My part starts at about the 20 minute mark, but before that Gary talks about Ike Davis' struggles and some of the other problems the Mets have been having lately, so maybe the Cubs have a shot to win a third series in a row!

OK, we won't get crazy. Enjoy.

The post Talking Cubs/Mets on the Met Musings Podcast appeared first on Obstructed View.

The Cubs are 29th in the league in Offensive Batting Average on Balls In Play, with .265. That is a historically bad number (it would be the lowest rate in the past 5 years). While there have been healthy and vigorous debates on the merits of BABIP at the individual level, there really is no argument when you consider that rate team-wide. .265 just isn't a sustainable measure, even considering the park factors that really do work to depress BABIP at Wrigley Field. I'd imagine that going forward .280 or so is a more reasonable clip (still bad, but the Cubs are a bad offensive team); that's an extra hit every 3 days, maybe, but an extra hit can be all the difference. 

Unfortunately for the Cubs, they also have a Defensive BABIP of .265. It's the 2nd best rate in the league, and it's going to go up.  The Cubs as a team are also 2nd in the league in GB% (50.1%), which is a primary driver of BABIP, so it's entirely reasonable to expect the Cubs to be good in this respect, but not as phenomenal as they've been (there exists a fairly loose correlation between GB% and BABIP – if only because GB isn't a line drive). Unfortunately, the Cubs are also 1st in the league in both LD% and IFFB%. Sure, these aren't stats that are necessarily going to regress; there just isn't a whole lot of room to improve in either area (the only way to go is down). 

The Cubs themselves are middle of the road in nearly all batted ball categories; 17th in LD%, 16th in GB%, 12th in FB%, 25th in IFFB% (unfortunately), 7th in HR/FB. This is a) another indication of the probable improvement in BABIP and b) fairly expected given the offensive makeup of this squad. However, there is one thing that is pretty glaring, and that's the Cubs' .188 BABIP with RISP. It's 30th by a LOOONG way, and so is the accompanying .221 wOBA. In fact, I can't ever find a worse BABIP with RISP going back some 20-odd years (for that matter, I can't find a sub-.500 OPS in the fast few years, either). That change is going to come; when it does, I assure you the Cubs will look a lot, lot better. 

On a related note, it appears that the Cubs are applying "selective aggression" to their plate appearances. They are 3rd in the league in swing rate (46.6%); curiously enough, they are actually still above average in P/PA (due to their ability to foul pitches off). I like the approach so far, if the Cubs can keep it up (and as an aside, I would soooo preach fouling off pitches if I was a hitting coach. I'm sure most teams do). 

All told, I think most of the bounces this year have gone against the Cubs (and BP thinks so too; they have us pegged as a .500 team and I agree). The bullpen has already come around (don't look now, they are 13th in FIP). The bats will too. When they do, the wins are going to come and it's going to be deeply unsatisfying when they trade off midseason.

The post Cubs Regression To The Mean appeared first on Obstructed View.

Below is a look at The Outside Corner Newsletter that will be going out 1-2x a week starting tomorrow. Obviously they'll promote their own content, but it will be similar to the Awful Announcing Newsletter (recommended as well), in which they'll promote the must reads of the week from all around the web as well as tweets and photos you may have missed. Basically, if you signup you can read more quality baseball content since we're too lazy to provide non-Cubs news.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! If you sign up here, you'll be entered for a $200 Vivid Seats Gift Card drawing they'll do at the end of the month.

Yes they paid us to post this, but we wouldn't have done so if we didn't think this was a worthy cause so sign up before they cancel the check.

Now back to your regular programming.

The post Chance to win $200 gift card at The Outside Corner on Bloguin appeared first on Obstructed View.

Jeff Samardzija is the de facto ace of this staff. All 5 of Fangraphs' projections has him sliding in FIP, and I might agree with them. When the FANS projection slates you for 3.72 coming off of 3.66 and 3.55 (albeit 2011 was in relief), something is a little wonky. He's been getting lit up in the Spring, but he says he's just working stuff out (he actually said he threw a belt-high fastball down the center of a plate so a dude could hit a home run off him, so he could work with empty bases (or something like that). He's a good bet to be a solid #2 rotation guy. 

Travis Wood is scary. He looked bad last year and he was actually really lucky by FIP-standards. He doesn't have a great fastball and he doesn't change speeds well: his FB last year sat at 89.4, his changeup at 79.6. He's a pitch-to-contact guy who had an obscenely low .244 BABIP last year – unless some part of his kit has drastically improved he is going to get rocked this season. A team with 2012-vintage Wood getting 20 starts is a team that loses over 90 games. In an ideal world, he'd be a LOOGY (wOBA of .279 against lefties).

Chris Volstad was a total disaster last year. He struck out less than 5 people per 9 innings. You can do that if you are an incredible pitch-to-contact type that induces groundballs: Volstad is not that guy. His LD% has steadily risen over the past 5 years. According to Pitch f/x, he didn't have a single league-average pitch last year.

Paul Maholm started the year of really poorly but became a solid starter for most of the year. The Cubs traded him for Arodys Vizcaino, and that move will probably work out for both teams (a definite win-win for both sides at the time of the trade – Maholm had another year of cost-control). 

Matt Garza could have possibly netted a Top 50 prospect at one point, if not more. At this point, the best the Cubs could probably hope for is a Christian Villanueva-type. He might sign a team-friendly extension, or a prove-it deal with the Cubs, but if the injuries didn't make him a vastly inferior pitcher, he's still a large injury risk for whatever team ends up with him. It sucks, but that's the truth.

Ryan Dempster had an incredible run with the Cubs last year. Shenanigans with the trades aside, he ended his tenure with the Cubs as a generally good player. He wasn't very good for the Rangers after the trade, and he's not going to like it in Boston either. 

Justin Germano has played parts of 7 SEASONS despite sporting a career ERA of 5.27. He is the very definition of a replacement-level pitcher and played like one for the Cubs. That might be a little harsh given his freakish strand rate and .339 BABIP, but at some point you have to realize that you are giving 12 starts to a 30-year old non-prospect with no future in your organization and move on. The Cubs have.

Chris Rusin is not very good. He was another guy who just had an awful strand rate last year (64.7%) which points to either an inability to pitch from the stretch or variance. We'll probably see which it is, unfortunately, because the Cubs don't have many backup options before they get to Chris "I can give you 5" Rusin.

Edwin Jackson is this year's big FA acquisition. He's probably going to give you 190 innings of slightly-above-average pitching, which is just fine by me. He's a #3 on an average team, which means he's probably our second-best pitcher depending on how you feel about Garza, and his contract and age will still be fine when the Cubs are a good team again. He did lose a mile from his fastball last year, but he lost a mile from all of his other pitches too, so I'm not incredibly worried that he's suddenly incredibly hittable. It'll be very interesting to see if he can keep down his LD% like he did last year.

Carlos Villanueva isn't very good. He was hit-lucky and strand-lucky last year, and those worked in concert to mask a year that wasn't as rosey as it looked. He's an ideal 5th-starter/swingman type, and he'll likely occupy that role with Chicago this year. 

Scott Feldman was the anti-Villanueva last year. He FIPed 3.81, but had an ERA of 5.09. He left only 61.0% on base, and his BABIP went from .239 the year before to a fairly-high .318. If he repeats his peripherals from last year, he'll be just fine, and he's got the stuff to work as a 4th of 5th starter on an average team. 

Scott Baker is a huge injury concern. If he comes back at the level he used to pitch at, he could be a great steal for the Cubs. However, he signed with the Cubs, so he'll probably spend half the year on the DL, and the other half doing his best Chris Volstad impression.

All in all, the Cubs will at least have more depth than last year. That was a serious, serious problem last year (on the order of 5-10 wins lost to sub-replacement pitching), so we've improved pretty drastically in this area. However, we are still basically average at this point.

The post Assume the Position: MLB Starting Pitchers appeared first on Obstructed View.

Note: I can't ask about the Cubs, specifically (there are NDAs about that sort of thing).

Obstructed View: Where do you want to be 10 years from now? Do you aspire to be a GM?

Tom: More of the same, I think. I have no desire to be a GM.

Obstructed View: How did you end up meeting MGL?

Tom: We both posted at an old baseball forum called BaseballBoards.com, which later became Fanhome. Voros, Patriot, David Smyth were also some of the posters there. (Note: How incredible would it have been to be in that environment?)

Obstructed View: I worry sometimes that my father might misunderstand sabermetrics because the barrier to entry is too high. Are you ever afraid that advanced statistics are off-putting to people who might just be getting into baseball, or are already overmuch familiar with low-quality stats like RBI and Wins? Do you have recommendations on ways to introduce advanced stats to those who may not be comfortable with all of the math, or is it just not for them?

Tom: I'm not worried about it being off-putting. Everyone should be comfortable with wherever they are.

I think the reliance on RBI and Pitcher Wins is a barrier, but as we saw with Felix and others, pitcher wins is starting to erode.

I think picking up an old Bill James Baseball Abstract through inter-library loan is the best way.

Obstructed View: The Book came out in 2006, almost 7 years ago. What part of it do you think has held up the best and what part do you think has held up the worst?

Tom: Sales every year has been pretty constant, which means it's getting pretty good word-of-mouth. Looking back, I don't think there's any one part that is better or worse in terms of timelessness. We wrote the book on the idea that it would be timeless.

Obstructed View: What aspect of baseball do you think is least understood, from a statistics standpoint? What is holding the sabermetric community back as far as exploring that subject?

Tom: Least understood by who? The only thing holding back the community is access to the relevant data. Without data, we have no way to test the hypothesis.

Obstructed View: Whose work in baseball do you most respect from a statistics standpoint? Whose work in baseball do you most respect from an “old-school” standpoint?

Tom: There are plenty of people. Bill James, Pete Palmer, MGL, Andy Dolphin, Tom Tippett, Dan Fox. Really, it's a very long list, and I can spit out another dozen names or three if you give me a few minutes. I'm just really happy to be part of such a community.

Obstructed View: What statistic do you like the most that you DIDN’T invent? Any moments where you were surprised someone “got there” before you did?

Tom: Well, Voros invented DIPS, which is about the most important finding in the last 15 years. Pete Palmer introduced us to Linear Weights. I'm never surprised, since everyone has their own creative input. We're all building on the work of others.

Your question seems to suggest some single-lane race, when really, it's about all of us on some scavenger hunt, coming from all over the world, picking up items on our journey, and agreeing to meet at Times Square, and see what we can all share with each other by the time we get there. It's cooperation, not competition.

Obstructed View: Many managers have started to embrace the new thinking as far as sabermetrics are concerned. In your opinion, will people with a purely statistical background ever be on-field coaches, giving strategic advice? How far away might we be from having, say, Dave Cameron advising Eric Wedge on when to use his bullpen?

Tom: I don't even know what "purely statistical background" means. Are you suggesting someone who only has a vocation in some various mathematical disciplines, but has no baseball experience at all? That would be the worst person to put on the field. You need a subject matter expert, and that means someone who lives and breathes baseball as the first requirement. 

Obstructed View: I'm afraid I may of framed the question incorrectly. I meant to say someone who perhaps never played baseball at a high level, but has a masterful grasp of the percentages and that sort of thing. With Billy Beane, Theo Epstein, Andrew Friedman, etc. changing the way front offices operate, I was curious if you thought that a similar thing might happen in the dugout (if it hasn't happened already). I think some managers are becoming much more receptive to the idea of using more and more specialized stats already.

Tom: Ah, I see. Well, I'm not really qualified to answer that question.

Obstructed View: How important do you think FIELD f/x will be as far as clearing up defensive metrics? Will we ever get to a place where fielding is as well understood as hitting? Should FIELD f/x ever be made public?

Tom: Tracking player movements and ball movement is critical. We do it all the time with our eyes. So, now we need to have a systematic, precise way to do all that on a large scale. A system that does that will remove all the uncertainty we currently have.

Obstructed View: From previous interviews, I know that you aren't a fan of the current system of the Hall of Fame. Do you think there is a place in the hall for sabermetricians and internet writers to have a say in who gets in? Do you think we'll live to see the day where someone like Bill James gets inducted for his contributions to baseball?

Tom: There's some really passionate fans out there, who devote their time and energy on baseball and its history and they don't get paid for it. Any time I run my many polls, I'm quite happy with the results I get. The IBA shows how you can have a good system with good fans produce good results.

Obstructed View: Anyone who has heard you speak about Rock Raines knows you believe he’s a no-doubt Hall-of-Famer. In my mind, Edgar Martinez is in the same boat – his numbers look to me like he’s better than maybe half of the Hall (not to mention that 3B are SORELY underrepresented in the Hall), and he hasn’t really received any support (languishing in the
mid-30’s). With the growing backlog of worthy players that will “take votes away” from Gar, he most likely won’t make it in until the Veteran’s Committee, if at all. Do you think Edgar should make the Hall? Do you think he will?

Tom: If you think a Hall of Fame should have about 20-25 new members every ten years, then Edgar would likely be part of that group. If you think it should be 10-15, he's probably outside that group.  If you think it should be 30-35 members, he's easily inside that group. So, you have to first decide the size of your hall of fame. The readers on my site have suggested that we should have 20-25 new members every ten years.

Obstructed View: Are there any players in particular that you think are “better than their numbers?”

Tom: It's a given that some players are better than they've performed so far, and others are worse. It's just a sampling issue.

Obstructed View: What topic would you most like to research, but haven’t been able to?

Tom: There's a long list of things, and I'm really happy that we've got a broad community that someone somewhere is addressing each one and will eventually publish it.

Obstructed View: How good are these Blackhawks? Are they for real?

Tom: I've only been following the Canadiens and Devils so far, but eventually, I'll pick up on a few more teams. I still they think have the best uniform in all of pro sports in USA/Canada.

Thanks again to Tom Tango for answering the questions.

The post Interview with Tom Tango (aka tangotiger) appeared first on Obstructed View.

No Cubs on the US roster, but Anthony Rizzo is playing for Italy while Ryan Searle will pitch for Australia and Yao-Lin Wang will pitch for Chinese Taipei. Former Cubs minor leaguer Hung-Wen Chen will also pitch for Chinese Taipei.

The post US Roster for World Baseball Classic appeared first on Obstructed View.

Rizzo was sent to AAA Iowa to begin the season and hit the crap out of the ball. He was promoted to Chicago midway through the season and put together a very strong season. He turned 23 in early August, but for baseball purposes it was his age 22 season (age as of June 30th). It was an old age 22 season, but still 22 according to the way people have traditionally organized it.

For the purposes of much of this post, I'm going to ignore the 51 OPS+ over 153 plate appearances in 2011. Instead, I'm primarily going to focus on the 368 PA of 119 OPS+ baseball. I was curious where that season would rank among first basemen at a similar age if his 2012 was the only season he had.

The question is, what criteria do we use to compare his 2012 to historical results? I went with careers spanning multiple seasons on Baseball Reference's Play Index. It was the first choice to make. Then I had to pick age and obviously we'd want to include younger players because it's even more impressive to do what Rizzo did (or even close to it) while being younger than he was. I also wanted to include the age 23 season for players because Rizzo was close to that and because there really isn't a whole lot of difference between the two. 16-23 it is.

I wanted the first part of a player's career since I'm ignoring Rizzo's 2011 and treating 2012 as his first season. Knowing I'd have to choose plate appearances later, I decided to go with a player's first season through his third season. I'm interested in how he compares to 1st basemen so while a shortstop hitting even close to as well as he did would be far more impressive, it's not relevant to what I want to know.

I decided to go with a player who played at least half his games at 1st base figuring if the player could still play half his games elsewhere, he might be a better overall player, but also a player who will eventually play first base full time. I could probably safely reduce that to 25% and still get a pool of players who were primarily 1st basemen throughout their careers.

Rizzo had 368 plate appearances last season so I used a minimum of 300 PA.

Here's the list:

Dick Hoblitzell's name is bolded in red because Anthony Rizzo's 2012 would slide right above him and right after Keith Hernandez. If that's all Rizzo had done so far, it would be good for 35th. However, Rizzo's 2012 season had just 368 PA and only Joe Cunningham, Sean Casey and Tony Perez had fewer plate appearances than Rizzo in 2012. The number of plate appearances are also important because if a player has 2000 plate appearances prior to 23 then he was probably more qualified to play than someone who had just 368. Rizzo, though, has over 500 in his career so far so we have to consider that, but there are still many on the list with more than he had.

If we were interested, and clearly I am since I'm writing this, we could take a look at those who performed offensively most similar to Rizzo did in 2012 to get an idea of how he might perform over the next 5 seasons (years before free agency). Here it is:

One Hall of Famer in George Sisler and only Bob Chance was worse than average at the plate over the next 5 years. The average OPS+ of these players from the first table was 120 and over the next 5 years the average was 119. I don't believe first basemen have generally had long careers, but I thought it was interesting that in this group, 4 of the players played less than 6 years after the age of 23 and 2 of them didn't even make it 5 seasons.

Prior to now, we've been ignoring Rizzo's 2011 season. So far in his career he has a 100 OPS+, which puts him right after Eric Hosmer on the first list, which is why I cut the list off where I did. Looking at the entire career we find he'd rank 68th on the original list. Several of these guys weren't your average 1st baseman. They piled up the triples and stolen bases, something that Rizzo will not ever do. He has 1 career triple and only 5 stolen bases. That's not a bad thing, but many of these guys were adding value in ways that Rizzo never will.

If we consider the whole career and now look at the most similar players, this is what we get for production over their next 5 years.

The average of this group is 107.

I'm willing to give Rizzo's 2011 less weight than we typically would, but it still happened. What this means is that I think he'll do better than this group, but maybe not as well as the earlier group. But Rizzo is just one player so he could end up being in the Hall of Fame like 2 comparables. He could end up being out of the league for various reasons in short time too. It's probably somewhere in the middle. Expecting a Hall of Fame career is a bit riduclous and anticipating his career ends soon is equally ridiculous.

The post How good is Anthony Rizzo? appeared first on Obstructed View.

Good teammate

To the surprise of no rational Cubs fan here or elsewhere, Alfonso Soriano is a good teammate.

During his time in Chicago, Theo Epstein has come to realize what a tremendous teammate Soriano is and how willing he is to help younger players. Epstein considers Soriano an excellent clubhouse presence, and after a 32-homer, 108-RBI season, the Cubs president contends that he will need a player of note in return if he is to trade Soriano and assume a majority of the $36 million left on his contract. Soriano will only accept a deal to an East Coast team, so the Phillies, Rays, Orioles, Yankees, and Marlins are teams that could benefit by him.

I don’t believe the national media has taken a shit on Soriano like the Chicago media has in recent years, but it’s been remarkable and enjoyable to finally see Soriano treated like the player he was always known to be. Prior to joining the Cubs, Soriano was known as one of the friendliest players in the game, one of the better teammates, someone who smiled all the time and just loved to play baseball. Upon arriving in Chicago and not winning the MVP, Cy Young and Manager of the Year Award, the Chicago media decided to flip that story around and pretend otherwise.

The fans bought in. Soriano was booed relentlessly. He was called names that I can only imagine were racist. He was called lazy, a piece of shit and so on and so forth. It was disgusting and embarrassing to be a Cubs fan while it happened.

Then last year, Soriano rebounded, had a pretty good season and all of a sudden he’s a team leader, a positive clubhouse presence and someone who goes out there every day and does his job with a smile on his face. In other words, it only took the Chicago media 6 years to learn what every other person in the media already knew.

Them Chicago sportswriters are a bright bunch of people.

NFL Hall of Fame

The football Hall of Fame released the candidates for 2013. Here are all the articles that talked about steroids or performance enhancing drugs in the NFL:

It’s almost like they don’t care about steroids in the NFL. It’s also like they don’t treat the Hall of Fame like a shrine. Like in baseball. The shrine that has a bunch of piece of shit human beings already in it. What can we learn here? That the football writers are significantly smarter than about 65% of the BBWAA. And most baseball fans.

Michael Bourn market shrinks

Also in that article by Nick Cafardo was this bit about Michael Bourn:

Nobody really knows what happened to the Bourn market. He’s a top defender and a good leadoff man.

I have a pretty good idea what happened to the market. GMs have realized that signing guys who rely heavily on speed to large contracts are not such good ideas. Although the Soriano contract has actually turned out OK (in that it’s not as bad as it might have been), the Carl Crawford contract looks to be so bad at this point that it’s going to hurt the market for speed players for awhile. A leg injury and their outlook changes entirely.

Dontrelle Willis

Saw this title on Cubs.com: Inbox: Could Willis crack Cubs’ roster? A lot of shit would have to go wrong for that to happen. So let’s just hope an already bad team doesn’t have a bunch of players go down to injury making them even worse.

Nate Silver

Nate has a fantastic article about the crowded waiting room at the Hall of Fame. It’s a must read for all fans. It’s not something football fans or their sportswriters need to read, but those who root or write about baseball, yes, they need to read it.

The post Daily Facepalm – 1.13.12 appeared first on Obstructed View.

I created the Hall of Stats so we wouldn’t be ignored. And today, the Hall of Stats includes:

• Barry Bonds
• Roger Clemens
• Curt Schilling
• Jeff Bagwell
• Larry Walker
• Mike Piazza
• Alan Trammell
• Edgar Martinez
• Kenny Lofton
• Tim Raines
• Craig Biggio
• Mark McGwire
• Rafael Palmeiro
• Sammy Sosa

Why? Because the Hall of Fame has 209 players. And they were among the 209 best players ever. Welcome, guys. We’re happy to have you.

The post Hall of Stats appeared first on Obstructed View.

“Let’s put it this way,” Idelson says. “Every year I root for someone to be elected. I’m not alone in Cooperstown in that wish. By the same token, I was fully aware that a shutout was possible and was prepared for it. We have tremendous faith in the writers’ process.”

I think you have to be an idiot to have faith in the BBWAA.

“Over 70 years, we’ve seen the way it plays out with the BBWAA,” he says. “When you walk through the gallery of plaques, like I do every day, you can look at the walls. Certainly I can’t find anyone the BBWAA elected who is undeserving. You could argue there are some on the outside looking in who are worthy, and that’s a valid point. But that’s also the nature of things.”

Yep, he’s an idiot.

The post Jeff Idelson, President of the Baseball Hall of Fame, full of shit appeared first on Obstructed View.