Series Preview: Milwaukee Brewers (1-2) at Chicago Cubs (1-2)

In Series Previews by berselius57 Comments

The Brewers dropped their opening series to the Cardinals, losing to Jaime Garcia and Lance Lynn in three relatively high-scoring games. The Cubs, meanwhile, did their best to try to have the bullpen/defense blow late leads in all three games against the Washington Nationals. This will be Aramis Ramirez's first appearance in Wrigley not wearing a Cubs or Pirates uniform. I'm hoping Cubs fans applaud him for his past contributions to the team, but I'm not holding my breath. It's also Ryan Braun's first appearance since urine-gate. The Brewers didn't make any particularly big splashes this offseason, relative to last year's blockbuster Marcum and Greinke trades. They signed Ramirez, and lost Betancourt (a gain) and Fielder (a big loss). They signed C Jonathan Lucroy to a ~5/11 extension at the end of spring training, and picked up reserve outfielder Norichika Aoki from Japan.

Team Overviews

As mentioned last time, these are the 2011 numbers since we don't have much of a sample for this year. NL rankings are listed in parentheses

Overall

  Brewers Cubs
wOBA .327 (2nd) .313 (8th)
BSR -3.9 (10th) -12 (16th)
UZR 16.2 (4th) -9.5 (8th)
DRS 23 (5th) -36 (13th)
SP FIP 3.75 (5th) 4.25 (11th)
RP FIP 3.24 (3rd) 3.85 (5th)

Starting lineups

ZiPS projections listed for each player

Brewers wOBA wOBA Cubs
2B Rickie Weeks .356 .330 RF David DeJesus
CF Carlos Gomez .303 .295 2B Darwin Barney
LF Ryan Braun .385 .336 SS Starlin Castro
3B Aramis Ramirez .351 .322 LF Alfonso Soriano
RF Corey Hart .351 .339 1B Bryan LaHair
SS Alex Gonzalez .295 .314 3B Ian Stewart
1B Mat Gamel .335 .323 CF Marlon Byrd
C Jonathan Lucroy .305 .334 C Geovany Soto

As much as we complain about the lineup stuff, looking at the projections there's really only two easy choices. Bat DeJesus first, because he's the only one with OBP worth a damn (unless Soto is on), and bat Barney last. As for the rest, just draw names out of a hat and it wouldn't make too much of a difference. When your three best hitters are all projected in the .330s it's not going to matter that much.

Injury report

As soon as LaHair felt well enough to play, Blake DeWitt was scratched with back spasms of his own. Way down in the minors, tough sign draft pick Dillon Maples is injured and should be out until around the start of Boise's season this summer (I can't seem to dig up a link for this injury right now though…). The Brewers are all relatively healthy, though Corey Hart had a procedure on his knee early in spring training. It doesn't seem to be slowing him down, as he's hit three homers already.

Players to watch

The obvious choices for this series are the Brewers big swingers Ramirez and Braun, for the reasons mentioned above. The Cubs offense has yet to produce a HR, but they should hit a few this series, though it's too bad Randy Wolf won't make an appearance.

Pitching Probables

This year's ZiPS projected ERA and FIP in parentheses

Monday: Shaun Marcum, RHP (3.51, 3.55) vs Chris Volstad, RHP (4.82, 4.63), 6:05 PM CT

Sometimes it's easy to forget that Shawn Marcum is a damn good pitcher. For some reason I thought he struggled last year with the Brewers, but he actually posted slightly better numbers than in Toronto the previous year. Of course, once you factor in the change from the AL East to the run-starved 2011 NL it's not quite so remarkable (though still great!). I might have been remembering his poor September as the Brewers were making a playoff push – he gave up five or more runs in three of his five september starts, and got absolutely shelled in the playoffs giving up 16 runs in 9.1 innnings across three starts. As Cubs fans are well familiar with, it's not too hard to have three bad games in the playoffs even when you're very good.

Volstad had a quietly solid spring, and there was no chance that he wouldn't make the rotation given who he was traded for. Expect a steady diet of ground balls, and hope that the Cubs infielders actually get to them. He's the 4 1/2th starter on the team, since Maholm missed a bunc hof time in ST with the flu.

Tuesday: Chris Narveson, LHP (4.32, 4.22) vs Paul Maholm, LHP (4.20, 3.98), 7:05 PM CT

Narveson had a fairly unassuming minor league career, but managed to hold his own as a starter in 2010 after passing his bullpen test in 09. I'm trying to come up with something interesting to say about him from his numbers, but there isn't much. He's pretty much the definition of an average back-end left-handed starter.

The Cubs signed Maholm to a 1/4.25 deal with a 6.5m option for 2013. It could turn out to be a good bargain. Maholm toiled away in obscurity in Pittsburgh, an extreme groundball pitcher in front of a leaky infield defense. Things aren't going to be that much better for him here. Aside from the flue bug that sidelined him in spring training, Maholm had a shoulder injury that shut him down at the end of last year. We haven't heard anythign about it so far, so hopefully no news is good news in that department.

Wednesday: Yovani Gallardo, RHP (3.46, 3.37) vs Ryan Dempster, RHP (4.24, 4.10), 7:05 PM CT

Gallardo took a page from Dempster's 2011 opening day start and got absolutely shelled. The Cardinals hit four homers off of him and he walked five in less than four innings. Gallardo has a lot less mileage on his arm than I thought (mostly due to his gruesome ACL injury in 2008) and actually had his best year in 2011, pushing down his walk rate by an even two batters per nine below his 2009 numbers, while maintaining his strikeout an inning pace.

Dempster had an incredible outing on opening day, only to see it spoiled by the pen. It was the best Cubs opening day start by game score in about 25 years, and his best start since a mid-July outing against the Marlins last year. The wind was helping him, but as he said in the post-game comments, you have to pitch to the conditions. It's not like the defense was bailing him out all the time either – he struck out ten batters.

Thursday: Zack Greinke, RHP (2.98, 2.70) vs Matt Garza, RHP (3.52, 3.52), 1:20 PM CT

This is a matchup of two players who will be playing the Maybe They'll Get An Extension game this season. Greinke obviously is less likely to get traded, both because the Brewers should contend this year and because they'll be able to get draft picks if he leaves at the end of the year. Though curiously enough according to Cot's he does not have no-trade protection this year (while he did in '10 and '11). G

Greinke pitched well in his first start, striking out seven, walking none and allowing four hits in seven innings against the Cardinals. Garza struck out five in six innings and gave up a 2-run homer to Adam LaRoche, before seeing the bullpen blow the game in a similar fashion to the opener.

Prediction

Cubs win tonight, lose the next three

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Comments

  2. mb21

    Narveson had a fairly unassuming minor league career, but managed to hold his own as a starter in 2010 after passing his bullpen test in 09. I’m trying to come up with something interesting to say about him from his numbers, but there isn’t much. He’s pretty much the definition of an average back-end left-handed starter.

    I’ve got something to say: I have no fucking idea how he’s even a league average pitcher. He was a top 100 prospect. A decade ago. He’s been unimpressive since, but according to FIP he’s about average. Using rWAR he’s barely better than replacement, which better describes his talent in my opinion. I think he sucks.

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  8. mb21

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    Maybe a bit of both. I’ve been more skeptical on Rizzo than a lot of people have. Then again, you guys will say I’m pessimistic no matter what. (dying laughing)

    I’ve thought he’s good, but I’ve seen a guy with a good OPS along the way, but nothing that stood out except for his age. Until last year. I never trust a season worth of stats. I saw some people mention they’re not yet sure what to think of F7. I still am.

    Putting Dempster in the rotation was a bad decision that worked out, but at least he had been a good starter at one. Despite that, I was skeptical of him entering 2009. That was after his excellent 2008 season. It wasn’t until about midway through the 2009 season that I felt comfortable that what he’d done since 2008 was a new true talent level. The same thing will be true of F7 and it’s been true of Rizzo. He went for good and young to ridiculous and young last season. I hope he maintains it and he’s off to a fantastic start. But I’m not convinced. (dying laughing)

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  12. Mercurial Outfielder

    I think we’ve found Sullivan’s preferred target for 2012: Theo.

    But as it turned out, the Cubs didn’t really get that much younger, acquiring 27-year-old Ian Stewart to replace Ramirez, signing 32-year-old David DeJesus to play right and giving the first base job to the 29-year-old LaHair.

    Those three combined make $6.97 million in 2012, or $31 million less than Ramirez, Kosuke Fukudome and Carlos Pena made manning the same positions in 2011.

    Meanwhile, Cubs’ ticket prices dropped by only 1.3 percent, according to Team Marketing Report, forcing fans to pay Lord & Taylor prices for a Walmart type of team.

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  16. Recalcitrant Blogger Nate

    @ Smokestack Lightning:

    I thought the same thing when I read that, combined with Cain and Votto extensions, but I do think there will be some inefficiencies in the market that they will figure out how to exploit. Perhaps its trading for players who are under contract for bigger/longer. Who knows. I still think it could have helped a long-term rebuild to have gotten Yu Darvish on a 5 year deal. Then they could have traded Garza to Tex for prospects. It’s not like the Cubs have anyone outside of Garza that anyone wants to trade for anyway.

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  17. WaLi

    josh wrote:

    I’m trying to just enjoy the good moments, myself. It was cool Cassie got his chance. He blew it, but it was fun getting there.

    Yeah it was. I enjoyed the game, it was pretty back and forth there for a while. I thought for sure Castro would get that hit, but unfortunately he didn’t think so. It was weird seeing him watch strike 2 and 3. How often does he let that happen?

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  19. Mish

    The Rangers and second baseman Ian Kinsler have come to an agreement on a five-year contract worth $75 million that will take effect in 2013. There is an option for a sixth year worth $10 million that can vest to $12 million. The buyout is $5 million.

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  20. WaLi

    @ Mish:
    His WAR for the past few years seems to hover around 5 (on baseball ref) so this seems to be a good deal for the Rangers as they are paying $15m/year so only paying $3m/WAR, for now and if you take into account .5WAR/year decrease at the end they will be paying a little too high, but overall seems like a value.*

    *Disclaimer, not an expert.

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  21. jtsunami

    Smokestack Lightning wrote:

    I don’t really see anything in this article that we didn’t know when the new CBA was first announced.

    The thing is there’s always an inefficiency somewhere. Putting everyone on an even playing field with the draft will create a larger focus somewhere else. I believe the price of free agents will rise, but what’s going on right now is an overreaction. Let’s generously say before the new CBA that the Cubs planned on spending $15m on amateurs this year. With these changes, it doesn’t give the major league payroll a $15m bump per year and would allow the team to spend $25m/year on Fielder. It gives them around $8m extra to spend on the big league club.

    I have no doubt that Theo is studying what to exploit in the new system. I just think this is kind of old news. The writer tries to make you think the club is set back for the next 10 years. If that’s true, isn’t everyone else set back 10 years too?

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  26. WaLi

    @ bubblesdachimp:
    Put LaHair in LF and try to sell Soriano, or try to sell LaHair. Could Soriano play RF? He has a strong arm.

    Also, if LaHair is hitting I don’t think we see Rizzo until September so he would get paid less.

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  28. bubblesdachimp

    @ WaLi:

    Yea i just can’t imagine theo allowing lahair to go to left but rizzo is going to need to play at some point. Maybe around June if he keeps it up.

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  30. mb21

    Marlon Byrd has a 27.3% line drive, which would be good for a .393 expected BABIP. Instead, his actual BABIP is .083. Methinks the expected BABIP drops and the actual BABIP increases. So far Byrd has been unlucky.

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  32. Mercurial Outfielder

    Okay, let’s say F7 has really turned it around and performs in his 90th percentile. What’s that worth? 4-5 wins, max?

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  35. mb21

    Using the projections and estimating him as a starter based on the typical .8 to 1 run difference I get a 90th percentile somewhere around 2 WAR, but I’d have to look to be sure.

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  40. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ mb21:
    (dying laughing) So he’d have to wildly outperform his projections to be the kind of player many seem to think he is.

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  44. Author
    Berselius

    Ozzie ————-> 5 game suspension

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  46. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ Berselius:
    Yeah, I suppose that’s true. I’m just trying to come to some conclusions about what expectations for him ought to be. He was clearly a different pitcher the other day, with two noticeable differences: the addition of the nice hard cutter/2-seamer, and the ability to consistently throw strikes. Now a new pitch is nice, but it’s no cause for calamity, but the strike % was noteworthy because that’s been F7’s constant failing. His stuff has always been electric, but he just never had any control of it. If he does have the handle now, can he be as good as Garza? Better than Garza? and if he doesn’t, how drastic of a decline ought we to expect?

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  48. WaLi

    @ Berselius:
    How could they ban him for that??? (dying laughing) Wow. He wasn’t speaking as a representative of MLB. He said it in an interview with Time magazine. It has nothing to do with baseball, period.

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  49. Mercurial Outfielder

    So Luke Scott can badmouth our President and admit he throws banana chips at a dark-skinned teammate and calls him a “savage” and MLB does nothing, but Ozzie expresses admiration for a guy for his ability to avoid being assassinated, and he gets suspended 5 games?

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  51. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ Rice Cube:

    “I respect Fidel Castro,” Guillén is quoted as saying in the online article. “You know why? Many people have tried to kill Fidel Castro in the last 60 years, yet that [SOB] is still there.”

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