Tag: tsuyoshi wada

Where We Stand Now

Following last night’s 6-0 loss to the Indians, the Cubs are a solid 34-28, but are 8 games behind the Cardinals who have hacked their way to baseball’s best 43-21 record. The Pirates are in 2nd place and after winning 6 in a row are a couple of games ahead of the Cubs. The Cubs remain 5th in the NL, which is good for a playoff spot, one game up.

The actual record is what’s most important, but runs scored and runs allowed often reflect a team’s actual talent better and do a better job at predicting rest of season wins.

Thankfully for those like me who are lazy, Baseball Prospectus calculates a few different winning percentages.

1st Order Winning Percentage is the team’s Pythagorean record (Pythagenpat is what BP uses). It’s based on actual runs scored and allowed.

The Cubs 1st Order Winning Percentage is .500. They’ve scored 250 runs and allowed 250 runs. That’s a 31-31 record. The Cardinals are at the top at .637, 9.8 games ahead of the Cubs. The Pirates aren’t all that far behind the Cardinals here. The Cubs are 8.1 behind the Pirates.

2nd Order Winning Percentage is based on projected runs scored and allowed. The projected totals are based on the team’s underlying stats. It’s an attempt to rid the team of any good or bad luck runs that may have scored by them or their opponent.

The Cubs 2nd Order Winning Percentage is .531, which is good for a 32.9-29.1 record. The Pirates are at the top of the division here at .607 and the Cardinals are at .599. The Cubs are 5.9 games behind the Pirates here.

Apparently 2nd order winning percentage also has a built-in penalty for hacking.

3rd Order Winning Percentage is like the previous one, but it adjusts for quality of the team’s opponents, home park, and league difficulty.

This one is the most thorough of the three and the Cubs fare the best here at .540 (still a bit under the .548 in real life). The Cardinals are at .608, 5.4 games ahead of the Cubs. The Pirates are .576.

The Cubs have been a bit lucky when it comes to 1st and 2nd order winning percentage, but pretty much right on when it comes to the 3rd one. The Cardinals, while very good, have been lucky. They’re still the best team in the division and possibly the best in the National League.

Baseball Prospectus’ Playoff Odds Report uses the current record and rest of season PECOTA projections to calculate the team’s record at the end of the year. The Cubs finish at 87.2 wins while the Pirates win 87.6. Basically a tie. More importantly, the simulations currently give the Cubs a 62% chance of reaching the playoffs. The division is pretty much over, and has been for some time.

Kris Bryant now leads the team in fWAR with 2.6 with Anthony Rizzo‘s long ongoing slump (2.5). Addison Russell and Chris Coghlan are tied for 3rd on the team with 1.3 each. Starlin Castro is dead last on the team with -0.5. He’s been much better in June after a horrible May. That’s one way the Cubs should be considerably better moving forward. Castro isn’t a great player and never will be, but he’s closer to league average and far better than a below replacement level player.

If you look at the Cubs lineup and their performances to date, the Cubs really don’t have a lot of areas they can improve at the deadline offensively. Jorge Soler should be back and hopefully striking out less than before. It would also be nice to see some more power for him, but overall, he’s been fine for a rookie. Dexter Fowler hasn’t been all that impressive overall, but he’s a placeholder, the Cubs hope. Chris Coghlan has been impressive, and that, along with Javier Baez‘s injury, may have put to rest any thoughts of Kris Bryant moving to LF at some point this year.

On the pitching side, I wanted to point out that currently, only 16 qualified pitchers have a K-BB% of better than 20%. Actually, better than 18.6%. Two of them are Cubs. Jason Hammel‘s is 21.4% and Jake Arrieta‘s is 20.5%. Kyle Hendricks sneaks in at 28th best with a K-BB% of 16.4%. The Cubs rotation has been good. The top 30 doesn’t even include Jon Lester who many believed was the team’s best starter entering the season.

Myles wrote here on OV at some point that he believed Arrieta to be the best. I didn’t buy it at the time, but have come around to agreeing with him on that one. I believe it was Myles.

Even the Cubs bullpen has come around somewhat, but bullpens are notoriously unpredictable.

The Cubs aren’t going to be messing with the top four in their rotation, but there is Tsuyoshi Wada at 5th. This is the one spot the Cubs are likely to look for an upgrade. If time permits, I’ll try to explore some possible options down the road.

The team they have now is for the most part the team that will finish the season with them. They’re in contention so they won’t be sellers, but they probably won’t be big buyers either. I do think that may have been different had Javier Baez stayed healthy, but he didn’t.

If the season ended today, the Cubs would be in the playoffs. That’s a good thing. An even better thing is that they’re better than the Pirates and I think they’ll finish ahead of them. They’re also fun to watch. Even more fun will be getting to see Kyle Schwarber in the lineup tonight.

Source: Baseball Prospectus

Original Where We Stand Now by Shawn D. Goldman

Journeymen of Tomorrow: The Story So Far (AAA and AA)

It’s been awhile since we’ve touched on the minor leagues this season. dmick has been busy. Seeing as I held the post of “minor league wonk” fairly recently, I thought I’d give a short synopsis of each team so far.

Iowa

Arismendy Alcantara has not been so great this year. His walk rate is down precipitously, so even though he carries a .275 average, he’s the owner of a .290 OBP. The power has shown up, especially in doubles/triples power, and it isn’t like he’s lost at the plate. I’d just like to see more power.

Javier Baez has been terrible so far. .149/.232/.311. He also leads the team in errors. It’s still quite early, but he isn’t exactly forcing the issue for the brain trust at this point.

Pet prospect Logan Watkins continues to impress in a utility role. He’s batting .265/.375/.353 in part time action; the only blemish so far is the high K rate.

Vitters is staying healthy; that’s important for him. Unfortunately, he’s also batting .196. I’m the only person on this blog who is still a believer (inasmuch as I believe he can be a major league regular or 4th OF), but it’s saying something when the FO reaches into the Iowa bag of outfielders and pulls out Chris Coghlan to replace Sweeney.

Christian Villanueva has less power this year, and he’s striking out more. Villanueva’s good 2013 put him back on the prospect map, but he’s taken a large step back this season. It’s early (of course), but he’s really struggled this year.

Kyle Hendricks has been pretty unlucky this year. He’s striking out a lot more people than he used to, which is obviously a good sign. The novice would point to his K/BB remaining pretty constant (3.7 last year, 3.7 this year) and think he hasn’t improved. This is the primary reason why K/BB is such a garbage stat. People don’t really care about the ratio, they care about how many more strikeouts a player has than walks. His K%-BB% is 18.4%, a huge improvement from last year’s 13.5%. The primary problem Hendricks has faced this season is an atypically low strand rate. It’s 61% this year, and his career number is more like 77%. You would expect nibblers like Kyle to have a lower and lower strand rate as they climb the ladder, but not this low. When that rebounds, his ERA will too (and his FIP is 2.57).

Pet Prospect Tsuyoshi Wada has been insane this season. 0.64 WHIP, 0.57 ERA, 37 K in 31.1 innings. If a SP gets traded or hurt, Wada has to be the next man up. If he isn’t, there is no justice.

Eric Jokisch has given up the longball this year but little else. His 1.19 WHIP will play, as will his 6.16 innings per start. Most impressive are his 5 walks in 37 innings.

Alberto Cabrera has been dynamite for the I-Cubs this year.

Tennessee

Jorge Soler is working his way back from his latest injury. His next injury is scheduled for May 14th.

I had a twitter spat with Sahadev Sharma and Harry Pavlidis last week about Kris Bryant. I said that I wouldn’t give Bryant a pitch in the ZIP of the plate. They said I didn’t get the purpose of the minor leagues and you wouldn’t want to admit defeat in any case. I maintain that pitching smart is still a part of development; pitching to Kris Bryant isn’t smart. He’s batting .295/.417/.543. He’s striking out too much, but who gives a shit. Kris Bryant is the best hitter in the Cubs minor league system. He’s also proving the critics at 3B right, and a move to RF is probably imminent. The little I’ve seen of Tennessee this year has been Bryant just not looking comfortable at third.

I told Sahadev that if I have to choose between pitching to Bryant or pitching to Rafael Lopez, I’m pitching to Lopez every time. Of course, Lopez has a higher OPS (.977 to .960) on the season than Bryant now. Rafael is on fire, turning in the best performance of a Cubs minor-leaguer this season. .310/.456/.521 gets a lot of people to notice.

Pet Prospect Stephen Bruno is working his way back from an injury last year, but still hitting ok. .250/.370/.369, mainly at 2B.

We can hopefully exhale about C.J. Edwards. His injury does not appear to be serious (with pitchers, they aren’t serious until they suddenly are). He’s been predictably sublime this season.

Corey Black is walking everyone right now. If he pitched against Mike Olt, I wonder what would happen (Mike Olt strikes out on 4 pitches).

Ivan Pineyro has been sturdy this year, but nothing special.

Armando Rivero is in AA for no reason. He is, right now, a MLB quality reliever. He’ll embarrass the minor leagues until he’s called up.

I thought Pierce Johnson was broken when he walked 8 in one game. Since then, he quieted down and delivered a yeoman’s performance yesterday. He’s walked more than he’s fanned. That’s not so good. I wasn’t as high on Johnson as everyone else was last year, and I think he’s showing his true colors now, more-or-less. I think I’d take at least 3 pitching prospects in our org over him right now (Tseng, Edwards, Blackburn), and there’s a possibility of a few more.

OV Daily Facepalm

dailyfacepalm

Weekend Roster Moves of note

No real surprises here, except maybe Blake Parker, who was pretty decent last year in 46 innings and change for the big league club.

Starlin Castro working his way back

Castro has played in a minor league game or two and should be back for opening day. Hopefully they'll take it easy on his hamstring in the cold weather next week, though Aisley said on twitter this morning that the extended forecast for the Cubs home opener is 62 degrees, for what little it's worth.

BPro scouting notes on various prospects

Jason Parks and his BP friends saw a bunch of Cubs players yesterday ($). Parks had great things to say about Almora's fielding, especially in Arizona's troublesome sun. Not much new on Javier Baez – big league pitchers with changeups are going to own him until he adjusts. Parks also had lots of things to say about Junior Lake, including that he still has the ceiling of a 30-30 guy but right now he's pretty much a 'fastball in the middle of the plate' guy. The tools are there. Lots of nice things to say about Christian Villanueva too, especially about his bat's future.

BPro NL Central preview

Ken Funck and OV Executive Overseer-in-Chief Harry Pavlidis preview the Cubs competition ($), answering five questions about each team. My favorite thing from this piece was suddenly realizing that Ryan Braun will be playing in RF, i.e. the sun field at Wrigley. Bonifacio is a switch hitter, and if he makes the team I wouldn't be surprised to see an inside the parker at some point. Billy Hamilton might hit 5 or 6 against them (dying laughing). They're also kidding themselves to even consider that Ryan Braun could win another MVP award from the BBWAA. They also seem pretty conviced that Shark (obviously) and Travis Wood (surprisingly) will be dealt. I don't really see it with Wood, *someone* has to pitch those innings for the Cubs for the next few years. 

Re: Last weekend

It's a strange feeling to see a Wisconsin basketball team down double digits and not be too worried. Not to mention these newfangled things like dunking and alley-oops, and scoring more than 50 points in a game. What team is this?

Of course, they'll go 2-19 on 3-pointers and lose by 25 to Baylor on Thursday because that's how this tournament works.