Aaron_Kennelly
-
Posts
11,482 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Joomla Posts 1
Chicago Cubs Videos
Chicago Cubs Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits
2026 Chicago Cubs Top Prospects Ranking
News
2023 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks
Guides & Resources
2024 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks
The Chicago Cubs Players Project
2025 Chicago Cubs Draft Pick Tracker
Blogs
Events
Forums
Store
Gallery
Everything posted by Aaron_Kennelly
-
JAVY!
-
At what point in the game has he completely crushed their souls and they no longer believe this?
-
Does Heyward's swing look a little different to anyone else? I can't put my finger on it. But it just seems like there are fewer moving parts or something. It looks a little smoother. I've thought all year that it's looked like junk and that there is just too much going on. The first two ABs looked more pleasing aesthetically.
-
It's not donging, but I'll take 2 runs however we get them.
-
There we go!
-
Hey, some BABIP correction for Jorge.
-
You wrote a pretty stellar dissertation on him, so I'd hope that'd happen... Fangraphs just wrote one and posted it this afternoon, too: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-way-kyle-hendricks-is-exactly-like-clayton-kershaw/
-
I am growing to like Hendricks more and more with each passing start.
-
Guess what an idiot did with a tattoo gun this time...
Aaron_Kennelly replied to Sammy Sofa's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
And yet, still included the next comma, because, though he is unsure of which 201_ year it happens, it will happen. And then it will happen again in some later year. -
So when DRS says Russell has saved 5 more runs than an average shortstop this year, they are probably pretty close. He's probably saved 5 more runs than an average guy would have saved had the average guy had the same balls hit at him. But, he might have the capability of saving many more runs if given the opportunity. Maybe the weak contact induced by Cubs pitching has held him back. Maybe he's just been unlucky. Maybe it's the other way around.
-
Yeah, here's the main problem with our current defensive metrics. It's all about opportunity. If you range further over than any other player at your position is physically able and the ball is still even a millimeter from your glove and you don't make the play, then you don't get any credit. Let's say that happens to you ten times on all ten balls hit out to you. You're not helping your metrics. But, Joe Blow over there is a slightly above average defender and he has ten balls hit to a spot that, say, only 40% of fielders can get to. And all ten balls hit to him are right there and he makes all ten plays. He's going to look like a stud according to the metrics. Now, this is obviously taking things to the extreme. But defensive metrics right now measure what has happened. It's all about opportunity. You don't get a chance to show off your arm unless there's a guy on base. And if there isn't a chance to show off your arm, you aren't going to get credit for it by these metrics. This extreme that I mention, though, well it happens, maybe not to that extreme. But take this article from fangraphs from early in the year: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/lets-watch-adam-eaton-save-12-runs/ Adam Eaton was just racking up defensive runs saved left and right. Like, he had a crazy amount of defensive value according to these metrics. Why? He was getting a ton of opportunities to do so. He's now leveled off. So let's go back to the whole low-liner, high-velocity events I wrote about in that article. BABIP is an average. On average, Addi has been way better than everyone else at this skill. However, and this goes back to my previous article about the Cubs avoiding hard contact, he hasn't had that many opportunities to show off this skill. The Cubs only give up batted balls in this category on 0.20% of the pitches they throw, less than half of some teams. This is the fourth-lowest percent in the league. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=&hfZ=&hfGT=R%7C&hfPR=&hfAB=&stadium=&hfBBT=&hfBBL=&hfC=&season=2016&player_type=pitcher&hfOuts=&pitcher_throws=&batter_stands=&start_speed_gt=&start_speed_lt=&perceived_speed_gt=&perceived_speed_lt=&spin_rate_gt=&spin_rate_lt=&exit_velocity_gt=100&exit_velocity_lt=&launch_angle_gt=0&launch_angle_lt=9&distance_gt=70&distance_lt=&batted_ball_angle_gt=-25&batted_ball_angle_lt=0&game_date_gt=&game_date_lt=&team=&position=&hfRO=&home_road=&hfInn=&min_pitches=0&min_results=0&group_by=team&sort_col=pitch_percent&sort_order=asc&min_abs=0&xba_gt=&xba_lt=&px1=&px2=&pz1=&pz2=#results So Addi might not be getting enough chances to show off his superior skills. And the metrics aren't going to give him credit for plays he hasn't had to make. Addi's made 9 stops on these types of balls. So have Erick Aybar and whatever other scrubs have been playing short for Atlanta. The difference: Addi's only let five of them go by, while they have let 14 go by. That could be a problem in these metrics, since they are probably assuming nobody is getting to them anyway,
-
eh, like you alluded to in the article, the Starlin Castro experience (which i still remember more fondly than i probably ought to) kind of taught us that no ground ball should be taken for granted Oh, sure. I'm just saying that it is hard to quantify exactly how often that happens. We know he's made a lot. But, exactly how many of them are balls another guy isn't getting? For instance, we've seen a number of plays that Zobrist has just come up short on this year. And people make a comment about how Addi or Javy would have had it. But, do we really know that? And how many of them actually are happening that way? Statcast is going to be able to help us figure that out.
-
OK, one last post on the subject. I thought those spray charts I showed at the end were interesting, too. Addi makes those plays so often, that we are (at least I am) kinda numb to it. It's just like, "Oh nice play, Addi." But, it's hard to quantify how many times he makes a "good" play. And I think DRS and UZR do a good job of measuring defense. But, all that's really going on there are that people are putting zones on defenders and when a ball goes through the zone, they measure how likely it is that a normal defender makes a play there. And you get credits and debits when you make or don't make plays, and you get value based on how often these people think a play should be made. But, we really don't have solid evidence of, "Hey this guy is making this particular play at X amount of the time, compared to this other guy at Y amount." This can do that. We have to look no further than those spray charts. You can tell the difference between a good defender and a bad defender. It's quite obvious. Gregorius is letting everything past him when it is smashed back at him. There are dots littering the outfield. He's barely made a few stops, and those were probably the ones that were literally right at him, and probably not even all of them. Addi, on the other hand, has a line of outs stretching across the left side of the infield, and there are a few lonely dots in the outfield that he allowed to get past him. And that's just on one particular type of play. That doesn't even include the balls Addi has to range way over to make, like the one I linked in my previous post. So on this one sample of plays, in 1/3 of the season... we now have visual proof of how many damn balls he is stopping.
-
Also, it would be nice if they would include fielding data in this. Like, route efficiency, first step, and total ground covered and all that. With some of the balls-in-play data, you can't really tell what's going on. For instance, if we set the maximum threshold at 9 degrees launch angle and no minimum, in order to get all non-fly balls of at least 100 mph, here are the results: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=&hfZ=&hfGT=R%7C&hfPR=&hfAB=&stadium=&hfBBT=&hfBBL=&hfC=&season=2016&player_type=pitcher&hfOuts=&pitcher_throws=&batter_stands=&start_speed_gt=&start_speed_lt=&perceived_speed_gt=&perceived_speed_lt=&spin_rate_gt=&spin_rate_lt=&exit_velocity_gt=100&exit_velocity_lt=&launch_angle_gt=&launch_angle_lt=9&distance_gt=70&distance_lt=&batted_ball_angle_gt=-25&batted_ball_angle_lt=0&game_date_gt=&game_date_lt=&team=&position=&hfRO=&home_road=&hfInn=&min_pitches=0&min_results=0&group_by=team&sort_col=babip&sort_order=asc&min_abs=0&xba_gt=&xba_lt=&px1=&px2=&pz1=&pz2=#results Cubs in first with a .257 BABIP. Next lowest is at .375. There's more data, but some of it is useless, like this ball that ends up an easy, rolling grounder: http://mediadownloads.mlb.com/mlbam/mp4/2016/05/11/681356083/1462938225430/asset_1200K.mp4 So you set the minimum launch angle at 0 degrees because nearly all of those balls are a tough play. But, there is some stuff in that expanded group, below 0 degrees launch angle, that was interesting. Like, this ball: http://mediadownloads.mlb.com/mlbam/mp4/2016/04/15/591259983/1460750845744/asset_1200K.mp4 It was a similar rolling grounder, hit really hard, but he had to go get that one. Add in some fielding data and, baby, we've got a stew going.
-
Tim might have to put it on the front page. Here is a link, though: http://www.northsidebaseball.com/articles/cubs-articles/24-statcast-fun-with-addison-russell if my last post doesn't make my feelings obvious, good stuff, man. just need to find a way to get eyeballs on these. A couple things I found interesting with the Russell piece... When looking up those stats for the hard-hit low liners, it's kinda uncharted territory. Like, nobody is really tracking BABIP on hard-hit, low liners. And who knows exactly what it means? Or if it can really be used for anything. And when looking that stuff up, it's, like, OK, I know precisely what I am looking for. "I want those balls that are smashed and eat up infielders, or just barely elude them. And these parameters I've set should give me those balls." But, you don't really know what's in there. What if something weird is going on? Then you do the search, and you look at the results that come up, and you click on the Cubs' listing and you can see what happened on each ball and it looks good. And then there is video with a lot of them. That paragraph that I linked all of those Russell plays -- those were literally all of the outs in those results that had video attached. They were exactly what I was looking for when I started the search. I watched a number of videos from a number of teams, both the hits and outs. And they were all exactly what I was searching for. Statcast is horsefeathering awesome. And, then, you can start comparing these numbers to other things. Like, I wanted 100 mph+. That's when you are talking about the really hard-hit balls. 90 mph is also kinda hard, though. Not so much. The BABIP on 100+ while hit out there is .618. From 90-99: .512. Already a big drop from a 10 mph loss. But maybe you want to drop the threshold down some to get a larger sample. No biggie, let's set the minimum at 90: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=&hfZ=&hfGT=R%7C&hfPR=&hfAB=&stadium=&hfBBT=&hfBBL=&hfC=&season=2016&player_type=pitcher&hfOuts=&pitcher_throws=&batter_stands=&start_speed_gt=&start_speed_lt=&perceived_speed_gt=&perceived_speed_lt=&spin_rate_gt=&spin_rate_lt=&exit_velocity_gt=90&exit_velocity_lt=&launch_angle_gt=0&launch_angle_lt=9&distance_gt=70&distance_lt=&batted_ball_angle_gt=-25&batted_ball_angle_lt=0&game_date_gt=&game_date_lt=&team=&position=&hfRO=&home_road=&hfInn=&min_pitches=0&min_results=0&group_by=team&sort_col=babip&sort_order=asc&min_abs=0&xba_gt=&xba_lt=&px1=&px2=&pz1=&pz2=#results Oh, Addi's still leading the way. Then, you don't know what the numbers mean. Or if they can tell you anything. What if defensive positioning is skewing things too much? What if a team just knows where to put their fielders? So you search from the beginning of last year until when Addi took over at short, and the Cubs are the second-worst team in the league at making outs on these balls. And then you search from then until now and the Cubs are easily the best. The only thing that really changed was swapping Castro out for Russell. And this is something I've never heard of until making the search. Sure, I know Addi is a better defender overall. But, I have no idea what this data is going to say. And it more than confirms my suspicions.
-
I'm not seeing it on front page, but you can link but clicking through to cubs articles tab on front page. Tim might have to put it on the front page. Here is a link, though: http://www.northsidebaseball.com/articles/cubs-articles/24-statcast-fun-with-addison-russell
-
Not a fan.
-
I made another post for the front page. It's not quite as long. Should be a fun read for people that like Addison Russell's defense.
-
In my last article, I briefly mentioned that the Cubs give up the lowest BABIP against on balls hit with less than a 10° launch angle, these being ground balls. I attributed this partly to having Addison Russell playing shortstop. Today, we'll see if we can glean anything from Statcast to substantiate this claim. That's right, we're going to pore over some more data from baseballsavant. Lucky, we are. Let's start off by looking at all batted balls that Addison Russell has a reasonable chance of getting a glove on. Hmm... where to start? We better at least filter out everything hit outside of Cook County to be safe. Actually, this should be pretty easy. Baseballsavant lets you filter by batted ball direction (or horizontal launch angle). 0° would be directly over second base. 45° would be directly over first base. And -45° would be directly over third base. Let's use 0° and, oh, -25° as our parameters. (I've played around with the horizontal launch angles some, and -25° is pretty far in the hole, but there are a lot of plays made there by shortstops. Anything further and we start getting in a mix of third basemen, too.) Let's also set the maximum vertical launch angle at 10° to remove all the fly balls that travel well over his head into the outfield. And finally we'll make the minimum batted ball distance at 70 feet. This should take away any plays made by pitchers or bunts to the left side of the infield. Alright, the parameters are set. We're going to be looking at practically any batted ball that is hit in the general vicinity of a shortstop. There are going to be some plays that will skew things a little -- any batted ball into a shift, for one. Also, Addison Russell hasn't played shortstop in every single inning of the season, and we are going to filter by team. This isn't a perfect measure of anything. But, this ought to give us a reasonable idea of what's going on. First, here's the league average BABIP (batting average on batted balls) on all such batted balls under these parameters: .312. If you are a major league baseball player and you hit a ball in that direction, without getting the ball airborne, you can expect to reach safely 31.2% of the time. How do the Cubs (Addison Russell) fare against the rest of the league? First. By a wide margin. The Cubs BABIP against on these balls is .200. The next lowest in the league is .233. Addison Russell destroys all batters' hopes and dreams. The difference between Addison Russell's BABIP allowed on these balls and the league-average BABIP is larger than the difference between Dexter Fowler's and Tim Federowicz's batting averages. Shut it down. There's nothing left for me to write about. Actually, I want to keep going. There's more good stuff to come. Let's change things up a little and see if maybe there is something funky going on with that data. Maybe the launch angle is messing us up. I'm going to take the launch angle parameter off, and instead filter everything classified as a "ground ball" hit in this area of the field. This will take away any liners, and these are plays shortstops do have to make sometimes. And "ground ball" is a little subjective. (When exactly does it become a ground ball, if the infielder doesn't catch it?) It doesn't matter... still first. The Cubs' BABIP on ground balls in this area is .177. The next lowest is .206. OK. So Addison Russell knows how to get guys out when they hit the ball near him. Can he make any tough plays, though? Let's investigate. We all know Addison Russell has impressive range. Unfortunately, we don't really have anything at baseballsavant that we can use to measure his range -- at least not that I know about. But, there is something we can look into. I wrote a lot about exit velocity in my last article. Let's get back into that. Balls that are hit really hard are difficult to field. But, if it is a hard-hit ball driven straight into the ground that bounces several times, those aren't exactly tough plays. It might be a little more difficult if you have to range over to get it. But it's still a pretty routine play for a big league shortstop. The difficult ones are the hot shots right by you. The low liners. The balls that come screaming at you 100 mph. Ones that you might have to play on a short hop, or snag out of the air. The ones you don't have much time on. The balls you have to react to right off of the bat. Let's look at all balls hit at least 100 mph and at a vertical launch angle between 0° and 9°. These are either going to be low liners or balls that will bounce right before getting to an infielder. These are the batted balls that often eat up a fielder. The league average BABIP on these balls is .601. Let's also go back to the horizontal launch angle of between 0° and -25°. And we'll also set the minimum distance at 70 feet to again remove balls hit at pitchers. And we'll put the minimum velocity at 100 mph. So these are hard, low liners in the general vicinity of shortstops. The league average BABIP on these balls is .618. Where do the Cubs rank among all MLB teams? Did you really have to ask? First. The Cubs give up a BABIP of .357 on these balls, and the next-lowest team is at .524. Now, these are hard, low liners. It's probably going to be tough to get them if they are deep in the hole. And we don't have enough information, such as fielder positioning, to make any reasonable assumptions about this data. But, we can narrow the parameters down some. Let's try between -2° and -23°. Still first. You can move those limits around a few degrees in either direction, and it doesn't really affect things too much. Addison Russell has double-plus hands. He can really flash the leather. His reaction time is impeccable. On balls that might eat up a lesser shortstop, Addison has no issues. He has no trouble gobbling these balls up and quickly turning a double play. Tricky hops will not deter him. Does this data really mean anything? No, probably not. These are small samples and there is a lot of noise in there, like defensive positioning. But, if you look at the teams at the top of the list on BABIP on these hard liners at shortstops -- the Cubs, Reds, et al. -- these are teams with shortstops that generally rate very well in the advanced defensive metrics. Down at the bottom you have the Rays and Brad Miller, the Yankees and Didi Gregorius. These teams' shortstops generally rate extremely poorly by defensive metrics. We could look at last year, too. The top two are the Indians and the Giants. Francisco Lindor and Brandon Crawford... yep, it checks out. The Cubs ranked 26th last year in BABIP on these hard-hit, low liners near the shortstop. From the start of the season until August 7th, the Cubs ranked 29th. From August 7th on, the Cubs ranked 7th. I shouldn't have to tell you what happened on August 7th. I think we're in synchronicity here. I'll leave you with this. The following are spray charts for these batted balls that are hit at least 100 mph and at a vertical launch angle between 0° and 9°, with a horizontal launch angle between -25° and 0°. One is for the Yankees and their stone-handed shortstop, Didi Gregorius. The other is for the Cubbies, with our double-plus handed shortstop. http://i.imgur.com/iEkaOAY.png http://i.imgur.com/gomz3WM.png
-
Yep. And it's not like I'm "Trout or bust!" I mean, if a Jose Fernandez becomes available, count me in on that, too. But, as you said, rotation post-2017 is my biggest concern with this team. I don't really care who is catching or playing left field for us in the playoffs this year. I figure we have enough talent elsewhere and enough serviceable options at those spots that I'm not dying to make a move there. Maybe if you could get a Josh Reddick for reasonably cheap. But we aren't in a position where we need to make a desperation move to upgrade from Miguel Montero and David Ross.
-
I hope Urias looks like he did in his first start. I assume he won't be as jittery. Still, I need some more dongs in my life.
-
Minor League Musings
Aaron_Kennelly replied to Little Slide Rooter's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
Zagunis is at .306/.416/.450 I can get down with that. Obviously the slugging is the concern with him being in a corner outfield spot. But with what could be a near .400 OBP, he really only needs to hit about 10 bombs a year for me to be on board. -
And about the talk about moving the needle earlier. That's where I'm at. Like, sure, Lucroy is better than Montero. It might move the needle, if he hits a Carlton Fisk homer or something. But, maybe Montero just goes off in the playoffs, himself. Who the hell knows? The one thing that really could is a top-of-the-rotation arm. But then again, who knows? Maybe he makes one start and sucks. I think that's the one thing that has the best chance of moving the needle, though. But, hell, all of the top-of-rotation arms we've talked about are either now injured, not looking like top of the rotation arms, or aren't getting traded. I've kinda moved on from that idea. I really don't care what we do. Upgrading the bullpen would be nice. But we could do that on the cheap like last year and look no worse for the wear. Like, singing Matusz and him being as competent against lefties as he's been in the past would be a nice start. Maybe Carl Edwards Jr. helps out. There, it's already better. But, we're 7.5 games up in the division and are 36-15. Our run differential suggests we probably could be even better than that right now. We are loaded already. Let the young talent like Russell continue to develop. Wait for Rizzo to get out of his slump. Hope Heyward breaks out soon. It's all good. Smooth sailing from here. And, call me crazy, I know it's a terrible idea to go assuming things in baseball. But, we're gonna be in the playoffs again next year. And probably quite a bit in the years to follow. I'm that confident in our talent. So my main concern right now is probably years of control and age. I don't want some old bastard taking up a spot for the next two years, and two years only. So if we are going to trade guys, make it the Candelarios of the world. They can still net you pieces to shore up some holes. If we are going to trade Willson Contreras, alright, but it better be in some huge Mike Trout deal or something. Not for Jonathan Lucroy.
-
Me. I agree, but that's probably a fair trade if one were to be constructed. No? Maybe, I don't really know. I just want no part of Braun and his contract, at his age, and with a steroid history and injury history. And I don't want to give up all those years of control of Contreras for an older catcher with little control, though a fantastic one at that. Also I don't really feel the need to upgrade at catcher as much as others. I think Montero will be fine. He's actually hit alright outside of that week before he went on the DL, while his back was acting up. He's been a little unlucky. For one, he's had three balls bounce off the top of the wall in a deep part of a cavernous stadium. He's also made a lot more contact this year, and his K-rate is somehow way higher than it should be. And he's also shown a discerning eye at the plate. His plate discipline is better than ever. And Ross has been great. With Contreras on the horizon, I'm perfectly secure with our catching forecast.
-
i honestly thought my perception couldn't possibly be accurate so i clicked his post history the one post that came up that could even somewhat qualify as positive was about victor robles Vinestal also was shockingly absent. At least the other doom boners post during our winning streaks too. Yeah, but those guys are predictable doom boners. I don't think he is. But he has done a lot of whining about a 36-15 team this year.