Colin Wyers looks at batting average and BP’s True Average to find the players with the emptiest batting averages. Starlin Castro and Darwin Barney at the top 2 and former Cubs Ryan Theriot and Aaron Miles are next. Jeff Baker is 7th and Marlon Byrd is 10th. As Colin notes, you can be a good hitter and still make the …
Cubs Are Pretty Consistent
I happened to realize that the Cubs just finished off their stretch where they played 18 straight games against an opponent projected to finish over .500. The Cubs went 12-15 in the early soft part of their schedule against teams like Houston and the Diamondbacks for a .444 win percentage. Then we figured the bottom would fall out as they …
Catcher Interference Skill
Mike Fast looks at the catcher inference leaders (batters, catchers, and even pitchers) since 2007 (subscription required). Carl Crawford, who reached base last night via catcher interference on Welington Castillo, leads the way. The top 15 batters in catcher interference have accounted for 60% of all interference calls (including playoffs and spring training) since 2007. Crawford has 14 and the …
Pirates (sorta) winning, attendance goes up
In a Hardball Talk blog today, Drew Silva reported that the Pittsburgh Pirates’ attendance is up relative to last year. A couple reasons why: 1. PNC Park is really nice. As reported below: According to Rob Biertempfel of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, ticket sales this year at the gorgeous PNC Park are already up 2.4 percent and are 14 percent ahead …
Garza ——–> MRI on elbow
The only starting pitcher the Cubs have had this year that’s been any good is now going to miss his scheduled start on Sunday and visit a doctor. He’ll have an MRI and knowing the Cubs luck will probably be out for the next 19 years. BOSTON – Believe it or not, the Cubs’ starting pitching went from worst to …
Cubs Baserunning
Baseball Prospectus has their sortable statistics available for 2011 now. The first thing I checked out was the Cubs baserunning numbers since they’ve sucked at baserunning for several years. So far they rank 21st in baseball in EqBRR (Equivalent Baserunning Runs) and are -1.0. They did rank 14th last year, but 28th the year before that. Darwin Barney has been …
Cashner to see Dr. Yocum about shoulder
I haven’t found an official report, but journalists have said this is so on twitter and twitter never lies. Search Cashner on Twitter Has anybody ever seen Dr. Yocum and gotten good news? UPDATE: Bruce Levine has it up on ESPN. Chicago Cubs right-handed pitcher Andrew Cashner will fly to Los Angeles on Monday to consult Dr. Lewis Yocum about …
Soriano’s Contract: Disability Insurance
It makes sense for Major League Baseball teams, when handing out large multiyeared contracts that are “guaranteed,” to have an insurance policy to lessen the loss to the organization should the player suffer a career ending inury or be otherwise physically unable to play for the team. Given Alfonso Soriano’s contract, I thought I’d be interesting to take a look …
An interview worth reading
Those who like stats are familiar with CHONE, which was the best projection system around. It was created by Sean Smith who is better known as Rally (rallymonkey5). Halos Heaven did an interview with him that I enjoyed reading so I figured I’d link to it here. My favorite is quoted below. What happens when you take a player who …
Cashner Back to Square One
According to Carrie Muskat and multiple other sources, Andrew Cashner reaggravated the injury that sent him to the DL and will return no sooner than the All Star Break. Awesome.