Author: berselius

Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (3-3) at Milwaukee Brewers (3-4)

The Cubs won the Arizona series but came away less two members of the rotation. They head to Milwaukee, who are coming off three straight wins against the Atlanta Braves. Ryan Braun and Rickie Weeks have gotten off to hot starts but the rest of the lineup hasn’t started hitting yet.

Here’s a look at their (small sample size) team numbers and NL ranks so far

Cubs Brewers
wOBA .321(9th) .300 (10th)
SP FIP 3.86 (5h) 4.80 (12th)
RP FIP 3.58 (12th) 7.15 (16th)
DRS -8 (14th) 4 (3rd)

Team overview

Baseball Prospectus projects the Brewers to go 85-77 on the season. Oddly enough they project the Cubs to have an equally good offense (777 Runs scored).

Batters

Player ZiPS wOBA
2B Rickie Weeks .350
RF Mark Kotsay .296
LF Ryan Braun .379
1B Prince Fielder .394
3B Casey McGehee .324
CF Carlos Gomez .301
SS Yuniesky Betancourt .305
C Wil Nieves .265

The Brewers are without two regular starters. RF and unfrozen caveman Corey Hart is out with an oblique strain suffered in spring training, and there is still no timetable on his return. Starting catcher Jonathon Lucroy broke a pinky at the beginning of spring training, and began a rehab assignment yesterday.

Pitchers

Player ZiPS FIP
RHP Yovani Gallardo 3.29
RHP Shaun Marcum 3.53
LHP Randy Wolf 4.23
LHP Chris Narveson 4.47
RHP Marco Estrada 4.20
RHP John Axford 3.58
RHP Takashi Saito 3.48

Of course, Greinke would be heading up this list were it not for his pickup-basketball-related broken rib. Yesterday, he threw his first bullpen session since the injury.

Players to watch

I’m going to go with Yuni – will he commit more errors and boneheaded plays in this series as Ryan Theriot will for the Cardinals? For the Cubs, Soriano seems to be swinging the hot bat (except maybe for this Castro guy), so I’ll go with him.

Pitching Matchups

(ZiPS projected FIP in parentheses)

Friday Friday: Carlos Zambrano, RHP (3.74) vs Randy Wolf, LHP (4.23)

Z had a tough time finding the strike zone early in his first start, but settled down a bit as the game went on. He gave up a home run to Garrett Jones and didn’t get his usual ground ball distribution (9 FB, 5 GB, 3 LD). The Cubs won the game so it was good enough for Z to eat dinner that night, though it had to be at a TGI Friday’s. Looking at his career numbers while researching the Gallardo comment below, I had forgotten that he’s never posted an ERA above 4 his entire career. We need to hammer home this fact to every moran Cubs fan who loves bashing Z.

Randy Wolf was hammered for 6 runs in 4 innings in his first start in Cincy. He gave up 10 hits including 2 HRs and walked two, but was lucky that both of the homers were solo shots. He had a poor debut with the Brewers last year, mostly due to a drop in his strikeout rate, but most of the projection systems figure him to bounce back.

Saturday Saturday: Matt Garza, RHP (4.16) vs Chris Narveson, LHP (4.47)

It felt like Garza gave up somewhere between 12 and 100 groundball singles in his debut as a Cub last weekend. His game log would tell you that he also gave up 7 line drives, but he wasn’t hit particularly hard (all of them were singles). Most impressively though he struck out a career high 12 batters. Garza had a lousy spring so this kind of debut was what he needed to make sure the fans/media didn’t turn on him right away. A little wildness from Marmol and a poor decision in what was otherwise a fantastic game by Starlin Castro turned Garza’s W into a L but I’ll take it if he posts more of those performances.

I was surprised to see that Narveson started 28 games for the Brewers last year. He had a bit of bad luck with baserunners last year, given the big split between his 4.99 ERA and his 4.22 FIP. According to fangraphs he has a great curveball but his 88 mph fastball is hittable. ZiPS is not a huge fan but most of the other systems see him as a solid averageish pitcher, which is nice to have as your 5th starter.

Sunday Sunday: Casey Coleman, RHP (4.92) vs Yovani Gallardo, RHP (3.29)

Well, I got my wish that Coleman would be in the Cubs rotation but I can’t say I’m happy with the circumstances. Coleman came up and did a decent enough job in 8 starts at the end of last year. From what I remember he was one of the pitchers who had a much more confidence on the mound with Quade at the helm than Lou. What we see with Coleman is pretty much the best we’re ever going to see out of him – a 1 WAR pitcher is about his ceiling. He should post an ERA in the 4.5-4.8 range and that’s about as good as you can expect from a guy that’s 6th on your depth chart. I’m hoping that I’ll be writing Trey McNutt‘s name in here for Tuesday’s start vs Houston but I’m not holding my breath.

We’ve compared Gallardo to a young Z before but that’s not a particularly great comp. A lot of it is due to the fact that they’re both good-hitting pitchers (laughing). Z was a power sinker guy, but Gallardo doesn’t get the ground balls the way Z did. Both of them posted ERAs well under their FIPs early in their careers. I was surprised to see that Gallardo posted a 1.88 ERA in 2008, despite  a 4.09 FIP and a modest .288 BABIP. Oddly enough last year he had the best peripherals of his career, but posted an ERA 0.8 points higher. That improvment combined with the fact that he’s only 25 has led the projection systems to predict a big year out of him. He might even be the best pitcher on that staff, Greinke included.

Prediction

Brewers take two out of three. The Cubs should be steamrolled in the Sunday game but I do like their chances in both of the other two games as the lineup should crush LHP.

Continue reading “Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (3-3) at Milwaukee Brewers (3-4)”

Mapping out the Rotation

Shawn pointed out in the comments that given the number of off-days, the Cubs can limit the 5th starter somewhat. But given that they’re spaced 7 days apart there will still be a few starts. Here’s how it maps out

  • 4/6 Ryan Dempster
  • OFF DAY
  • 4/8 Carlos Zambrano
  • 4/9 Matt Garza
  • 4/10 Casey Coleman
  • 4/11 Demp
  • 4/12 5TH STARTER
  • 4/13 Z
  • OFF DAY
  • 4/15 Garza
  • 4/16 Coleman
  • 4/17 Demp
  • 4/18 Z
  • 4/19 5TH STARTER
  • 4/20 Garza
  • OFF DAY
  • 4/22 Demp
  • 4/23 Z
  • 4/24 Coleman
  • 4/25 Garza
  • 4/26 5TH STARTER
  • 4/27 Demp
  • 4/28 Z
  • 4/29 Coleman
  • 4/30 Garza
  • 5/1 5TH STARTER
  • 5/2 Demp
  • 5/3 Z
  • 5/4 Coleman
  • OFF DAY

So 4 starts for whoever gets the gig.

mb21: Since we’re talking about the rest of the month, it seems a good time to post the expected win-loss record for the Cubs over the first month of the season. We’ve used the RLYW projections blowout to get the projected winning percetages for the Cubs and the teams they play. Once we have that, we can use Bill James log5 method to calculate expected wins (adjusting for home field advantage). The projections blowout had the Cubs at 80 wins. With the loss of Andrew Cashner and Randy Wells, let’s say they lost 2 wins. It’s highly unlikely they lost that many, but let’s work with that one anyway. So for the first 5 games they had an expected total wins of 80 and the rest of the month it is 78. Here’s how the month works out (h/t to RLYW).

Date Team Ex.PcT Cubs xW xL txW txL tW tL
4/1 Pirates 0.433 0.493 0.61 0.39 0.6 0.4 0 1
4/2 Pirates 0.433 0.493 0.61 0.39 1.2 0.8 1 1
4/3 Pirates 0.433 0.493 0.61 0.39 1.8 1.2 1 2
4/4 Dbacks 0.451 0.493 0.59 0.41 2.4 1.6 2 2
4/5 Dbacks 0.451 0.493 0.59 0.41 3.0 2.0 3 2
4/6 Dbacks 0.451 0.481 0.58 0.42 3.6 2.4
4/8 at Brewers 0.512 0.481 0.42 0.58 4.0 3.0
4/9 at Brewers 0.512 0.481 0.42 0.58 4.4 3.6
4/10 at Brewers 0.512 0.481 0.42 0.58 4.8 4.2
4/11 at Astros 0.407 0.481 0.53 0.47 5.4 4.6
4/12 at Astros 0.407 0.481 0.53 0.47 5.9 5.1
4/13 at Astros 0.407 0.481 0.53 0.47 6.4 5.6
4/15 at Rockies 0.512 0.481 0.42 0.58 6.8 6.2
4/16 at Rockies 0.512 0.481 0.42 0.58 7.3 6.7
4/17 at Rockies 0.512 0.481 0.42 0.58 7.7 7.3
4/18 Padres 0.488 0.481 0.54 0.46 8.2 7.8
4/19 Padres 0.488 0.481 0.54 0.46 8.8 8.2
4/20 Padres 0.488 0.481 0.54 0.46 9.3 8.7
4/22 Dodgers 0.516 0.481 0.51 0.49 9.8 9.2
4/23 Dodgers 0.516 0.481 0.51 0.49 10.3 9.7
4/24 Dodgers 0.516 0.481 0.51 0.49 10.8 10.2
4/25 Rockies 0.512 0.481 0.51 0.49 11.4 10.6
4/26 Rockies 0.512 0.481 0.51 0.49 11.9 11.1
4/27 Rockies 0.512 0.481 0.51 0.49 12.4 11.6
4/28 at Dbacks 0.451 0.481 0.49 0.51 12.9 12.1
4/29 at Dbacks 0.451 0.481 0.49 0.51 13.4 12.6
4/30 at Dbacks 0.451 0.481 0.49 0.51 13.8 13.2

Through 5 games, the Cubs were expected to win 3 games and lose 2. They’re record prior to today was exactly that. They’d played no better or no worse than expected against the lesser competition they’ve faced so far. The end of the month record is expected to be 14-13. It would be nice if the Cubs could instead be 3 to 4 wins over expectations. They’ll need to make up some ground somewhere and against the early schedule is when it will be easiest. Today isn’t going well so far. They trail 5-2 in the top of the 6th so it’s likely the Cubs end the day worse than we expected when the season started.

Continue reading “Mapping out the Rotation”

Series Preview: Arizona Diamondbacks (1-1) at Chicago Cubs (1-2)

All I should have to say about yesterday’s game is that the Cubs lost on a 2-run infield single. It was that kind of day.

However, despite the fact that the Cubs lost two games to the emintently beatable Pirates there were things to be happy about. Here’s a breakdown of what we learned

The Good

  • Starlin Castro. What a great start to the season. He hit two triples yesterday, and his baserunning led to seemingly half of the Cubs runs in the series. Even if everything else goes to shit it will be exciting to watch him this year.
  • Matt Garza fought the luck dragon for 7 innings in his first officially official start in a Cubs uniform, but I think it was good enough to make sure the fans didn’t turn on him out of the gate for not being Cy Young. He set a career high of 12 strikeouts and threw boatloads of strikes. He didn’t walk anyone and gave up 12 singles, and it seemed like every one of them were seeing eye grounders.
  • Carlos Pena is as good as advertised on defense. Brenly seems to have a new man-crush but at least it’s on a player that’s actually pretty good. I think the over/under on the number of times we’ll hear about Pena’s pregame fungo routine for the rest of the season should be set around 50 times.
  • Geovany Soto is batting higher in the order at last. We’re still seeing a few dumb lineup things like Barney batting second, but I don’t think we’ll see that as often as we’ll see Soto batting 5th or 6th.
  • Carlos Marmol had his jaw-dropping slider working in Saturday’s game.
  • Colvin looked as good defensively as we should expect, given his ability to hack it in CF, in nailing Jaramillo at the plate in the 8th inning of Sunday’s game to preserve the Cubs lead. He looked a little lost in RF last year but if his glove shows up he’ll be better than the replacement level 4th outfielder that the projections see him as.

The Bad

  • The Cubs offense is going to struggle to score runs. They scored 12 in this series,and were helped by 4 unearned runs thanks to the Pirates crappy defense. The Cubs are also swinging at everything. They didn’t have a good PA in Saturday’s game until Z’s double in the third inning. In that PA he saw as many pitches as the team did in the first and second innings.
  • Marlon Byrd needs to move down the lineup, and soon. After a gift throw into RF by Ronny Cedeno to gift-wrap the Cubs chances to tie the game on a sac fly, Marlon continued his habit seen through the series of swinging on the first pitch. He grounded out into a game ending double play.
  • Carlos Marmol did not have his jaw-dropping slider working in Sunday’s game. However, even when Marmol’s wild he can still get away with it at times. He walked the first hitter, the second hiter hit a flare just over Barney, but then the pirates gave up an out and he got the WAG that usually gets him out of trouble. Just bad luck that it glanced off of Marmol and a bad decision by Castro. Pena did a great job corraling the throw but it was too late for it to matter.

Anyway, that’s behind us now. The Cubs host the Arizona Diamondbacks for a 3-game series before their first road trip of the season. Arizona is 1-1 after Sunday’s game in Colorado was cancelled due to snow.

Team Overview

BP projects the Diamondbacks to be the low team on the totem pole in the NL west this season, with a record of 76-86. Their biggest problem is their pitching staff, which is projected to give up the second most runs after only the Coors-aided Rockies staff. To be fair, they do play in a hitters’ park themselves.

Since not much has happened in the season so far I’m just going to post their main players’ ZiPS projections.

Position Players

Player wOBA ADR
SS Drew .337 2
RF Upton .377 8
2b Johnson .358 4
1b Branyan .374 5
CF Young .340 7
C Montero .332 -5
3b Mora .309 -6
LF Nady .321 0

Drew is banged up and didn’t play in the first two games, so there’s a good chance Willie Bloomquist will get at least one of the starts if not all of them, given the weather in Chicago.

Pitchers

Player FIP
Dan Hudson 3.62
Saunders 4.65

Kennedy

 4.06
Enright 4.84
Gallaraga 4.97
Putz (CL) 3.40
Hernandez 4.83

Former Pirate Zach Duke would normally be in the rotation, but a line drive in spring training broke his hand, putting him out for 6-8 weeks.

Players to watch:

Aside from the obvious Cubs choice, Starlin Castro, I’ll pick an ex-Cub in Xavier Nady (the one armed bandit) for the DBacks. I hope we get to see numerous lollipop throws back to the infield in this series.

Pitching Matchups:

(ZiPS projected FIP in parentheses)

Monday: Joe Saunders, LHP (4.65) vs Randy Wells, RHP (3.95)

Saunders came to the DBacks as part of the Angels’ Dan Haren robbery. Saunders had a breakout year in 2008, posting a 3.41 ERA and 17 wins for the Angels. However, that was tempered by a .266 BABIP and a good measure of HR luck. The following year he posted a 4.60 ERA and a 5.17 FIP, but still somehow managed to win 16 games. For some reason that was good enough for the DBacks to grab him.

Wells is looking to bounce back from his “sophomore slump”, in which his ERA jumped by a point and a quarter but his peripherals stayed just about the same. Hopefully the groundballs he’ll generate won’t find all the holes that Garza’s did yesterday.

Tuesday: Barry Enright, RHP (4.84) vs Andrew Cashner, RHP (4.46)

Enright posted superficially solid numbers after being called up from AA last year, posting a 3.91 ERA and a 6-7 record in 99 innings. However, his .248 BABIP had a lot to do with that, and his FIP and xFIP were 5.62 and 4.96 respectively. It looks like he’s a flyball pitcher that doesn’t strike a lot of guys out, which is not a great combo.

I’m glad that this is the game that I’ll actually be able to catch all of (stupid work), as I’m excited to see what Cashner can do this season. He definitely got a great matchup for his first start. From what I remember his change-up was starting to look good in ST, and if that trend continues he should be able to stick in the rotation.

Wednesday: Armando Galarraga, RHP (4.97) vs Ryan Dempster, RHP (3.73)

Galarraga is of course famous for the near perfect game with the Tigers last season. He was 8 2/3 of an inning through it and was fed the ball on a groundout to 1b to seal the deal when veteran umpire Jim Joyce ruled the runner safe (replay showed that he was out). Despite all the media hoopla around the play, Galarraga and Joyce both handled the situation well. Joyce tearfully apologized after the game and (gasp) admitted that he made a mistake. Galarraga accepted the situation gracefully saying “nobody’s perfect”, and went to great length to assure Joyce that there was no bad blood. Perfect game notwithstanding, Galarraga was never that great of a pitcher and the Tigers released him in the offseason.

Dempster started strong but fell apart in his opening day start. He lost control in the 5th and Neil Walker made him pay with a grand slam, and after Quade put him out in the 7th (with 100+ pitches and two shaky innings in the bank) he gave up another HR to put it out of reach of the Cubs offensive offense.

Prediction

The matchups look good in all three of these games. I like the Cubs to win two out of three to bring themselves back to .500

Continue reading “Series Preview: Arizona Diamondbacks (1-1) at Chicago Cubs (1-2)”

The Stats We Use: FIP

Evaluating pitchers is tough. Most of the traditonal batting stats are based on discrete, context-free events that mostly have to do with the offensive player’s skill – Home Runs, hits, stolen bases, batting eye, etc. There are still stats like RBI and R that depend on the players around the batter, but generally the quick and dirty thing that were tradtionally looked at with a batter were their triple crown stats: AVG, HR, and RBI. Nowadays you’re more likely to see a hitter’s slash line (AVG/OBP/SLG), OPS, or if you’re lucky wOBA, all of which are pretty much context-neutral.

For pitchers it’s much more difficult to tease out context-neutral stats. For a long time the primary stats used to evaluate a pitcher were Wins, ERA, and Strikeouts. I don’t even need to explain how useless Wins are as a stat to evaluate a pitcher’s performance. Much like RBI it’s a narrative stat rather than a particularly quantitative one, and the RBI stat is far less ambiguous. It depends heavily on a pitcher’s team’s offense scoring enough runs to give the team a win, as well as the pitcher’s bullpen not regularly imploding behind him. ERA is a little better — it’s a rate stat that quantifies the number of runs scored off the pitcher per 27 outs. But it also has issues. One problem is the bullpen issue mentioned above – if you leave a guy on when you’re pulled from the game and Jeff Samardzija gives up a HR on the first pitch you’re still dinged for the guy on the basepaths. One even bigger problem is defense. You don’t want to burn a pitcher for pitching in front of a team that’s a bunch of statues, similarly, a pitcher who plays in front of a team of Ozzie Smiths is obviously going to look a lot better. The fact that pitching is so intertwined with defense makes it harder to tease out some sort of context-free metric for how good a pitcher might be.

One big breakthrough in evaluating pitchers came when Voros McCracken introduced Defense Independent Pitching Statistics – namely, developing metrics that completely strip out fielding from the equation. He found that generally pitchers have no control over what happens to balls in play – in almost all cases pitchers defense independent stats such as strikeouts, walks, and home runs tended to be much more stable than their BABIP (batting average on balls in play). There have been more modifications and clarifications to this theory (which we’ll talk about in future stats posts), but overall it provided a new framework for evaluating pitchers.

Anyway, here’s the formula

FIP = (13*HR + 3*(BB+HBP – IBB) – 2*K)/IP  +  C

C is a constant that rescales FIP so it’s on the same scale as ERA, much like we do with wOBA (i.e. the average FIP is the same as the average ERA). For general purposes you can think of it as 3.2, and it is usually computed at a seasonal level.

Where do these numbers come from? It’s the same idea as in wOBA – those weights on the events are derived from the average run value of each event. And in fact you could even say that FIP does include balls in play because of the + C factor at the end. By scaling it to the league ERA, you’re basically saying that FIP evaluates a pitcher for skills that he has control of relative to facing an average offense and with an average defense behind him. Aside from neutralizing the context, one of the advantages of FIP is that it is a better indicator of future performance than ERA. Colin Wyers did a study a few years ago that looked at FIP (as well as a few other DIPS type stats that we may look at here) as a predictor of ERA and found that it does roughly a 20% better job than ERA alone.

FIP does have its flaws, which other stats have sought to overcome. One of the ones that has always jumped out to me anecdotally is things like GB rate, which a pitcher also has some control over. Some other systems such as tRA and Baseball Prospectus’s SIERA factor in batted ball types. Another problem is that HRs can obviously have huge impact on the FIP formula but are relatively rare events, so some bad luck on HRs leaving the park can affect a pitcher. xFIP (for expected FIP) improves FIP by trying to normalize out pitchers’ HR/FB rates, though on average it’s not much better of a predictor than FIP because if you look at the entire population of pitchers, xFIP should be about the same as FIP.

FIP is used in Fangraphs’s calculation of Wins Above Replacement, which we will discuss in the future. One debate in the saberist world is what pitching stat one should actually use to value a pitcher’s performance. Fangraphs uses FIP because as mentioned it neutralizes defense and offense faced. However Rally, the creator of the now-propreitary CHONE projections, used ERA when creating his historical Wins Above Replacement database, and it is also used at Baseball-Reference. The main question here is whether you prefer FIP, which is more of a predictive stat, i.e. what should have happened, vs ERA which is a narrative stat, i.e. what did happen. We refer to these as fWAR and rWAR. 

Credit where credit is due

FIP was originally created by Tom Tango, based on McCracken’s DIPS theory.

This FIP primer at 3-D Baseball by The Book Blog regular Kincaid was a good reference, as well as the one that pointed out that balls in play are taken into account via our rescaling to ERA.

Continue reading “The Stats We Use: FIP”

Obstructed View Opening Day Roundtable – part 2

Your fearless Obstructed View Executive Chairmen got together to discuss various topics related to the 2011 Cubs season. We looked at the offseason and the new additions to the club in part one. Here’s part two, which focuses on our predictions for the 2011 season.

Ryan Theriot

[mb21] : How many times will Theriot get a standing ovation when the Cardinals come to town?
[aisle 424] : Zero.
[aisle 424] : He will be roundly booed.
[berselius] : zero
[aisle 424] : That “right side of the rivalry” bit got a lot of traction.
[berselius] : The Hobbitton Gazette will make sure to bang the drum on his “right side of the rivalry” comments
[mb21] : I actually hope he doesn’t get booed. He was a player on back to back division championships. He’s an idiot, but I hope he doesn’t booed.
[aisle 424] : Prepare to be disappointed.
[berselius] : That’s the 2011 motto  (dying laughing)
[aisle 424] : (dying laughing)

Who will surprise, who will disappoint?

Continue reading “Obstructed View Opening Day Roundtable – part 2”

NL Central Preview: St. Louis Cardinals

Last Year:

Most thought that the Cardinals had all the pieces to run away with the NL Central, but somehow it never came together. Their offense dipped by 4 points from their 2009 rate to a .321 wOBA, good for 7th in the NL. Their pitchers posted an excellent 3.57 ERA (4th) and a 3.85 FIP (7th), and their defensive numbers were all over the place (+61 by DRS (1st), +18 by FSR (4th), and -14.2 by UZR (11th)).

The Cardinals started off strong out of the gate, winning their first game and remaining in first place until mid-May. They traded the top spot with the Reds for the next three months before the Reds finally pulled away in mid-August. They were desparate to fill the hole caused by Brad Penny’s injury in mid-May, which resulted in his missing the rest of the season. SP Kyle Lohse went down a week later and missed about three months. At the trade deadline, they moved RF Ryan Ludwick and picked up SP Jake Westbrook, who posted a 3.48 ERA / 3.52 FIP down the stretch for the Cards. They also picked up the finally-released Jeff Suppan from the Brewers and somehow managed to get him to post a 3.86 ERA (despite a FIP near 5) in 70 or so innings.

Offseason Moves:

The Cardinals re-signed Westbrook to a 2/16.5 deal in December. Given that he’s a sinkerballer, he should fit in just fine with Dave Duncan. Just after Thanksgiving, they traded for Dance Fever (dying laughing) in exchange for Blake Hawksworth. A few days later they sent their incumbent defensive-specialist SS Brendan Ryan to Seattle. They signed Lance Berkman to a 1/8 contract to be their primary RF, despite the fact that he hasn’t played there since 2007. We’ll get plenty of enjoyment out of his misadventures in RF, as well as the added opportunities for Mercurial Outfielder to bust out his embarassing Berkman pic collection. The most important offseason development wasn’t a front office move — top pitcher Adam Wainwright required Tommy John surgery on his elbow after an injury in early spring training.

Players To Watch:

All eyes will be on Pujols as well they should, but with Wainwright out the Cards need their young starters McClellan and Garcia to step up. Garcia was incredible last year, posting a 2.70 ERA in 163 innings. He had some luck with respect to HRs, but the projection systems agree that he’ll be pretty good. We’ve seen a lot of McClellan in the Cardinals pen for the last three years, where he’s been fairly effective, but it’s a big question mark whether his stuff will translate to the rotation or how many innings he’ll be able to pitch.

Projections:

Here’s a rough look at their team headed into the 2011 season. Since we don’t know a ton about not the Cubs, we used Baseball Prospectus’s depth charts to estimate playing time. The players OBP/SLG are a simple average of their PECOTA and Oliver projections. The defensive numbers are from the players’ 2010 Fan Scouting Report, and baserunning was ignored unless a player was especially good or awful on the basepaths.

Hitter Pos PA OBP SLG Fld WAR
Yadier Molina CA 500 0.335 0.352 1.9 2.71
Gerald Laird CA 120 0.288 0.318 0.5 0.01
Albert Pujols 1B 650 0.425 0.601 0.8 7.84
Lance Berkman 1B 74 0.382 0.458 0 0.34
Skip Schumaker 2B 450 0.338 0.358 -0.9 0.14
Nick Punto 2B 209 0.317 0.300 0.5 -0.09
Ryan Theriot (LOL) SS 600 0.332 0.326 -0.6 0.14
Nick Punto SS 90 0.317 0.300 0 -0.04
David Freese 3B 550 0.325 0.424 0.1 1.65
Nick Punto 3B 106 0.317 0.300 0.5 -0.05
Matt Holliday LF 650 0.384 0.503 0.1 4.46
Allen Craig LF 58 0.329 0.439 -0.1 0.11
Colby Rasmus CF 600 0.330 0.425 0 1.89
Jon Jay CF 74 0.324 0.375 0 0.1
Lance Berkman RF 495 0.382 0.458 -0.5 2.27
Jon Jay RF 126 0.324 0.375 0.5 0.08

 

Pitcher S/R IP ERA WAR
Chris Carpenter S 180 3.30 4.58
Kyle McClellan S 120 3.76 2.28
Jaime Garcia S 176 3.87 3.09
Jake Westbrook S 186 4.31 2.25
Kyle Lohse S 157 4.79 1.06
Miguel Batista S 120 5.26 0.25
Ryan Franklin R 65 3.97 0.73
Jason Motte R 60 3.78 0.68
Trever Miller R 60 3.80 0.51

Win talent: 85.5

I was quite surprised to see this – I thought the Wainwright injury would easily send them down the ladder in the division. There are a few things I would quibble with – Berkman is probably going to be pretty awful in RF, “Big Puma” or not. I also suspect that McClellan’s projection is based more on relieving than starting, so that ERA should probably be higher. On the other hand, I have no idea how Colby Rasmus ended up with a zero in the FSR. Given how lousy they are likely to be in the middle infield, their groundball-tilted pitching staff might see a lot more problems this season. Overall though I think my prediction above is what the season hinges on – if McClellan can pitch well in the rotation and Garica avoids a sophomore slump, they’ll be in good shape.

Continue reading “NL Central Preview: St. Louis Cardinals”

NL Central Preview: Cincinnati Reds

Last Year:

The Reds surprised many by winning the division over the heavily favored Cardinals. My memory stinks, but from what I remember BPro had them as a slight favorite going into the season and I thought they were insane. The Reds vindicated BP, posting the best offense in the NL (.339 wOBA) with below-average pitching (4.29 FIP, 12th in NL and 8th in NL), which is not too surprising given their launching pad of a ballpark. But the biggest surprise was their defense, which ranked 4th in the NL by UZR (+44.8) and first in the Fan Scouting Report (44 Runs, 24 higher than the next best team). The Reds have plus+plus defenders at 2b, 3b, and RF, who more than made up for the defensive adventures of LF Johnny Gomes and SS Orlando Cabrera.

The Reds played .500-ish ball out of the gate, and even dipped all the way down to last place in the division on April 24. However, following that they went on a 5 game winning streak and were never lower than second in the division for the rest of the season. They took the division lead on August 15 and it was never really close after that. They weren’t very active during the season — the only big move they made was to trade OF Chris Dickerdoodle to Milwaukee for Jim Edmonds, who continued his hot hitting after joining the team.

The Reds were swept out of the NLDS by the Phillies, where they were shut out in game 3 by Hamels and no-hit in game 1 by Halladay. Jay Bruce drew the lone walk of Halladay in the 5th inning of that game, preventing the no-no (if you think about it, a perfect game should be called a no-no, not a no-hitter). They took an early 4-0 lead in game 2 but back-to-back surprising errors by the normally sure-handed Scott Rolen and Brandon Phillips as well as a rough outing by Aroldis Chapman turned a 4-0 lead into a 7-4 loss.

Offseason Moves:

The Reds stayed pat for the most part. They let SS Orlando Cabrera go and replaced him with and equally rapidly aging shortstop in Edgar Renteria, who they signed to a 1/2.1 deal in January. The resigned starting catcher Ramon Hernandez at 1/3, who is the nominal starter but isn’t quite as good as co-catcher Ryan Hanigan. They picked up former Giants OF Fred Lewis to be their 4th outfielder, and kicked the tires on former Marlins Dontrelle Willis and Jeremy Hermida, neither of whom is likely to make the squad.

Players To Watch:

I’m not a huge fan of any of the Red’s starting pitchers, but the most interesting guy in the mix is Aroldis Chapman and his triple digit fastball. The Reds signed him to a 6/30.25 contract and while he could make up that value as their future closer, they’re going to get a lot more value out of him starting. Going into the season Chapman had six pitchers (Volquez, Cueto, Arroyo, Bailey, Wood, and Leake) in front of him so it wasn’t too surprising that the Reds would let him work out of the pen for 2011. However, now that Bailey is headed to the DL, Arroyo has mono, and Cueto is having minor issues with his shoulder (not to mention that Volquez is still bouncing back from TJS), Chapman might find a few SP innings anyway. He has the most electric stuff I’ve ever seen, and if he can get it over the plate he’s going to be an elite pitcher for years to come.

Projections:

Here’s a rough look at their team headed into the 2011 season. Since we don’t know a ton about not the Cubs, we used BP’s depth charts to estimate playing time. The players OBP/SLG are a simple average of their PECOTA and Oliver projections. The defensive numbers are from the players’ 2010 FSR, and baserunning was ignored unless a player was especially good or awful on the basepaths.

Hitter Pos PA OBP SLG Fld WAR
Ramon Hernandez CA 320 0.324 0.384 0.1 1.03
Ryan Hanigan CA 309 0.356 0.370 0.4 1.5
Joey Votto 1B 650 0.394 0.545 0.4 5.39
Yonder Alonso 1B 50 0.323 0.408 0 0.01
Brandon Phillips 2B 646 0.323 0.434 1.8 3.63
Paul Janish 2B 100 0.304 0.345 1 0.09
Edgar Renteria SS 375 0.310 0.357 -0.6 0.01
Paul Janish SS 300 0.304 0.345 0.5 0.28
Scott Rolen 3B 560 0.342 0.430 1.4 3.3
Miguel Cairo 3B 100 0.304 0.354 -0.2 -0.05
Jonny Gomes LF 385 0.321 0.448 -0.8 0.3
Fred Lewis LF 200 0.337 0.404 -0.3 0.21
Drew Stubbs CF 630 0.314 0.382 0.5 1.13
Chris Heisey CF 35 0.320 0.434 -0.4 0.08
Jay Bruce RF 650 0.335 0.488 0.9 3.3
Chris Heisey RF 51 0.320 0.434 0.1 0.08

 

Pitcher S/R IP ERA WAR
Edinson Volquez S 134 4.08 2
Bronson Arroyo S 186 4.25 2.38
Johnny Cueto S 180 4.39 2.01
Homer Bailey S 158 4.69 1.24
Travis Wood S 168 4.07 2.52
Mike Leake S 104 4.56 0.96
Francisco Cordero R 68 3.98 0.75
Nick Masset R 75 3.91 0.69
Aroldis Chapman R 110 4.31 0.23

Win talent: 81.6 Wins

This could be even lower, given the potential SP injury issues mentioned above. I was pretty surprised to see this, but a big part of the Reds top offense last year were guys like Scott Rolen (.367 wOBA), Drew Stubbs (.345) and Ryan Hanigan (.368) playing out of their minds. They’ll still have a good offense and contend but they’re going to be hit by the regression hammer in 2011.

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Quade realizes the Cubs have no speed, backs off aggressive baserunning talk

It’s nice to see the team back off from another dumb policy. At the beginning of spring training (and IIRC the offseason) Quade said that the Cubs were going to be more aggressive on the basepaths. Via the hobbit:

“I almost feel like we’re forcing something that we shouldn’t,” Quade said. “It goes against everything (I believe) — ‘We’re going to be aggressive, we want to run …’ Yeah, you’re going to run yourself into a lot of outs….We just need to run with our heads.”

Much like the decision to release Carlos Silva this is more of a common sense, let’s not do something negative move than necessarily a positive development. But it’s nice to see the Cubs pull their head out of the sand twice in three days.

The Cubs have been awful at baserunning, and it’s not just Ryan Theriot. MB took a look at this last January and found that it’s not even a recent phenomenon. If you look at just the last 5 years using Baseball Prospectus’s Equivalent Baserunning Runs (EQBRR), which combine stolen bases/caught stealing with stuff like going from first to third, scoring from second on a single, etc., this is what you get:

Year EQBRR
2010 -8
2009 -14
2008 -13.1
2007 -12.3
2006 -2

I guess they improved last year (laughing). 2006 was the last relatively decent year, but that was buoyed by Juan Pierre’s baserunning numbers. A few other regulars, such as 2008 Kosuke, 2008 Mark Derosa’s Stubble, and oddly enough 2010 Soriano and Koyie have put up EQBRRs above 2, but overall the Cubs are an old team without speed.

Continue reading “Quade realizes the Cubs have no speed, backs off aggressive baserunning talk”

NL Central preview: Houston Astros

Last Year:

The Astros started off the year with eight straight losses, and were sitting at 17 games below .500 at the all-star break. However, they turned things around somewhat in the second half of the season, going 40-33 despite trading co-faces of the franchise Lance Berkman and Roy Oswalt at the trade deadline. Much like the Pirates the Astros did well against the Cubs, going 11-7 against them.

The Astros had the second-worst offense in MLB last year, and their team .296 wOBA was better than only the Marlins. Their fielding was right around average and it was their pitching that propelled them into fourth place in the division. Wandy Rodriguez, Felipe Paulino, Brett Myers, and the now-departed Roy Oswalt all posted FIPs below 3.6.

Offseason Moves:

The Astros haven’t been particularly active this offseason, which is unusual given Ed Lynch’s penchant for signing mediocre relievers to long-term deals. Maybe he’d be interested in John Grabow? They actually traded away a reliever for once, rather than signing new ones, when they moved closer Matt Lindstrom to Colorado for some minor league arms.

They traded SP Felipe Paulino to Colorado for former Rookie of the Year and venison lover Clint Barmes, who was penciled in as their starting shortstop until he broke his hand in spring training. He should miss the first 4-6 weeks of the season. They also picked up Mariners castoffs Ryan Rowland-Smith and Bill Hall.

Players To Watch:

Hunter Pence, I guess? Berkman has taken his awkward picture taking talents to Saint Louis. Now that Oswalt is gone as well, Pence is the de facto face of the franchise. However, the perpetually underrated Wandy Rodriguez and noted public spousal abuser Brett Myers are projected to be their top two players in 2011.

The minor league system is bare, and to add insult to injury one of their top prospects, catcher Jason Castro, tore his ACL in spring training and will miss most of if not all of the 2011 season. Their other top prospect, SS Jio Mier, is still in A-ball so we won’t see him anytime soon. 

Projections:

Here’s a rough look at their team headed into the 2011 season. Since we don’t know a ton about not the Cubs, we used Baseball Prospectus’s depth charts to estimate playing time. The players OBP/SLG are a simple average of their PECOTA and Oliver projections. The defensive numbers are from the players’ 2010 Fan Scouting Report, and baserunning was ignored unless a player was especially good (i.e. Bourn) or awful on the basepaths.

Hitter Pos PA OBP SLG Fld WAR
Humberto Quintero CA 311 0.268 0.330 0.5 -0.19
J.R. Towles CA 300 0.305 0.364 0 0.46
Brett Wallace 1B 600 0.315 0.408 0.1 -0.07
Carlos Lee 1B 46 0.317 0.452 0 0.05
Bill Hall 2B 600 0.290 0.396 0.2 0.33
Jeff Keppinger 2B 64 0.329 0.373 -0.5 0.06
Clint Barmes SS 600 0.290 0.382 -0.3 0.09
Tommy Manzella SS 100 0.294 0.327 0.1 -0.07
Chris Johnson 3B 600 0.301 0.425 -0.3 0.75
Jeff Keppinger 3B 81 0.329 0.373 -0.5 0.07
Carlos Lee LF 591 0.317 0.452 -1 0.24
Jason Michaels LF 106 0.303 0.393 0 -0.06
Michael Bourn CF 600 0.322 0.338 0.8 1.93
Jason Michaels CF 100 0.303 0.393 0 0.08
Hunter Pence RF 634 0.325 0.457 0.3 1.79
Jason Michaels RF 79 0.303 0.393 0 -0.05

 

Pitcher S/R IP ERA WAR
W Rodriguez S 194 3.83 3.51
Myers S 201 3.95 3.32
Happ S 150 4.3 1.83
Norris S 182 4.58 1.64
Figueroa S 140 3.96 2.3
A Rodriguez S 75 5.23 0.18
Lyon R 72 3.64 1.38
Melocon R 63 3.84 0.65
Lopez R 70 4.91 -0.31

TOTAL WIN PROJECTION: 68.4

I know MB says he never counts out the Astros because of his feeling that, much like the Angels, they tend to outperform their projections. If they do outperform it by 8-10 games they could be a threat to the Cubs hopes for fourth place.

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NL Central Preview: Milwaukee Brewers

Last Year:

The Brewers finished in third place in the NL Central with a 77-85 record. They had the second-best offense in the NL with a team .334 wOBA, trailing only the surprising Cincinnati Reds. However, it was their pitching and defense that proved to be their downfall. Brewers pitchers posted a 4.21 FIP and 4.59 ERA on the season, both good for 13th in the NL. Oddly enough the Brewers graded out as average by UZR last year, but were second worst in the NL by DRS and the FSR with -38 runs and -21 runs, respectively.

The Brewers got off to a decent start to the season, playing .500 ish baseball before going on a 9-game losing streak in mid-May from which they never really recovered. They finally but the bullet and released Jeff Suppan after that streak, two years too late. Jim Edmonds had a 2008-Cubs like resurgence with them, posting a .369 wOBA with the Brewers before being traded to the Reds for Chris Dickerdoodle in July. Starting catcher Gregg Zaun tore his labrum in June and missed the rest of the season. He announced his retirement in the offseason. Ageless closer Trevor Hoffman finally hit a wall, struggling early and losing his closing gig to rookie John Axford. Hoffman picked up a few save opportunities late in the season, and recorded his 600th save on September 7th. He retired in the offseason. They signed SP Yovanni Gallardo to a new 5-year deal in April.

Offseason Moves:

With Fielder’s and Weeks’s departures due to FA on the horizon, the Brewers went all in on the 2011 season. They gutted their farm system to acquire starting pitchers Shaun Marcum from the Jays and Zack Greinke from the Royals. Following those moves, they signed oft-injured 2b Rickie Weeks to a 4/38.5 extension, with a vesting option for a fifth year that would increase the value of the contract to 50 million. In less impactful moves, they traded longtime swingman Carlos Villanueva to the Jays, resigned Brenly favorite Craig Counsell, and signed platoon masher Mark Kotsay. They traded Chris Dickerdoodle to the Yankees for former Cubs pitcher Sergio Mitre, probably only to make sure that his feelings aren’t hurt by my repeatedly calling him Dickerdoodle.

Players To Watch:

Fielder and Braun are their big hitters, and Greinke, Marcum, and Gallardo are their obvious top pitchers, but whether or not the Brewers run away with the division will largely depend on whether their recent investments in Corey Hart and Rickie Weeks pan out.

Weeks has always had plenty of raw talent, but he’s had a tough time staying on the field. He’s had surgeries on both wrists, and prior to 2010, in which he had 754 PAs, he had never posted more than 560 PAs. He’s also no longer the young player that many remember him as – he’s turning 29 this fall. His defensive skills, while improved, are still a little below average.

Hart had been panned by many as a bust after his breakout 2007, in which he posted a .259/.353/.539 line. I don’t know that a lot of projection systems expected him to post another OBP that large, but IIRC PECOTA loved his power. However, he followed it up with disappointing years of .268/.300/.459 and .260/.335/.418, with below average defense. Hart bounced back with a .283/.340/.525 line last year (with subpar defense), but there’s cause to be concerned that he might return to the below-average player he was in 2008 and 2009.

Projections:

Here’s a rough look at their team headed into the 2011 season. Since we don’t know a ton about not the Cubs, we used BP’s depth charts to estimate playing time. The players OBP/SLG are a simple average of their PECOTA and Oliver projections. The defensive numbers are from the players’ 2010 FSR, and baserunning was ignored unless a player was especially good or awful on the basepaths.

Hitter Pos PA OBP SLG Fld WAR
LuCroy CA 450 0.319 0.380 -0.1 1.15
Kottaras CA 160 0.319 0.397 -0.9 0.31
Fielder 1B 670 0.393 0.527 -0.9 3.93
Kotsay 1B 48 0.311 0.370 0 -0.07
Weeks 2B 600 0.353 0.446 -0.1 2.86
Counsell 2B 169 0.323 0.323 0.5 0.09
Yuni SS 585 0.282 0.383 -2.5 -1.97
Counsell SS 80 0.323 0.323 0 0.04
McGehee 3B 650 0.329 0.439 -0.5 1.81
Gamel 3B 33 0.329 0.424 0.1
Braun LF 670 0.361 0.530 -0.2 4.05
Boggs LF 64 0.330 0.354 0.3 0.0
Gomez CF 470 0.293 0.348 0.2 -0.32
Boggs CF 121 0.330 0.354 0.3
Hart RF 630 0.328 0.471 -0.5 1.41
Kotsay RF 121 0.311 0.370 0 -0.1

 

Pitcher IP ERA WAR
Greinke 186 3.41 4.43
Gallardo 178 3.80 3.29
Marcum 175 3.77 3.3
Wolf 174 4.39 1.94
Narveson 168 4.59 1.5
Loe 156 4.73 1.15
Axford 72 4.51 -0.03
Saito 60 3.23 1.28
Hawkins 60 4.12 0.26

Win Talent: 79.2 WAR. Maybe I went a little overboard with Yuni’s defensive numbers, but I’m trying to be consistent. If he’s truly a negative 2 WAR player the Brewers aren’t going to keep him in the lineup. Then again, I think FSR is too kind to Braun’s defense in LF. Gomez has a big defensive reputation but FSR isn’t a big fan either. The offense is there, and the pitching is better, but it looks like their defense is still going to hold them back.

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