury is still out on whether Colvin is a good defender or not. The scouts seem to be mixed in the minors between some believing that he had good corner outfield defense and poor center field defense and others who believed he was only a LF. So far, in the very limited data we have in the majors Colvin seems to be leaning towards the former idea with his defense both with the eye test and UZR. I don't think it's a stretch to believe that he's a good defender at either corner outfield position. At the same time, that still has to be confirmed with more chances.

And the other question is does the SEC want to lose its distinction of the best football conference? They lose a lot of credibility by adding 4 mediocre to worse schools to the conference.

Either team can score with walks, hbp, errors, etc. and have two no hitters in a normal 9 inning game. If the Cubs score in the 9th or earlier, Floyd can't get 27 outs. And if he doesn't get 27 outs, he doesn't get an official no hitter.

Besides Hill the Cubs have all left-handers on the bench so there weren't many choices on that front.

Gotta love that the Cubs have chosen Grabow over Russell, who has actually gotten hitters out this year. Atkins will be here about a week, and the its the return of John [expletive] Grabow. God damn this organization is horrible. It's the best long-term decision. Russell has gotten pretty lucky and still has mediocre numbers for the season. Grabow's likely the better pitcher. And you really want to be sure before you release a relief pitcher that has more than a year left on his contract because they bounce around from awful to good again so much and the Cubs could easily get some contract relief by next year.

This is the best way to use a guy like Atkins. He's most likely insurance for a couple of days and then he'll be sent right back down for Grabow.

Lee has had 10.7% of normal at-bats and Ramirez has 8.8%. Lee has had 10.3% of at-bats with RISP and Ramirez has had 10.9%. If I get a change, I'll calculate what the numbers would be without each of them. I definitely would agree that bad lineup construction might have caused some of these issues. Lou's bad lineup and playing time decisions have cost the Cubs in that one and other areas. Of course it should be said that the numbers I used also dowplayed the problems. If you remove the Cubs from the NL numbers and removed the RISP numbers when using the Cubs total as you should, it gets a little worse.

I heard Dan Bernstein on the radio the other day trying to educate fans on advanced baseball statistics, and was using FIP like it was the king of all pitching statistics. Whoever was with him (not Boers) was noticing that Jimenez wasnt among the top 10 pitchers in FIP and calling the stat out based on that. Dan's response was to defend that damn stat to the death and kept talking about how its more important than anything else you can look at because it's independant of fielding. I was just shaking my head. These stats are great, but people have to understand that there is not one single stat that determines the value or worth of an individual player. Definitely agree. And I'm not actually the biggest fan of FIP in particular because it assumes all pitchers control their BABIP equally and I don't agree with that. But it does show that he probably has been unlucky even if there is a scouting reason why his BABIP might be so high (leaving too many pitches over the middle of the plate for example).

Either the peripherals don't tell the entire picture, he was extremely lucky last year, he's extremely unlucky this year, or a little of both of the last 2. Probably all 3. The peripherals would suggest he was lucky last year but that he's been very, very unlucky so far this year. But that also doesn't take into account LD percentage and that has been way up this year. So Wells BABIP is sky high, but he's also had a high LD% to help account for that. Let's just say the peripherals and results for the Cubs starters don't match up well so far. Wells had the best FIP among the whole Cubs starting staff (not counting Gorzelanny who isn't starting anymore) going into the day and it might remain that way after today.

The funny thing is that the peripherals would suggest that Wells is pitching better this year than last year. His strikeout rate is up, his walk rate is down, his home run rate is the same. But he's just getting pounded with hit after hit this year.

There have been a lot of people who have stated that the Cubs main problem is that they simply cannot get the clutch hit this year. Others have pointed out that their clutch numbers are very close to their overall numbers and saying that a lack of clutchness has had no impact. Is either side right? Let's take a look at the numbers: 2010 Cubs overall: .261/.328/.410 2010 NL overall: .258/.329/.402 Notice these numbers. The Cubs are virtually identical to an average NL offense so far this year. They walk a little less and have a little better of an average which also inflates their slugging slightly. Now let's look at RISP: 2010 Cubs RISP: .252/.331/.409 2010 NL overall: .263/.357/.417 The Cubs OPS is 2 points better with RISP than without. However, that is coming from an increased walk rate which is easily the least important thing to measure when looking at RISP. The batting average is down 9 points which even though the Cubs have a slightly higher ISOP with RISP still drags the slugging down a point. But look at the NL in general. The walk rate moves up at a slightly higher rate than the Cubs. The BA is 5 points higher and the ISOP is up as well. The NL ends up having a 43 point edge in OPS change compared to the Cubs and a 14 point edge in BA change compared to the Cubs. Those numbers are not quite as strong when you refine it to RISP/2 outs: Cubs: .235/.337/.393 NL: .236/.353/.379 In this one the Cubs walk rate is down compared to the NL, which is the least important part of this particular statistic. The change in their batting average ends up being 4 points worse compared to their total than the NL is. Their slugging change is actually still better than the NL's even with that BA drop. Bases Loaded Cubs: .231/.300/.404 NL: .283/.322/.446 This one only has a minimal impact on the season but as you can see the Cubs have been getting clocked in this category. The walk rate has been much better than the NL which is good as that does directly score a run and the ISOP is good but the BA is so much worse. The Cubs pitching tells much of the same story: Total Cubs: .246/.314/.390 NL: .258/.330/.402 RISP Cubs: .279/.357/.460 NL: .262/.357/.412 RISP/2 outs Cubs: .244/.331/.391 NL: .234/.352/.372 Bases Loaded Cubs: .293/.321/.488 NL: .275/.314/.417 The Cubs do a better job than the NL in the change in their walk rates in the specialty situations. But the NL has done so much better of a job in both the BA and SLG changes in those specialty situations. Notice that the Cubs are 12 points better than the NL in average in total, but are 17, 10, and 18 points worse than the NL in these three types of situations. Ideally you'd love to improve both your BA/SLG and your walk rate, but if you have to choose you'd much rather take the NL side and be much better in BA/SLG than walk rate in these situations. So there isn't much doubt that the Cubs have been bit by the clutch bug this year. And it isn't necessarily that the Cubs have been unclutch. The argument that the Cubs have melted away in clutch situations really isn't true. They just have been a much more extreme version of the NL as a whole. The batters have been winning clutch situations more often than normal this year. The Cubs just haven't won nearly as many of them as the NL, and have let more batters beat them than the rest of the NL. People tend to dismiss clutch factors because they are random variation which is true. In analyzing what has already happened though they can be important and it looks like the random variation has really hurt this club. I wonder if anyone could calculate any approximate number for how many extra runs would be generated and how many would have been saved if the Cubs difference from their total numbers to their RISP numbers were the same as the rest of the league. My guess is that it would mean that their RS/RA number would be safely on the positive side of the ledger. It certainly starts to explain why their pitching ERA is worse than any of their peripherals and the offense has had a lesser but similar effect on their numbers.

Didn't Silva strike out 11 Pirates in a game? No. Silva only struck out 5 Pirates. His 11 strikeout game was against the Cardinals.

What does especially in the Cubs system mean? The Cubs top 6-7 was one of the best in baseball (it will obviously drop if both Castro and Cashner graduate). And Jackson is widely considered one of the best picks of the 09 draft so far which is why he was 74th on BA's top 100 list. Vitters is probably the most questionable pick so far from Wilken considering he was drafted 3rd. Cashner is one of the best pitching prosepcts in all of baseball at this point. Jackson is an excellent prospect. Colvin still has huge question marks attached to him but it has been nice to see that he apparently has at least one huge tool (his immense power potential). The biggest concern with him is if he can keep hitting line drives at the rate he has with his huge strikeout rate.

Yeah. That's how I feel - I didn't like Colvin or Jackson and a lot of guys didn't like Cashner and all 3 of those first rounders have had success to this point. I did want Sale or Castellanos. Yeah, but those guys had pretty consistent 1st round grades. When everyone in the business is in agreement on a guy, they're right 9 times out of 10. I thought Colvin had a lower round grade. He was ranked 170th by BA at the time.

This has been Wilken's MO his entire career to draft some strange picks in the first round. They've usually ended up working out though in both Toronto and they're starting to in Chicago. So I'm not worried that this pitcher doesn't have 1st round talent although I wish they had gambled and tried to get him in the 2nd.

I thought people would want to know that Ryne Sandberg has been speculated as a possible option for the Orioles managerial position. He was on the radio show Inside Pitch earlier today and apparently he said that if the Orioles came calling he would listen. I don't think there has been anything official from the Orioles that they would be interested in Sandberg and I'm not sure if he'd leave even if they were interested with the Cubs managerial situation in flux, but I thought I'd pass it along.

Without the recent rule changes, Silva would probably be considered but left off the team. This has been a pretty banner year for NL pitching so far. There are 13 slots on the roster. Jiminez, Halladay, and Wainwright are locks. Carpenter and Santana between reputation and having very good years are probably in. Bell, Broxton, and probably Marmol have good shots from the closer role. That leaves 6 spots left. Garcia, Pelfrey, Cain are likely the first 3 up. One of the Houston pitchers probably makes it as their only representative. And that leaves Silva fighting with about 8-10 other pitchers for 2 spots. But with Sunday starters not getting to pitch in the All-Star game, Silva has a much better chance of making it when they get replaced. The other way he has a chance of making it is if he stays undefeated between now and then and adds a couple of wins.

In Silva's case, I think that is only a small part of the reason. Silva's major difference has been what the fangraphs article pointed out earlier in the season. He has completely changed how he pitches against left-handers by relying on a changeup instead of his two seam fastball. That has turned what was previously his main weakness into a strength for him. His numbers against right-handers are about the same as they have always been. That might mean that he could have an improvement that lasts. Looking at his peripherals, his strikeout rate is easily the best its ever been and he's maintained his other numbers. Obviously he's not sub 3 ERA good (very few pitchers are and Silva has definitely had luck) but his numbers suggest he could be transitioning from average to well above average.

I have not heard him emphatically refuse to waive his NTC. And I doubt very much now it's about being close to home. He's a big boy, and he's a couple states away from home playing many of his games out west. I'm sure being local mattered at the time, but getting a NTC is a great negotiating power for any player. He knew Hendry was desperate to get him to give up the NFL, so he got the NTC. But I'm sure his biggest desire is to be pitching in the major leagues instead of Des Moines. He hasn't said it himself, but his agent said there was no chance. And he only has less than a year before he has to either stick in the major leagues or have every team pass on him anyway.

In all seriousness, I wonder of Jeff Samardzjia for Alex Gordon is a possibility. Much like Gordon, Shark is a former top prospect whose team has pretty much given up on him, and maybe a change of scenery would do him good. Of course, Shark would have to waive the NTC that he never should have had to begin with, but I suppose he would considering hes much more likely to get a shot with KC than with us. Maybe throw in one of our AAAA guys like Fuld, Hoffpauir, or Snyder. Maybe Theriot if it gets the job done. Samardzjia was supposedly willing to waive his NTC to go to the O's in the infamous Brian Roberts deal so I don't see why he wouldn't do the same for KC. Right now he's probably behind Jackson, Schlitter and Parker in terms of possibly being promoted. You could also probably add Coleman to that list and there's always Gray and Berg. Where did you see that he was willing? All I've seen Samardzjia do is emphatically refuse to waive his no trade clause. He's come out and said that the reason he chose baseball over football was so that he could stay close to home and pitch for the Cubs which is why he demanded the no trade clause in the first place.

You don't consider Prince Fielder to be close to Lee's production? Or did I (and Cot's) miss an extension he signed? The Brewers control Fielder through 2011. This is not his walk year. He is slated to hit FA at the same time as Adrian Gonzalez. Cot's: At the end of that two year deal he still won't have enough service time to be a free agent. That deal covered his first two arbitration years and 2011 will be his 3rd arbitration year.