Theo Epstein held a presser to debrief on the 2014 season. I look forward to those happening in October or November, but that should come relatively soon. The tone of the conference was near-universally positive, and that makes sense. There are a lot of things to be optimistic about, chief among them our cheap, dynamic core of players both already in the majors or just about to be. If you just mentally block Rick Telander (a practice I cannot recommend too highly) out, it was a great bow on a sometimes-tough season.
The expectation that I drew from the P.C. was that the Cubs are expected to compete for an N.L. title this year, though they won’t pay twice tomorrow for a hamburger today. That’s a smart strategy, though I was kind of disappointed how often he hedged himself on that point. After arbitration raises on the associated non-tenders, the Cubs are sitting at around a $65 million payroll. That leaves enough room for 2-3 short-term get-me-over pitchers and one marquee free agent, and you could put yourself solidly in the driver’s seat with minimal risk beyond 2015. Ultimately, I think that’s what the Cubs will do (and short-term pitching is undeniably one of this FO’s strengths, probably aided by Chris Bosio). I don’t have names for you, but it’s not hard to speculate intelligently here.
What I thought was the single most intriguing tidbit in the press conference, though, was Theo’s admittance that plate discipline hasn’t been where he’d like it to be. While he’s right, of course, I wondered how bad the Cubs’ walk rate has really been this year.
The answer is it’s really bad.
At first, it doesn’t look so poor – 7.2% isn’t all that far from 7.6% (the Cubs and the league walk rate, respectively). That’s 24 walks in a season, give or take a few. However, actually drawing walks is just one half of the coin, as far as plate discipline is concerned. Just putting the ball in play gives the average batter a 30% chance of getting a hit. Therefore, every 3.3 times you can avoid a strikeout, you should be credited with an extra hit. With this in mind, I developed a statistic called Effective Walk Rate:
(BABIP) * (LgAvg K rate – Personal K rate) + Walk Rate
For instance, Luis Valbuena had a BABIP of .294. His walk rate this year was 11.9%, and his strikeout rate was 20.7%. While his walk rate was great, he puts balls in play a little less than the average player does in his ABs, so his walk rate is reduced a little bit. Plugging into the formula, we get
(.294) * (.204 – .207) + .119 = .1181 = 11.8%. Not a huge difference, to be sure, but for some players the gulf is massive.
Here are the qualified Cubs batters:
| Name | EWR | EWR+ |
| Anthony Rizzo | 12.40% | 163 |
| Luis Valbuena | 11.81% | 155 |
| Chris Coghlan | 9.54% | 126 |
| Ryan Sweeney | 8.25% | 109 |
| Starlin Castro | 7.14% | 94 |
| John Baker | 7.02% | 92 |
| Mike Olt | 5.96% | 78 |
| Ryan Kalish | 5.84% | 77 |
| Welington Castillo | 5.02% | 66 |
| Jorge Soler | 4.74% | 62 |
| Justin Ruggiano | 4.35% | 57 |
| Chris Valaika | 3.42% | 45 |
| Arismendy Alcantara | 2.88% | 38 |
| Javier Baez | 1.37% | 18 |
| Junior Lake | 0.40% | 5 |
And here’s the difference between BB% and EWR for each player:
| Name | BB% | EWR | Difference |
| Ryan Sweeney | 6.60% | 8.25% | 1.65% |
| Starlin Castro | 6.20% | 7.14% | 0.94% |
| Chris Coghlan | 9.00% | 9.54% | 0.54% |
| Anthony Rizzo | 11.90% | 12.40% | 0.50% |
| Luis Valbuena | 11.90% | 11.81% | -0.09% |
| Ryan Kalish | 6.20% | 5.84% | -0.36% |
| Welington Castillo | 6.20% | 5.02% | -1.18% |
| Jorge Soler | 6.20% | 4.74% | -1.46% |
| Chris Valaika | 5.30% | 3.42% | -1.88% |
| John Baker | 9.10% | 7.02% | -2.08% |
| Arismendy Alcantara | 5.70% | 2.88% | -2.82% |
| Justin Ruggiano | 7.20% | 4.35% | -2.85% |
| Mike Olt | 9.70% | 5.96% | -3.74% |
| Junior Lake | 4.30% | 0.40% | -3.90% |
| Javier Baez | 6.60% | 1.37% | -5.23% |
EWR+ is simply the EWR over the league average walk rate. You can see that all of our rookies fare poorly by this metric, even Jorge Soler – Soler struck out almost a quarter of the time last season.
The biggest beneficiary of this metric is 4th OF emeritus Ryan Sweeney, who had a poor year traditionally.
By using a traditional walk rate, the Cubs are 18th in the league. That’s not good, but it’s not all that bad. By using Effective Walk Rate, they are dead last. The Cubs led the league in strikeout rate this year (giving 1113 to the foursome of Baez, Olt, Lake, and Alcantara will sew that dubious honor up). Combine the two and you have a team EWR of 6.08%, or 80% of the league’s average. By this measure, the Cubs had the least patient offense in the entire league this season.
It’s important to note that this does NOT mean that I think the Cubs had the worst offensive this year. Patience is the most important factor for a baseball team, but patience alone does not make an offensive run. The Mets and Rays had a 110 and 121 EWR+, respectively. You must combine patience at the plate with power. The Cubs were a middle-of-the-road team by SLG, but a Top 10 team with isolated power (which I look at more as a predictive measure of power). A team needs both power and patience to really be effective in scoring runs. The Cubs have more-or-less unlocked the slugging side of that equation, but the patience side is of critical importance.
| Team | EWR | EWR+ |
| Athletics | 10.15% | 134 |
| Rays | 9.16% | 121 |
| Blue Jays | 8.60% | 113 |
| Pirates | 8.52% | 112 |
| Indians | 8.48% | 112 |
| Dodgers | 8.43% | 111 |
| Twins | 8.42% | 111 |
| Mets | 8.34% | 110 |
| Red Sox | 8.27% | 109 |
| Cardinals | 8.24% | 108 |
| Nationals | 8.12% | 107 |
| Yankees | 7.91% | 104 |
| Angels | 7.89% | 104 |
| Tigers | 7.74% | 102 |
| Royals | 7.54% | 99 |
| Padres | 7.48% | 98 |
| Marlins | 7.31% | 96 |
| Rangers | 7.24% | 95 |
| Brewers | 7.21% | 95 |
| Astros | 7.19% | 95 |
| Braves | 7.14% | 94 |
| Giants | 6.97% | 92 |
| Phillies | 6.90% | 91 |
| Diamondbacks | 6.88% | 91 |
| Reds | 6.76% | 89 |
| Mariners | 6.54% | 86 |
| Orioles | 6.32% | 83 |
| White Sox | 6.29% | 83 |
| Rockies | 6.27% | 82 |
| Cubs | 6.08% | 80 |