I hope I don’t get fired by Tim, Adam and Berselius for writing a post that is only loosely tied to sports, but after reading a couple threads on the fantastic The Book Blog over the last week, I’m going to do it. The first thread I’m not going to bother looking for as it was mostly about fast food. The most recent thread though, that’s what I want to talk about. It’s about the dilly-dallyers in restaurants and how those establishments deal with those people.
Continue reading “TGIF Is A Replacement Level Restaurant”
Author: dmick89
Entire team lands on DL
Andrew Cashner left yesterday’s game with tightness in his shoulder and had an MRI after the game. The results revealed a tear in his rotatar cuff. It’s what they are calling a mild strain, which is the same thing as a mild tear.
Randy Wells also landed on the DL becasue of pain in his forearm. Hendry has said it has nothing to dow ith the elbow, but it’s one of those areas of the arm that you often hear about before the elbow itself.
Casey Coleman has been re-called from AAA and will make Wells’s start on Sunday. No other players have been called up yet to replace Cashner whose next start was scheduled for Tuesday. Coleman’s average projection for this season is a 4.45 FIP.
Cashner exits game with tightness in his right shoulder
Andrew Cashner was taken out of today’s Cubs/Diamondbacks game in the 6th inning with tightness in his pitching shoulder. He had thrown the ball as well or better than any starter so far. He’d averaged about 94.5 mph on the fastball, but on one pitch in that 6th inning you could see him lower the shoulder after the follow through. The trainer immediately ran out to see what was wrong and Cashner was replaced by the team’s best wide receiver.
Tightness in the shoulder isn’t abnormal for pitchers and may not be a big deal. I’m hoping it isn’t, but I’m also not optimistic. You could clearly see something started bothering him after that last pitch and that’s troublesome. We won’t hear anything else for at least a day. If Cashner goes to the disabled list, he’ll likely be replaced in the rotation by Casey Coleman.
Continue reading “Cashner exits game with tightness in his right shoulder”
The Stats We Use: Baserunning
Believe it or not, baserunning is a relatively simple aspect of the game to quantify. If you think for a moment about the possibilities in baserunning, there aren’t really that many of them. There are several of course, but it’s not as many as you may think. For example, a runner on 1st when a single is hit can move to 2nd or 3rd. On rare occasions he may move all around the bases. A runner could be on 2nd when a single is hit and he can go to 3rd or home. The baserunners could also be thrown out. There could be a baserunner at 1st when a double or triple is hit. There are stolen bases, caught stealings, pickoffs, and a number of others.
That probably sounds like a lot and it’s more than I made it sound like at first. However, we have a run expectancy table to help us quantify the value of these baserunning events. Before we go further, the run expectancy table is the heart and soul of advanced baseball metrics. The run expectancy table tells us exactly how many runs have scored in the various situations. The run expectancy table isn’t anything new. It’s not a newfangled set of statistics or anything like that at all. George Lindsey was writing about the run expectancy tables in the early 1960s. It’s been around for a long time.
Here’s the simplest of run expectancy tables using 1999 to 2002 data. Between those years at the start of an inning, teams averaged .555 runs that inning. If the first batter made an out, it decreased their RE to .297. That out cost the batting team the difference between those two in runs. With a runner on 1st and no outs, teams scored .953 runs. Imagine a single is hit. 1st and 2nd is 1.573 runs. Let’s say the baserunner goes 1st to 3rd on that single. The RE with runners on the corner and no outs is 1.904. The baserunner added the differene (1.904-1.573) in runs by going from 1st to 3rd rather than 1st to 2nd. That’s how many runs in that situation that baserunner provided his team. Imagine that same runner was thrown out at 3rd instead. The RE with 1st and 2nd is 1.573 runs again, but now there’s one out and only a runner on 1st base. The RE dropped to .573 runs. The baserunner cost his team exactly 1 run by trying to add the extra base. As you can see, the out is far more valuable than the extra base. It’s not even close. The extra base added .331 runs while the out was worth -1 run. The out in baseball is especially valuable once a batter reaches base.
It’s why a lot of people aren’t huge fans of the stolen base. Stealing 2nd with noboby out adds .236 runs while getting thrown out at 2nd costs you .68 runs. It’s why people say you have to be successful close to 70% of the time to make it worthwhile.
That table is the average. There are actually different run values depending on the state of the game. A successful stolen base in the 9th inning of a tie game is worth more. The same is true for other baserunning events. The close and later the game is, the more valuable those extra bases are. However, the outs are also more costly.
Anyway, you simply apply the RE table (in-season of course) to the various possibilities. Baseball Prospectus provides Equivalent Baserunning Runs (EqBRR). It includes the number of runs a player was worth on balls hit on the ground or ones hit in the air. It includes the value of runs after an out was made, stolen bases and of course the outs made in the process. There are actually five different categories that are added to get EqBRR: Ground Advancement, Air Advancement, Stolen Bases, Hit Advancement and Out Advancement. The first thing you do is comb through the play by play data and find the number of opportunities in each area. Then you calculate the average for all players and compare each to the average player in terms of runs added or subtracted.
If the average player went first to third on a hit X number of times while another player did it X+3 then he’s above average in that category. The same is true if a player advances on an out as well as the other categories more than the average player does so. Let’s say a player advanced from 1st to 3rd three more times than average. The value of those three additional bases is the difference between men on 1st and 2nd and men on 1st and 3rd times the number of times the player advanced above or below average. Making outs on the bases as well as stolen bases obviously affect baserunning.
There’s a little more to EQBRR than I’ve made it sound like. If you have a subscription to Baseball Prospectus you can find many of the links discussing each category in this article.
Few players each season are worth more than 6 runs on the bases. Last year there were only 10 and the year before just 5. Only 7 players have been worth -6 or fewer runs on the bases over the last two seasons. Most players are going to end up in the -2 to +2 range. Baserunning, at the team level especially, can be quite valuable. For a player like Carl Crawford, it’s certainly part of his value going forward (at least until he ages and the speed declines). It’s an important part of the offense that has to be added in when we’re looking for that one tell-all metric (WAR).
Berselius and I have written about the Cubs awful baserunning in the past. He did so on this blog. The Cubs, as a team, are nearly -50 EqBRR since 2006. That’s an average of -10 runs per season. A win is 10 runs, or 10.5 to be precise. The Cubs have cost themselves 5 wins over the last 5 seasons. Not that big of a deal when you think about it, but the Cubs are also very poor defensively. In two ways teams can improve noticeably, the Cubs are very bad at those areas. The Cubs are left looking for positive contributions from their offense and pitching. It hasn’t gone so well on the offensive side of things since the end of World Ward II. Since the end of the war, the Cubs have had exactly one season in which they have been better than league average on offense. That was 2008 and they were only a few percentage points better than the league average.
Mike Quade made an intelligent decision at the end of spring training when he said the team would not be running as much. Earlier he had said they were going to be aggressive, but I’m guessing 7 stolen bases in all of spring training compared to 8 times being caught helped change mind. The best thing the Cubs can do to improve on the bases is to stop trying to steal them. They’re not good at it. No reason to insist on doing something you aren’t good at. I’m not good at surgery and I’m not insisting on performing one. Know your limitations. I’ve ripped on Quade before, but to me, that’s worth a lot.
Random Thoughts
Three games doesn’t tell us anything, but they were three predictable games. The offense struggled, which they’re going to do all season long. That’s especially true against right-handed pitchers. The defense let the team down late in Sunday’s game. Rather than a tie, a defensive mistake allowed the Pirates to take the lead. The pitching staff was solid, which they mostly will be this season. The Cubs made at least one mistake on the bases and nearly one or two others. That’s going to happen a lot this season too.
I didn’t single any player out because I don’t think it’s important. People say it’s a team game and it is even though we can measure the individual contributions of each player. Three games in there’s no reason to single anyone out for mistakes. The point I’m making is that the Cubs played about as well as we can expect them to play this season. At least in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. Strength: pitching. Weakness: everything else. That’s how it was this weekend and that’s how it will be much of the season.
Starlin Castro is fun to watch. I’d forgotten just how much fun. It’s obviously more fun when he collects 8 hits in 3 games as well as a walk. He showed more power in spring training and he’s shown the ability to drive the ball a bit more so far this season. Don’t go expecting 25 home runs like And Counting is or you’re likely to find yourself booing him at some point. If he does hit 25 I’ll pretend I agreed with AC about the 25 home run prediction. It will make me seem smarter that way.
He’s not a finished player, but he’s still the youngest player in the game.
The top three starters for the Cubs lost two of three games vs the top three of the Pirates. That’s probably not a good sign, but it’s also not exactly their fault. When you score 7 runs in the two losses combined, you can’t expect to win too many ballgames. You’re certainly going to lose more than you win.
How many more times do we have to hear about Carlos Pena saving errors? Is he the only 1st baseman who scoops balls out of the dirt? Isn’t that kind of important for 1st basemen? I’m betting that the ones who struggle at picking it out of the dirt are the ones who find themselves in AAA for a long time. It’s part of the job. Maybe Pena is better than the average player. I can buy that, but this talk about him saving X number of errors is irrelevant unless you’re going to tell me how many errors the average 1st baseman saves.
I’m all for Darwin Barney playing 2nd base. May as well see what he has. Play him every day. I’m not expecting much. In fact, I expect he’ll be sent to AAA by the end of May. Play Colvin every day too. That’s what I’d do. However, if the Cubs want to win games, you platoon Tyler Colvin and Alfonso Soriano, not Fukudome and Colvin. You platoon Blake DeWitt and Jeff Baker, not Baker and Barney.
Marlon Byrd batting 3rd doesn’t bother me. That’s the least important spot in the top 5 spots in the lineup according to the extensive research in The Book. That seems a good spot for him. Speaking of Marlon Byrd, he’s been awful since the middle of last season.
It’s nice to see Alfonso Soriano come through. I always like that because I fear he’s going to get booed out of the stadium if he doesn’t. And when he doesn’t, he usually is booed out of the ballpark.
Carlos Zambrano left with cramps on Saturday. It’s a problem he’s had throughout his career. It seems to me that Z has something that’s causing that. Even if it isn’t, big deal. He was ready to come out of the game anyway so it doesn’t really matter.
Matt Garza allowed 12 hits, struckout 12 and walked nobody in 7 innings. If that’s happened before, it hasn’t happened often. Most of the hits were seeing eye grounders. Overall, he had a really good first start and it was easily the best of the three so far.
I’m glad Kerry Wood is wearing a Cubs uniform again. I just wish he’d be wearing the Cubs uniform while playing for the Yankees or Red Sox. I’d like to see Wood win a championship and I’m afraid that’s not happening for him with the Cubs.
Carlos Marmol remains the up and down pitcher we’re used to seeing. One day he looks like he’s literally the best relief pitcher not named Mariano Rivera. The next day is a different story.
The Cubs play 3 at home vs the Diamondbacks before hitting the road. They have Randy Wells pitching tomorrow afternoon followed by Andrew Cashner and Ryan Dempster. I’m excited to watch Cashner pitch in the rotation. A quick look at the probables shows the Cubs probably have the pitching advantage in at least 2 of those games (Wells and Dempster). No idea as far as Tuesday’s game goes.
Pitcher Usage
The table below shows the number of pitches thrown in each outing.
| SUN | MON | TUE | WED | THU | FRI | SAT | |
| Ryan Dempster | 103 | ||||||
| Carlos Zambrano | 85 | ||||||
| Matt Garza | 102 | 114 | |||||
| Randy Wells* | |||||||
| Casey Coleman | 90 | ||||||
| Andrew Cashner* | |||||||
| Carlos Marmol | 24 | 17 | |||||
| Sean Marshall | 24 | 25 | |||||
| Kerry Wood | 16 | ||||||
| James Russell | 74 | ||||||
| John Grabow | 23 | 11 | 21 |
||||
| Jeff Samardzija | 30 | 49 | 22 | ||||
| Marcos Mateo | 20 | 24 | 3/31 | 30 | |||
| Jeff Stevens** | 22 | 89 | |||||
| Justin Berg | 14 |
* Disabled List
** Not on 25-man roster
NL Central Questions & Answers: Pittsburgh Pirates
This is our final NL Central Questions & Answers and this time Pat Lackey from Where Have You Gone Andy Van Slyke answers our questions.
Obstruced View: Neal Huntington – yea or nay?
WHYGAVS: I think Huntington's done a pretty good job thus far for the Pirates; far better than his two predecessors at the very least. The Pirates last three drafts look about as good as three drafts can without the benefit of time to properly evaluate the players and while he didn't hit a home run on his highest profile trade (the Jason Bay deal), he's swung some some nice lower profile moves to bring in guys like Evan Meek and Joel Hanrahan and James McDonald and a few minor leaguers (Bryan Morris and Jeff Locke, to name two) heading towards the Majors. The focus has been mostly on rebuilding from the bottom up and I think that that's where it should be, so it doesn't really bother me that much that his moves to strengthen the big league club in the interim have flopped a bit.
Obstruced View: Will Pedro Alvarez and/or Andrew McCutchen be on a winning Pirates team?
Continue reading “NL Central Questions & Answers: Pittsburgh Pirates”
Probably something about nothing
Prior to tomorrow's game we'll be posting the final NL Central interview. I had planned to post it this evening, but I thought I'd throw something else together.
Anyone who has read much of anything of mine over the years knows that I'm not one of those people who goes nuts over pitch counts. That doesn't mean I don't pay attention or that I don't think there are certain things that should be done. I do. My opinion is that you take the starter out after 3 times through the order unless he's an elite pitcher. That's basically the idea and I don't want to dive too much into it because it's not really important.
In today's 6-3 Opening Day loss to the Pirates, Ryan Dempster had what I'd call a so-so start. At times he looked excellent and he made a couple huge mistakes. In the end, Dempster allowed 6 runs in 6.2 innings. Mistakes happen. These won't be the only ones Dempster makes this season and the ones today aren't any more or less important than ones he'll make down the road.
In those 6.2 innings Dempster threw 114 pitches. The previous three seasons Dempster threw 91, 98 and 95 pitches in his first start of the season. It was rather cold today at Wrigley Field. It's been cold early in the season before in Chicago. I was kind of surprised to see that in 2009 Dempster's second start he threw 110 pitches. The following year he threw 114 in his second start. Last year he threw 120 in his third start and 111 in his next.
Not being injured in the past doesn't mean he's going to be injury free in the future, but it's clear he's thrown high pitch counts very early in the season in the past. My initial reaction was probably a little too negative. I'd have preferred Dempster not throw over 110 pitches today, but I generally don't like to see pitchers on the mound at 110 pitches anyway.
It's not because of the potential of injury down the road. It's because by that time pitchers are almost always working on the order the fourth time and the offense has a significant advantage at that point. I also understand that managers would don't tend to take that into consideration even though it's something Greg Maddux has talked about many times. So it's clearly something that is talked about amongst the players and/or coaches. I think managers prefer to use their starters in fear of their bullpen or in fear of having to use too many relievers in the future.
It's probably not a good idea, but I don't think it should have irritated me either. Dempster has handled it in the past and was certainly near or above 100 pitches in his next to last start in Arizona. I hope we don't see him throwing over 110 pitches in several consecutive starts, but until that happens I think I overreacted.
Series (and NL Central Team) Preview: Pittsburgh Pirates (0-0) at Chicago Cubs (0-0)
Site Update: The login on the menu has been replaced by a login at the top of the screen as it was annoying having to scroll over the login to actually login.
It’s baseball time! Since the Pirates are the last team we have left to do and the first team the Cubs play, we’re going to combine my usual series preview with my Pirates season preview. My Cubs win projections based on the system I used to make all of these previews is included below the Pirates content. Thanks to MB for his additions to this preview.
Continue reading “Series (and NL Central Team) Preview: Pittsburgh Pirates (0-0) at Chicago Cubs (0-0)”
NL Central Questions & Answers: St. Louis Cardinals
This is Obstructed View’s 4th interview with an NL Central blogger that we’re posting this week. Steve Sommer of Gashouse Graphs has taken some time to answer these questions and I’m most appreciative. We’ll have our final interview (Pirates) tomorrow evening after the Cubs/Pirates game.
Obstructed View: Cubs fans are all too familiar with Ryan Theriot. Aside from the 2008 season the team was probably better off without him in the lineup. What do the Cardinals see in him? What are your thoughts on the signing?
Steve Sommer: I think the Cardinals saw him as someone that wasn’t Brendan Ryan. They believed that Ryan didn’t take the game serious enough and thus had to go. Theriot was available cheaply and is the kind of player that Tony loves. I’m not a big fan of the deal. With a pitch to contact philosophy and pitching staff suited to that philosophy I’m not a big fan of trading plus-plus defense for average at best defense and a slight offensive upgrade.
Obstructed View: Gotta ask it. Is Pujols staying or going?
Steve Sommer: Honestly I’m 50/50 right now. I think management realizes that they will have to make a big time offer, and they will make a close to market rate offer. That said I think they also know that there is a line that they probably shouldn’t cross, even for Albert.
Obstructed View: Is the issue between LaRussa and Colby Rasmus over or is going to pop up again this season?
Steve Sommer: It will probably pop up, but I do not think it will be as big of a deal as in years past. I think Tony will unnecessarily sit him against the occasional lefty, but on the whole I think they will coexist just fine. Colby’s the third best position player on the team by a decent margin, and I think even Tony will see that this season.
Obstructed View: How important was the loss of Adam Wainwright and do the Cardinals have the ability to replace his expected production?
Steve Sommer: It’s huge. It’s probably a 3-4 win loss, which in a division like this will definitely impact their playoff chances. They won’t replace his production. I think McClellan will do ok, but best case scenario is he’ll log ~50-60 less innings than Wainwright would have at a one run higher ERA. While that’s still a pretty good year for a guy making the reliever-starter transition, it’s still not Wainwright type production.
Obstructed View: Are the Cardinals going to contend? What has to happen for them to be in that position?
Steve Sommer: I think they’ll be in the race as I think all of the teams are flawed in some way. I don’t see any team really distancing themselves from the rest of the division. Just like the rest of the teams in the division, the primary thing they need to contend is health. They have some decent depth in certain spots, but they cannot sustain many injuries and hope to stay in the race. I think they also need to have an unexpected year out of at least one of the middle infielders.
Obstructed View: How do you think the NL Central ends up 2011?
Steve Sommer: I’ve gone on record saying the Reds will win the division. I think they have the most balanced team in terms of offense, defense (where they really stand out from the other teams), and pitching. I think the entire division will be a fight to the finish between the Reds, Brewers, Cards, and probably the Cubs too and will likely be decided by which team is the most fortunate.
Continue reading “NL Central Questions & Answers: St. Louis Cardinals”