Did the Cubs win yesterday?
Minor League In
Cubs signed Donnie Murphy to a minor-league deal. He's a better option than Edwin Maysonet or Alberto Gonzalez in my opinion. Hopefully he never sniffs our major league roster, but if Barney is out for an extended period, you could do worse than Murphy (of course, you could do better).
Minor League Out
Cubs lost Robert Whitenack on waivers to the Cleveland Indians. Maybe the Cubs will trade Hector Rondon back for him! Whitenack is the latest reminder that recovery from TJS is just not 100%. He was hurtling up prospect lists until the surgery a few years back, and just never came back with the velocity he had when he left. Hopefully he can figure it out in Akron.
How Many Plate Appearances Have the Cubs Had With Men in Scoring Position?
14.
How Many of Those Plate Appearances Resulted in a Hit?
0.
Small Sample Size Stat of the Day
The Cubs, as a team, have an OPS of .410. However, the Miami Marlins have an OPS of, incredibly, .338.
Comments
Myles wrote:
I think DJ used to always say Frenceson was good, and then he would suck. So he started saying bad things about Franceson instead or something.
WaLiQuote Reply
@ WaLi:
Yeah, that was the running joke last year with DJ
BerseliusQuote Reply
@ WaLi:
Oh yeah, that’s right. Completely forgot.
dmick89Quote Reply
ChicagoCubsOnline @TheCCO 53s
RT @Cubs #Cubs lineup @Pirates 4/4: DeJesus CF,Castro SS,Rizzo 1B,Soriano LF, Schierholtz RF, Navarro C,Valbuena 3B, Lillibridge 2B, Wood P
bubblesdachimpQuote Reply
Navarro as a 6th hitter tells you all you need to know about this team
MylesQuote Reply
Bubbs gets to go to his first Nats game today! Super excited to see Bryce.
bubblesdachimpQuote Reply
That’s awesome. You get to see Jordan Zimmerman take on… Wade LeBlanc?
MylesQuote Reply
No idea who is pitching for the marlins. wish it was jose fernandez.
But i am excited. Got comp tickets through a friend and getting to see Bryce and Giancarlo in epic. Never seen Giancarlo before.
bubblesdachimpQuote Reply
It’s going to be incredible. Very jealous.
MylesQuote Reply
@ Myles:
Len was saying last night when Hairston was up and I think Soriano and Rizzo were on base that Pittsburgh was playing for the bunt. I was thinking “Why the hell would he be bunting? Who the hell can knock in runs after Hairston?” The answer was proven to be: noone. Also luckily Hairston didn’t try to bunt, although of course that didn’t change anything.
WaLiQuote Reply
@ WaLi:
The bottom of the order for the Cubs is crazy bad. It’s a dream come true for a pitcher to get 3 easy outs at the end of the lineup. Today that’s 4 easy outs.
dmick89Quote Reply
well its fucking cold. (dying laughing)
But one thing that bubbs has been confused about. Why are the nats not putting Harpers rocket laser arm in right and keeping Werth there? Did Werth call shotty? Would you ever want to keep your best OF arm in LF?
bubblesdachimpQuote Reply
@ bubblesdachimp:
Depends on the ballpark. The Pirates would sometimes put their best fielder in LF due to the huge LF at PNC. I thought Harper was going to play CF.
dmick89Quote Reply
@ bubblesdachimp:
Loved Nats Park from the times I’ve been there. I like that beer garden setup they have fenced off by shipping containers outside the park….it’s very unique.
BerseliusQuote Reply
@ bubblesdachimp:
Well, the Cubs have been doing it for years with Soriano. But I know what you mean.
BerseliusQuote Reply
The back half of the lineup is terrible, but complaining about it feels kind of like complaining that the Cubs didn’t have an all star to replace Ramirez a few years back. The last three position players in the Reds opening day lineup are Frazier, Cozart, Hanigan. Not exactly world beaters there either.
BerseliusQuote Reply
@ Berselius:
Yeah, but given how cheap their top 4 cost, you’d think we could do better than replacement level.
joshQuote Reply
It’s more a combination of these things:
The Cubs’ backup C is $1.25 million Dioner Navarro.
Dioner Navarro is awful at hitting baseballs.
Dioner Navarro is better than two other players on our team at hitting baseballs.
2012 Todd Frazier: 115 OPS+
2012 Zack Cozart: Okay, you got me (79 OPS+)
2012 Ryan Hanigan: 88 OPS+
2012 Dioner Navarro: AAA for the Reds (96 OPS+ in limited time)
2012 Luis Valbuena: 79 OPS+
2012 Brent Lillibridge: 46 OPS+
MylesQuote Reply
Remember when we tried Soriano in Center Field? That was fun.
love nats park. So easy for me to get to. (Live about 12 blocks) Good food good beer.
bubblesdachimpQuote Reply
@ Myles:
I was thinking more of yesterday’s game (Castillo vs Hanigan), and Frazier’s a little better than I thought. Don’t deny that those players suck, but context.
More fair to use projected wOBA (ZiPS)
Frazier: .325
Cozart: .304
Hanigan: .310
Castillo: .308
Gonzalez: .266
Lillibridge: .282
I retract my earlier statement (dying laughing).
BerseliusQuote Reply
also,
Valbuena .307
Navarro: .294
BerseliusQuote Reply
Berselius wrote:
Yeah, I was just going to grab the projections, but you beat me to it.
dmick89Quote Reply
I think everyone in the Game of Thrones thread in the forum has read the books, but just in case I set up a separate spoilers thread so we don’t ruin shit for anyone.
BerseliusQuote Reply
I have a question about the rating system that MB has been using recently. I had thought that the way they were used in hockey was roughly, number is ceiling, upside, whatever, and the letter correlated to the chance to reach that upside. You’re using the letter to establish the floor, and if you’re going to do that, wouldn’t it make more sense to do it as a range (e.g. 4-8 instead of 8D)?
You’re going to end up with similar results of course, since somebody with a low floor is also probably going to have a lower chance of reaching their ceiling, but they’re not the same thing. Of course you have to decide which you care about more. Do we want to know how likely Baez is to become an all-star, or do we want to know what he would become if he didn’t?
I know its nitpicking, and I’m reacting to something a week old, but its been bugging me since then. Either way, its much better to do it your way than the letter grade system that tries to put the upside and risk together in some unknown way.
rattierQuote Reply
rattier wrote:
My understanding at first was that it was more of a percentage chance, but Dave corrected me and I liked it a lot better. Regarding numbers or letters for the floor, as you say, they’re really the same thing. I guess 8D is easier to write than 8-4. Plus, I think it would be easier to say that player A is an 8D prospect than player B is a 8-4 prospect.
dmick89Quote Reply
I think the other thing with regards to using percentages or something like that is that it’s nearly impossible to come up with something like that. I’d feel if you’re going to use that, it should at least represent reality and I don’t think anybody has any idea what percentage chance a prospect has to reach his ceiling. It would be pretty low and ridiculously low for players in the lower minors.
dmick89Quote Reply
I didn’t know how to pronounce Hector Rondon’s last name until last night. Once I heard Len say it, I immediately knew that Santo would have just called him Ron Doane, or just Ronnie.
mikeakaleroyQuote Reply
Not that I give a shit, but if/when the NL adopts the DH, do you think
these assholesbaseball writers will give the DH’s of the world more of a chance at the Hall of Fame?EDIT: I suppose adding it to the NL won’t necessarily create DH only players though, which seems to be the case in the AL, what with them rotating players from positions to DH.
mikeakaleroyQuote Reply
@ mikeakaleroy:
They won’t even give third base legit representation, so…. no.
joshQuote Reply
@ dmick89:
I guess I disagree that its better to include the floor instead of odds of reaching the upside. I want to know how likely it is that someone like Baez will be as awesome as people say is possible, and if he fails, I don’t really care if he ends up as a AA washout or Luis Valbuena. Maybe odds of being a quality starter or above would be something I would care about, but it would certainly be too complicated to give someone a 8F-6B-3A rating or some crap like that.
@ dmick89:
Good point. But just because they’re all small odds and hard to determine doesn’t mean its not important. A potential star just signed and in low A is different than a potential star in AAA ready for a callup, and differentiating between them is the goal of these letter grades, to me.
rattierQuote Reply
Hell, they didn’t even vote in Bonds, arguably the greatest player of all time.
joshQuote Reply
@ dmick89:
Also, the letter grades are very relative. A 7A certainly doesn’t mean its a guarantee, but its the best a prospect can do, with the understanding that even the surest prospect will fail some large percent of the time. A lower grade just indicates that they have an even smaller small chance of succeeding.
rattierQuote Reply
@ josh:
I think that’s a completely different issue, but yes, it all goes back to the fact that voting sportwriters are mostly dumb.
mikeakaleroyQuote Reply
rattier wrote:
I agree it’s important and I wish I could answer the question. I really do. I’m sure we could work out some sort of groundwork for this. Say that the average 9 has less than 5% chance of reaching that potential. It might be higher for those higher in the minor leagues, but it’s still going to be small. An 8 would have a slightly higher chance just because his ceiling isn’t as high. I think that’s another issue you run into.
If you say that Baez is a 9 with a 7.5% chance (pulled that number out of my ass) and that someone who is a 7 has a 15% chance, I’m not sure a lot of people would understand that. I think a lot of people would be confused and think it means that the 7 has the better chance of being the better player even though it’s not what it is saying.
I agree that finding a percentage would be hugely important information. If we knew the average percentage just for players rated 1-10, 11-20 and so on, it would be fantastic. It would create a lot of issues though. Say a 9 becomes an 8. Would we still, later on, view his ceiling as a 9 like it was before or an 8?
I’d love that information, but I can safely say that I’ll never know it and it would only be a wild ass guess.
dmick89Quote Reply
A friend on FB called A-rod a stats gatherer. Kind of funny. I guess he has a beef with A-rod being good while the Rangers sucked. What does that even mean in baseball? There are occasions in football where in might be a legit complaint, but there’s no clock in baseball, you’re expected to perform the same in every at bat, whether it counts or not.
He also argued A-rod is an asshole, and to that I have no retort. The guy strikes me as a d-bag, but he was still a good player. It’s not really his fault that the Rangers and Yanks piled crazy amounts of money on him.
joshQuote Reply
@ josh:
A-fraud is an overpaid duchebag. He’s a moran and a trader!
/typical fan’d
mikeakaleroyQuote Reply
@ mikeakaleroy:
It’s the same issue: they have no idea how to evaluate what a player did and rely too much “intangibles” which they are mostly inferring from their imagination.
joshQuote Reply
@ rattier:
The letter grades are telling us, based on what we know right now, this is as low as we think he could fall. Information is always changing so the ratings aren’t fixed. Someone who is a 6A is someone who has better than average potential and he might become a 5, which was about average. This would be someone in the high minors who has a number of skills, but none that make him an elite talent.
But yeah, the letter grade does suggest a player has a lower chance of succeeding without trying to quantify that percentage chance.
dmick89Quote Reply
@ josh:
DHs can’t be “team leaders” is the perception. I imagine that the NL would probably handle the DH the way a lot of teams are now doing, which is less of a dedicated position and more of a chance to play matchups and rest players.
joshQuote Reply
rattier wrote:
But aren’t the letter grades doing just that? Baez, Soler, Amaya and others all had Fs. They’re still in the low minors and they can still fall a long way over the next few years. Jackson, Watkins and Sappelt each had Cs. Szczur and Vitters each had a B.
I think a decent rule of thumb is that it’s pretty damn hard for someone in the low minors to do better than an F (we had 2 with an E that had high ceilings).
dmick89Quote Reply
@ dmick89:
I took it as an implied percentage (since percentage in this case would just mean “estimate of confidence level”)
joshQuote Reply
@ josh:
Yeah, that’s kind of been the trend in recent years and I expect it will continue. I’m guessing if you look back over the history of the DH, there just weren’t that many in the league at the same time that were really good hitters. Using the DH as a way to rest your catcher while not giving him the day off is a great idea if that catcher is a good hitter.
dmick89Quote Reply
fine, I ordered GameDay audio so I can listen to Carl Crawford tear shit up with the Dodgers.
joshQuote Reply
@ mikeakaleroy:
I gotta say, though, I think if I played for the Mariners, I’d be on the first train out, too.
joshQuote Reply
Hey! Cubs “baseball” in 30 minutes!
mikeakaleroyQuote Reply
@ mikeakaleroy:
I “love” it!!
joshQuote Reply
@ josh:
Also: to drown out coworker BS.
joshQuote Reply
game thread up: http://obstructedview.net/games/cubs-pirates-game-chat.html
dmick89Quote Reply
@ dmick89:
Good lord, I’m not suggesting a way to actually get these projections right. I have no idea how to do that. I’m just suggesting a way to clarify what your wild ass guess means. And I think your wild ass guesses (or Sickels’ or whoever) on 1) how awesome they could be and 2) how likely they are to be that awesome is what people want to know as fans.
You’re right about the question of whether somebody drops from a 9 to an 8 if they actually changed, or just didn’t reach their potential is too complicated, as is the question of is a 8A better than a 9B, or who is more likely to end up as at least a 7. But that’s why you can change the rating, and why these are just wild ass guesses in the first place.
@ dmick89:
Yeah, like I said, its going to end up basically the same either way. Just nitpicking on the methodology, mostly since I already like the system better than other rating systems out there.
rattierQuote Reply