Baseball prospectus recently published an article on the defensive impact of catchers that tried to quantify the differences in framing in receiving pitches. Framing is the art of holding a glove and positioning your body with the intent of convincing an umpire that the pitch you just caught is really a strike. It turns out that different catchers have a significant effect in turning balls into strike calls and that this effect is persistent across seasons and even if a catcher switches teams. Jose Molina was judged to be the best in baseball at turning close balls into called strikes. Our own Geo Soto is 10th best in baseball over the past 5 seasons with an estimated 7 runs per 120 games saved by his framing of pitches. Hill was near the bottom with 15 runs cost per 120 games. By contrast, Jose Molina saves his teams a staggering 35 runs every 120 games by the way he catches the ball. If this is even remotely accurate, Molina is one of the best bargains in all of baseball at $1mm per season. Albert Pujols doesn't quite produce that many extra runs over the course of a season relative to a replacement player.

This brings up a line of thinking for me in evaluating pitchers on the free agent market. You need to look at the skill of the catcher to whom they were throwing. If we have a pitcher from Pittsburgh that has been throwing to Ryan Doumit (the worst grade in baseball, costing his team 26 runs per 120 games) and you are going to bring him to Chicago to pitch to Geo most of the time, you would expect him to do significantly better since he would be getting more borderline pitches called as strikes. Tom Gorzelanny anyone? Whereas a pitcher that has been throwing to Molina or Jonathan Lucroy (another of the top receivers) could be expected to not put up the same quality of numbers for a new team with an inferior receiver.

Anyway, I hope that you will enjoy the article and its implications as much as I did. I thought it interesting enough to point out. The Economist magazine published a small piece on it earlier this week as well with a tie-in to the Moneyball movie.

I meant to get this up yesterday during the off day, but I had a couple of things come up (work. What a drag.) that made this take a while longer to get done than I had hoped.

With all of the gnashing of teeth over Lee and Ramirez and the pleasant surprises out of the outfield, I was interested to see just how our team had fared to this point versus the pre-season projections. I used Bill James for the projection numbers, and, in the interest of full disclosure, I was a little lazy and didn't factor in any reached on errors into my wOBA calculations, so they may be a touch low for a couple of guys that have reached on errors so far. All disclaimers aside, see the chart below.

NAME	Projection	wOBA	Difference	%difference
Castro	xxx	0.399	xxx	xxx
Lee	0.386	0.303	-0.083	-21%
Ramirez	0.375	0.222	-0.153	-41%
Soto	0.362	0.385	0.023	6%
Byrd	0.335	0.373	0.038	11%
Soriano	0.346	0.430	0.084	24%
Fukudome	0.349	0.398	0.049	14%
Theriot	0.319	0.298	-0.021	-6%
Baker	0.346	0.293	-0.053	-15%
Fontenot	0.334	0.335	0.001	0%
Colvin	0.316	0.400	0.084	27%
Nady	0.347	0.304	-0.043	-12%
Hill	0.289	0.204	-0.085	-29%

 

For those of you who aren't familiar with wOBA, see a good, easy explanation here.

The weighted average of the wOBA for the players listed above to this point is .342 for those of you that are wondering. The league average is typically around .335. I put Castro's numbers in there mainly for curiosity sake. There is a small sample size issue here still, but the kid is off to a GREAT start.

Now a couple of things stand out to me here. First of all, our outfield is flat out mashing. When you have a guy in Colvin with a .400 wOBA sitting behind three other guys, you have a pretty strong OF. This probably won't continue all year, but these guys are significantly outperforming expectations. Soriano specifically is having a fabulous year so far. Let's hope that he keeps it up. The only other two players on the roster that are outperforming their expectations are Castro (he didn't have a number, but he is certainly outperforming what would have been projected) and Soto by a slim margin. The gaping holes are obvious and everyone knows about them. Even knowing this, though, I was surprised at the gasping sucking sound coming from our third baseman. That is epic under performance right there. Surely it can't continue. Right? Anyone? Bueller?

One other observation. Given the lack of walks and lack of doubles power from Theriot, even his high batting average places him well below the team average of .337.

I thought this interesting information and thought that some of you might be interested as well, so I wrote it up and posted it a day late.

Discuss away.

With 20 yr old SS Starlin Castro's blazing start in TN this spring (.380/.396/.620), all of us are counting the days until his arrival at Wrigley. All (and I do mean all at this point) of the consensus about Castro is that he is a certain major league SS for many years. So what are we waiting for? Promote him already, right? Theriot isn't getting it done. Let's get someone in there who is the future and let him get going!

There are many arguments on both sides of this issue from a player development standpoint. I will leave it to others to debate the pros and cons of that. Here, though, a quick tutorial for those who may not understand the business side of the decision. It is certainly a factor.

When a player is called up to the major league club, there is a service clock that begins ticking. A club has a player under salary control for his first 3 years. If the team and the player don't come to an agreement on salary, the club can just renew this player's salary unilaterally. This happened to Prince Fielder in 2008, as some of you may remember. Its why Marmol got paid $430k in 2008 and $575k last year. After year 3, a player becomes arbitration eligible, but is still under the control of his current club. Typically, this means a large increase in salary, though not what the player would usually be able to demand on the open market as a free agent. (Marmol got $2.125mm this year in a deal that avoided arbitration.) The player remains arbitration eligible for an additional 3 years; so although the club is paying them more, they are still retaining exclusive rights to this player. Only after 3 years of arbitration is a player eligible to become a free agent. This is why young players that come up through the farm system are so valuable. The club has them under some form of cost control for 6 years; 3 years at a significant discount and 3 more at somewhat of a discount.

Now, there is a wrinkle in the arbitration rules. A player can qualify for arbitration after only 2 years in the major leagues as a "Super Two" player if he:

• Played in the majors for at least 86 days the previous season - AND -
  
• Is among the top 17 percent for cumulative playing time in the majors amongst others with at least 2 years, but less than 3 years experience.

So a Castro who is called up in April of 2010 could qualify for arbitration after 2012 even though he has not played three full seasons. In order to keep this from happening, the Cubs would need to wait until 17% of the players had been called up, or wait until Castro has passed into the 86 day window, thereby making this season not count towards "Super Two" status.

Waiting to call up Castro until June 1, will avoid the possibility of him achieving this "Super Two" status and keep Castro under cost control for the Cubs for an additional year. Now recognize that I am not making an argument one way or another for whether he should be called up now or after June 1. I am simply stating the business side of it so that everyone can see the back office considerations that go into making decisions like this. If Castro turns into an All-Star SS like many think that he will, this extra month in the minors could save the club $10mm or more in 2016. The question becomes, is one month of Castro now worth the potential savings of $10mm in 2016.

I hope that this helps shed some light on a topic that many casual fans do not understand.

 

 

I wanted to provide a forum for some mid season talk about some of the prospects in the Cubs system and possibly a mid-season grade for them in the wake of Starlin Castro's High-A All Star game MVP award the other day.

LINK

We will start with STARLIN CASTRO SS - STATS - I remember being surprised along with everyone else when the Cubs jumped Castro all the way to high A Daytona as a just turned 19 year old kid. The discussion at the time was that if he were to have success in high A, he immediately would become a blue chip prospect. I think that has likely happened as he has posted a line of .306/.338/.392 (BA/OBP/SLG) in 60 games and 218 AB so far. We can hope that some more power develops, but that seems likely both given his frame and given that this is a kid playing against players often 2-3 years his senior. Grade = B+ Stock = Rising fast

JAY JACKSON RHSP - STATS - Again, there was a good bit of buzz about Jackson before the season began. Already a top prospect in the Cubs system, the team was looking for him to continue to develop. As Josh has pointed out recently, he has been doing so with a 1.11 ERA in 40.2 innings since May 1. If this continues, I wonder what the chances of a promotion to AAA or even the big club might be? Grade = A- Stock = Rising

JEFF SAMARDZIJA RHSP - STATS - Jeff started out the year poorly in Spring Training and then continued to be a mediocre pitcher for the Iowa Cubs through the first couple of months. Although I am sure that he has been working on his secondary pitches, I had hoped to see a bit more from Samardzija so far this year. His last few starts provide a bit of hope and he pitched 8 strong shutout innings the last time out. However, the 6 hits and 4 walks show that he still isn't overpowering anyone's lineup. Expect to see Jeff continue to learn how to pitch as a starter in AAA and probably get a September call up if everyone stays healthy. Grade = C- Stock = falling a bit probably

JOSH VITTERS 3B - STATS - Sent to Peoria to begin the year after a good showing at Boise last year before the injury, we were told not to be too surprised if he didn't show much power at the beginning of the year, as this is a pitchers league. Well, I think that Josh has done quite well in this department and has quelled any worries about the lingering effects of his injury. Josh's line of .308/.346/.520 with 12 doubles and 13 HR does show that he is driving the ball well. It is also important to keep in mind that this kid is still only 20 years old. While plate discipline continues to be the concern with him, it appears that he may have a Vlad Guerrero approach: See ball, hit ball, doesn't matter where ball is. The concern is whether this can translate into higher levels. He has only 7 BB to go with 37 strikeouts in 250+ PA so far. Look for a promotion sometime soon to Daytona. Grade = B+ Stock = already pretty high, certainly hasn't hurt it.

ANDREW CASHNER RHSP/RP - STATS - The Cubs want Cashner to work as a starter for a couple of years in the minors in order to force him to develop his secondary pitches. I think that the jury is still out as to whether the team sees him as a potential starter in the bigs or a right-handed power set up arm/closer. Starting has treated Cashner well in 2009, however. Although his innings have been limited, Cashner has been lights out so far this year. A 1.85 ERA in 10 starts (although only 34 IP) with 27Ks and a .217 BAA is a pretty good line in Daytona. Grade = B+ Stock = Rising a bit I would think.

RYAN FLAHERTY 2B - STATS - A first round supplemental pick out of Vanderbilt last year, Flaherty performed well at Boise, although against primarily younger competition. This year he got bumped up to Peoria and is not doing well with the change. Again, it is important to remember that Peoria is a pitcher's league, but Flaherty's line of .236/.308/.435 is not very impressive when you see what Vitters has done in the same context. If Flaherty will continue to develop, he might be a Theriot with some pop, but he probably projects more as a super sub without DeRosa's bat. Ryan will need to figure it out at the plate if he is going to continue to progress. I would expect that he finishes the year in Peoria and gets looks at Daytona next year. Grade = D+ Stock = falling hard.

DAE-EUN RHEE RHSP - NO STATS - A 20 year old pitcher signed from South Korea, Rhee had Tommy John surgery in mid-2008 and has not made an appearance yet this year. Maybe Josh or toon has more information on him? Grade = none. Stock = Fell a bit with injury. Too soon to see what he will be after the surgery for another year or so.

HAK-JU LEE SS - STATS - Another South Korea signing, this thin 18 year old speedster is just getting started on his professional career with the Short season Boise Hawks. 3 games in, he has 13 AB with a line of .538/.571/.615 and 2 for 2 in SB attempts. WAAAYYY too early to tell what we have here, but Lee could be a Cedeno type player or much better at short. This is one that I will be watching for the rest of the year. Grade = none yet. Stock = same.

WELLINGTON CASTILLO C - STATS - Castillo is an all glove no hit catcher that really struggles against RHP. His overall .196/.242/.338 line means that he had better be an out of this world defensive catcher if he is going to ever see the big club. Fortunately for him, he glove isn't too shabby, but its just not good enough to carry that bad of a stick. Castillo will need to improve his hitting overall (only .222/.271/.378 against lefties this year) to have any chance of helping the Cubs. Grade = D Stock = Falling.

TONY THOMAS 2B - STATS - Thomas is a soon to be 23 year old 2B that is progressing right on target in AA this year after being jumped to high A Daytona last year. He is having a better year in AA this year than he did last year with a line of .283/.358/.450 His plate discipline has increased as well as he has already come close to equaling his walk total from last year in just over half of the plate appearances. I would imagine that Tony would finish the year out in TN this year. Grade = B Stock = rising modestly.

That is all that I have time for at the moment. I might try to come back and add a bit, but please feel free to jump in with anything else or anyone else that you would like to review or see reviewed on their performance this year.

Yesterday, the Cubs released 2003 #1 draft pick OF Ryan Harvey. Link. Harvey always showed a lot of raw talent, but never delivered on that. He could always hit a ton...when he made contact. The problem was that he could never distinguish balls from strikes. 1st ball-fast ball hacker. He hit .247/.298/.448 with 83 HR and 539 strikeouts in 471 career minor league games and was seemingly always injured. The guy did have a rocket arm and I would guess that the Cubs tried to convince him to change positions and pitch as he did in High School (ala a certain Carlos Marmol who started as a catcher.) If so, apparently Harvey refused, so he was let go. It is a good thing probably and the Cubs are treating him well by allowing him to go and try to catch on with someone else. He would have needed to be added to the 40 man roster at the end of the year, and he was not progressing to the point where that would have been a good move for the Cubs.

Continuing their lack of production from the John Stockstill era of the draft.

2002 1st Round:

21 Bobby Brownlie,

32 Luke Hagerty

36 Chadd Blasko

38 Matt Canton

Best pick of draft: Rich Hill? round 4, Micah Hoffpauir? round 13

2003 1st Round:

6 Ryan Harvey

Best pick of draft: Sean Marshall round 6

I'd go back farther, but it's just depressing. Other first rounders are: Luis Montanez, Ben Christensen, Corey Patterson, Mark Prior, (although to be fair, this 2001 draft wasn't too bad; even with the frustration that was Prior. It also delivered Theriot and Soto to the Cubs as well as traded parts Nolasco and Mitre.).

Anyway, good luck to Harvey. I am sure that he will land somewhere for a while at least. It really is too bad that it didn't work out, but I see him being a total bust and never sniffing the big leagues.

I know that all of these have been talked about in the past, but I figured that I would consolidate into a single fanpost all of the recent news.

Apparently, there is speculation that the Cubs are looking at Mark Teahan of the Royals as well as Ibanez. Might not be a bad deal and it might give Pie a place to flourish away from the bright lights assuming that he is part of the bait. LINK

I posted a while ago (you can delete if you want to, Al) that the Cubs might still be in the Peavy running. However, it looks like the braves might not be out of the contest just yet. LINK

However, now that the Cubs have signed Demp again, the scenario of Randy Johnson seems more likely than Peavy if they feel that they need another arm. Speculation (which is all that it is at this point) is that they are looking at Furcal as well. LINK

A little different topic, but Ryan Dempster has now apparently said that the Cubs weren't "prepared" for the playoffs. LINK

So, What would you do? Obviously, if you could get Peavy without giving up the entire farm, you would have to be interested. However, with a rotation that already includes Z, Demp, Lilly, and Harden, you are pretty stacked right there. Add Peavy to that mix and you have 5 #1 and #2 starters. Do you really need that, or are the dollars better spent somewhere else? I would lean towards a Teahan or Ibanex first, I think... You?

Looks like the Cubs are far and away the front runner for Peavy.

Cubs and Peavy

Towers on the Jake Peavy trade talks: "It's really come down to one club now – the Cubs. It's going to take awhile. They have a couple of players to pick from that we are interested in but anything with them is going to potentially involve a third team or fourth team. We're focusing only on them."

Towers said his conversations with the Yankees "were not substantial" and that he told Yankees GM Brian Cashman "until I get the go-ahead from Jake, I'm not going to" explore trade options with Cashman.

Link

I made a series of comments in a thread earlier today and figured that I would consolidate them for general consumption here.

Right now the Cubs are 4 1/2 games up. That didn’t seem like too much of a lead to me until I started to actually look at the numbers. I went through the remaining schedule and looked at the series that are left. Here they are with the record that I would guess for each:

Cubs:

2 vs Houston (1-1)

3 at Cincinnati (2-1)

3 at St. Louis (2-1) – they look like they have quit

3 at Houston (1-2) – man are these guys hot.

3 vs Milwaukee (2-1)

3 vs St. Loius (2-1)

4 at NY Mets (1-3)

3 at Milwaukee (1-2)

I think that you will agree that I have been VERY conservative here and erred on the side of predicting more losses than I think that we will actually have. Even so, that shows a 12-12 record for the rest of the year. That puts our final record at 97-65. Doing this would require the Brewers to go 17-8 over their last 25 games to tie. Looking at their schedule, that is certainly possible, but it would require them to play really good baseball over the next month and the Cubs to play rather poorly. If the Cubs can find a way to split the NY series and take two of three from Houston in Houston or take both of these next two games, that pushes their record to 14-10 through the end of the year and 99-63 overall, requiring Milwaukee to go 19-6 to tie. I don’t think that this will happen ex Sheets.

Let's look at it a different way now. Taking the home/road win% for the year thus far into account, the Cubs to this point have won 69.8% of their home games. With 8 left that means we should expect between 5 and 6 home wins. (5.6) Lets give a nod to a strong schedule and say they win 5. With 16 road games left and a 52.3% road record, they should be expected to win between 8 and 9 of these (8.4.) Again, give a nod to a strong schedule and say that they win 8. That gives a record for the rest of the season of 13-11 and an overall record of 98-64.

The Brewers have 15 games left at home where they have won 62.1% of their games. This would lead us to expect between 9 and 10 wins at home (9.3.) Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt due to a weaker schedule and say they win 10. They have 10 left on the road where they are winning at a 54.9% clip. This would indicate between 5 and 6 wins there (5.5). Lets say 5 since 4 of these are at Philly and 3 in Chicago against the Cubs. This leaves them with a 15-10 record the rest of the way and an overall record of 95-67 giving the Cubs a 3 game division win. The Brewers will probably do a bit better than this, but this is what their season average would indicate.

Finally, let's look at this one final way in order to try to account for the strength of schedule difference a bit more. The Cubs record against each of the teams that they are playing for the rest of the year:

5 left vs. Houston. (6-7 so far) = 2 wins pessimistically.

3 left vs. Cincinnati (7-5) = 2 wins.

6 left against St. Louis (5-4) = 3 wins.

6 left against Milwaukee (6-4) = 3 wins.

4 left against NYM (2-0) = 2 or 3 wins (small sample size alert.)

This gives the Cubs 12-13 wins lets say 13-11 and an ending record of 98-64.

The Brewers have:

2 against the NYM (2-2) = 1 win

4 against San Diego (2-1) = 3 wins, again pessimistically.

6 against Cincinnati (6-6) = 3 wins

4 against Philadelphia (1-1) = 2 wins

6 against Cubs (4-6) = 3 wins

3 against Pittsburgh (11-1) 3 wins

This gives the Brewers a record of 15-10 and an ending record of 95-67.

My point is only that BOTH teams are going to have to play significantly different than their season long norms in order for the Brewers to catch the Cubs. Throw in an injury to Ben Sheets here if his groin strain does turn out to be something and it tilts the table in the Cubs favor even farther. Not saying that the Brewers can’t catch the Cubs or even that they won't, only that I feel pretty good about where we sit even after the loss of three in a row. Back away from the ledge, people...

I assume that most everyone has seen this by now, but the Brewers had an altercation in the dugout last night reminiscent of Carlos Zambrano and Michael Barrett going at each other last year. This time it was Prince Fielder and Manny Parra. It looked like Parra was saying something not quite complimentary to Prince (insert fat joke here) and Prince didn't like what he was hearing.

If you haven't seen the "fight" (kinda looked like a couple pre-teens in sixth grade. Parra wanted no part of Prince.) You can go here.

Is this the turning point for the Brewers like last year was for us? Do they pull together around this and start playing well? Or, more likely in my opinion, is this the signs of the wheels coming off? Did the Cubs get in their heads that much with the four game sweep that now the team is going to come apart?

I guess that we will have to wait and see, but it is never good to see something like this on your own team.

I have to admit that I was wrong about Ryan Theriot. I did not think that he was good enough to be an everyday ML SS. Now, the jury might still be out for how well he will perform down the stretch and whether he will wear out in August and September again and so I am glad that we still retain Onedec as a backup. However, did you know...

Theriot currently has the 10th highest BA among ALL NL position players - and highest average on the team? (.319)

Is tied for 16th in the NL in runs scored? (38)

And best of all, is only making $428,000 this year!

Oh yeah. AND he's scrappy!

I saw a very interesting article the other day (maybe in Vineline? I don't remember, sorry) that compared the rookie seasons of our Matt Murton to one Henry Aaron. Now this information needs to be taken with a large grain of salt as Hammerin' Hank was 20 during his rookie season while Murton was 24. However, it is very interesting. I can't help but feel like Murton might have gotten a bit of a raw deal by not being allowed to play at the major league level. I don't think that he would have developed into Aaron, of course, but he may have been a solid .300, 25-30, 80-100 guy. Anyway, here are the stats: Matt Murton vs. Hank Aaron rookie year

	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLP	OPS+	TB
Matt Murton	144	455	70	135	22	3	13	62	45	62	.297	.365	.444	104	202
Hank Aaron	122	468	58	131	27	6	13	69	28	39	.280	.322	.447	104	209