Author: dmick89

Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (10-13) at Arizona Diamondbacks (10-13)

The Cubs basically canceled yesterday’s game because they didn’t like the matchup. No other explanation makes sense to me – the rain had passed the Chicago area after an hour or two, and it didn’t look like there were further huge storms that could delay ther teams’ flights out of town. I think it had a lot more to do with Coleman vs Chacin. So instead of playing 13 games in a row, the Cubs figured they’d be better off getting an off day and moving this one to June 27. It means they’ll play 17 games in a row heading into the all star break, but without the makeup game they were already slated to play 13 in a row anyway, so no huge deal. Oddly enough they originally had an off day on 6/23, a three game series against the Royals, then another off day before the stretch leading up to the ASB. I guess you need that extra time to prepare and decompress when you’re playing such an important opponent (laughing). The Cubs rotation should be in better shape by then (knock on wood) so I think this was the right decision.

Team Overview

Arizona team stats (NL Ranks in Parens)

wOBA: .328 (4th)
UZR: -0.1 (9th)
DRS: -13 (11th)
SP FIP: 4.71 (15th)
SP xFIP: 4.19 (13th)
RP FIP: 4.26 (14th)
RP xFIP: 3.48 (5th)

Batters

Player wOBA ZiPS wOBA
CF Chris Young .311 .341
2B Kelly Johnson .267 .349
RF Justin Upton .366 .379
SS Stephen Drew .387 .345
C Miguel Montero .369 .338
3B Ryan Roberts .438 .328
1B Russell Branyan .356 .377
LF Gerardo Parra .334 .323

Cub killer Willie Bloomquist is on the DL with a hamstring injury. Replacement level third baseman Geoff Blum is also on the DL, and fellow replacement leveler Melvin Mora has a foot injury.

Pitchers

Player FIP ZiPS FIP
RHP Ian Kennedy 3.16 3.88
RHP Daniel Hudson 3.07 3.47
LHP Joe Saunders 5.16 4.60
RHP Barry Enright 5.69 4.85
RHP Armando Galarraga 7.75 5.20
RHP J.J. Putz 2.92 3.43
RHP David Hernandez 4.12 4.81

The Dbacks are still missing Zach Duke, who broke his hand in spring trianing.

Pitching Matchups

ERA, FIP, xFIP, and projected FIP are in parentheses.

Thursday: Ryan Dempster, RHP (7.63, 5.71, 3.69, 3.87) vs Barry Enright, RHP (6.65, 5.69, 4.75, 4.85), 8:40 PM CT

MB took an excellent look at Ryan Dempster the other day, which is much better than anything I could say here. The short version is that there does not appear to be anything wrong with Dempster, he’s just had some awful HR/FB luck.

The Cubs have already faced Enright this season. He went 6 innings and gave up four runs, including a homer to Tyler Colvin. He’s an extreme flyball pitcher and it’s not surprising that he gives up a lot of HRs. Given that whatever they’re calling The BOB these days is a hitters’ park, that’s not a great combination. Lucky for Arizona they’re facing the Cubs, who have failed to hit a HR in any of the games they’ve played at Wrigley when the wind is blowing out.

Friday: Carlos Zambrano, RHP (5.28, 3.62, 3.65, 3.67) vs Armando Galarraga, RHP (6.00, 7.75, 4.47, 5.20), 8:40 PM CT

Z followed up a great start vs the Padres with an awful one vs the Dodgers. However, one silver lining is that in those last two games Z has been generating ground balls at a much more Z-like rate. His season GB% is now in line with his past few seasons, which was a concern of mine. His peripherals are all looking good, he just doesn’t have the ERA to show for it.

Galarraga, on the other hand, has had some awful luck. Perfect game notwithstanding, he doesn’t have great stuff and a 26.7% HR/FB rate just makes it worse. He did manage to beat the Cubs in their last series, giving up four runs in seven innings while striking out five. He’s coming off a three inning, six runs allowed start against the Mets where his defense did not give him much help. See my above note about why his HR/FB rate doesn’t matter that much (laughing).

Saturday: Matt Garza, RHP (4.11, 1.24, 1.93, 3.82) vs Ian Kennedy, RHP (4.02, 3.16, 3.76, 3.88), 7:10 PM CT

Starlin Castro had a rough day behind Garza in his last start, committing three errors in one inning to give the game away to the Rockies. At least those unearned runs brought Garza’s ERA down to a level closer to the incredible peripherals he’s posted so far. He’s been Zambrano-like in his ability to seemingly go to a full count with every batter, but so far he’s exciting to watch.

Kennedy’s a decent pitcher who’s reputation was tarnished by a few bad starts early in his career at the pressure cooker of Yankee Stadium. The luck dragon has helped him out so far as far as BABIP and HR/FB are concerned. I’m taking his projections with a grain of salt though, as the decent numbers he posted last year came with an unsustainable .256 BABIP. Some of that comes from the fact that he’s a fly ball pitcher, but that has to move up.

Sunday: Casey Coleman, RHP (7.43, 5.88, 5.61, 4.97) vs Daniel Hudson, RHP (5.64, 3.07, 3.60, 3.47), 3:10 PM CT

Coleman’s start was pushed back because the Cubs didn’t feel like playing yesterday. I’ll be lazy and just repeat what I said in the last preview. Coleman was hit hard by the Dodgers in his last start, though somehow no balls left the yard. He’s been a little unlucky with balls in play, but so far he’s looked eminently hittable. So much for the Confidence Aura of Mike Quade helping him out.

Hudson was a 2008 draft pick by the White Sox, and he rocketed through their system all the way to the bigs in 2009. He was laughably traded to ARI for Edwin Jackson last season, one of the dumber moves by generally shrewd dealer Kenny Williams. He posted great numbers in 14 starts last year for the two teams, though his 2.45 ERA was largely a product of a .241 BABIP. It looks like he’s yet another flyball pitcher. Maybe I’m wrong about the Dbacks ballpark, but you’d think that these aren’t the kind of pitchers they’d want to stockpile.

Prediction

This could be a fun series. I think they split the series, with the Cubs winning on two of the first three days. I’m bummed the Cubs don’t face Joe Saunders, who is one of my favorite punching bags.

Continue reading “Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (10-13) at Arizona Diamondbacks (10-13)”

Cashner and Wells throw off flat ground

Andrew Cashner and Randy Wells continue to work their way back from shoulder and forearm injuries, respectively. They took a step forward today throwing from 90 feet off flat ground.

CHICAGO — Cubs pitchers Randy Wells and Andrew Cashner both threw from 90 feet on flat ground Wednesday as they continued their rehabs.

Cashner is on the disabled list because of a strained right rotator cuff, while Wells has a strained right forearm. There is no timetable for their returns.

“All is good,” said Cubs manager Mike Quade, who joked with the pair about being “payroll bandits.”

Payroll bandits? They’re making league minimum.

Continue reading “Cashner and Wells throw off flat ground”

Obstructed View Introduces Unobstructed Views

This blog has been active for exactly a month now and we’ve gotten hundreds of emails asking for us to provide user profiles. We’ve gotten dozens and dozens of emails asking that we provide a way for our readers to publish content to the blog. We hear about FanPosts and Diaries and we’ve responded. We listened.

Each registered user has a profile page. Your latest comments are included and you can add your twitter feed there as well. You can also write your own blog entry. We’ve set up Unobstructed Views to be something that is often called a community blog. If you talk about how great Obstructed View is, you may even get your article promoted to the front page. We’ll have an RSS feed on the sidebar that links to all new articles on Unobstructed Views. There’s a link the menu to it as well as a link taking you directly to the page where you can manager your blog articles. The Unobstructed Views menu item up top also has links to your profile.

We hope you can take some time to publish your own articles. Doing so is relatively simple. Scroll over Unobstructed Views on the menu, click on New Article Or Manager Your Articles. If you do the latter, click New Blog. It’s rather straightforward. When you are done with your article and want to publish it, change Publish to yes. You’ll need to select one of the two categories. Access should be set to Public. Enter a title for your article and then add your article to the editor. There are some icons to help with formatting.

There are several links below the editor (Image, Page break, More, Jcomments On and Jcomments Off). If you need to upload an image, go ahead. I don’t know why you’d want a page break. More creates a link to Read More. If your article is really long, this can be useful. Ignore the Jcomments buttons. Comments are enabled by default.

When you’re done with your article, change publish to yes and then click Save at the bottom. To view your article on the site, click Unobstructed Views on the menu. Then go to twitter, facebook and other social networking sites you frequent and let everyone know. You should also call your family and friends and have them tell 10 people each.

If there’s something you’d like to discuss, post something on it. If there’s a news item about the Cubs or MLB that we haven’t touched on, write something about it. Doesn’t have to be much. There’s no minimum character nonsense.

There’s also a new login for the site. Gone is the bar at the top of the screen and at the top of the sidebar is a new login module. Same username/password and you can now also login using twitter or facebook if you don’t want to register for the site.

Continue reading “Obstructed View Introduces Unobstructed Views”

There’s nothing wrong with Ryan Dempster

Ryan Dempster has gotten off to the worst start of his Cubs career. It’s led to some wondering what is wrong or whether or not he’s done. If we look at his ERA it’s gone from 2.96 in 2008 to 3.65, 3.85 and now 7.63. Obviously something isn’t right. We see a similar trend with his FIP (3.41, 3.87, 3.99 and 5.71). Once again, one of them is not like the others.

However, if we dig a little deeper we see the reason why. His HR/FB is sitting at 22.2% right now. Pitchers don’t have a skill here. The true talent skill for Major League pitchers is right around 10%. Dempster’s HR/FB rate from 2008 through 2010 was right about 10%. The unusually high HR/FB rate has resulted in only 59.3% of the runners on base being stranded. So far, you get on against Dempster, you’ve got a good chance of scoring.

xFIP adjusts HR/FB rate to 10% and we see that Dempster’s xFIP since 2008 has been 3.69, 3.76, 3.74 and 3.69 in 2011. He’s been as consistent as possible. His 2008 season resulted in a low ERA and lower FIP because he had a lower than average HR/FB rate. It was about average in 2009 and 2010 and way above average this year. The end result is that he’s basically been the same pitcher aside from home runs all four seasons.

Dempster’s BABIP is also unusually high. It’s .324 this year and it was .280, .302, and .294 in 2008, 2009 and 2010 respectively. Well maybe his line drive rate is through the roof like Matt Garza. Nope. It’s 17.5%, which is just a bit under what he’s averaged since returning to the rotation in 2008. Even stranger, he’s given up a few more fly balls this season and flies have a lower BABIP than grounders do. Also odd, 11.1% of the balls of the bat have been infield fly balls. It had been just under 7% in 2008 and 2010 and at 12.5% in 2009. Balls are just falling in for hits against Dempster and then he’s giving up a ton of home runs.

His control is the best it’s been since returning to the rotation. In 2008 his walks per plate appearances (minus IBB plus HBP) was .098. It was .089 in 2009, .109 last year and .085 this year. 8.5% of the batters he’s faced have reached base via unintentional walk or hit by pitch. That’s it. His strikeouts per plate appearances hasn’t dropped off either. It was .219 in 2008, .205 in 2009, .228 last year when he strukout a lot of batters and back to .206 this season.

The big difference? In 2008 1.6% of plate appearances against Dempster resulted in a home run. It was 2.6% the next season and 2.7% last season. It’s 5.7% this year.

If you give up as many home runs as Dempster has it’s difficult to say he hasn’t been hit hard, but when you look at the line drive rate that’s exactly what we find. Home runs still count of course and he’s given up a ridiculous amount of them. He has not had a good season so far, but there’s no reason from what I can see to think he won’t return to what he’s done the last 3 years. Everything seems to point to him being the same pitcher and he just happens to be rather unfortunate right now in that so many fly balls are leaving the ballpark.

Continue reading “There’s nothing wrong with Ryan Dempster”

Is this year’s team different?

On at least two occasions Alvin Yellon has commented on how different this year’s team is compared to last year. After Saturday’s win he said it for at least the second time that I’m aware of. The Cubs were down 8-5 and came back to win, which prompted Alvin to say this:

It’s absolutely clear to me that this team is different from last year’s. Last year’s team would have folded up its tent after going behind 8-5; this year’s club seems to know how to come back, having done so on several occasions already even in games they haven’t managed to come all the way back and win.

After the first time I heard this I wanted to take a look to see whether or not there was any truth to it. I realized I had better things to do. After this time though, I thought why not? How hard is it to go back and look at the first 20 games of the 2010 season (now 21 games)? It’s not that hard so I went ahead and did it.

Interestingly, the 2010 team was 10-11 after 21 games, which is the same record as this year’s team, but that doesn’t tell us whether or not Alvin is onto something or just making shit up.

On Opening Day last year the Cubs got blown out 16-5. The next closest game to a blowout last year by this time was a 6-1 loss. This year they’ve been blown out twice. Both teams who blew the Cubs out broke unwritten rules so we should probably count those as wins instead.

In the 4th game of the season last year the Cubs lost 5-4, but it was one of those games the Cubs blew early on like they have done a couple times this year. The Cubs had a 3-1 lead in the 8th and Cincy scored 4 to take a 5-3 lead. The Cubs came back though and nearly tied it and scored 1 in the 9th. There’s one game they came back even though they didn’t win, which Alvin specifically mentioned about this year’s team.

The next game the Cubs fell behind 3-0 early and then tied it a few innings later. They scored 1 in the 8th to win the game. A comeback win for the 2010 team.

A couple games after that they won 7-6, but they fell behind 4-2 by the bottom of the 7th. The Cubs then scored 1 to make it a 4-3 game before giving up 2 more and then scoring 4 in their last at-bat to win 7-6. Another comeback win.

The very next game was another one the Cubs came back, but still lost. Trailing 4-2  the Cubs tied it in the 4th, fell behind 5-4 in the 6th, tie it once again, then they got behind 8-5 and the Cubs still score another run.

The next game the Cubs trailed 2-1 in the bottom of the 7th. Cubs score 6 runs and win 7-2. Another late inning comeback by the 2010 team.

Also the next game, the Cubs trailed 4-0 in the bottom of the 8th to the Astros and scored 3. They lost 4-3, but that’s now the 3rd time they’ve nearly come back while they have come back to win 3 times.

A 9-3 win was the result of the Cubs scoring 6 in their last 3 at-bats.

The 20th game of the season saw the Cubs with a walk-off win in the 10th.

The 2010 team came back regularly, which was a sign of just how not good the 2010 team was. They kept having to come back to win and were still only 10-11 after those 21 games. The games they did lose they made many of them competitive by scoring runs late to keep it close.

This year’s team isn’t any different. They’ve blown some games like the 2010 team. They came back to win a few games like the 2010 team. They made games close by scoring late just like the 2010 team. In the end, this year’s team sits the very same 10-11 against even worse competition than the Cubs played a year ago. Last year the team had played 6 against Milwaukee, 3 against Cincy and 3 against the Braves. This year’s team has played 3 against Milwaukee and 3 against the Rockies. The rest of the teams are either bad or slightly below average like the Dodgers.

No, this year’s team isn’t the least bit different. They’re a little worse, but in terms of how they’ve gone about winning and losing, it’s the exact same as last year’s team and I suspect the same as the previous years as well as every other team. It’s called baseball. Sometimes you blow some games, steal some games late, come back yet fail to win. That’s the game.

Continue reading “Is this year’s team different?”

Cubs compared to their projections

I wrote this on Friday morning so it’s updated through Thursday’s games. I’m too lazy to update it to include Friday’s blowout loss.

This is something I’ll try to update once a month just so we can see where players are at compared to their projections. It’s something SG has done on RLYW a few times over the last couple years and I really like the idea so I’m going to borrow it. Mike Leake would steal it.

I’m using the projected wOBA and actual wOBA to calculate each players wRC. That’s based on the number of plate appearances of course. It’s the run value the player has contributed to his team.

Name PA wOBA wRC Proj-wOBA Proj wRC Diff
Starlin Castro 83 .405 15.1 .328 9.4 5.7
Aramis Ramirez 77 .374 12.1 .352 8.7 3.4
Alfonso Soriano 70 .375 11.1 .338 7.9 3.2
KosukeFukudome 41 .408 7.6 .342 4.6 3.0
Jeff Baker 31 .381 5.1 .321 3.5 1.6
Reed Johnson 16 .427 3.2 .302 1.8 1.4
Darwin Barney 61 .323 7.2 .293 6.9 0.3
Geovany Soto 65 .307 6.8 .363 7.4 -0.6
Blake DeWitt 14 .269 1.0 .319 1.6 -0.6
Koyie Hill 10 .229 .4 .272 1.1 -0.7
Marlon Byrd 77 .274 6.1 .335 8.7 -2.6
Carlos Pena 60 .261 4.1 .362 6.8 -2.7
Tyler Colvin 48 .234 2.3 .328 5.4 -3.1

There are sample size issues here to consider before you start saying how much a player sucks. Marlon Byrd is not going ot post a .274 wOBA this season. Get real. Colvin and Pena won’t hit as poorly as they have either. On the other hand, Castro, Fukudome, Johnson and Baker won’t hit nearly as well as they have. Overall, the offense has produced 8 more runs than expected so far.

Name IP RA FIP Proj-RA Proj-FIP Diff-RA Diff-FIP
Randy Wells 6 1.50 5.18 4.48 4.10 2.98 -1.08
Andrew Cashner 5.1 1.76 5.26 4.73 4.5 2.96 -0.76
Sean Marshall 9 1.00 1.35 3.85 3.51 2.85 2.16
Jeff Stevens 3.2 2.81 3.56 5.49 4.57 2.68 1.01
Jeff Samardzija 11 4.09 5.1 5.79 5.33 1.70 0.23
Kerry Wood 6.1 2.95 4.75 4.03 3.73 1.08 -1.02
Casey Coleman 10.2 4.41 6.2 4.89 4.45 0.48 -1.75
Carlos Marmol 9.2 2.93 2.29 3.25 3.07 0.32 0.78
Carlos Zambrano 25.2 4.29 3.91 4.18 3.89 -0.10 -0.02
Matt Garza 24.2 4.83 1.23 4.34 4.27 -0.50 3.04
Marcos Mateo 7.1 6.34 1.51 5.46 4.86 -0.88 3.35
Ryan Dempster 25 7.20 4.61 4.17 4 -3.03 -0.61
James Russell 9 9.00 6.57 5.46 4.92 -3.54 -1.65
John Grabow 6.2 10.16 8.11 4.71 4.53 -5.45 -3.58

Too small a sample to even talk about. Just wanted to post it so you could see it for yourself.

Continue reading “Cubs compared to their projections”

Should Brett Jackson be starting for the Cubs?

Brett Jackson was the Cubs first round pick in 2009 and the 31st pick overall. It was the first time that I could remember that the Cubs selected someone who knew how to get on base. Jackson took a lot of walks on college and there was never any doubt as to his ability to reach base. He also had a lot of strikeouts, which concerned some people. It didn’t bother me. It was the change in philosophy that I liked most. I liked that even more than I liked picking Jackson and I though he had a very good chance to become a star for the Cubs.

I had become too familiar with the Cubs and their tendency to draft guys in the top rounds who could not get on base. Guys like Luis Montanez, Corey Patterson, Ryan Harvey, Tyler Colvin and even Josh Vitters. These guys couldn’t take a walk to save their lives. Brooks Kieschnick was OK, but far from great. Off the top of my head I look back at Kevin Orie as the last position player the Cubs drafted in the first round who actually knew how to take some pitches. I can’t remember too much about the skills of the players before him. Guys like Doug Glanville, Earl Cunningham, Ty Griffin and Derrick May. I should look into that sometime, but it’s not important here.

In 2009 the Cubs finally chose a guy who could work the count and I was thrilled. Not only could he work the count, but he hit for average, power, played a premium defensive position in CF, reportedly had a strong throwing arm and could get on base. While none of these tools apparently grade out as excellent, they were all above average. For years the Cubs had their so-called five tool talents. The only problem with guys like Patterson, Felix Pie and Ryan Harvey is that they weren’t five tool talents. None of them could get on base at a high enough rate for that to even be considered above average. Not without hitting for a high average anyway. In Brett Jackson they had a guy who you could fairly easily see hitting .300/.400/.500. I don’t think the Cubs have drafted anybody in at least ten years in the top few rounds who you could look at and think they could someday reasonably hit that well.

Jackson could easily have flamed out. The strikeouts could have been too difficult to overcome. There was certainly a possibility as there is with any prospect. It wasn’t that I thought Jackson was a for sure top talent in the draft. I liked it because he could get on base and that’s something the Cubs have not valued highly enough in the top round of the draft.

It’s now Jackson’s age 22 season and after his first full minor league season in 2010 he had already played about half a season at AA. He returned to AA to start the season this year and all he’s done so far is post a wOBA greater than .500. That’s all. It’s a small sample of course. He’s not Barry Bonds or Babe Ruth. Don’t get that excited.

Jackson has 4 doubles, 2 triples, 3 home runs, 12 walks, 6 stolen bases and he’s slugging over .750. He’s hit at every single level he’s been and he’s probably not long for AA. He won’t continue to hit as well as he has so far, but I think it’s becoming clear that AA just isn’t presenting him with much of a challenge at this point.

He’s almost certainly going to get some playing time this season for the Cubs. It could be as late as September, but I think it will be sometime in June. I think he continues to hit well enough the Cubs simply can’t overlook how damn good he is. It’s also easier for the Cubs because it’s not like they have an awesome hitting outfield or anything. It’s a very poor hitting outfield. The Cubs left fielder, Alfonso Soriano, is projected to hit .338 (wOBA) this season. Marlon Byrd is a bit worse at .335, Tyler Colvin is at .328. Kosuke Fukudome is the best hitting outfield and that’s largely because his playing time against lefties has been limited. His projected wOBA is .342. Brett Jackson’s projected wOBA is .326.

There’s actually very little difference in the projections between Brett Jackson and Kosuke Fukudome who has the best projected wOBA among the outfielders. Since Fukudome, Soriano and Colvin are corner outfielders, they’re not as valuable as Jackson who plays a much tougher defensive position. Byrd is the most valuable outfielder the Cubs have, but he plays CF. He’s projected to hit about 10 points of wOBA higher than Jackson, which isn’t at all significant. Byrd’s updated projection would be a bit lower while Jackson’s would be higher, but Byrd would still be the better hitter as far as projections go. Defensively, I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine. Byrd isn’t a great defender, but word is that Jackson isn’t a terrific one either. It’s probably fair to consider them equal on defense.

As a result, Jackson would be the superior player to the other outfielders. His defense in a corner would  be better than any of the others and since Jackson has shown an ability to hit lefties while Fukudome has struggled, we can safely assume Jackson is the second most valuable outfielder in the Cubs organization.

We don’t want to bring him up to play a corner outfield spot though. That would be stupid. His value to this team in the future is as a CF and that’s where you want to keep him. Since Byrd is the better player right now, you keep Jackson in the minors even though he’s the team’s second best outfielder. If you can move Byrd at some point in the near future, go ahead and do so. There won’t be much of a loss, if any, if you switch to Jackson in CF. Jackson may even prove to be significantly better right out of the gate.

My guess is that is that Jackson hits well enough to earn a promotion to Iowa in the next 4 to 5 weeks and anytime after that he could get called up. I’d be kind of surprised if we don’t see Jackson sometime in June. I think the Cubs will make room for him in CF at some point. I know we’ve heard rumors about Marlon Byrd and the Nationals, but it’s too early for that. Each year it seems we hear about a player this early in the season the Cubs are looking to trade or even discussing with another team. Trades usually don’t happen this early in the season.

Continue reading “Should Brett Jackson be starting for the Cubs?”

Bunting

Mercurial Outfielder hates the bunt. He absolutley hates it. He’s not alone. There are a lot of people who think it’s a dumb strategy and there are a lot of people that think that one run is so important that it’s always a good strategy. The answer is somewhere in between and that’s what The Book focused on for 50 pages. I can’t possibly go over everything included in The Book so those who have it should turn to page 237 to get started.
Continue reading “Bunting”