Another shitty Cubs season in review: Carlos Pena

Carlos Pena signed a 1-year, $10 million contract with the Cubs last offseason. We knew a few things about Pena: he wasn’t going to hit for average, he would take a lot of walks and have a solid OBP and he would hit for some power. The league batting average last year was .255 and Pena hit .225. Pena’s OBP was .357 while the league average was .321. He slugged .462 and the league slugged .399. He was exactly the player we expected on offense. Pena’s average projection entering the season was a .221/.349/.475 batting line. He was projected to have a .357 wOBA. Pena’s batting average was nearly identical to his projection, but batting average is a useless statistic when evaluating a player. His OBP was slightly higher while his slugging was slightly less. Ever since I’ve been posting average projections I don’t think there has been a player other than Pena who hit almost exactly as projected in all three rate stats. Because the OBP and SLG are almost identical, we know the wOBA is likely to be quite similar to the .357 projection. It was actually .354. His offensive WAR projection was 2.7. His offensive fWAR and rWAR last year was 2.7. He only needed a little more than 2 wins to be worth the money and he was worth slightly more than he was paid. It wasn’t easy. He got off to a horrible start. In 77 April plate appearances he hit a grand total of 0 home runs. Even worse than that was that he struckout in 30% of his plate appearances. He batted .159/.289/.175 (good for a .231 wOBA). Not only did he not have any home runs, he had only 1 extra base hit. He would hit 17 home runs the next 2 months and batted .243/.356/.557. After April he would have 57 extra base hits and in those 5 months he hit .235/.367/.505. He would also walk 101 times in 2011, which was 23.8% of all the Cubs walks last year. As a team they walked only 425 times. That was better than only the Astros 401 walks. Other than Carlos Pena, the Cubs were easily the least patient team in baseball last season. Considering the awful month to begin the season, Pena had a damn good season last year. The Cubs will miss his patience, but more importantly than that, they’re going to miss a lot of the patience they had last season. Kosuke Fukudome, Aramis Ramirez and Pena combined to make 25.7% of the Cubs plate appearances in 2011, but made up 44.7% of the team walks. Nearly half of the walks the Cubs saw last year are by players no longer with the team. As a team the Cubs only had a 6.9% walk rate. Take away Fukudome, Ramirez and Pena and the rest of the team had a 5.2% walk rate. The Astros were a league worst 6.5% last year. I looked back through 2000 and only 1 team was below a 6.3% walk rate (2001 Tigers, 6.1%). A few more teams were at 6.4% and 6.5%, but most of the worst walk rates were even higher than that. The Tigers won 66 games in 2001. Obviously the Cubs have or will have replacements for the players they lost, but none of them are going to have the patience that Pena and Fukudome had. Ramirez had an 8.2% walk rate since 2007. Ian Stewart’s career walk rate is 10.3%. If Ian Stewart had the same number of PA that Ramirez had last year, he’d have walked 64 times. Ramirez walked 43 times. This is the one spot the Cubs have improved their patience at. Fukudome walked in 13.3% of his PA last season. David DeJesus has walked in 8.6% of his PA since 2007. Fukudome was traded midway throught he season so we’re interested in how much the RF as a whole walked last year. That was 8.7%. They don’t lose or add anything at that position. Pena walked in 16.7% of his PA last year. The Cubs don’t yet have a 1st baseman other than Bryan LaHair so let’s use his projected total. He’s projected to walk in 8.7% of his PA according to CAIRO. That’s 52 walks over the same number of PA as Pena. The group as a whole is expected to have about 35 fewer walks than the guys they’re replacing. This comes out to about a 6.3% team walk rate. It’s important to note that these numbers are only an estimation. Please don’t quote these numbers. Depending on who the Cubs add at 1st base, the 2012 Cubs could have one of the two or three worst walk rates since 2000. I’m fairly confident in saying right now that the Cubs will have the worst walk rate in MLB next year. And it’s not like they have a lot of power (they did lose Ramirez and Pena!), or are very good at defense or at running the bases. To be quite honest, I remain very surprised the new front office has spoken so much about the need for pitching when the position players are clearly the weakest part of this team now and in the near future.

Talk about a New Year’s bringdown.

Yeah, Carlos Pena was a useless signing because he didn’t produce in April when it mattered. Same with Ramirez. Glad they’re both gone.

/meathead

[quote name=mb21]The funny thing is April is usually the least important month since they, you know, often play fewer games in April.[/quote]No way man, they weren’t ten games back in April! They only produced when it didn’t matter!

Where do you think Pena is going to end up? That extra draft pick would be nice.

Speaking of first base, now that Quentin has been traded to SD is it time for thoyer to put in a call regarding Kyle blanks. Seems like it could be a nice buy low situation. How much less upside does he have than Rizzo?

Jason Fraser====> Back to Toronto

a little concerned by Jacob Turners lack of K’s

[quote name=bubblesdachimp]Jason Fraser====> Back to Toronto

a little concerned by Jacob Turners lack of K’s[/quote]I think you have to take into consideration he is only 20. Still learning to pitch.

[quote name=dylanj]I could see Pena as the DH for an AL contender. I was really surprised at how low the average line for the DH was last year[/quote]With the rise of interleague play, few teams carry a DH specialist anymore (e.g., David Ortiz). Most teams use the DH spot to give position players a day of from fielding.

[quote name=Rice Cube]Yeah, Carlos Pena was a useless signing because he didn’t produce in April when it mattered. Same with Ramirez. Glad they’re both gone.

/meathead[/quote]If only the Ramirez and Pena had gotten of to hot starts, the Cubs could have stayed in contention for a couple more weeks.

I like Kyle Blanks. Not sure he has the upside Rizzo has, but I don’t think Rizzo is as good as a lot of people do.

[quote name=Suburban kid]The first half was nice, but then the review of Pena turned into a pre-emptive obituary of 2012 team OBP.. Bringdown.[/quote]Just wait until I get the April 2011 review up in April.

[quote name=dylanj]i’m not a rizzo fan at all really. I honestly think Lahair will put up league average #’s at 1B. And that Castro will have 1,000 errors without Pena to help him[/quote]Castro might have two more errors than he had last year with a different 1st baseman. Pena’s Scoops were league average prior to 2011 when he was tops in baseball. The reason he was that high was because he had so many more chances with Castro and Ramirez on the left side of the infield. There’s no reason to think that a guy who is league average at scooping suddenly becomes the best in baseball after one offseason. No, Pena was league average last year, but had more opportunities. The idea that Pena saved Castro from all these errors was probably the most overblown statement during the 2011 Cubs season.

DJ, more scoop chances = more scoops. If the left side of the Brewers infield just threw the ball into the dirt every time Prince Fielder would lead the league in scoops. I don’t think anybody would be saying that Fielder is a good defender.

How do they measure 1B defense? Scoop percentage? Is there a standard method to gauge the difficulty of a play?

[quote name=Rice Cube]How do they measure 1B defense? Scoop percentage? Is there a standard method to gauge the difficulty of a play?[/quote]1st baseman use their range to field balls and convert them into outs of course. They make errors so there are Error Runs for 1st baseman. So you can easily calculate the Range Runs and Error Runs. They also turn double plays so you can calculate Double Play Runs (Pena below average at that too).

If the Gold Gloves are any indication, we should rank defenders using OPS.

Castro and Barney combined for -4 double play runs.

Sorry to hear about the guilty verdict, RC.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8396939/topless-coffee-shop-arsonist-guilty

[quote name=Rice Cube]I don’t like to go arson around.[/quote]You should be fired for that remark.

Barring a stirring comeback by the Cowboys, methinks the NFL playoffs be set:

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ys-nfl_playoff_picture

Bulls are good at basketball.

[quote name=Rice Cube]I wonder if they can protect this 42-point lead.[/quote]Did they?

new shit: http://www.obstructedview.net/chicago-cubs/articles/matt-garza-update.html