I was checking out Starlin Castro's disappointing offensive season on Fangraphs and thought I'd check to see where the Cubs rank offensively as a team. I didn't realize it had gotten so ugly. Their 77 wRC+ is dead last behind the Mariners at 81. The two offense's may actually be equal if we eliminated the pitcher in the NL, but that's too much work and I don't really care that much about being that precise.
At this point I started to wonder when the last the Cubs offense was this bad. As I started looking back at each year for the Cubs using wRC+ I remembered I had already looked at the Cubs historical wRC+'s. On the now retired Another Cubs Blog I had taken a look back to see how many times the Cubs were above 100 (average). It was correctly pointed out in the comments (no longer there) by commenter AB that league average wRC+ in the NL is not 100 due to the pitcher batting. While the article I wrote talked about league average as if it was 100 and therefore incorrect, it still shows how not good the Cubs offense has been. They've never had a stretch where it was clearly above average. They had never been a dominating offensive team.
If you look through the wRC+ for each season you'd notice the last time the Cubs offense has as low a wRC+ as the 2012 bunch was in the strike shortened 1981 season (106 games played). That team managed a 75 wRC+. The 64-98 Cubs the year before had a wRC+ of 77. That is the last full season in which the Cubs have had as bad a wRC+ as this season.
You can look back as far as you want and you won't find a Cubs offense who had a worse wRC+ than the 1980 team. The 2012 team is currently tied with that team. If the Cubs offense continues to hit as it has, it will become tied with arguably the worst offensive team they've ever had. Even if we include the 1981 season, it would still be the 2nd worst and the Cubs still have 54 games to beat the 75 wRC+.
What's even more interesting to me is that 1980 and 1981 are the only seasons in which the Cubs have managed a wRC+ lower than 80. There are a few seasons in which they had an 80 and a handful more at 82, but never this low.
While the 2012 Cubs are probably not the worst offensive Cubs team in history, they are certainly one of the worst. An 80 wRC+ like they had in 1951 and 1956 is quite possibly worse than a 77 these days. At that time the Cubs were 20% below the league average and all teams used a pitcher. Since 1973 an 80 is equal to 20% below league average, which includes the DH in nearly half of MLB. Being precise here isn't of that much importance to me. The offense this year is bad. Terrible. And they do have at this time the lowest wRC+ they've ever had (excluding the strike shortened 1981 season).
I thought it might be fun to compare the teams.
The 1980 Cubs catcher was primarily 27 year old Tim Blackwell. His wRC+ was 98. Geovany Soto has done the bulk of the catching for the Cubs to this point and his was 67. Steve Clevenger's is 49. Only Welington Castillo and his 53 PA have a decent wRC+ (100). The 1980 team has 67 wRC (weighted Runs Created) from the catchers and this year's team has only 33. Granted, there's still 54 games remaining, but to this point in the season the 1980 team was much better behind the plate.
Bill Buckner had a very good season at 1st base in 1980. He had a 113 wRC+. The 2012 Cubs have also been very good at 1st. Anthony Rizzo had a 120 wRC+ while Bryan LaHair had a 112 wRC+ (most of those PA at 1st anyway) and Jeff Baker at 98.
Darwin Barney edges out Steve Dillard and Mike Tyson though it's not like Barney's 85 wRC+ is all that impressive. Tyson has to feel like shit these days knowing there's a raging fucking lunatic with the same name.
Ivan DeJesus and Starlin Castro have had almost identical seasons offensively. Castro's unimpressive 83 wRC+ barely edges DeJesus's 81. By the way, whoever had Darwin Barney having a better offensive season than Castro through 108 games wins a gallon of Cookie's BBQ.
We're just going to call 3rd base the clusterfuck of suck because that's what it's been so far this year. It's with great sadness that I have to report that Luis Valbuena has the highest wRC+ among Cubs clusterfucks of suckers. His 61 eges out Ian Stewart's 58. Len Randle had a 92 wRC+ in 1980 in 549 PA.
Tallying up the infield for good measure we have the 1980 Cubs beating the 2012 version out at catcher, but the current team's infielders are just no match for the 1980 Cubs.
Dave Kingman had a great season in LF, but he only batted 280 times. While his 123 wRC+ beats Alfonso Soriano's 112, we have to give the edge to this team because of playing time. Jim Tracy pitched in a 92 wRC+ for the 1980 Cubs.
Other than Reed Johnson the rest of the Cubs CF have sucked this year.
Mike Vail's 98 wRC+ tops David DeJesus's 94.
Remember when the Cubs had Aramis Ramirez, Sammy Sosa, Derrek Lee and Nomar Garciaparra? Or when they had Ryne Sandberg, Mark Grace and Andre Dawson? Miss those days too. Shit, I miss the days when they had good Geovany Soto and Marlon Byrd.
I guess the only good news about this is that the offense will be better in the future, but that's not even saying it's going to be good. It just can't get worse.
2013: Things are looking up!
WaLi wrote:
The 1980 Cubs were so bad that Topps didn’t even bother getting them together for a team picture.
The 1979 and 1981 teams both also had the dismembered floating heads style as well. Every other team had a real team picture. Every single one. I still don’t know why the Cubs were different. It gave me a complex about being a Cubs fan even back then.
@ Aisle424:
I didn’t know that. That’s weird. Why the hell wasn’t there a team picture? Were they too expensive or something?
I was also looking back at this article earlier today: http://www.obstructedview.net/commentary-and-analysis/ballhawks-can-take-2012-off.html
I used the starting 8 from BRef so if we use the same thing (link below) and add the rest of season PECOTA projections (some different players, but work with me), we end up with 96 home runs from the starting 8. That’s a few more than projected, but still the worst since 1997. You have to go back pre-Sosa to find a Cubs team whose starting 8 had less home runs than this bunch.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHC/2012.shtml
By pre-Sosa I mean pre-Sosa going bonkers Sosa.
@ mb21:
I have no idea. That was at the point where Wrigley could give a shit about anything anymore so it might just never have been scheduled. The 1982 Topps team cards went from team pictures to pictures team’s hitting and pitching leaders, so it’s hard to tell if the problem was with Cubs ownership and management or if Topps just didn’t give a fuck.
Is that like a clustersuck?
I also found it interesting that if you look back at the most recent two Cubs teams who have sucked complete ass (2006, 2012) both teams were actually very good defensively (using UZR). This is interesting to me because every other year they suck defensively.
Ah… memories of such storied careers.
Rice Cube wrote:
I think the Gay Community would like to meet with you.
@ Aisle424:
That’s just weird, but I’m glad you brought it up because I had no idea.
@ Aisle424:
What year was that? Lezcano was never very good in the minors. I think Carlos Lezcano converted to pitcher and changed his name and birthdate. We knew him as Carlos Zambrano.
@ Aisle424:
Did they just pick random minor league players for those cards?
Steve Macko was 5’10, 160 and not very good once he got to AA: http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=macko-001ste
Pagel was a 1st round pick and had some nice numbers in the minors so it wasn’t random, but Lezcano and Macko?
This doesn’t answer the floating head issue, but it’s interesting. I didn’t realize the floating heads went back so far and that there were a couple of years with an actual team photo. I also never knew it happened to the White Sox once, but no other team.
http://www.slangon.com/poor/?p=4775
mb21 wrote:
I’m assuming so. Ty Waller was supposed to be a future replacement for Santo if I remember my Vineline correctly, but I could be mixing him up with other future replacements for Santo that littered the Cubs’ minor leagues for years.
Steve Macko is clearly stoned in that picture, Dave Geisel is clearly nursing a hangover, and Karl Pagel may or may not be fully human.
A lot of the other teams’ future star cards are funny too, but most of them at least have one guy who ended up being serviceable in his career.
@ mb21:
in fairness, he has a look that Lisa Gherardini would envy.
@ Aisle424:
How many of those things did they make? We should put Alvin in some of them. (dying laughing) Dude’s a future start for sure.
mb21 wrote:
Now I have a project. I think the 3-guy future stars format was used from 1980-1982 for the Topps series.
Fleer might have had something similar, but Fleer and Donruss were inferior cards until about 1986 or so. Then they started passing Topps because they did limited series between their main sets that contained Rookie Cards of hot young stars before Topps next full season came out. Then Topps started doing wacky shit and then Score and some other brand came out and collecting baseball cards ceased to be fun by about 1989.
I’d buy one of these for this year’s team (dying laughing)
@ WenningtonsGorillaCock:
I see Mike Harkey once went 12-6 in 1990 nursing a 4.87K/9 courtesy of a .251 BABIP. If you would have told me in the year 1990 about BABIP I would have stared blankly at you until you could tell me if this ‘BABIP’ is somehow like prestige on Baseball Stars.
My memory of Mike Harkey is how he tore his leg up doing some kind of acrobatic move at Wrigley.
I’m disappointed that none of you have Photoshopped Texting Yellon into one of those baseball cards yet.
@ WenningtonsGorillaCock:
I was about to say the same thing about Macko.
@ WenningtonsGorillaCock:
I remember being super excited about Jerome Walton once.
I remember being excited about Gary Varsho. And Ty Griffin. And Derrick May. And Les Lancaster. And Rick Wilkins. And Roosevelt Brown. And Kevin Orie.
@ Rice Cube:
Miguel Cabrera’s most similar by age (per similarity scores):
1.) Frank Robinson (924) *
2.) Hank Aaron (910) *
3.) Ken Griffey (890)
4.) Albert Pujols (881)
5.) Mel Ott (862) *
6.) Joe Medwick (858) *
7.) Al Kaline (858) *
8.) Mickey Mantle (856) *
9.) Juan Gonzalez (849)
10.) Hal Trosky (847)
6 of 10 in the HOF. (dying laughing)
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
And 8 of 10 of them will be as soon as Griffey and Pujols are eligible.
Aisle424 wrote:
and one artificially intelligent marxist.
@ GW:
(dying laughing)
Greinke is being un-FIP today.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Yeah.
Lineup:
DeJesus CF
Barney 2B
Rizzo 1B
Soriano LF
Castro SS
Castillo C
Vitters 3B
Mather RF
Samardzija P
Mather is getting way too much PT. Meaning he’s getting PT.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Fuckin’ Kevin Orie.
Looking at B-Pro’s tAV stat (their version of linear weights scaled to batting average). The Cubs are last in the majors this year (.240). It is also tied (with 1980) for the second-worst Cubs offense since 1950, with only the 1981 Cubs being worse (at .236).
@ Rizzo the Rat:
Joe Mather is on the job. This will be rectified shortly.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
What’s wrong with a RF who bats 8th?
@ Rizzo the Rat:
I haven’t read all that much on tAV, but is it scaled so that a .240 in one year is equal to .240 in another? Isn’t it just scaled to batting average? So we’d really need a tAV+. Or not?
@ mb21:
.260 is average. Always. They also have RPA+ (same thing, with 100 as average), but it’s harder to find.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
Nothing. In the AL.
The Cubs have 4 players with at least 145 PA who have a walk percentage under 5%. 2 of them are under 4%. Another 6 who are 6.0% or lower. Only 5 above that (all 5 above 9.5%).
@ Rizzo the Rat:
Thanks.
Of the 5 better than 6% only 3 remain active. Geovany Soto was traded and Ian Stewart is on the DL, which leaves Luis Valbuena, David DeJesus and Bryan Lahair.
This team needs players who get on base in a very bad way.
Darwin Barney has the 2nd highest fWAR among Cubs position players.
Barney has the highest rWAR among all players. He has the 2nd highest WARP among position players.
The best pitching rWAR on the team was Dempster’s 3.1 followed not so closely by Maholm’s 1.3. Garza is next at 0.8 and he’s injured. the most rWAR for Cub on the active roster is F7′s .5.
Shawn Camp has the 2nd highest rWAR among healthy Cubs players.
Chris Volstad has the 2nd highest fWAR among Cubs pitchers who are healthy and still on the team. (dying laughing)
Are you saying the Cubs aren’t very good this year?
@ mb21:
How much of that is defense?
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
He’s 19.2 RAR (Runs Above Replacement). 7.8 of that is UZR.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
FIRE THEO DIS GUY CAN’T GET DA JAWB DONE! WE NEED TA HIRE AN OLD SKOOL BASEBALL GUY LIKE STEVE STONE
Alex Brown —————> Bears ( so he can retire as a Bear on Thursday)
Starlin is in a bad way right now. All the young players seem to be regressing at the plate.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
We knew Rizzo wouldn’t continue to hit as he did early on. He’s just not that good. Castro regressing like he has is a bit of a surprise. HIs OSWING% is terrible leading to almost no walks. Maybe it’s nothing, but it is at least a little concerning. As for Jackson and Vitters, I don’t think anyone expected much of anything from them this year. Jackson strikes out way too much and Vitters is Josh Vitters.
What concerns me is that 3 of the 4 young guys don’t appear to have much patience so the Cubs need Jackson to straighten himself out because he’s the one OBP guy they have anywhere close to being ready.
Pitch F/X plate discipline average OSWING% is 28.7%. Castro’s is 37.1%.
His BIS OSWING% is 40% and it’s 7th worst in baseball.
Should have been a TOOTBLAN
Castro has the 5th worst BB% in baseball.
We stinks
Looks like the A’s just eked out a slugfest.
I think it’s funny that the Reds are using Broxton to set up Chapman when Marshall is much, much better. Today they paid a steep price for that.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
his first road trip room service bill?
I see Soto hit his first AL homer.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
Looks like that was the difference in the game.
Castro got a hit!
I’ve been following along on Gameday and I have Scout turned on. Don’t know why. Never turned it off I guess. Anyway, a few pitches ago it said Samardzija may be running out of gas because his fastball had gone from as high as 96 to as low as 92. A few pitches later it said he had plenty left in the tank as he was still hitting 94. (dying laughing)
I wonder if a media shitstorm will descend on F7 for breaking the bat over his knee. I’m guessing it won’t.
Pretty fucking solid performances from F7 of late.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
We both know the answer to that one. They won’t say a word.
Good start from F7. Here’s hoping they at least get him off the hook.
Jeez (dying laughing)
Can’t catch a break.
Yes, Len, Valbuena is in a slump. It’s called his career.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Did Len really say he is in a slump? His wRC+ for August is 169.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
He said he was coming out of a slump. (dying laughing) I guess it’s a stupid thing to say for a lot of reasons (dying laughing)
For all the Breaking Bad heads, I posted a nice interview with the guy who plays Hank, and it contains a possible spoiler.
It’d be nice if the Astros started winning some.
Adam Dunn has struck out 3 times today (against a righty, no less), so Brett shouldn’t feel so bad.
@ Rice Cube:
I wish I could win the lottery. In fact, I’d put better odds on that than on the Astros winning with any frequency.
Well, I missed that game completely. Can the west coast make up its mind if the games will be early or late please?
@ Aisle424:
I definitely remember a lot of hype around Waller.
You all are hilarious today. But I guess a topic like how much the Cubs suck is good fodder. Thanks MB.
By the way, the DontCarometer made it to the third sentence today before going off.
Wonder what you sci-fi guys think of this: Whedon signs with Marvel
Was Buffy objectively hot?
Hey Josh–did the aftermath of the joke I was trying to make about running a wire out your window to the ground help at all? I agree with WaLi that if you could just run some wire from the washing machine outlet to the office (through the walls or whatever) that would be your best bet, but I like the practicality of the heavy duty extension cord too.
I’ve owned 2 old houses and loved them both. But I’m happy to tinker, though I’m getting tired of the crawl space. After completely redoing the plumbing with pex 3 years ago and adding outlets this year, I hope I don’t have to go under there for a few more years. My old houses have been like my old air-cooled VW was, both required constant TLC.
(dying laughing)
@ SVB:
I went with the heavy duty extension cord. Actually, this whole discussion only began after I had already more or less settled on a solution (though I was worried the landlord wouldn’t like it for some reason). This place is a duplex and an old one. There is a huge double utility sink made of concrete? Soapstone? Not sure. It’s a cool old place. I was just not expecting to run into the problem of lack of grounded outlets. The extension cord idea will work fine. I bought a bunch of those clamp things you hammer in to hold it in place. It actually looks almost like it’s supposed to be there.
SVB wrote:
both buffys (kristy swanson and the tv chick) were two of the hottest chicks ever.
From the Trey McNutt aside:
Yeah, me too. Even if I top out at 78 mph.
Aisle424 wrote:
seriously one of the most interesting things i’ve read in a while, which maybe says some bad things about me. actually, i enjoyed the hell out of the first 40 comments in general.
also, fuck mike harkey.
lastly, i can’t let a thread about old baseball cards go on without posting the greatest card ever, the 1984 fleer jay johnstone budweiser umbrella hat card:
Jay Johnstone was the original Ryan Dempster.
@ Aisle424:
TAKE IT BACK
actually i see your point
@ Aisle424:
Wasn’t he one of the actual baseball players who appeared in the first Naked Gun movie?
@ EnricoPallazzo:
I’ve been trying to figure out that avatar for months. Now I know…
In case anyone missed the UNBRIDLED FURY…
http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=23747637&c_id=mlb
Aisle424 wrote:
If you go to the link and then click “What were they thinking” in the right sidebar, there are some other pretty interesting articles about baseball card design.
Rice Cube wrote:
/white guy’d
@ Rice Cube:
It only does damage when the bat doesn’t break.
@ GW:
(dying laughing) This is a Rosenblog/Sully article waiting to happen.
We’re having issues with our server right now.
@ Mish:
actually, i lifted that from a sullivan article.
server issues should be fixed now.
new shit