Chris De Luca writes in today’s Sun Times about what went wrong this season. He traces this season’s problems back to the Cubs’ postseason loss to the Dodgers. Specifically, he says, Lou’s desire to get a more left-handed team was the problem. He says that the roster moves made to get more left-handed - getting rid of Henry Blanco and Mark DeRosa - hurt the team’s chemistry and hurt their offense. He also suggests they should have kept Jim Edmonds around. He then concludes by saying the loss to the Dodgers “was no reason to overreact and tear up a 97-victory team that could’ve been just as dangerous in 2009.”

Now, I’m not going to accuse De Luca of being a hypocrite. After all, it’s totally fair of him to accuse the Cubs of overreacting by seeking to get more left-handed even though he wrote on October 31, 2008, “The Cubs and White Sox reached the playoffs, but October only exposed their most glaring needs. For the Cubs, that is a speedy leadoff hitter, preferably one who’s a switch hitter or bats left-handed — anything that would allow them to move Alfonso Soriano out of the top spot.” The Sun Times’ Web site doesn’t allow you to view that far back in the archives, but believe me, I didn’t make that up.

But really, what did the Cubs tear up, anyway? Three Cubs hitters got more than 150 plate appearances and did not return this year: DeRosa, Edmonds and Ronny Cedeno. Nobody is seriously suggesting the Cubs would be better with Cedeno this season. So that leaves Edmonds and DeRosa. Edmonds is out of baseball, and the fact that nobody was interested in him as a 39-year-old center fielder tells me something. He was good last year, but keeping him would have been a Gary Gaetti-esque situation where you pull a fading veteran off the shelf and he gives you a few good months so you make the mistake of trying to get even more out of him.

So that leaves, in spite of De Luca’s protestations that he’s not beating this drum yet again, DeRosa. DeRosa would have been primarily playing  right field for the Cubs if he’d stayed, so he couldn’t have offset Mike Fontenot’s disappointing production and he couldn’t have played third every day when Ramirez was injured, at least without making Reed Johnson an every-day player, and given how Johnson’s played this year, you wouldn’t want that. DeRosa is hitting .256/.323/.456 this year. Part of that is due to an injury he’s playing through. His replacement, Milton Bradley, is hitting .261/.395/.399. Bradley is hitting for less power than DeRosa, but you might notice that his numbers are actually better than the guy he replaced.

Keep reading →

Technically, Carlos Marmol got the save in last night’s game, in spite of taking years off Cubs fans’ lives and filling cardiac wards across Chicago. Before the season, Marmol was projected to have somewhere around a mid-three ERA and be worth about 1.8 wins above replacement.

As it turns out, his ERA actually is around the mid-threes, standing at 3.53 before last night. But Marmol’s fielding-independent pitching (”FIP”) is up at 4.38. He’s walking one batter for every 1.25 he strikes out - the NL average is around 1:2. So Marmol’s control has not been encouraging. And he’s only been worth .2 wins so far this season, instead of the well over one the Cubs were expecting.

The Cubs have a couple of options about what to do with him, though. First, Marmol may very well have options left, in which case he could be sent down to Iowa to work out his control issues a little. Even if he doesn’t have options left, it isn’t hard to believe a guy who’s walking as many as he is is injured, so the Cubs could DL him and send him on a rehab assignment, if they so desired.

Second, the Cubs could basically do nothing. So far this seems to be Lou Piniella’s solution, given that he let Marmol close tonight and let him stay in the game even though he nearly coughed it up. To be fair, with a good player, sometimes you have to ride out a bad streak. If Lou had listened to the fans Micah Hoffpauir would be starting over Derrek Lee, and the Cubs would be several games back of the Cardinals this morning instead of tied for first. And Marmol definitely earned a chance to work out the kinks in his game with the performances he put up in the last two seasons.

Keep reading →

Over at Goat Riders of the Apocalypse, ajwalsh wrote a couple of days ago about how the Cubs’ window is closing. Even if the Cubs don’t win a thing this year, I don’t think the concept of a “window” really applies to this team.

The Cubs payroll presently stands at $138 million, according to Cot’s MLB Contracts’ spreadsheet. Most of this year’s team is going to be back next year; Kevin Gregg, Reed Johnson and Rich Harden are the only main contributors on this team that aren’t under club control for next season. A few players become arbitration-eligible and their price tags will go up, but right now the Cubs are obligated to pay out $120 million next season. They could conceivably sign a couple of pieces in free agency if they need to without increasing their payroll from this year, or even decreasing it slightly.

Pretty much everything that could go wrong has gone wrong for this year’s team. Harden has been lousy. Dempster has a broken toe and is out a month. Zambrano went on the disabled list. Aramis Ramirez was on the disabled list for a long time. Bradley, Soriano, and Fontenot have all been very bad. Lee looked washed up for a month before he started hitting. Soto fell off a cliff and then when he started to come around, got hurt. And in spite of all of those things, the team is a little bit over .500 and competing for a bad division.

I suppose the question one needs to ask is, is what happened to all these players representative of their talent levels as they age, or is it a fluke? For Bradley, Soriano, Lee, and Ramirez, the answer is probably a little of both. They’re all getting older and are going to miss time and their skills will decline. But the declines we’ve seen from Bradley and Soriano strike me as fluky. Both of them will finish with disappointing numbers on the season, and everyone will revise their expectations next season down somewhat as a result. But Bradley will be 32 next season and Soriano will be 34. Neither’s career is over just yet. They won’t necessarily be as good as they have been in their careers, but they probably won’t be as bad as they have been, either.

Keep reading →

Ground balls are valuable. They’re not* likely to result in hits, particularly of the extra base variety. When the wind is blowing out at Wrigley, they are even more valuable - an extreme ground ball pitcher can survive any type of weather.

*corrected

Since I’m playing around with some PITCHf/x data, I figured I’d share some stats on the Cubs’ ground ball pitching tendencies. This is sorted by the ground ball rate (grounders divided by pitches). I also included the rate of hits on ground balls - better known as the batting average on balls in play (BABIP) for grounders. The bottom rows give you the team totals and the league totals for 2009.

The Cubs’ GB/pitch rate is lower than league average. What this doesn’t factor in is the rate of whiffs, fouls and takes. If you miss a lot of bats, or throw a lot of balls, all the other rates (including ground ball) will be artificially lowered. But we’ll roll with it - for now.

The BABIP shows the Cubs have been a little bit unlucky on ground balls. And/or the infield defense isn’t as efficient as other teams’. In any case, we’re only talking about six weeks of data, so take your grain of salt.

Notes on the pitchers:

• Wells and Patton are getting a good amount of ground balls. Wells has been unlucky on his, while Patton has been on the lucky side. That’s a good sign for Wells, who may stick around with the Cubs for a while. So will Patton, though.
• Marshall has the highest GB/P of the starters (Wells excluded). Zambrano and Dempster are ground ball pitchers, but their rates take a hit since they both miss a lot of bats. Dempster in particular is a whiff machine. Zambrano misses the zone a lot, too.
• Cotts has bad luck, but a good GB/P rate. That’s from a guy who really can’t throw strikes.
• It makes me a little nervous that the late inning guys appear to be fly ball pitchers. Marmol misses bats more than enough, so I hope my next pass, which includes other batted ball types, paints a prettier picture.

Just to be clear, I’m not introducing a new stat here, it is too flawed for repeat usage. Still, it’s a decent barometer on a important aspect of pitching.