Hairyducked Idiot

Well first, that's a good reason not to go off just one series. Second, it's still not true. As I type, they've outscored the Marlins 14-11. That projects to a .610 win percentage over a season.

They aren't. They are much better than the Marlins.

Which I think shows the limitations of MiLB OPS. Soler's start says much more promising things than Baez's so far.

There was a mention in the Tribune today that a Cubs coach had been studying video of Rizzo and found a mechanical flaw involving him finishing his swing too high, and the fix began with Friday's game.

For Kyle from that exchange re: why surgery wasn't done sooner... BeefStew2 ‏@IAN_STEWART_2sc 5h @JSapp17 they said surgery was too risky in that area Jacob Sappington ‏@JSapp17 5h @IAN_STEWART_2sc but Cubs doctors gave you the green light? BeefStew2 ‏@IAN_STEWART_2sc 4h @JSapp17 yes, and I'm all good now Quit pushing your anti-Valbuena hater agenda.

Absolutely yes. Heck, even after this three-game win streak, they are still only on pace for 63 wins. They are much better than that and don't belong in a conversation with the Marlins or Astros, at least not until a selloff.

So this is another iteration of the "does noticing something and being curious about it count as getting 'all worked up'" thing? I agree. We definitely don't need to get all worked up.

Another slap in the face to all his haters. Keep on keepin' on, Valbuena.

That sucks. But also it was pretty freakin' cool.

Cute. Wrong, but cute. As always when we have these discussions, the thresholds aren't magical numbers where the statistic instantly switches from "completely meaningless" to "ZOMG now it means something!" in a single PA.

In 23 IP, Sanabia has 14 BB and 3 HBP against 11 K. Please tell me we can draw some walks against this guy.

Slab Bulkhead AKA Kevin Gregg. Hmmmm..... wonder if Kyle has absolute faith with Gregg pitching ?? I do. Seriously. 8 in a row, 14-14. This is happening. I can see sweeping the Marlins, but the Padres are a lot better. If I have to, I'll settle for 7/8 and 13-15.

Slab Bulkhead AKA Kevin Gregg. Hmmmm..... wonder if Kyle has absolute faith with Gregg pitching ?? I do. Seriously. 8 in a row, 14-14. This is happening.

Seriously we are going to sweep the Marlins and then the Padres and be .500 and have crazy good times.

Run gloved in

Lowest hands evah.

His hands looked a little low on that one. Might need to fix that.

It's conceivable that you could have positive or negative variance in how your contact and pitch recognition components turn into strikeouts. Maybe Rizzo's actual strikeouts for one of the years aren't lining up with his strikeout peripherals, so to speak. It'd be neat to test if some sort of xK% was more predictive than actual K%. K% O-swing% Z-zwing% Swing% O-contact% Z-contact% Contact% Zone% SwStr% League average 20% 31% 65% 46% 66% 87% 79% 45% 9% Rizzo 2012 17% 35% 68% 50% 64% 91% 81% 46% 10% Rizzo 2013 29% 31% 66% 46% 57% 93% 79% 44% 10% (with the exception of SwStr%, these all come from the PitchFX tab on Fangraphs, which has slightly different values than the other tab that has the same stats that I believe are hand-recorded by one of the stats services). Why was Rizzo better than league average at avoiding K's last season? It seems to be just that he was swinging at more pitches than average and thus ending the PA with a BIP. This year, he's swinging at fewer pitches, while making more contact in the zone and less contact out of the zone. His LD% has also gone down from 24% to 16%. So his K's this year are a combination of taking more pitches and failing to drive the pitches he's making contact with, presumably fouling more off, which combine to cause him to get into more 2-strike counts. His inability to make contact at pitches outside the zone are causing him to get wiped out by those 2-strike counts more often. When you look at his batted-ball data this year, you get a big drop in line drives and even a big drop in ground balls, but a big rise in pop-ups and fly balls (combined for 37% of his BIP last year vs. 56% this year). So we've got Law reporting that it seems like he's getting his hands low and loading slower. We've got an inability to consistently put the ball in play earlier in the count. We've got a major increase in fly balls and pop-ups. Those all seem to work together, so I'm going to take it as true that he's developed some sort of mechanical hitch that he'll need to either consciously fix or just work his way out of.

That's a really good question. His swinging strike percentage is essentially identical to last year. I don't see anything obvious on his fangraphs PitchFX stats that would explain the drastic increase in strikeouts. I don't see anything unusual in the amount of balls he's seeing in the zone vs. out or in the mix of pitches thrown. He's actually swinging at balls out of the zone a bit less (35.1% to 31.1%) and making a higher percentage of contact in the zone (92.5% vs. 91.0%). There's a few things different by a few percentage points here and there, but for the most part it all looks similar enough to last year. A few things that do stand out: His LD% is pretty down and his IFFB% is up. Last year his P/PA was 3.68, this year it's 4.12. Last year 48.6% of his PA went to two strikes and 34.6% of those went for Ks, this year it's 56.7% and 50.9% of those went for Ks. So it seems like it's some combination of: Not ending enough at-bats with line drives, which probably means he's fouling off more and thus getting to two strikes more. Getting burned on two strikes way more often, despite not having a higher swinging strike percentage overall.

My man crush is going to prove the doubters wrong this year. I'm loving all of these walks. If the magical contact skills can make him impossible to strike out in AA as a 20-year-old, I just don't see any chance that he's not at least a bench bat in the majors. Tennessee has been climbing up the imaginary "which box score am I most excited to check" ranking of our affiliates.

i read some crazy thing (and i can't remember where) where if you adjusted for [expletive] luck and our strength of schedule we'd actually be pretty good. Baseball Prospectus's 3rd Order Wins absolutely loves us. Has us like over .500 or something. I can't remember what all goes into that.

Sometimes guys come out of nowhere. He can be this year's Samardzija.

That slider is bonerific when it works like that. Seriously. We are going to rampage through this next week and suddenly feel optimistic.

What happened to all that absolute faith ??? Carlos Marmol happened. Because Cubs.

Marmol, if you do what it looks like you are going to do, I will cry. I will actually cry.