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. …
5 Cubs Trends Sure to End
The Cubs are five games into the 2011 season, so naturally we know everything we need to know about this team. But for anyone who thinks the sample size isn’t quite large enough to draw conclusions, I just want to correct a few lies the opening weekend may have told us. For the record, I wrote this before today’s game, …
Diamondbacks @ Cubs
The projections below are from the 2011 ZiPS spreadsheet. I’m using last year’s bullpen numbers. Diamondbacks wOBA wRC Cubs wOBA wRC Willie Bloomquist .296 .409 Kosuke Fukudome .343 .602 Dan Johnson .349 .612 Starlin Castro .332 .545 Justin Upton .381 .731 Marlon Byrd .338 .564 Miguel Montero .339 .553 Aramis Ramirez .350 .594 Chris Young .339 .536 Tyler Colvin .318 …
Kevin Millar Can Die in a Fire
I happened to be driving in the car when Kevin Millar went on the Waddle and Silvy Show on ESPN 1000 so I heard this live and I was pissed as hell I wasn’t able to transcribe any of it because I was screaming at my radio by the end of it. Thankfully, Paul Sullivan took the trouble of doing …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Cubs Officially Won’t Lose Them All
What have we learned so far in the two games the Cubs have played? Not a ton, but there are some things about how the games have gone so far that stuck out to me. 1) Scoring runs is going to be an ordeal more often than we’d like. The Cubs have scored four earned runs in two games and …