It hasn’t been too long since we saw the Reds, but in that span of time they’ve gone from a mediocre record to the top of the NL Central division. A big part of it is that they’re healthy again – Bailey, Cueto, and Scott Rolen are all back on the roster now. They’ve won eight of their last ten …
Grades so far: Outfield
I haven’t gotten to this one as quickly as I’d hoped, but here it is. You can read about the article I wrote about the infield if you haven’t already. Alfonso Soriano – It hasn’t been pretty, but Soriano has been a productive hitter to this point in the season. He has a .359 wOBA thanks to his 11 home …
Series preview: World Champions (21-16) at Chicago Cubs (16-20)
Team Overview Team stats (and NL ranks) wOBA: .297 (15th)UZR: -8.1 (12th)DRS: -6 (6th)SP FIP: 3.22 (3rd)SP xFIP: 3.47 (4th)RP FIP: 2.79 (3rd)RP xFIP: 3.14 (2nd) Batters Player wOBA ZiPS wOBA CF Andres Torres .390 .337 2B Freddy Sanchez .301 .313 1B Aubrey Huff .283 .344 C Buster Posey .319 .365 RF Nate Schierholtz .334 .327 LF Pat Burrell .354 …
Series Preview: St. Louis Cardinals (20-15) at Chicago Cubs (15-18)
The Cubs stranded approximately 215 baserunners in the last series against the Reds, and I don’t know if I should be encouraged by the numbers of batters who got on base or discouraged by the fact that the only win the Cubs got in the series was on a 9th inning, down by one rally on Saturday that almost fell …
Cubs rWAR and fWAR
Most of you are at least somewhat familiar with WAR and how it works. I’d bet most of you are familiar that Fangraphs publishes their own WAR (fWAR) and Baseball Reference publishes their own. BRef’s WAR is based on Rally Monkey’s formula and it’s been referred to as rWAR for a few years now. There are some key differences between …
Series Preview: Cincinnati Reds (16-15) at Chicago Cubs (14-16)
The Cubs went 4-3 on their trip out west, and a winning record on any such trip is a nice feat no matter the quality of the teams played. Today they start a 2 plus week stretch of games against good to great teams, capped off by an inevitable steamrolling in Fenway. They start this stretch with the Reds, my …
Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (12-15) at Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles (14-15)
Team Overview Dodgers team stats (NL rank in parens): wOBA: .310 (11th)UZR: -2.9 (10th)DRS: -11 (11th)SP FIP: 3.77 (8th)SP xFIP: 3.64 (5th)RP FIP: 4.52 (16th)RP xFIP: 4.09 (12th) Batters: Player wOBA ZiPS wOBA 2B Aaron Miles .270 .272 LF Jerry Sands .252 .326 RF Andre Ethier .430 .374 CF Matt Kemp .460 .356 3B Juan Uribe .305 .322 1B James …
Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (10-13) at Arizona Diamondbacks (10-13)
The Cubs basically canceled yesterday’s game because they didn’t like the matchup. No other explanation makes sense to me – the rain had passed the Chicago area after an hour or two, and it didn’t look like there were further huge storms that could delay ther teams’ flights out of town. I think it had a lot more to do …
Series Preview: Colorado Rockies (14-7) at Chicago Cubs (10-11)
After hosting the Cubs last week, the Rockies dropped a series at home vs the Giants and lost 2 of 3 against the Marlins, where they were nearly no-hit on Friday by Anibal Sanchez. They no longer have the best record in baseball (that belongs to the Phillies) but they’re one game off the pace. Team Overview Team stats and …
Cubs compared to their projections
I wrote this on Friday morning so it’s updated through Thursday’s games. I’m too lazy to update it to include Friday’s blowout loss. This is something I’ll try to update once a month just so we can see where players are at compared to their projections. It’s something SG has done on RLYW a few times over the last couple …