Category: chicago national league ball club

The end game slipped out of reach for Dusty’s as much as the ball did the same for Bako.

It shouldn’t be surprise; Dusty’s not here for his in-game strategy, and given it was only one inning, it probably wasn’t a big difference whether Hollandsworth got a hit or not. Still, you hate to see things go down horribly in flames like that.

Here’s what I would’ve done
– In the 8th, after Mercker and Barrett got kicked out, don’t immediately replace them with Bako and Remlinger. Stick starting pitchers you’re not going to use tonight – Maddux because he pitched last night, Clement because he couldn’t hit if you needed him – until their spots come up in the order or you’re back in the field. If those spots come up, you’ve got your choose in pinch hitters, and if they don’t, you can do a virtual double switch, maybe positioning Bako farther down the order. (In Weaver On Strategy, Earl Weaver explained he used this same concept)
– Don’t double switch when you’re the guy you’re bringing in isn’t a really good hitter. Given that Rey Ordonez has slipped to new levels of horrible, there’s no reason to have him bat, but he’s the last reasonable option at SS. If they left him in Ramon’s spot, they wouldn’t have the problem of Grudz potentially having to take his spot in the field – Mark’s just batting for the pitcher. Dusty has a bad trend of reflexing double switching if the pitcher is do up, even in situations like this where the pitcher isn’t likely to pitch next inning anyway and the guy he’s bringing in isn’t the best hitter they could’ve used the next inning.
– Pinch hit for Bako, regardless of the bench situation. I’m pretty certain anyone on the team would take playing out of position as catcher over losing. Bako did not give them their best chance of winning in that situation.

None of this is mind warping stuff.

Argh, Reds just went ahead.

The rule is – or, let’s be honest, Jim Baker’s rules, since I’m just using the template for his old e-mail newsletter and occasional BProspectus column – is that you don’t neccesarly do the same matchups the same day to avoid boredom. (This handly lets me write some of this the night before instead of squeezing it in around my normal schedule!) I’ll try to note when I’m skipping around from what’s mathamatically correct.

Also, unless I have a tremendous amount of fun or massive support or lots of free time, I’m only doing this gig for this week. (Regularly?) Don’t worry, I’ll talk about silly wrestling things eventually!

Best Game Of The Day
CHC (40-30) vs STL (41-29) – did it
MIN (38-31) vs BOS (36-31)
Carlos Silva (7-4, 4.13) vs Derek Lowe (6-5, 5.25)

5.25 seems pretty bad, but 5.25 after an 18 inning streak without an earned run seems even worse with a nice upside. What’s the amazing reason for his turnaround?

H/9 IP
2003 9.6
APR 12.7
MAY 13.3
JUN 5.6

Less hits = less runs, who’d thunk it. (He’s getting more groundballs too.)

Worst Game of The Day
DET (31-38) vs KCR (27-40) – sure why not
Gary Knotts (4-1, 4.25) vs Darrell May (4-8, 5.96)

I’d like to admit right now I have no idea who Gary Knotts is. It happens.

There comes a point in every season where, despite what they may read in Gammons columns or hear from Bud Selig, there are not really 30 teams do not have a chance for a World Series. There’s really like 15 who have a chance without some sort of miracle happening. Kansas City has realized they’re not one of those teams and have started to jettison those they can. Compartively, Seattle may get clued in sometime in Novemeber. Tampa’s going to enjoy their current ride, but hopefully even they’ll realize when it’s over, it’s over.

I think in most situations, I’d think the Tigers should take that same perspective; enjoy your surge towards averge-ness which this Kansas City series will undoubtly provide, but be ready to move anyone who’s worth anything in the very near future. The point is win now, or do whatever you can to win soon, and playing for 3rd doesn’t work.

There might be a exception here, given how completely horrible they were last year (although, oddly enough the worst team in the last 25 years wasn’t good enough to make ESPN’s list of the worst teams of the last 25 years). If you trade away players for prospects, aren’t you also trading any new regained credibility with them? There needs to be more some semblance of a plan here if anything that’s been gained is to be kept, rather than routine rebuilding.

Trying to make sense of my thoughts here: if you can talk the A’s into Urbana or whatever, good. But instead of going after B or C level prospects (getting an A level guy for a rent-a-player seems a thing of the past), the Tigers would benefit greater from trying to move one of their (other) bigger albatrosses.

Higginson $8.85mil this year, $11.85mil next year
D. Young $7.13mil this year, $7.13mil next year
J Johnson $3mil this year, $4mil next year
(Outside of Pudge, everyone else is just for this season or low for next year.)

It hasn’t taken a high salaried team to win in the AL Central the last few years, and there’s no reason to think that’ll change next year. They’ll only be carrying $37mil in salary for next season if they don’t make any moves, but if they do clear off the roster some more this season, they’ll have room for another free agent driven improvement next season.

Closest Game of The Day
LAD (37-31) vs SFG (39-32)
Jeff Weaver (5-7, 4.53) vs Jerome Williams (6-5, 4.59)
SF’s win last night moved them into first place; it’s all wacky percentages because the Giants have played 3 games more at this point.

MLB.com has a pitcher matchup preview page. Usually, they’ll give you 20+ words about the pitcher’s last start and his season so far. Here’s what they put for Jeff: “Weaver got his revenge by beating the Yankees.” There’s not quite the personal subtext for this one.

You could have a long debate if Jerome Williams or Dustin Hermanson is the second best starter on this team, but either way you look at it, they’re not close to Jason Schmidt.

VORP of the five guys with the most starts
Schmidt 33.0
Hermanson 6.6
Williams 5.7
Rueter 2.0
Tomko -10.2

Hmm, one guy very much better than the rest of his colleagues on the Giants, how familiar.

Highest Position Player VORPs
Bonds 56.6
Tucker 16.3

Oddly enough, even though Bonds is worth more than one and half Schmidt’s, Bonds is only 347% better than his next closest, while Schmidt is an even 500% better than his next closest. (I suspect those numbers might be different if compared the players vs the team average, but I’m not sure.)

Lopsided Game of The Day
NYY (44-24) vs BAL (28-38)
Jon Lieber (5-4, 4.83) vs Erik Bedard (1-2, 4.33)

I’m thinking Baltimore might be making frequent apperances in this category; two good teams and one really bad in the same divison don’t make for a great combo.

I didn’t think Lieber would be a great fit for the Yankees; he’s a guy who will create lots of defensive chances while keeping the ball in the park, but this isn’t a team built around taking advantage of lots of defensive chances. ESPN.com has recently added DIPS to their sortable stats, and it’s always fun to play with a new toy.

Leiber’s actual ERA is 4.83, but indepedent of defense, you’d expect it to be 4.38. That’s about a half a run on the bad side, but still not as bad as I expected it to be.

Erik Bedard is another AL guy I’m not familair with, but the notes indicate this may be a make or break start for him. I’m not sure why, because he’s got decent numbers the last couple times out.

06/04 3IP, 5R, 86Pitches
06/12 5IP, 2R, 99Pitches
06/17 5IP, 1R, 86Pitches

Obviously, going deep into games has been a problem for him (longest outing of the year is 6 2/3rds), and he’s shown the inconsistency you might expect from a young pitcher, but it’s not like the O’s have a surplus of good pitchers at the moment or are contending for anything but draft position already. Might as well give him the full season to figure if he can consistenly make it to 100 pitchers before bottoming out.

It’s 2! I’ve actually got to do stuff today and am busy! Well, not really do as much as stand and watch and think “I could do this five hundered times faster? Why am I here? Why do I have to stand when my foot hurts?” but you’d really have to be here to understand.

Luckily, all night games.

I think, now, I’ve got the person style I actually wanted to emulate:

Best Game Of The Day
CHC (39-30) vs STL (41-28)
Greg Maddux (6-5, 3.91) vs Jason Marquis (6-4, 4.26)

This is the battle for the NL Central, for now. Cubs lead the season series slightly, 6-5.

As I mentioned previously, earlier in this season I thought it might be doubtful Greg Maddux would get to 15 wins for in another consecutive season, as he was pulling off a decided lack of Ws. He’s picked them up more often lately.

2004 Wins/ERA
APR 1/5.65
MAY 3/3.54
JUN 2/2.21 (with 2 starts to go)

Maddux has also had a rep as a slow starter this last few seasons. So was his early win totals pretty similar to previous years?

2003 Wins/ERA
APR 3/5.13
MAY 1/4.63
JUN 2/4.74
JUL 3/3.60
AUG 4/2.25
SEP 3/3.18

2002 Wins/ERA
APR 2/4.37
MAY 4/2.15
JUN 1/3.10
JUL 3/1.46
AUG 1/2.54
SEP 5/2.91

2001 Wins/ERA
APR 2/2.48
MAY 2/2.54
JUN 5/2.13
JUL 5/2.82
AUG 3/4.08
SEP 0/5.19

Sorta. He’s got 6 now, and he’s had 7, 7, and 9.

But the larger picture is the yearly high win totals come from constant good months with a varying amount of help, and a lot from the one month you’re good and everyone else around you helps too. So even if he wasn’t on pace right now, you’d have to give him the leeway of having that W filled stretch down the road until he’s proven he can’t do it.

That April ERA has gone up every year.

Worst Game Of The Day
DET (31-37) vs KCR (26-40)
Maroth (5-4, 4.23) vs Gobble (3-4, 4,81)

Maroth would have to have one of the more spectacually bad last 15 weeks of the season to lose 20 games for the second straight year. I think it’s a safe assumption this isn’t going to happen. Is he actually pitching better this season, or is he just getting better support from the hitting and the bullpen?

SN W/L %
2003 .391
2004 .570

That’d be a Yes.

Currently, Maroth ranks as second most hurt by his bullpen in 2004; he should probably have another win if he got decent help. He was thirteenth last year, and I wonder if that means the bullpen has been worse for him or if it’s just more of a factor because everything else has turned around for him.

It’s nice to be confirmed 20 Losses does not neccesary mean the end of a pitcher’s usefulness, and perhaps in the future managers might follow Trammell’s lead and just let them pitch with 19Ls.

Closest Game Of The Day
OAK (38-30) vs ANA (38-31)
Tim Hudson (7-2, 2.78) vs Bartolo Colon (4-6, 6.04)

Can’t get much closer than that. Well, if OAK had played and lost one more game.

The rivalary between these teams will likely go down to the wire for the AL West crown. While no one outside of the Lone Star State actually believes the Rangers are in this race for the long run, by playing better than any of three also runs in the AL East, it’s going to make it hard for the Wild Card to come from a left coast.

Unlike other divisions, they’ll mostly get to settle it on the field.

OAK @ ANA 06/22-06/24
ANA @ OAK 06/29-06/30
no July
no August
OAK @ ANA 09/24-09/26
ANA @ OAK 10/01-10/03 * Last Day Of the season

In between those last two series, OAK gets a four game versus Seattle (who perhaps might’ve come around to throwing in the towel on the season by then) and ANA gets TEX.

Lopsided Game Of The Day
PHI (36-31) vs MON (22-45)
Brett Myers (5-3, 4.14) vs Livan Hernandez (3-7, 4.42)

Expos As Bizzaro Team, Part 34 In A Never Ending Series: On any other team, or perhaps with any other man, isn’t Frank Robinson fired by now? The bottom fell out on a team that hasn’t always lived up to expectations and certinatly shouldn’t be this bad this season. Three years is usually all the time an ownership group is willing to give to a medicore manager, and Robinson’s results have been well below medicore this season. Not to mention the players all hating him.

Did everyone catch up to Livan this year? Did he just get old between trips to San Juan? He was having an all time great hidden pitching season, but the easy numbers don’t seem to support it this year.

SN W/L %
2003 .647 (should’ve been 16-9, was 14-10)
2004 .647 (should’ve been 7-4, is 3-7)

Dead on. Can you believe it? He’s the unluckiest starter in the NL this year. (Zach Day is 6th)

Perhaps, since the Expos should be ready to move, this is the guy the Dodgers and the White Sox of the world should go after.

Because it’s a Monday and MLB is anti-Monday, two thirds of the league is off today; just those teams who are getting in four game intra-division series this week.

Best Game Of The Day

LAD Odalis Perez (4-3, 2.88) vs SFG Kurt Rueter (3-6, 5.03)

Dodgers start the day 1.5 games up. With the Padres having dropped 8 of the last 10 and fallen back to 4 out, things might have finally sorted themselves out in the NLWest.

ERA
NYM T Glavine 2.07
CHC C Zambradno 2.25
SFG J Schmidt 2.26
MIL B Sheets 2.59
FLA C Pavano 2.81
FLA B Penny 2.83
HOU R Clemens 2.84
LAD O Perez 2.88

2.88 ERA gets you 8th best in the league, surprsingly, though another good start will move him up to at least 5th. Gange’s obviously being picked for the All-Star team, so even though Perez has been hot lately, he needs to pick up actual decisions if he wants to make it.

Best Game Of The Day (alternate)

OAK Rich Harden (3-4, 3.95) vs ANA John Lackey (4-8, 5.51)

Similarly, Oakland starts the day up 1.5 on the Angels – but Texas sneaks in between at half game out.

Given Oakland’s imploding bullpen the last week, it’s sorta weird to still see them in the lead. The other teams just have been losing with slightly less theatrics:

Last 10
OAK 5-5
TEX 5-5
ANA 4-6
SEA 7-3

Both these teams have problems (relief, starters – Lackey’s gotta do something here) where the most obvious solutions to them (Everyday Eddie, Garcia) aren’t likely, because Seattle won’t trade within the division. And even if they would, these two losing gives Seattle the impression they might catch up (they won’t), so they’ll hold on to their guys for a while longer.

I know starters are more important than relivers because they’re going to give you more innings over the course of a career, but in terms of things which can affect your team’s psyche, bullpen issues have to easily be worse than a fifth starter. You only have to deal with the bad guy in your rotation once ever five days, while you’ve got to worry about finishing the game any time you have a lead.

AL K/9 (100 PA min)
ANA F Rodriguez 14.09
BAL B Ryan 12.23
MIN J Rincon 11.50
DET U Urbina 11.16
MIN J Nanthan 11.02

Worst Matchup Of The Day
ARZ Casey Fossum (1-5, 6.62) vs SDP Ismael Valdez (5-3, 4.85)

Fossum’s last five starts
05/25 @SFG – 5.1 IP, 4R (L)
05/30 @LAD – 5.0 IP, 2R (L)
06/06 vLAD – 4.0 IP, 5R (L)
06/10 @BAL – 6.0 IP, 0R (W)
06/16 vNYY – 4.2 IP, 8R (L)

So I’m thinking the pen should start getting ready now. Partly this is because he’s still probably recovering from a shoulder injury, but I’d think he’d be getting better and he obviously had a big step back vs the Yankees.

Poor sad O’s. Way to kill Scott.

Looking again in at Petco’s effect:
Padres Home Batting: .316 OBP/.346 SLG
Padres Away Batting: .349 OBP/.417 SLG

Yow. Maybe it’s just the Padres?

Padres Home Pitching: .314 OBA/.393 SLG
Padres Away Pitching: .327 OBA/.427 SLG

See, that’s not nearly as bad. I think Padres the hitters are just behind the pitchers in figuring out what they can do there (or maybe it’s just the wrong group of hitters.)

Worst Matchup Of The Day, Alternate
PIT Josh Fogg (4-5, 6.57) vs Tim Redding (3-6, 5.00)

Pirates have the worst record over all today. If you total ’em up, PIT vs HOU is 61-72 and ARZ vs SDP 61-72, so whatever.

Astros have really tumbled, dropping 7 of the last 10, partially thanks to the Cubs, and probably aren’t in full panic mode today only because they got a game back in the standings on Sunday. Even though they’re fifth, they’re not so out of it that they couldn’t still make a run with all this time left…

However, coming in to this month, the Pirates were in a similar position, 6.0 out, thinking they might pull of a surprise run – and then the wheels came off, falling to a baker’s dozen out. Astros have a lot more talent than the Pirates, but with four teams ahead of you, you’re going to lose ground to someone every night you don’t win, so they’ve got to start figuring it back out quick.

Might As Well Do All Of ‘Em Game Of The Day

CLE C.C. Sabathia (4-3, 2.95) vs CHW Scott Schoeneweis (5-5, 4.30)

This kinda sorta means something, seeing as the White Sox are 1.5 out and Cleveland is only three behind them, but it’d hard to see the Indians making it any closer than it is right now (or maybe after this game, because this doesn’t seem to be a favorable matchup for the hometeam.) It’s taken a 7-3 run by the Indians and 4-6 by the White Sox (giving up 10+ runs to the Expos? How does that happen?) to even get it this far.

Plus, with Omar hurt, who do they have left to trade? Not that Omar should get you much, but most everyone else falls in either the “sucks” or “young and want to keep around” categories, so it’s tough to imagine them getting a midseason boost to get them past the Twins and the WSox

Your Chicago White Sox Starting Pitchers!
M Burehle 15 GS 4.07 ERA
J Garland 14 GS 4.64 ERA
E Loaiza 14 GS 3.82 ERA
S Schoeneweis 13 GS 4.30 ERA

D Wright 4 GS 8.15 ERA
F Diaz 2 GS 11.42 ERA
N Cotts 1 GS 5.70 ERA
A Munoz 1 GS 33.00 ERA
J Rauch 1 GS 12.27 ERA

The fifth starting monster known as WrightDiazCottsMunozRauch (counting Cotts in relief, which balances him out to 0) has a VORP of -21.8, the worst in the major leagues.

This comes up because Rauch, despite almost getting run out of town after his last start, got called back up gets the chance this time around. Lucky him.

The strange thing here is there’s no one hurt who should’ve been around for the fifth spot. Given Garland and Schoneneweist were both to some extent questionable as success coming into the season and none of the fifth starters, you would’ve thought there a vet would’ve been invited to spring training and been hanging around in AAA to fill in when/if someone went bad, but it’s just been a parade of rookies and AAA lifers. I wonder if they’d be interested DFA LHP Jimmy Anderson; Freddy Garcia would be a big boost, but right now anyone would be a big boost and they’re throwing away starts waiting for Seattle to deal.

Wrigley Expansion

Don’t really want to talk about the game, though we were due a loss since we’ve run out of power the last few days. But what was interesting today is the Cubs going back to their expansion plans; they’ve wanted to turn across the street to a tourist destination/extra facilities area for quite some time. The rooftop stuff got them distracted; part of the plan is to expand the bleachers, which would overhang the sidewalk. Neighborhood groups weren’t thrilled with the idea of having the area underneath being perpetually in shadow for safety reasons, and support beams on the sidewalk for drunk wandering people reasons. Looks like on the third try, the Cubs might have addressed those problems.

I think the new building will be nice, but I’d prefer brick over glass. It’s a drop in the ocean of parking problems around there. Anyone still left from the current group is going to be thrilled to have real batting cages and an indoor pitching mound if they get this done. But even if it gets approval, it’s not going to start till after next season, so who knows.

Hey Scott, can I steal your baseball blog for a week if the O’s have made you give up already?

Followup

I can’t believe I forgot Valpo. They totally fit the Usual NCAA Suspects. Butler probably should fit in too, maybe even IUPUI if they had managed to get in this year.

I think putting DePaul over Big10Basketball is an envy thing; being from a fellow city school, I know they must get way more attention than they deserve, so they must get a lot of attenion. But I tend to zone out on Big10 basketball so I could see the other side.

I think Arena Football’s importance is overplayed just because they have a national TV deal; they appeared to lose their radio deal locally, and no one seemed to have much interest when they got to the semi-finals this year. There’s probably as many people in Dekalb (and in the western suburbs, because it’s quite the mid-range high school graduate magnet) who care about the Huskies as people who care about the Rush.

(This was originally supposed to go up last week, but got pushed back a bit.)

RedbirdNation, a highly enjoyable St. Louis Cardinals blog, tried to determine which sports teams were the Kings of the various MLB cities – what was the importance of the different teams to the people who lived there. I found it interesting, because they went through the effort of trying to get in touch with people in those different cities to get their takes on the situation, making it more authentic than just an outsider taking guesses. The order of teams were predictable in some place (NY’s #1 as the Yankees was the easiest call) but also unexpected in places (Tampa’s #5 as the Yankees).

Like I’m sure plenty of other people did, I read through the sections on other teams and patiently waited for my city to come up, so I could disagree. It’s a list, right, so that’s the point.

Luckily enough, when they got to Chicago, I wasn’t disappointed. I did have plenty of room to disagree. Here’s their list:

Continue reading “King of Chicago”

Thing I hate about MVP Baseball #243: You do not get credit for 3 innings saves.

Cubs 7 – Astros 2, Yahoo.

Christian @ The Cub Reporter hits a point I thought the post-game coverage missed last night: as great as Prior and Todd Walker were, the MVP of the game was Jimmy Anderson. If he struggled before the ninth and forced the Cubs to start using the rest of the pen, Astros stood a chance of coming all the way back. Remmy gave the tough guy’s line about always having an extra inning left, but they probably would’ve been really ugly innings.

I thought it was a huge risk not calling up Sergio or Wuertz, but it worked out great; besides the pen break, Anderson’s proven himself valuable (a neccisity if you’re going to be used on a Baker team, see Dubois, Jason) and everyone else got rested. Good move.

I think they still could use another night without much pen usage (three of four games isn’t really much better than two straight games), but with Carlos going 120+ pitches last time out, things may get intersting.

BTW, I hope Dusty was kidding about playing Hollandsworth, Sosa and Alou the same time in the outfield. I know Todd’s got a hot bat, but that’s gonna be a horrible defensive outfield. They all make dramatic catches, but the plays are dramatic because they’re slow, not because they’re good. They also shouldn’t take out Walker if he’s still going to hit like this, but I’ve got lesser hopes for logic there.

Head’s up: Although it was initially supposed to only on locally on Fox Sports Chicago (and Fox Sports Net in Houston) as listed down there, ESPN’s picked up Monday night’s Cubs/Astros game (8pm EST) – because it’ll be Mark Prior vs Roger Clemens. Sound move on their part.

Prior’s still working his way back – though last time out, he was hurt as much from not getting any calls on the corners as not having his command totally back – and is on prohibitive pitch count, but it still should be in for quite a while since everyone got used today and most of ’em got used yesterday too. They were an inning or two away from Greg Maddux coming out of the pen. SERGIO! last started on Thursday, so maybe they’ll call him or Wuertz up to help out things and John Leicester might celebrate his first ML win by going back to Des Moines.

ChiTrib points out that Prior’s really getting a rude welcome back in his opposing matchups

Last: STL, Matt Morris
This: HOU, Roger Clemens
Next: OAK, Mark Mulder (06/19)
Next: CWS opener @ the Cell
Next: HOU, Clemens again if they stay on schedule. (07/01)

It’s hard being The One.