strawbossisevil

I expect him to be in the upper .600s, yes. He could certainly get lucky again, but I think it is likely to expect that he ends up with an OPS about .050 lower. So most people going on 30 have an increase of power? I find that hard to believe. I think his increased SLG has more to do with the lack of stats to draw from, so they add some regression to the league mean, as that is how those projection systems work. And like I pointed out that regression to the mean works when we are talking about a young player, but for a "late bloomer" like Theriot, it may tend to over emphasize increases in certain areas.

Yeah, it must really must grind Sheet's gears that had he accepted Arby he would have been locked in for 11 million or more. And our team would have gladly paid it. Now when he comes back looking for a similar deal, he only gets offered 5 million plus incentives. I could see how he'd be upset thinking, well you would have offered me this back in November. But now you are taking advantage of this poor market and won't even consider offering me the same thing. But yeah, that neglects the fact that the fault truly lies with Sheets and his agent. I wonder though, if Sheets had accepted his arby. Would we still have signed Hoffman? Would the base salary for the team been just a bit higher? Who knows.

Bill James, Chone, Marcel and Oliver all include BABIP in their projections. Bill James has Theriot predicted to have a BABIP of .320. Chone has him predicted to have a BABIP of .312. Marcel has him predicted to have a BABIP of .316. Oliver has him predicted to have a BABIP of .309. Like I said, in Bill James, Chone and Marcel, all three have him improving on his slugging precentage. Pushing it up into the .360s or .370s. These projections exceed his slg precentages of his previous two seasons. And in order to meet these projections while dropping twenty points or more in BABIP his ISO would have to increase substantially. Something you might expect from a 25 year old, but not someone who is going on 30. Oliver however, puts his slugging right between where he's been these past two seasons. With his drop in BABIP that seems to be right on. After figuring Ks into the picture, that would bring his expected OPS much closer to what Oliver has predicted. I came up with about .675.

True, good point. Didn't think about the Ks. With Theriot, HRs isn't an issue. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

Ok, first off I'm not suggesting that BABIP replace OPS. BABIP is one of the major factors we have to consider when forming someone's expected OPS for the next season. That's my point. I don't know how else I can explain it. As for why the projections have Theriot better. Most of them have him dropping about 20-30 points in BABIP, which is probably fair. As it gets him into the .280-.320 range pointed to by Ender. Where I do have a problem with the projections is that almost all of them except for Oliver have him slugging higher next season than he has shown in his first two full seasons. My question is, why are they doing this? This is his age 30 season, why are we to assume he suddenly will hit for more power than he's shown in the last two seasons? I think this is where Oliver gets his prediction down, because he predicts that Theriot will have essentially the same slugging percentage that he has had over the past two seasons. By doing this he is saying that while Theriot's BABIP will go down, his ISO will go up slightly from last year to a more expected number. I can buy that. It's part of the reason why I didn't say I expected Theriot to put up a .650 OPS next year. Oliver is the only one that doesn't have this large increase in SLG% and so his prediction of .695 is about right. He still has Theriot with a BABIP at .310, and I am not entirely convinced that he will be even .010 points better than average. But I definitely think Oliver's prediction is much more on the ball then the other three. Edit: I should add that one of the problems with projections is often with players such as Theriot who don't have a long history of being in the league, they apply regression to the mean. Meaning bringing him toward league average. This often works well for younger players who are going to be improving and heading more toward the mean as they get closer to their primes, but I think where it fails is when the same system predicts a regression to the mean for a late arriver to the MLB, like Theriot. Who is actually already at his prime or past it. So while regressing to the mean in slugging works great for the 24 year old, for the 30 year old, it doesn't.

If he isn't going to gain ground in BABIP, where is he going to gain ground? I find it hard to believe he could walk at a higher rate, he showed absolutely no power last season (1 HR, 19 2B, 4 3B, so only 24 extra basehits out of 178 hits (his ISO was .052). I think he has just about maxed out his walk rate as pitchers are not going to be pitching around a guy who has that little power. I suppose he could hit for more power next season, but he is entering his age 30 season so adding power isn't exactly something that is likely for him either. So where is this big improvement going to come from if his BABIP goes down? It has to come from somewhere.

Yes, OPS correlates much closer to runs than BABIP. But BABIP is closely tied to OPS. Let me go through this one more time (although I think Ender and I both tried to cover this). Let's say we have Theriot. Who had a BABIP of .350 in one season. He has had a short career, with one season of below average BABIP and one with the .350 mark. Now let's just say for arguments sake, that his true ability lies around a .300 BABIP. Let's see what happens to his OPS when he goes from a .350 BABIP to a .300 BABIP without him adding any additional power. His Batting average was .310, his OBP is .390 and his SLG is .360. (round numbers to make this simpler to understand and explain) Now. Let's see what happens when his BABIP goes from .350 to .300. His batting average drops from .310 to .260. His OBP drops from .390 to .340. And his SLG drops from .360 to about .310 (using Theriot's power number from last season, it actually came out to .306, but I'll be generous). If that happens, if he doesn't hit for more power in his ABs than he did the previous season. His OPS would be .650. Now I'm not even saying that is what I expect from him next season. But I don't expect anything much higher than .700 OPS tops, unless he is one of those special players who can consistently have a BABIP higher than the majority of the major league hitters. BABIP does have a large effect on what a person's OPS is, and thus is useful for determining what a person's OPS will likely be for the next season. Once we arrive at this expected OPS, we can then see how it translates to wins. You want to ignore what is a major building block of OPS, but its important to know how a person got at that OPS before you can use it to make predictions on how a player will do in regards to wins.

I stand corrected FTJ. I should have made the point than that most of the Cubs players had BABIP well above their career averages. Would that be a valid enough point for you? On top of that, very few hitters are able to do what Ichiro does, but I'll admit that it does show that there are those who can consistently supercede the league average number. Those players though are few, and very far between and there is no proof that Theriot is one of those players (as we have a two year sample, one which says he definitely isn't, and the other that suggests its possible that he is). Also saying the same shortcomings don't apply to pitching is a bit off too. Depending on where a pitcher puts the ball, he can to an extent control how well a ball is hit. I would guess there are pitchers out there who year in and year out are better than league average. Greg Maddox is an example, as during his prime he floated between .250 and .270. The point is, BABIP is a valid predictive tool for both batters and pitchers when we don't have a whole lot of history to know where their averages might fall. Theriot is a perfect example, he's played for two years, and has had one below average BABIP year, and one above average BABIP year. Because we only have a two year sample, we can use the league average to make a much more likely guess as to where he'll be (as the overwhelming majority of MLB hitters hover around that mark with only a few exceptions). In this case, he is most likely worse than last season. And to say that this doesn't apply at all to wins is a bit bogus too, especially if we are talking about a player like Theriot. He got on base, if I remember correctly about 39% of the time last season, and since he has no power to speak of, much of that OBP came because he got basehits. Now, let's say that he falls more in line with league average for BABIP just for arguments sake. If he still walked at the same rate, his OBP (one of the biggest components of OPS) would drop to about .340. His slugging would also drop as not getting hits would lead to a drop in slugging. So in order for him to put up a similar OPS, he would have to start slugging a lot more in the hits that he would get (AKA significantly more HRs), something that it doesn't appear he is capable of doing. But tell you what FTJ and Briggs. If Theriot equals or improves on his BABIP this next season, I'll buy you a beer. If he doesn't you buy me a beer. Deal?

Back to CV. I think he is a solid guy to have in the case that someone goes down with an injury. He may be able to step in and be a solid injury replacement. It's why I thought it was a good move to shore up the bullpen first, because it freed up Villy for use in the rotation if something were to happen. If we didn't have a solid closer, it's quite possible that CV would have been our closer, and in that case, he would not be as available to be used as a starter if the need would arise. Obviously, I'd prefer that we'd have better depth at SP than we do, but with the money we had to spend, I'm glad we used it where we did. I think we are as thin on SP depth as the Cubs. CV = Heilman in my mind. But, we did the best we could with the money we had while maintaining a degree of flexibility.

If it isn't wearing down, what is it? He was an "ace" type pitcher from 2002-2005. As you pointed out, he isn't that old. So what has caused all of his numbers to significantly drop over these past few seasons? His K/9 has dropped substantially. What is it if it isn't the wear and tear of being abused year after year?

Wow, 82-83 MPH. That's slower than I pitched back in college. He must have incredible control if that's all he can bring it at. For most Major Leaguers, I would think that would look like a BP Fastball. I would think a guy like that would be much more effective coming out of the pen. In the Doug Jones mold.

And I've shown you Briggs in the other thread, that even the best hitters in baseball, generally hover around the .300 mark in BABIP. You have yet to show me someone who can consistently hit with a BABIP in the .350s. The truth is you won't find said player, because said player doesn't exist. I think its possible, that someone could sustain a BABIP in possibly the .320s if they are really good at using the whole field as you suggest. But as others have pointed out, did all of these players just learn this all fields skill in this past year? Theriot for example, had his BABIP below .300 the previous season. Are we then to assume that he improved his ability to hit to all fields that drastically? The answer of course is "no". Like Russ, pointed out in the Peavy thread. Someone having a .350 BABIP is like a guy with 40 HR talent hitting 70 HR. When you make expectations for that player in the following season, you don't expect him to hit 70 HRs again, it's possible he does, but it isn't likely. It would be much more likely to expect the guy to hit around 40-50 HR. Just because a stat doesn't fit with your pessimistic way of approaching things, doesn't make it an invaluable stat. The point is to take all subjectivity out and look at things objectively, and looking objectively at the stats the Cubs put up last season they overachieved by quite a stretch on offense and in the starting rotation. And saying that it comes down to two guys. One who may pitch only 50-70 innings, and another who benefited from an BABIP in the .390s in the previous season (come on, even you have to admit it is unlikely he repeats that) is just ridiculous in my mind.

I think you can hope, but I just don't see it happening that we have 5 better SP than Suppan in 2010. Even IF, and I think its a big IF, he is over an ERA of 5 guy. He still is more valuable as a starter. He is a type of guy who almost every year makes every start, and almost always is around 200 innings. That is very nice to have from a #5 pitcher, even if his ERA is a bit over 5. I don't necessarily see him dropping off too much, because his "stuff" isn't the type that generally deteriorates with age.

I think its telling that pretty much every Cub was either average with their BABIP or well above average. They didn't have a single person have a below average year in the luck department, and they had over half of their lineup with BABIP well above long term sustainable levels. When you add to that the fact that their rotation is likely to take a step back, I agree, I think it COULD be close if our team can stay relatively healthy. I still think the Cubs are the more talented ball club, but I thought the Tigers were going to run away with the AL Central last season too. And we all know what happened there.

Close only counts in... Anyway, I was just addressing those who were calling him a 5+ ERA pitcher. I would be more willing to bet the under on the 5 ERA than the over for Suppan. I'm not saying money on Suppan was well spent, or that he is a great pitcher. But most teams would not be opposed to having a guy in the mid to upper fours pitching in their 4th or 5th spot in the rotation. As far as looking at how he did against certain teams. I would contend that most pitchers, even great ones, are more likely to give up more runs against the teams with better offenses, than against the teams with bad offenses. That is common sense. And really, all of those numbers are incredibly small samples, trying to deduce anything from that is probably not wise. Look I get it, Suppan is making far too much money in relation to his performance, I wouldn't claim otherwise. But when people talk about throwing him in the pen, or cutting him, they are just not being objective when looking at his stats. He is an average #4 pitcher, or an above average #5.

Let's wait until he actually posts an ERA over 5, before we start calling him a 5+ ERA pitcher. He's not as bad as many of you think he is.

I'll post this again, since it was hidden inside the Peavy trade thread. Here is why I think we can expect the Cubs to take a step backwards this year. Let's compare who the Cubs have in '09, vs who they had in '08. 2008 - C Giovani Soto 2009 - Giovani Soto - His BABIP was .337 last season. Thus many of the predictions have him regressing slightly or holding steady. I mark this as a push for the Cubs in ´09. 2008 - 1B Derrek Lee 2009 - 1B Derrek Lee - Someone already mentioned that Lee was effected by luck in 2008. Unfortunately, they were wrong on what kind of luck. Lee also put up a higher than expected BABIP, post a BABIP of .333. He has maintained a pretty high BABIP throughout his career, but this was higher than average for him. He's also seen a drop in his BB% over the past few seasons, and since his wrist injury has seen his SLG% struggle to return to former levels. I think an OPS in the low .800s is probably all that can be expected from him at this point, which is what he put up last year even with the somewhat lucky BABIP numbers. So I mark this as a push for the Cubs in '09. 2008 - 2B DeRosa/Fontenot 2009 - 2B Miles/Fontenot - Someone has already mentioned that Fontenot had a BABIP of .355. He will not repeat that. Bill James, Chone, and Marcel all have him in the low .800s for OPS or in the high .700s. That is a .100 drop or more from last season. DeRosa put up an OPS in the mid .800s last season. All of the projections for Miles have him in the .600s or very low .700s. So I mark this as a downgrade for the Cubs for '09. 2008 - SS Ryan Theriot 2009 - SS Ryan Theriot - 2008 Ryan Theriot had a BABIP of nearly .350 last season. Plus, he put up an OBP of .380+ while only hitting one HR. In 2007 Ryan put up a more typical BABIP of around .300 and was at .266 and .326. It is doubtful that Theriot will repeat a BABIP of nearly .350, so the numbers from 2007 are probably more likely what we'll see him put up this coming season. So I mark this as a downgrade for the Cubs for '09. 2008 - 3B Aramis Ramirez 2009 - 3B Aramis Ramirez - AmRam had a career high in BB% by more than 3% points over any season he had ever had. His slugging declined last season to be the lowest its been in 5 years. That said, his BABIP was about where it should be, but was still better than his career mark. All of the projections expect him to not have quite the walk rate he had last season (although still better than anything he had posted before this past season), while maintaining his current SLG. So we may see a 10 point drop in OPS or so from last season. Not enough to call it a downgrade. So I mark this as a push for the Cubs for '09. 2008 - LF Alfonso Soriano 2009 - LF Alfonso Soriano - Soriano also walked a bit more in '08 than he normally had in his career. His BABIP was pretty much expected, slightly over .300. So I'd expect to see Alfonso Soriano put up similar numbers next year. Perhaps with an OBP in the .330s rather than the .340s. I think it is interesting too that all the projections have him projected to be worse than last year, they must be factoring for age, which is possible as Soriano turned 33 a few days ago. But I will mark this as a push for the Cubs for '09. 2008 - CF Johnson/Edmonds 2009 - Fukudome/Johnson - Johnson's BABIP was .367 last year. He's not going to repeat that. Edmonds put up an OPS over .900. Fukudome and Johnson are both likely to put up OPS in the low to mid .700s. Plus I would claim that going from Edmonds to Fukudome in CF is a huge drop off defensively. I will mark this as a significant downgrade for the Cubs for '09. 2008 - RF Fukudome/DeRosa 2009 - Bradley/Fukudome - Bradley put up a BABIP of .396 last season. He will likely be a slight improvement over the numbers DeRosa put up in RF last season. Fukudome is likely a wash. So, I will mark this as a slight upgrade for the Cubs for ´09. 2008 - SP Zambrano 2009 - SP Zambrano - Zambrano has had his K rates steadily decline for two seasons now. This last season was his lowest K rate since 2001 (where he only pitched in 7 innings). The big question mark here is will that continue its decline? Also his FIP has been over 4 for the past three seasons, one has to wonder with the defensive downgrade in the OF whether his numbers will begin to head in that direction. I think the best the Cubs can hope for with Zambrano is a push from last season. 2008 - SP Dempster 2009 - SP Dempster - Dempster posted a sub 3 ERA last season. He was helped by having a strand rate of over 76%. The projections of Dempster are all over the board, but all agree that the best the Cubs should expect from him is a 3.60 ERA, with an ERA in the low 4s even being possible. This doesn´t even consider the fact that he went 200 innings last season after converting from the pen. So I mark this as a downgrade for the Cubs for '09. 2008 - SP Lilly 2009 - SP Lilly - Lilly also stranded 76% of runners last season and had a FIP in the mid 4s. Most projections have him repeating last season. I don´t see how he could do signifcantly better, I mark this as a push for the Cubs for ´09. 2008 - SP Harden, Marshall, and Others 2009 - Harden & Others - Harden has a tear in his shoulder. I don´t think the Cubs can expect him to pitch more than he did last season. His career seems to indicate that is about all they can expect from him this year. That spells two problems for the Cubs 1) Harden is good, but he is not going to post a sub 2 ERA again. Most projections have him with an ERA around 3. I think that is fair. As for the "others". With Marshall now in the ´09 starting rotation, the depth is not there. This will be a rather large downgrade for the Cubs. So I mark this as a downgrade for the Cubs for ´09. 2008 - SP Marquis 2009 - SP Marshall - Marshall only pitched 96 innings last season, while only barely cracking 130 the previous year. He is a solid pitcher. But frankly, if he pitches the whole season, I don´t expect his numbers to be much better than Marquis 4.53. Last year Marshall benefited from a left on percentage of nearly 80%. So I mark this as a push for the Cubs for ´09. Added on top of all of this, I should mention that the SP depth of the Cubs is a significant downgrade in comparison to last season. If they ever have more than one pitcher go down at once (which could happen with Harden being likely to spend lots of time on the DL, Zambrano having DL problems recently, and Marshall trying to pitch a full season when he hasn´t pitched over 150 in one season in his career.) I´ll be quick about the bullpen. Since this has gone on more than enough. Having Marmol in the closer spot rather than the setup spot is a downgrade for Chicago. Gragg (sp?) will not put up Wood type numbers, and will be a downgrade for Chicago. Vizcaino should be better than Howry was last year, so that is an upgrade. The rest of the bullpen is a push in my mind. In total I count - 7 downgrades from last season. 2 upgrades from last season. and 8 pushes from last season. I do not see this team as being as good as it was last year, it could be significantly worse, especially at middle infield and outfield. Last year they received some amazing contributions in those areas that they are unlikely to receive in '09. I´m not saying the Cubs will be horrible, but I think they have regressed some where if the Brewers or another team in the Central has a couple of guys perform better than last season, the Cubs could be caught.

Wow, Felix Pie and Cedeno for Heilman, when you consider the two moves needed to make this deal happen. What a horrible series of trades by the Cubs. Just goes to show why they haven't won a WS in 100 years, when you have a front office that makes moves like this, it explains a lot.

Here's a question. When comparing Gallardo to Sheets. How much value does Gallardo's hitting have in comparison to Sheets who is awful with the bat? Sheets over his career batted .076, good for about 5 hits over the course of a whole season (67 ABs), and he had about 2 or so walks per season (OBP .113). Gallardo on the other hand, based on his hitting so far in his career (.224) would get 15 hits over the same span of at bats, with about the same number of walks (added on top of that the fact that Gallardo has a bit more pop in his bat, as evidenced by his career slug % of .429. How much value does 10 hits have? Are we talking potentially a win or two more? And how does that play in to what type of ERA Gallardo would have to put up to be considered "equivalent" to the '08 Sheets? My reason for asking is because we were right in the playoff hunt with essentially the same rotation minus Sheets. What type of numbers do we need from Gallardo so that his production (offense and pitching combined) would be equivalent to Sheets?

145

This is awesome. http://www.scarysquirrel.org/games/pnut/game.html High score so far is 850 Edit: Make that 2070, and I'm gonna be done for a while.

I would love Aybar. I wanted to trade for him last offseason when the Braves were practically giving him away. I was bummed when the Rays snagged him on the cheap.

Thanks rluzinski, I figured a stat guy would help back me up on it. Like I was saying all along, it's not impossible he has a .350 BABIP next season, but a certain amount of regression is much more likely.

Bklyn, it's probably because Sheets didn't want to come back, and the fact that we didn't want him back. The relationship there has soured. No matter how much wishing or complaining we might do, that will not change. So we probably got the best pitcher we could get with the money we had. Truth of the matter is, if everyone stays healthy this season, we will likely be in the wild card chase, if not in the chase for the division (if the Cubs suffer some injury set backs or players have a down year). Also your assertion that a playoff team can't have two average type pitchers is not correct. Have you forgotten already the team that won the world series? The spent much of the year starting Kyle Kedrick and Adam Eaton, both who had seasons significantly worse than what is expected from Suppan and McClung. We will need our offense to play a bit better than last season, as part of our struggles were related to having many of our young stars having down years. But that is entirely possible. I understand being negative, but please, we don't need the same lines repeated over and over and over again. Everyone on the site knows how you feel about things.

Well we could assume that somehow Theroit has some how come up with a way to have a BABIP well above the league average. Or we could just look back to his previous season, where he was at the league average. So, if it is a skill he has, it's only been recently learned. I do think when you project how a player is going to perform in the next season, you have to look at numbers like BABIP and expect some regression to the mean. Mean being average, meaning if the player had 10,000 ABs, that's probably where they end up. Certainly its possible that Theriot ends up over the mean again this next season, it is equally possible however that he falls below the mean as well. The odds are exactly the same. I really think the Cubs as a team overperformed offensively last season. I don't think it is likely that they will overperform to the extent they did in '08 in '09. Below is a chart for perhaps the best hitter in the game, Albert Pujols. http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs/1177_1B_season_full_7_20080930.png Notice that while he had three seasons where he approached .350 (he's never had a season as high as Theriot), the majority of his other seasons hovered around the MLB average, and this is perhaps the best hitter in the game. I don't see how we can expect the majority of the Cubs players to continue to do, what even Albert can't do on a year in year out basis. I'd really like to see someone find a chart for a current player who consistently keeps a BABIP at .350 or higher. I just don't think said player exists.