Colin Wyers

So long as we're looking for a lefty corner outfielder that's a big masher and a defensive liability, I'm contractually obligated to remind all of you that Barry Bonds remains a free agent.

My first hunch is that he's running more often, and being less selective about when he runs. But how do we find out? Let's go ahead and define times on base as hits+walks+HBP+IBB-HR. And we'll define stolen base attempts as SB+CS. Last season Theriot had 190 TOB, compared to 56 so far this season. He had 38 attempts last season, compared to 14 so far this season. 2007 Attempt %: .2 2008 Attempt %: .25 So he's definately running more often than last season, but I don't think that explains it all by itself. Maybe he's lost a step - speed ages quicker than a lot of other things. Maybe it's just a fluke. Maybe last season was just a fluke.

So you think that we should bench a guy that actually didn't suck last season in favor of one who did. Theriot, season to date: .325/.397/.421 DeRosa, season to date: .259/.381/.398 The difference between them in production isn't that vast, and one of them is doing it without hitting for an absurdly inflated average. I'd bet on DeRosa to outhit Theriot going forward. You don't want to be riding the golden carriage when it turns into a pumpkin.

For an OPS+ of 85, still well below league average - "a lot better" is an exaggeration. Theriot's "neutral luck" batting line still isn't that good if you take into account park effect and extra base hits. Let's take a look at this real quick: League average, 2007: .266/.334/.423 League average w/ park effect for Wrigley: .278/.347/.444 So Theriot's "neutral luck" batting line would look like .283/.336/.358 in a neutral park. Any way you slice it, his power numbers are absolutely abysmal and he hasn't shown many signs of improving them. And before anyone says, "Well, shortstops don't have to hit for power," let's look at the average NL shortstop from last season: .279/.337/.420 That's still a damn sight better than our hypothetical "neutral luck" Ryan Theriot, even if we don't bother to park adjust.

But he did. He threw a meatball to Dunn. But he did his part for the inning not to even get to Dunn. Not facing Dunn that inning= impossible for Dunn to hit a home run that inning. Now I guess you could argue that Dunn would have hit the home run leading off the next inning, but everything would have been different. And ERA handles the matter by presuming that Dempster doesn't face Dunn at all that time in the lineup. Which is clearly wrong. The fact is that the error is a poor tool for measuring defense, and thus next to worthless in trying to evaluate pitchers in a defense-neutral context. It's an utterly meaningless distinction.

Is this Little League? Are we trying to be fair? The argument has nothing to do with what Ryan Theriot does and does not deserve. Neither of them deserve the position, and to be quite frank it's not reassuring that management went into the season with the two of them as our only realistic options at shortstop. It's about playing your best players in order to put yourself in position to win the most baseball games. Cedeno has been a better hitter, fielder and baserunner than Theriot, and if you start looking past AVG/OBP (the ONLY things that Theriot's defenders will ever bring up) to things like fielding prowess and baserunning and, oh, extra base hits, the difference becomes even more pronounced. And, fine, all of it's a small sample size. But going on Theriot's performance last season it's hard to make a case for Theriot being the starting shortstop that doesn't require ignoring his on-field performance. No, this isn't little leagues and I'm not "trying to be fair" - I'm basing playing time based on production. Right now Theriot is producing and should (not deserve) but should be playing. Frankly, Cedeno should be, as well at 2B for the time being. (I wish Cedeno was really good defensively as a lot of you think. He's got good range and a good arm but how soon we forget about the inconsistencies and errant throws he displayed so often in the past and did tonight). Using the argument you laid out above - Reed Johnson should also be starting every day, right? This isn't the little leagues, they should play the best players who give them the best chance to win, correct? Sigh. Season to date (prior to tonight's game) against RHP: Reed Johnson - .274/.319/.323, .641 OPS Felix Pie - .250/.333/.341, .674 OPS Pie has been more productive than Johnson vs. right-handed pitching. (Pie is also better defensively and running the bases.) The most viable arrangement is to use them in a straight platoon. So that's a straw man arguement. As far as your implication that we should essentially bench DeRosa in favor of Theriot, well, season to date: Theriot: .322/.397/.421, .818 OPS DeRosa: .259/.381/.398, .779 OPS So let me get this straight. You're arguing that we should bench someone who DIDN'T suck last season in preference of someone who DID, for under .040 points of OPS. Nevermind that Theriot's production requires that he sustain a batting average over .300 to keep his numbers better than DeRosa's.

So in your opinion, Ryan Theriot does not deserve to play then? Is this Little League? Are we trying to be fair? The argument has nothing to do with what Ryan Theriot does and does not deserve. Neither of them deserve the position, and to be quite frank it's not reassuring that management went into the season with the two of them as our only realistic options at shortstop. It's about playing your best players in order to put yourself in position to win the most baseball games. Cedeno has been a better hitter, fielder and baserunner than Theriot, and if you start looking past AVG/OBP (the ONLY things that Theriot's defenders will ever bring up) to things like fielding prowess and baserunning and, oh, extra base hits, the difference becomes even more pronounced. And, fine, all of it's a small sample size. But going on Theriot's performance last season it's hard to make a case for Theriot being the starting shortstop that doesn't require ignoring his on-field performance.

I think theres a risk in using pythag over small samples. Games like the April 30th 19-5 walloping we put on the brewcrew (I was at the game and it was awesome), have such a significant skewing impact when you are just looking at an 11 game sample. Taking out that game, it drops us from +11 to -3, worth a couple games in the pythag standings. I'm sure there have been analyses done as to when pythag becomes credible...anyone know of any? There are sample size concerns, but Pythagorean W/L is supposed to be more reliable over small sample sizes (and remember, a full season is a small sample size - everything is technically a sample) than straight win-loss records; that's why it exists. That said, if you're worried about blowouts skewing the Pythag, check out this. It's a Pythagorean win estimator on a per game basis, and it's capped, so no one game skews the estimate too much.

it's not at all. what's terrible logic is assuming that because some other hitters improved a lot, then so can cedeno. in the cases of the players discussed in this thread, they showed in their first full seasons that they had some of the skills - be it patience or the ability to pick a pitch and drive it for doubles/home runs - that are required to become a good major league player. cedeno showed none of the batting attributes needed to become an average or above-average player at the big league level. saying "hey mike schmidt sucked at 23 and he got good!" is a lazy argument. you're comparing apples to oranges. since i'm so wrong, there should be plenty of examples of guys who were God-awful hitters in their first full seasons, but became average or better. i'm surprised that you guys haven't found all these examples to put me in my place once and for all. No, this is exactly the point I'm saying. Cedeno being "God-awful" as opposed to merely below average or "showing attributes of a useful hitter" is a completely irrelevant point, especially with what he proved at the minor league level. Here's a better question. If Truffle is right, then Theriot's production so far this season has to be a mirage as well. And thus neither of them should be shortstop. (Which is a much more defensible position than the one currently held by Theriot's supporters.)

:blink: There are plenty of extra-run hits in cricket. Technically it's unlimited, but realistically you can get up to six. You learn something new every day!

Fixed.

Then at the same time you shouldn't look at his SLG in a vacuum considering he's stolen 7 bases. Exactly. You might want to look at EQA, which takes that into account. Theriot's EQA is .269, only marginally better than the .247 he put up a year ago. The CS's are killing him offensively. Cedeno, for a point of comparison, is sporting a .350 EQA. Which is Bonds-like. Gotta look at the sample size there. Ronny's had a nice 50 at bats. But I'm not about to call for Theriot's head when he's getting on base 2 times every 5 plate appearances. Both of them are small sample sizes, and both of them need to be regressed to the mean or incorporated into a projection based upon previous performance. But you're completely ignoring the fact that this isn't cricket, and therefore you can hit for extra bases. And you're right. Ronny Cedeno will not continue to hit like Barry Bonds. But at the same time, it is extremely unlikely that Theriot continues to post a batting average above .320. His walk rate seems to have improved slightly (it was actually below average last season), but his isolated slugging hasn't gone up significantly. Theriot's OBP will fall when his AVG falls, and his SLG is already precariously close to being subpar.

this Cedeno in CF bandwagon has really got me nauseated. i do like him at SS but what on earth happened to suddenly make Cedeno a bat we absolutely must get into the lineup? I'm guessing this has something to do with it: Cedeno: .391/.472/.587 Theriot: .316/.381/.412 Cubs CF: .258/.341/.308 I'd argue that Ryan Theriot cannot be as good, and a Pie/Johnson platoon cannot be as bad, as what we've seen so far this season. But when a guy's hittling like post-steroids Bonds, teams generally try to find places to bat them until the magic wears off. And if you're simply relying on performance to date, CF looks like the logical hole to plug. [i'm not advocating looking at performance to date, but I'm trying to explain where I see Lou's thought process coming from.]

Not really. There may be some merit to combining metrics like UZR and PMR, but they mostly have to do with increasing the validity of the observed measurement. But on the whole, you're better off using the best defensive metric available, rather than trying to combine the results of all defensive metrics. In this case, RZR is the best defensive metric we have available to us for Year 2008 performance. (Jinaz does a great rundown of what's available, although it predates the release of several promising Retrosheet-based methods.)

So... basically what the zone rating stats said.

it'd be as informative as people who hate him cherry picking stats to support their clearly biased stance. i'd like for you to show me where i advocated we "evaluate a player's defense based upon what the people who like him say." as you stated whilst making your ridiculous straw man argument. What defense metric would you rather we used?

that causes one to wonder what would cause a player to go from a top-5 defender one season to one of the worst in the league the following season? i have an idea and it involves relying on a defensive metric that considers yuniesky betancourt, bobby crosby and erick aybar dismal fielders. Your argument is pretty terrible, considering Theriot's defense is also criticized quite a bit from an observational perspective. then we can agree that RZR is a waste of time? i just found it ironic to cite a metric that had Theriot top-5 in the game last year to prove his worthlessness this year. the whole post was utterly rife with flawed logic. and furthermore to your point, Lord knows people here view Ryan Theriot with the utmost objectivity... You can't look at RZR independently - you have to also look at the OOZ numbers. Theriot's OOZ numbers last season were pretty bad, making him average defensively overall, as I recall. Theriot's OOZ numbers this season are below-average as well (he's made six OOZ plays so far this season, compared to around 8.75 OOZ plays by the average shortstop with his chances (you figure OOZ opps by taking his BIZ times .151). Or we could just evaluate a player's defense based upon what the people who like him say. I'm sure that works better.

I swear someday I'm going to have a brain anyeurism reading Cubs message boards. DeRosa: .290/.405/.441, 122 OPS+ Theriot: .340/.409/.447, 124 OPS+ Do two points of OPS+ really justify benching the guy who hasn't been caught stealing 30 times already? The real point here is that Theriot is one of the worst defensive shortstops in the league so far this season, and so as soon as his .340 batting average starts to drop, his OBP and SLG are going to quickly become unnacceptable, and he no longer is even providing even the average level of defense he provided last season. Benching DeRosa so that Theriot can play second is simply absurd.

Okay. From 1945 (the end of WWII) to 2007, there were 247 major league players who made their debut in their age 27 season and then got at least 1 plate appearance the next season. In their debut season, those players averaged a .291 wOBA; in the next season, those players averaged a .302 wOBA. (.338 is right about league average.) Theriot had a .302 wOBA last season. He seems exceedingly typical of the sort of player that makes their debut at age 27, by that standard. I wouldn't expect a big improvement out of Theriot this season based on this (admittedly slapped together) bit of trivia. (Caveats: I didn't adjust for park, and I did a lazy age calculation rather than figure out seasonal age. You could probably do a better study of the issue than what I've done here, but I think this suffices for my purposes.) Tell me if I'm wrong here, but this sounds like you're downplaying Theriot's worth based on historical analysis of other players who made their debut at age 27. Theriot made his debut at 25. His first (and so far only) full year was his age 27 year, which puts him in a significantly different category. That said, I'm still in favor of Cedeno over Theriot when the time to make that decision comes. But that's because Cedeno is better, not because Theriot is bad. I know it's not nearly the same thing, but this post made me think of all of the old "Pie will be terrible, look at Corey Patterson" posts we've seen over the last couple of years. Tim asked the question, I just answered it. There seems to be an implication that 27-year-old rookies should "age" differently in projections because they're rookies; I didn't find any such effect.

Okay. From 1945 (the end of WWII) to 2007, there were 247 major league players who made their debut in their age 27 season and then got at least 1 plate appearance the next season. In their debut season, those players averaged a .291 wOBA; in the next season, those players averaged a .302 wOBA. (.338 is right about league average.) Theriot had a .302 wOBA last season. He seems exceedingly typical of the sort of player that makes their debut at age 27, by that standard. I wouldn't expect a big improvement out of Theriot this season based on this (admittedly slapped together) bit of trivia. (Caveats: I didn't adjust for park, and I did a lazy age calculation rather than figure out seasonal age. You could probably do a better study of the issue than what I've done here, but I think this suffices for my purposes.)

Actually, Johnson, at his best (2006 in 134 games) had an OBP of .390. If that's a "league average OBP sort of hitter," can we have a lineup full of league average sort of hitters? Do you think that he's going to repeat his 2006 performance? Because I don't think it's especially likely. Ignore 2007 and you've still got to regress to the mean and apply an aging curve; ignoring 2007 is ignoring valuable information to add to our forecast. And so while his .390 OBP for the Jays two years ago was nice, I don't know that it qualifies as the best case scenario for Johnson this season. I can't use Excel at work, sadly, but if I'm remembering correctly, Johnson's composite forecast for this season wasn't especially spectacular, with an OBP around .325 or so.

Seriously. Ryan Theriot hit a single yesterday. I want you to find me a quote from anyone that says that Ryan Theriot will never hit a single. I'll wait. Take all the time you need. Oh? Nobody has said that? Okay then. The argument against Ryan Theriot is not that he will never, ever do anything, and will hit .000/.000/.000 with zero putouts and zero assists. The argument is that over the course of a full season, Ryan Theriot is unlikely to be especially productive at shortstop - his median forecast is basically right at replacement level, and his high-end forecast still falls short of league average production from his position. He will occasionally have good days, sure - I'm sure I can find some game-winning hits from Neifi Perez if I go back and check the play-by-play records. But over time, the likelihood is that the bad days will outnumber the good. That said. If for whatever reason you will only be satisfied with Ryan Theriot's detractors if we say bad things about him even on the good days - I am there. I am so there. If that's really all that you need to... well, I have no idea why this seems to bother you, but if it does, I will go ahead and provide that valuable service to you. So far as I am capable, I will go ahead and find a way to communicate to you, personally, Ryan Theriot's worth as a starting shortstop - in game threads, in postgame discussions... any time, any place. You're welcome in advance.

Yes, but who are you proposing lead off instead? Lee, Ramirez and Dome aren't going to budge from their spot in the lineup. No way Lou uses Soto or DeRosa as a leadoff hitter. So you're really talking about using Theriot, Johnson or Pie as the leadoff hitter. Theriot had a lower OBP than Soriano did last season; Pie isn't exactly an on-base machine either. And Johnson, at BEST, is a league average OBP sort of hitter. Over the course of a full season, we're not talking about such a huge difference. Obviously, it's not optimal to have Soriano hitting leadoff for a variety of reasons. But it's probably not in the top five of things that could be changed to improve this team.

The aging curve isn't so much a function of experience as it is, well, age; that's why it doesn't just keep going up as a player gets older. Even if there is some merit to the idea that Theriot's development was stunted by this, that or the other, it does not change his physical development. That said, I'll run some numbers on Age 27 debuts if it'll shed some light on the issue.

It is not, in fact, just as likely for a 28-year-old player to have a breakout season as it is for a 25-year-old. Now you're absolutely right about the sample sizes involved here being pretty meaningless, but the fact of the matter is that Cedeno has a higher ceiling; it's simply not a NEW fact. First of all, welcome to the Board. Now that you're here, you not be aware of this, but I've been a long time supporter of Cedeno. I wanted him to start over Theriot all offseason. However, with Soriano out, why is it verboten to play both Cedeno and Theriot? It's not. In fact, it's almost certainly the best move for the team given Murton's struggles. I just don't think there's any reason to pitch a fit until that decision is forced on us. Age 28 seasons are typically among the peak years for a player -- Theriot could certainly be having a break-out season. I'd suggest that a 28 year old having a great season after a sub-par Age 27 season isn't unheard of. Given that 25 is pre-peak and 28 is among the peak years, I believe it is more likely for a 28 year-old than a 25 year-old to have a break-out season. I could be wrong, of course, but that's my recollection. I absolutely agree that Cedeno has higher ceiling. No question about it (in my mind). And, actually, it is Ronny's ceiling and his likely progression as a player making him more important, long-term, to the Cubs than Theriot. Even though Ryan and Ronny are providing roughly similar production, Cedeno is likely to improve and become a better player while Theriot is arguably at his peak. All that said, the sample sizes are still too small to draw any meaningful conclusions. 28 is part of a player's peak years, which are somewhere around 26-28 or 27-29, depending on who you ask. But the age progression isn't equal. Take a look at this graph: http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u30/cwyers/aging_curve.png That's the average aging curve of a major league player, expressed in wOBA. (wOBA is a rate version of linear weights on the same scale as OBP.) Take a look at the curve during the peak years - it tends to flatten out. As a population, major league players tend to be far more consistant during their peak years than at any other time. Thus, on average we can expect to see more year-to-year improvement from a pre-peak player than we can from a player in their peak. This is not an iron law, of course - if nothing else sampling issues prevent us from getting a complete measure of a player's true talent level in a single season. But that's our median expectation based upon what we know about player ages. We also have this additional bit of information: Ronny Cedeno's hitting at AAA last season, where he put up a translated .307/.359/.456 batting line. (The translation is based upon the average difference in performance of players who were both in the majors and the minors; his raw numbers were .359/.422/.537). In mid-to-late April, I tend to think that past performance is a better indicator of future success than year-to-date numbers; we know that Matt Murton is a better hitter than his numbers so far indicate, and so there's no real reason to try to assign some sort of a reason to his struggles unless we have scouting or medical data to indicate otherwise. So in spite of how he's played so far, I still think Murton in left and DeRosa at second is the best use of current resources. (That assumes a strict platoon in center field; adding Johnson vs. Pie to a Theriot vs. Cedeno arguement is a bridge too far for me right now). The question then becomes, who plays shortstop? Based upon what we knew going into the season, Cedeno had more talent and is more likely to give the Cubs decent production from the position. Nothing that's happened so far has really given us reason to think otherwise.