One picture to sum up the season so far

So, yeah. The Cubs have won every game in which they’ve scored more than six runs. They’ve won 80% of the games in which they’ve scored between four and six. And they’ve lost every game where they’ve scored less than four.

The bullpen has been bad, but it’s really not the Cubs’ main problem. They should be better than 0-12 when they score less than four, but you wouldn’t expect them to have a good record when they get that little offense. The problem is that they have twelve games where they’ve scored less than four runs. If they keep scoring two runs or less in a third of their games, they’re going to be in trouble. If the offense can pick them up, though, they’ll be alright.

Is Kosuke really better?

Kosuke Fukudome had a terrible second half last season. And he followed it up with a terrible World Baseball Classic, which led into a terrible, abbreviated, spring training. Then he went 0-4 in the season opener, and didn’t start in game two, and I, at least, concluded that he’d be lucky to get half the plate appearances in center field.

Then in game three, he went 4-5 with a walk and a home run, and he hasn’t really stopped hitting since. Through seventeen games (that is, through everything before the Arizona series), he had, in 77 PAs, a .371/.481/.661 line, with four home runs.

This isn’t just as good as his hot start last year, it’s better. After 77 PAs last year, Fukudome looked like he’d be the rookie of the year, with a .317/.442/.460 line. This  year, he’s hitting for a higher average, and as a result, getting on base more. His walks are down from 14 at this time last year to 13 this year – but last year, two of those were intentional, and none are this year. And he’s slugging 200 points better, because he’s hit more home runs in the first seventeen games than he did in the first 50 last year.

Can he keep it up? Well, almost certainly not. His batting average on balls in play is .413, which is unsustainable (although actually a little low for his also-unsustainable 31.3% line-drive percentage). And it’s a little higher than his BABIP at the same point last year, which was .387. So we can expect that average to drop a bit. But home runs aren’t part of BABIP, so if those keep up, he’s going to be much better.

In fact, he’s likely to put up a much better line for the whole season, anyway. Fukudome hit, after this point last year, .249/.346/.368. If he were to equal last season’s numbers, he’d have to go .241/.339/.333. It’s possible he could hit those average and on-base numbers, but I’m not sure he could equal that slugging number for the rest of the season if he tried. So it looks like, while Fukudome could still fall below the high hopes people had when he came to MLB, he’s in the midst of what we’ll look back at as something of an improvement on the season.

Cubs/Reds Series Preview

The Cubs go on the road for three are at home for three games against the Reds (I don’t know why I thought this was the start of the road trip). This is the one place we might really miss Mark DeRosa, since if memory serves, he just destroyed the Reds every time the two teams played in the last two seasons. But the current Cubs hitters have done alright against the pitching they’re going to face. First up for the Reds is Micah Owings, who no Cub has had 10 PA against. He could certainly put together a good game, but I fear his 129 OPS+ at the plate more than I fear him as a pitcher. The other two scheduled to go in this series are Johnny Cueto and Aaron Harang, who do have several Cubs who’ve accumulated 10 PAs against them:

This might be a good chance for Soto to break out – he’s done really well against the Reds’ starters in the past, and he’s got to start hitting some time. Lee has been hitting well over his last few games, too, and he’s a good candidate to continue that trend. Note that Z has pretty good numbers of Harang, too. I’m sure there will be comparisons between him and Owings, so I bet he’ll be looking to get that first home run on Thursday.

Harden, yet again, hasn’t faced many of the Reds very often. The whole team only has a handful of appearances against him, with Laynce Nix as the sole Red who qualifies for listing here. The smattering of appearances Reds batters do have against Harden, though, favor Harden. There’s more data for Lilly and Zambrano, who’ve been in the NL Central slightly longer than Harden.

The Reds who are not Brandon Phillips have hit Lilly rather hard, and you have to figure that’s the game the Cubs are most likely to lose. Zambrano has handled the Reds pretty well, holding their current players well below where their team OPS has been over his career.

The Reds are 7-5 right now, so they’re right there with the Cubs and the Cardinals so far. They’re not hitting very well as a team.  Hopefully the Cubs starters can keep their bats cold for another three games and get a few wins to before they start the road trip.

Soriano’s Season WPA

Soriano’s Win Probability Added is now at 1.28 over the first ten games of the season. That’s second in the majors behind Aaron Hill, who is at 1.30 I thought it might be interesting to see the ebb and flow of WPA for Soriano this season. I didn’t start the graph at 0 at bats, so it starts with the result of his first at bat (a home run), which is why it doesn’t start at 0 WPA.

The giant spike there is his 9th-inning go-ahead homer off the Brewers last week. The second-largest one is, of course, his home run yesterday to put the Cubs ahead in the eighth. Since they had another frame coming up to bat in, there was a chance they could take the lead back there, too, which is why yesterday’s home run didn’t add quite as much win probability as the one against the Brewers. In fact, five of the top six win-probability-adding events for Soriano this season were his five home runs. The other? A bases-loaded walk against Jeff Suppan on April 12 that extended the Cubs’ lead. The biggest negative event (good for -.104) was Soriano’s two-out flyout against Adam Wainwright in the sixth with the bases loaded on Thursday.

Cardinals Series Preview

Up next: four games against the Cardinals. Would be nice to see the Cubs take the series. Would also be nice to see Aramis and Milton Bradley healthy for the series, since neither of them played at all against the Rockies.

Here are the current Cubs versus the Cardinals’ starters who are going in this series. The graph only shows those Cubs with 10 PAs against the Cardinals’ starters. The “total” line includes all plate appearances by current Cubs against the Cardinals’ pitchers.

The Cubs have done very well against Wainwright and especially Lohse, with Ramirez in particular putting up cartoonish numbers against Lohse. Lee has had the worst success of any of these hitters against any of these pitchers, with a .334 OPS versus Wellemeyer, but he seems to be getting hot in the last few days, so maybe he can turn that around.

On to the Cubs’ starters versus the Cardinals.

The most noticeable thing to me is how the Cubs starters have fared against Pujols. Pujols has a career 1.050 OPS.  In other words, even Dempster, against whom he’s OPSing .788, has handled him fairly well. Meanwhile, Yadier Molina has done better than his career average against every Cub except Marshall, so he’s picked up some of the slack.

No matchup graph for this one to compare starter ERAs versus the other team – with Carpenter on the DL I’m not sure exactly how the Cardinals are managing their rotation, so I don’t know who’s starting which days.

Where things stand

Just a quick look at the numbers for the Cubs, and how they stacked up, as of the end of Monday.

Offense:

• OPS+: 108 (3rd NL, 8th MLB)
• OBP: .374 (1st NL, 4th MLB)
• HR: 11 (2nd NL, T-5th MLB)
• BB: 38 (2nd NL, 2nd MLB)
• R/G: 5.43 (5th NL, 11th MLB)
• Offensive MVP (by WPA): Alfonso Soriano, .90 (1st NL, 1st MLB)

Pitching:

• ERA+: 141 (5th NL, 9th MLB)
• K/9: 9.3 (1st NL, 2nd MLB)
• SO/BB: 2.10 (4th NL, 7th MLB)
• R/G: 3.57 (5th NL, 7th MLB)
• Pitching MVP (by WPA): Carlos Marmol, .55 (3rd NL, 6th MLB)

The Cubs have scored 38 runs and allowed 25 runs. Their overall record is 5-2, and their pythagorean record is also 5-2.

Based on these numbers, the generic BP playoff odds report projects the Cubs to 82.3 wins, third in the NL central, with a 26.4% playoff chance. The PECOTA-adjusted odds project the Cubs to 97.2 wins, first in the NL central (and in the NL), with a 69.2% playoff chance. The ELO-adjusted report is not yet available.

All in all, hard to complain about those numbers after a week in which the bullpen has seemed shaky, Bradley and Lee haven’t hit and Soto, Bradley and Ramirez have all missed time.

What was Reed’s catch worth last night?

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of Reed Johnson’s catch to rob Prince Fielder of a grand slam last night. If he didn’t catch that ball, the game would have been tied, the Cubs would have squandered a four-run lead, and odds are good that Dempster would have been pulled earlier in the game. The Brewers still got two runs in the inning, but they never got the game tied, and the Cubs escaped with a win.

But one way we can calculate it is WPA. Generally WPA focuses on batters and pitchers, but in this particular case, we need to only look at two possible outcomes to figure out what the play was worth. When Fielder came to the plate, the Brewers had a four-run deficit, the bases loaded, and no outs in the bottom of the fifth. They had a 28.7% chance of winning the game at that point.

After the play, even though a run scored, they gave up the out and the odds were good that they wouldn’t have a big inning. With men on first and third and one out in the bottom of the fifth, down by three, their odds of winning were 25.4%, per Fangraphs. Had that been a grand slam, though, it would have been a tie game, bottom of the fifth, no outs. That’s a 56.6% probability of winning for the home team.

In other words, Reed effectively robbed Fielder of .312 WPA on that one play. That’s almost three times more valuable than the most valuable offensive play of the game, Koyie Hill’s walk to drive in the go-ahead run in the fourth.

And a housekeeping note: no preview for the Rockies series. I plan on doing similar ones to the one I did for the Brewers series, but there are very few plate appearances for most of the hitters on either team against the others’ pitchers, so it wouldn’t be very interesting.

Brewers Series Preview

The pitching matchups for this weekend’s series favor the Cubs: Harden/Looper, Zambrano/Bush, and Dempster/Suppan. I probably don’t need to provide you with graphs or numbers to get you to believe that – avoiding Parra and Gallardo is a real boon, so thanks for setting your rotation up that way for no real reason, Ken Macha.

However, I will give you both. First, the starters’ career ERAs versus the other team. For Harden, this is in fairly few innings, for everyone else, it’s considerably more:

The Cubs have the edge there in all three matchups. The only thing that surprises me is that it’s not more lopsided. But just because Suppan has a good ERA against the Cubs doesn’t mean he’s actually a good pitcher, I guess.

Next, we have performance against the Brewers’ starters for current Cubs. I restricted it to ten plate appearances minimum, which is a threshold a lot of Cubs can’t meet. I guess it’s not that surprising, given that this team has turned over starters in two outfield spots, second base, shortstop, and catcher since the start of 2007. That makes me wonder if that kind of turnover is precedented for a team that’s won its division in the same span. But on to the graph! 

Two Cubs have had some success against Looper: Fukudome and Soto. Not surprisingly, they’re both barely over the 10 PA cutoff. And Soto won’t be playing tomorrow, so that doesn’t really help us anyway. Ramirez and Lee have hammered Bush, with Soriano’s line looking lackluster only by comparison. And Theriot and Lee have both gotten to Suppan in the past, though if they’re the only two who get to him Sunday night, I’ll be disappointed.

Here’s the Brewers versus the Cubs’ starters. In spite of being a young team, they’ve had less turnover than the Cubs in the last few years. But due to Cubs turnover, no Brewer has the ten minimum PAs versus Harden.

I think the conclusions to be drawn here are pretty obvious: Prince Fielder is a good hitter. Jason Kendall for some reason owns Ryan Dempster (in a surprisingly large number of plate appearances). Zambrano has had a little trouble containing Braun, Dempster hasn’t. Corey Hart wears sunglasses at night.

This series looks good for the Cubs, although the second series of the year doesn’t really matter. Off the top of my head, I think the Cubs lost four of six or four of seven against the Brewers in Chicago the first month of the season last year, and yet they ran away with the division. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping to see them jump out to a lead in the division early on.

Five predictions for 2009

With the Cubs’ season set to start today, I have five predictions I’ll make before the first pitch:

1. Ryan Theriot won’t regress very far.

I know a lot of people around Cubs blogs don’t like Theriot, and there’s a good reason for it. A lot of Cubs fans massively overrate the guy’s abilities, to an annoying degree. But his 2008 season, where he got on base at a .387 clip, wasn’t a fluke. His numbers might decline a little, because he’s probably not going to walk significantly more than he strikes out again. But for the last two years, Theriot has hit 21% and 23.2% of his balls in play for line drives. Last year his .340 BABIP was more or less in line with what you’d expect based on that line drive number, but in 2007 his .289 BABIP was 40 points below where you’d expect it to be. If Theriot’s BABIP had been about what you’d expect, in 2007, he’d have OBP’ed .353. He should do about that next year – maybe higher if his seemingly-improved patience wasn’t a fluke. We may have to accept that while Theriot doesn’t do a lot of things well, he gets on base at a decent clip for a shortstop.

2. The Cubs will win the division by close to ten games.

The Cubs are just more talented than anyone else in the division. They may not win by double digits, but if they don’t, it’s because they slack off at the end with a big lead. I honestly don’t think the Central will be much of a race heading into August.

3. Kevin Gregg will stick at the closer’s spot if he stays healthy.

Carlos Marmol will win the closer’s job on the Cubs some day. But it won’t be this season. Last year, prior to August 13, Gregg had a 2.29 ERA. Several bad outings after that – and after he hurt his knee – inflated his ERA. When he’s healthy, Gregg is a good pitcher, and it’s likely the Cubs won’t move away from him unless he goes on the DL.

4.  Geovany Soto won’t experience much of a sophomore slump.

Soto’s numbers last year were great, and he might fall a little short of those, but that’s a testament to the high bar he set, not to his talent. He’s legitimately one of the best-hitting catchers in baseball, and his peripherals don’t suggest he’s going to fall off much. In fact, he may improve rather than regress, because he’s still young.

5. Ryan Dempster will remain valuable.

Dempster isn’t going to have an ERA under 3 again. But last year wasn’t especially lucky. He allowed a .288 BABIP. Average is around .300. .290. I didn’t believe the Dempster-as-starter experiment was a good idea, but he proved me wrong.  He knows how to pitch, he has good stuff, and he’ll put up solid numbers.

Update: MB21 informs me in the comments that average BABIP for a pitcher is about .290, not about .300. I regret the error and blame it on the strict deadlines this blog keeps.

Be Careful What You Wish For

It’s always a mistake listening to Chicago sports radio, and the other day was a particularly bad day for it. Two separate shows on the Score were debating the “controversy” over who should be starting, Derrek Lee or Micah Hoffpauir. Lee, you see, is old and busted. Micah is the new hotness. And by “new hotness,” I mean, “is slightly younger than Derrek Lee, but has more career spring training at-bats than real ones because nobody thinks highly of him as a player.”

The mistake Lee made was having one of the best seasons I can remember from a Cub in 2005. He hit .335/.418/.662. Those numbers aren’t just way better than his career numbers, they’re way better than anyone’s career numbers. Lee put up another good season in 2007 after recovering from his 2006 broken wrist. His power numbers were a little down, but he still did well above his career average. Then, last year, he got hot at the start of the season, and then tailed off. Check out his monthly lines:

April: .364/.437/.682
May:  .234/.269/.411 
June: .283/.371/.404
July: .292/.339/.442 
August: .301/.411/.376 
September: .274/.344/.440 

The truth is, those numbers aren’t that bad in most of those months. Lee’s power definitely evaporated after his ridiculous start. And his May, crippled in part by an awful batting average on balls in play, was bad. But his OPS was in the high 700s in June, July, August, and September. When he wasn’t hitting for power he was getting on base, and when he wasn’t getting on base quite as well he was hitting more doubles. In the end, he finished pretty middle-of-the pack for a first baseman. And he did so while playing through what he later admitted was a fairly bad neck injury. Maybe he should have rested and tried to heal it, but he didn’t, and he still put up passable numbers while playing hurt.

Then there’s Micah Hoffpauir. Hoffpauir has 80 major-league PAs. In those PAs he hit .342/.400/.534, with two home runs. Which sounds great until you consider a few things:

1) 69 of those at-bats were versus right-handed pitching. There are more righties than lefties in the league, but not by that much.

2) That .342 average is on account of 25 career hits.

3) Five of those hits were in one game. 

4) That includes both home runs.

5) An error by Hoffpauir cost the Cubs a run in that game, and they ultimately lost the game by one run.

And that’s the real problem. Hoffpauir might be an alright major-league hitter. But he can’t play the field at all. The only position he can play without being a total disaster is first base. And at first he’s still bad, just not as bad as he would be anywhere else. Derrek Lee is overrated in the field, but he’s not really giving anything back to the other team with his glove, either. So for Hoffpauir to be a better choice than Lee, he’d need to actually outhit him, not just match him.

The projections don’t think Hoffpauir can do it. They’re basing this on his 80 major-league PAs and his minor-league career, so they’re taking into account the fact that he killed pitching in Iowa last year. All of these projections are for wOBA:

It’s not like there’s any disagreement there. Every one of the projection systems thinks Lee will hit better than Hoffpauir. If you convert wOBA into runs, the widest margin is CHONE’s, which thinks that Lee is worth about 19 runs more with the bat than Hoffpauir over the course of 700 PAs. The closest margin, from ZiPS, puts Lee at about 5 runs better than Hoffpauir. Lee is at least 5 runs better than Hoffpauir with the glove. So you can reasonably project that a team with Derrek Lee as its first baseman would win one to three more games than a team with Hoffpauir as its first baseman.

There are plenty of arguments to have about Lee. You can argue that his power’s gone, that he isn’t suited to hit third in the lineup, that the Cubs ought to be looking for someone else to play first base. But please don’t argue that a guy who couldn’t make it out of AAA until he was 28 is better than Derrek Lee.