We knew that the Cubs would stink this year, but seeing the Pirates and Astros above the Cubs in the standings still takes some getting used to. At least we have the Hope Monster to remind us that the Cubs are only seven games back!!! It's gonna happen! The rest of the NL Central kind of stinks right now. The Cardinals got off to a hot start, but have gone into a tailspin over the past week or two and are now only three games over .500, and they probably just lost MO mancrush Lance Berkman to an ACL tear. The Brewers (who I was relatively high on) have had a run of bad injury luck that brings to mind the 2009 Cubs, and Bronson Arroyo has been the second most effective starter on the Reds staff.
There are rumors of a shakeup in the lineup, and even rumors that Anthony Rizzo might be called up in the next few weeks (most likely moving DeJesus to play CF and LaHair to stand in RF). I'm guessing that it won't be much more than Castro and DeJesus swapping places in the lineup. When the Cubs go 5-4 against the equally lousy Astros, Pirates, and Padres it will be a clear sign that things are looking up.
Team Overviews
NL rank in parens
| Cubs | Astros | |
| wOBA | .296 (14th) | .303 (11th) |
| BSR | 3.4 (2nd) | -4.5 (15th) |
| UZR | 7.9 (4th) | 9.1 (3rd) |
| DRS | 4 (5th) | -6 (9th) |
| SP FIP | 3.75 (9th) | 4.12 (12th) |
| RP FIP | 3.75 (11th) | 4.66 (16th) |
The Astros have had a revolving door of replacement-level starters filling in the fifth spot in the rotation, though the Cubs won't face any of them this series. In their seven starts they've posted 34 strikeouts to 16 walks, but given up 11 HRs and surprisngly only 25 runs.
Houston has new ownership that hopefully won't meddle in the affairs of the sharp new management team they've hired, but they're facing an even more daunting task to rebuild than the Cubs. At least the Cubs have Castro, Samardzija, and Garza, not to mention at least some top prospects near the MLB level. It's pretty much just Wandy Rodriguez and nothing else for the Astros.
Position players
The Astros main contributers on offense this year have been their middle infielders, ex-Red Sox SS Jed Lowrie and 2B Jose Altuve. Obviously, neither of these guys are guy that you expect to be leading this offense (.330 and .323 projected wOBA, respectively). That said, who should be? The rest of their lineup includes the shambling remains of Carlos Lee (.333 projected wOBA), Tony Campana 1.0 Jordan Schaefer (.282), third base-man Chris Johnson (.303), who followed up his 1.5 WAR rookie season with a -0.8 WAR 2011, and top catching prospect Jason Castro (.279). It will be a miracle if four runs total are scored this entire series. Much like the Cubs the Astros like to run the bases, though they seem to have a much better group of players to do it with (32 steals to 10 CS, in contrast with the Cubs 27/16). Though judging from their overall BSR number, they're finding plenty of ways to make outs on the basepaths anyway. Defensively Jordan Schaefer's speed allowss him to cover plenty of ground in CF, but none of the other regulars are expected to rate particularly highly. Carlos Lee, on the other hand, does a decent job resembling a statue at 1b.
Injuries
Schaefer has a leg injury so he might miss some games this series. Even if he does play, it will probably hold back his speed which is his main asset anyway.
After staying relatively healthy for the first month or so of the season, the Cubs injury list has grown quite long. And, unfortunately, concentrated. The Cubs are down three catchers, and Koyie Hill was acquired just because he knows a decent chunk of the pitching staff. Clevenger should be starting his rehab assignment today, and Castillo is only expected to be out a week or so. Carlos Marmol is still out with his hamstring injury and will hopefully stretch out his rehab as long as possible while he tries to find command of his fastball again. Less DL-worthy is the leg injury that Soriano is reported to be nursing. After looking great in the field for the first 6 weeks or so of the season (even admitted by Brenly!), he's clearly slowed down a bit. I'm surprised Sveum hasn't given him more rest during this stretch, and it's not like the Cubs have been facing a zillion left-handed starters either.
Current state of the Failpen
Due to the flurry of injuries and retirements and whatnot it's tough to remember who is currently in the bullpen. Here's the current list – someone is going to have to head back to the minors when the Cubs call up Travis Wood for Tuesday's start.
Rafael Dolis
James Russell
Shawn Camp
Randy Wells
Casey Coleman
Blake Parker
Michael Bowden
Wells's role has been specified as the long reliever out of the pen, but if they're serious about bullpenning him (and as much as I've defended Randy Wells, they probably should at this point), they might as well make him the closer because even Transformed Randy Wells is probably better than everyone else in this group. He certainly would be preferable to Dolis. This bullpen still stinks but it's a little better with guys like Coleman and Wells pitching in it rather than eating up innings in AAA with no chance at this point of contributing as a starter.
Pitching Matchups
Monday: Matt Garza, RHP (2.58, 3.21, 3.50, 3.40) vs Bud Norris, RHP (3.58, 3.60, 3.53, 3.84), 7:05 PM CT
Norris is an overlooked, solid pitcher, much like rotation-mate Wandy Rodriguez was earlier in his career. He's not a guy who lights the world on fire but it a pitcher just about any team would love to have in its rotation. His breakout year was 2010, where he had a 4.92 ERA that masked a 9+ K/9 rate and a not so great walk rate. He improved his walk rate while keeping a high strikeout rate in 2011, and he's right on track to keep doing so in 2012. He's a flyball pitcher so he gives up his share of HRs.
There's not much to say about Garza except that his numbers are right about in line with last year's excellent season. He's had a bit of batted ball and sequencing luck, but all of the peripherals are right where they need to be.
Tuesday: Travis Wood, LHP (4.50, 5.30, 4.28, 4.02) vs J. A. Happ, LHP (4.96, 4.60, 3.91, 4.57), 7:05 PM CT
Wood was penciled into the rotation by most people after being picked up in the Sean Marshall deal, but following the Transformation of Jeff Samardzija and a truly terrible spring, he found himself in Iowa instead. ERA-wise he's been pretty pedestrian there (4.57) but his peripherals (3.76 FIP, 3+ K/BB) suggest that he figured something out, hopefully. His .358 BABIP could explain that ERA-FIP split. He made one fill-in start earlier this month when Matt Garza skipped a turn due to a nasty flu bug and turned in a solidly adequate start against the Dodgers (6 IP, 3 R), though three runs is often an insurmountable lead for this offense.
Happ was acquired from the Phillies for Roy Oswalt in one of many facepalm-worthy Ed Lynch moves during his tenure as GM. Happ put up great ERAs in his time with thie Phillies, while posting merely meh FIPs. In his three seasons with the Phillies, mostly as a starter, he posted BABIPs of .266, .262, and .250, while it regressed back up to .300 not long after he joined the Astros. He's got a pretty good strikeout rate for a lefty starter but he can't find the plate worth a damn.
Wednesday: Jeff Samardzija, RHP (3.00, 2.97, 2.97, 4.02) vs Wandy Rodriguez, LHP (2.24, 3.03, 3.66, 3.74), 7:05 PM CT
Samardzija tried to do it all against the White Sox, going into the eighth inning and allowing three runs while also providing half of the Cubs feeble offense. He struck out eight and walked two batters, and didn't have as great of a handle on his cutter as evidenced by the accidental beaning of White Sox 1b Paul Konerko. One other thing that should be mentioned is that in addition to finding the plate and not throwing such a flat fastball this year, Samardzija is generating a lot of ground balls.
W-Rod is the Trope Namer for my Wandy Rodriguez Hall of Fame, consisting of pitchers that I saw early in their careers who looked awful and then became good much more quickly than my first impression faded away. It always drove me nuts when he beat the Cubs because I remembered just how shitty he was when I wrote him off as 5th starter material in 2005-2006. He's been the real deal for a while now though. His strikeout rate is down this year, but he's put up great numbers anyway by limiting walks and keeping the ball on the ground.
It’s that sinker he’s throwing. That is an unhittable pitch when he is locating it.
FWIW, the Cubs talked up F7′s ability to get groundballs when they drafted him and mentioned it a few times as to why he was being promoted. His GB rates in the minor leagues was always pretty high. I remember Ryno talking about him early on when he was generating something like 3 GB per FB in the low minors.
I didn’t think the Cubs would be worse than the Astros and still don’t, but I did expect them to finish behind the Pirates. It’s not that I think the Pirates are all that much better, but the Cubs just flat out suck. It’s one of the worst Cubs teams we’ve seen.
Suburban kid wrote:
this was a comment i recently enjoyed.
i am kind of pulling for the team to lose 100 games because once lahair has his inevitable massive decline, i honestly can’t think of any other reason to even pay attention. other than maybe rizzo comes up and is a badass?
One of the dumbest things I’ve read:
http://network.yardbarker.com/author/article_external/10832309?widget=true
Wood’s career is only similar to Marino’s in that neither won a championship. That’s it. The similarities end there.
mb21 wrote:
every game i have been able to watch so far this year, the cubs have looked good or at least decent, and they have pretty much won or almost won all of them. at most i’ll see a few obligatory stupid baserunning
errors but otherwise they have looked solid. i obviously have not watched many games (maybe 10) but is this team just completely bi-polar or something?
mb21 wrote:
they both played sports.
@ EnricoPallazzo:
Here’s something I tell my students about paper-writing. You need to do three things:
1.) Get it right.
2.) Get it organized.
3.) Do something with it.
Getting it right is only a necessary condition for success. Getting it right is a “C.” The Cubs aren’t making a lot of mistakes, they’re just not a very good team. They have to play flawless baseball just to stay near .500.
@ EnricoPallazzo:
Bad teams don’t necessarily stand out in that they make 3 or 5 horrible plays per game. They just stand out because they have no talent. The team’s offense is horrible. The bullpen is a joke. I know I haven’t seen a Cubs team with this little talent in at least a decade. I’d probably go back to the mid 90s. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen so little talent on the Cubs.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Well put. I might even say they have to play flawless baseball to stay at or near .450 baseball. I think this team is so bad they’d need a lot of luck just to finish at .500. (dying laughing)
@ Mercurial Outfielder: what i’m saying is that the games that i have seen, they look like a legitimately good team. i know this is a fluke because when i look at the box score for games that i miss, they look pathetic. i guess i was just making an observation that i have yet to personally witness how awful they are and that from a probability standpoint, it’s kind of weird that i haven’t seen them suck yet. if i watch the astros, they look like a minor league team. the cubs don’t (in the 25% of games i have seen).
@ EnricoPallazzo:
I’m wondering if you’ve intentionally tuned into games in which the top 3 were starting. They don’t look half bad in those games because half of the team is playing pretty well (usually).
Wood is a parallel for Dan Marino the same way Tom Brady is a parallel for Secretariat.
@ mb21:
I think this indicates a cognitive mistake that 99% of sports fans make: they assume that all teams are roughly equal, and the major difference between a good team and a bad team is simply a matter of who makes the most mistakes/is more poorly coached. It’s unfortunate because it leads to so much disappointment and angst on the part of fans.
mb21 wrote:
We could also say his career is similar to Charles Barkley’s, but the rule about comparisons transcends sports. So I guess it must be similar to John Starks’s instead (dying laughing)
@ EnricoPallazzo:
I don’t think the Cubs are going to be egregiously awful this year, i.e. dropping pop-ups, getting caught in rundowns all the time, etc. If that’s how you demarcate bad teams from good teams, then they’ll look “good” to you all year long.
@ GBTS:
True, Secretariat was just a system thoroughbred
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
It’s kind of like some fans (some of us and maybe even me) saying the Cubs would be such and such if they didn’t have Marmol. Who replaces Marmol? Apparently Dolis and I’d take a transformed Marmol over Dolis. This team just sucks. There really isn’t a whole lot that can be said other than that. They have little talent. They’re not fun to watch. It’s a big clusterfuck of suck.
@ Berselius:
(dying laughing)
(dying laughing)
The Cubs have been much better defensively, and CS aside much better on the bases this year. The big problems are the bullpen (which I think will regress to merely “not good” instead of awful) and even more so the offense, where there’s pretty much no silver lining other than a possible Rizzo callup.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Even AAA teams don’t look this bad if you watch them enough. Even the teams in the College World Series look competent and considering the competition they even look good.
@ mb21:
The starting pitchers are fun to watch. That’s about it. I’d still take this roster over Houston’s though.
Actually I think Shawn Kemp is the closest parallel to Secretariat because they both fathered several hundred offspring
No lineup shakeup yet
DeJesus
Campana
Castro
LaHair
Soriano
Stewart
Cardenas
Koyie
Garza
@ Berselius:
As you’ve said many times, regression works both ways. The top 3 in the rotation will regress quite a bit.
If they are really wanting to bring Rizzo up that soon, it sounds like they don’t care about that extra year of control or they are being pressured by someone (agent? union?) to bring him up. Otherwise I did a quick guesstimate and figure he debuts on the road against the D’Backs to get past the cutoff date.
@ Berselius:
The only good news for the Astros is they have been promoted to the big leagues and begin play there next year. The funny thing is that it’s bad news for the Cubs, but at least the Astros get to play without their stupid pitcher batting.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
i assume that whoever has the most heart/grit/scrappiness will win 110% of the time.
@ mb21:
i tune in whenever i can catch the game (i live in baltimore and travel a fair amount for work so it’s not that easy). but yeah, i think that by coincidence i have seen most of the samardzijja start plus a few of dempster’s and a few of maholm’s where he looked pretty good.
@ mb21:
Yeah, but they’ll regress from awesome to good-to-very-good. Unlike the regression that Campana is going to undergo.
Seriously, Soriano looked horrible in the last game. He could barely run. He was jogging after fly balls. Are they playing him until he gives up and retires or what?
mb21 wrote:
Also, I read this as Mariano at first and was very confused
@ Rice Cube:
If they want to avoid super 2 status they wait until the all-star break. They could call Jackson up now and they’d get that extra year. Rizzo will get that extra year if he’s called up much before the all-star break. They could call him up for a few games and then send him down. The media seems to think that won’t happen, but I’m not so sure.
@ josh:
seriously. I don’t get this at all. Give him a day off today, there are back to back lefties the next two games
@ mb21:
Does it matter before the asb? Isn’t it just games played?
@ mb21:
He’s pretty good at baseball down in Iowa, are they going to be able to send him down willy-nilly like that? I thought most folks here agree that once he’s up, he’s up for good.
@ Berselius:
There’s an off day on Thursday. I guess he can rest when he’s dead…
The team won’t get hilarious bad, I don’t think, unless we see even more injuries that require all the low A ball guys to come up and they play like little leaguers. They play okay, they just don’t hit very often and they leak runs like that old boat your dad left in the backyard for six years leaks water. They aren’t getting murdered, but they aren’t coming from behind either.
They’re bad in a more depressing than hilarious way. The laughter will come slicked with tears and bitterness.
@ josh:
Just another iteration of the AGGRESSIVE gameplan.
@ josh:
Exactly.
@ Berselius:
It’s service time. You could have a guy at the big league level who never plays a game accrue 172 days of service time, which is equal to 1 year. You have to be on the MLB roster for something like 86 consecutive days one season in order to qualify as a super 2. That’s the all-star break. http://www.obstructedview.net/commentary-and-analysis/when-will-we-see-brett-jackson-and-anthony-rizzo.html
@ Rice Cube:
I don’t necessarily agree with that. I think that would be the plan, but some teams do call guys up for interleague and send them down. Wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a chance for some teams to get top prospects a little playing time. I don’t know.
@ mb21:
I figure they’re just going to call him up for the interleague series, then send him back down
@ mb21:
Yeah, if they’re going to cll up Rizzo, that’s the smart thing to do, but man, if he starts hitting, they’ll have a PR kerfuffle on their hands when the demote him after interleague.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Could be they’re hoping he does hit and generate a teensy bit of excitement. If he comes up wailing, they may keep him.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Don’t worry, I hear that Joe Ricketts knows some good PR guys
@ josh:
Then Sveum is more of a stooge than even I think he is, because every Cub fan with the power of sight knows that when Soriano’s legs go, his bat goes with it.
@ Berselius:
Todd?
New shit: http://www.obstructedview.net/chicago-cubs/joe-didnt-help-anything-but-tom-ricketts-has-screwed-himself.html
Cubs have a 1.2% chance of making the playoffs! There’s still a shred of hope! http://www.baseballprospectus.com/odds/