St. Louis squeaked its way into the playoffs thanks to a late-season collapse by the Braves. Again, I find it crazy that there are 2 NL Central teams in the playoffs. Team Overviews Team stats, with NL rank in parentheses Cardinals Phillies wOBA .332 (1st) .316 (6th) UBR 4.0 (5th) -5.7 (14th) UZR -29.8 (15th) -10 (9th) DRS -13 (11th) …
Some Thoughts On Ryan Dempster
Ryan Dempster‘s April was just horrible. In his first start he allowed 6 runs and then in two others he allowed 7 runs. Dempster took over the role that Carlos Zambrano had for several years in which he was the opening day starter and had a bad April. In 31 April innings he allowed 42 hits, walked 16, hit 1 …
Why the hell do people care if so and so plays in September?
I’ve seen a lot of comments lately from Cubs fans upset that the Cubs are still playing the veterans (on other sites). Of course they are. What young player has pushed a veteran out of a job? Bryan LaHair isn’t young so let’s stop with that. Yes, I think he’d be as good as Pena, perhaps a bit worse, but …
Starlin Castro Year 1 and Year 2
All numbers updated through games ending on August 6th. Starlin Castro has nearly had as many plate appearances this season as he did last so it seems a good time to compare the two seasons. In 2010 Castro made his big league debut in early May and went on to hit .300/.347/.408. His wOBA was .325 and his wRC+ was …
Batman-abbreviated Series Preview: Iowa Cubs of Chicago (42-63) at St. Louis Cardinals (55-50)
I was going to write a longer preview, but I got sucked into this whole “Batman Equation” thing that was running around the internets today I tried reproducing the result, but the plotting software did not like the equation very much (laughing). In my mathematiciany opinion, the Batman logo probably does solve the equation….but it’s not the only …
The emptiest batting averages
Colin Wyers looks at batting average and BP’s True Average to find the players with the emptiest batting averages. Starlin Castro and Darwin Barney at the top 2 and former Cubs Ryan Theriot and Aaron Miles are next. Jeff Baker is 7th and Marlon Byrd is 10th. As Colin notes, you can be a good hitter and still make the …
The All Average wOBA hitters
I was looking on Fangraphs at Starlin Castro‘s stats this morning and couldn’t help but notice that his .357 wOBA was almost entirely batting average (.330). It doesn’t really matter how you accomplish it, but I started to wonder about the difference in wOBA and AVG. I was specifically interested in batters who had hit .300, which is what we …
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 …
Obstructed View Opening Day Roundtable – part 2
Your fearless Obstructed View Executive Chairmen got together to discuss various topics related to the 2011 Cubs season. We looked at the offseason and the new additions to the club in part one. Here’s part two, which focuses on our predictions for the 2011 season. Ryan Theriot [mb21] : How many times will Theriot get a standing ovation when the …
NL Central Questions & Answers: St. Louis Cardinals
This is Obstructed View’s 4th interview with an NL Central blogger that we’re posting this week. Steve Sommer of Gashouse Graphs has taken some time to answer these questions and I’m most appreciative. We’ll have our final interview (Pirates) tomorrow evening after the Cubs/Pirates game. Obstructed View: Cubs fans are all too familiar with Ryan Theriot. Aside from the 2008 …