Gender Bias in mathematics (with an assist from baseball)

Jordan Ellenberg, a mathematics prof at my twice-over alma mater, put up a post on his blog yesterday inviting discussion over gender bias in conference speakers. I had high hopes that it would spark an interesting conversation but it has ended up being pretty frustrating and depressing, mostly driven by a few privilege-blinded men who don't think there's a problem at all, as well as a more overly sexist anonymous coward or two.

Anyway, I just want to braindump a few of my own thoughts on the issue, as well as a few of those comments (Jordan's blog has eaten the comments I've tried to post over there). Of course, these are going to be colored with my own biases and experiences as a white male from a middle class background, and someone who does not actively explore or think about gender/racial issues all that much. However, I was raised by a feminist (and am married to one!) and hope that at least some of that rubbed off on me.

Jordan puts forth a simple question - does math need a campaign similar to the one linked in his post, which acts as a watchdog on conferences with all-male speaker lists. My answer would be - of course! There's nothing wrong in and of itself with all-male speaker lists. Subject-wise, mathematics can be such an esoteric field that simple probability says that sometimes the list of folks qualified to talk about it are all men. Of course, there are many other reasons why the availability of women mathematicians are so low that don't have anything to do with conference invitations, but let's get back to that for a moment.

Not surprisingly, the conversation turned into a discussion as to whether gender bias exists in mathematics at all. Denying that any such thing exists is ridiculous, in my opinion. But the problem is that, from a casual observer such as myself, it's tough to pin down. I've never run into anyone within mathematics who says that women aren't as good at math as men, nor that they are worse conference speakers (not that it means anything, but by FAR the two worst speakers I've seen were both men). However, even my shy, asocial self has heard about bad experiences by fellow female graduate students. I also think that few would argue that bias against women in mathematics/sciences exists in our culture at large, which is one of the reasons that there are relatively few women who major in things like math and computer sciences (my undergrad majors). But suddenly when they become grad students/postdocs/faculty members we're supposed to believe that these biases disappear?

Again, I'm not a scholar in this stuff but I think it's clear there is an implicit bias against women in mathematics. The problem with these biases is that it's really hard to point out without invoking strong reactions in those who benefit from it. I can't speak to gender very well but this has been a drum that we've been beating at Another Cubs Blog for a long, long time with respect to sports reporting (and, by proxy, sports fans) and racism. Just look at how different players are treated by the media - how many times have you heard a black or latino player described as "scrappy" or "gritty", compared to the long line of David Ecksteins and Ryan Theriots of the world? Sammy Sosa was one of the greatest and most popular Cubs of all time and he was run out of town on a rail with little protest by Cubs fans. Milton Bradley, abusive asshat that he is, was never given a chance by the Chicago media. Soriano and Ramirez are repeatedly blasted as lazy, despite the mountain of injuries they've been carrying in their Cubs tenure. Jacque Jones and Dusty Baker were subjected to racist taunting. But if you put a typical Cubs fan to question about it, they'll just say that they just have problems with those individual players, and hey look, Cubs fans all love Ernie Banks so we're not racist, see? (Ernie Banks is our Black Friend!) Bringing this back to math, I don't think that it's enough to say that since there are women in your field/women in conferences you've been to, the problem doesn't exist.

What it boils down to is equal opportunity - and that means for everyone. Simply saying "work harder" isn't enough. Talent will rise to the top, and the female mathematicians many of us could point to demonstrate that fact. But 'everyone' doesn't just mean the most talented. Again, returning to baseball look at how rosters are constructed. Of course you're going to want your biggest stars playing every day, and teams pursue them without any regard for race. But what about the average to replacement level players? There's a lot more of them, and this is where bias comes into play. It's not too surprising that a lot of those 'scrappy' players are both backups and white. Anyway, there isn't really an appropriate analogy for this in mathematics, but simply saying that anyone can be a star, as one of the anonymous cowards on Jordan's blog put it, isn't enough. Not everyone can win a Fields Medal if they just Try Hard.

Anyway, my last point is this. I'm a white male, not a woman, or any other minority, and it's not my place to discount what they express about their experiences and how they differ from mine. I haven't read extensive research or blogs on racial or gender issues, nor do I sign petitions or participate in protests, and I don't really see myself making these things a big part of my life in the future. But I can keep an open mind, treat people fairly, and make sure I question myself every once in awhile whether I'm doing a good job at those things. And that's just what such a campaign would do.

Building a Markov lineup simulator (version 0.1)

I wrote up a crude Markovian lineup simulator yesterday. It definitely needs more tweaking, but I want to explain the basics of how this works for those who are unfamiliar with it.

The inputs

Obviously, the lineup order itself! For now, because this is the simplest possible one I can make, the inputs needed for each players are:

Lineup position
Projected PAs
Projected singles
Projected doubles
Projected triples
Projected home runs
Projected walks

Under the hood
Once we have this, we divide each of the outcomes (singles, double, etc) by the PAs to get the rates that each of these occur. You use this to develop a range of probabilities for each player. Basically, it looks like

Chance of single | Chance of double | Chance of triple | Chance of HR | chance of walk | chance of out

Obviously these chances have to add up to 1.

For example, for Ryan Theriot's PECOTA projection we have
Counting stats:

PAs	1b	2b	3b	HR	BB
647	132	29	3	5	63

Rate stats:

1b	2b	3b	HR	BB
0.2040	0.0448	0.0046	0.0077	0.0974

Once we have these rates, we use these to define bins to determine what happens in each PA. Thus, continuing with this example, we would have

1b	2b	3b	HR	BB
0.2040	0.2488	0.2535	0.2612	0.3586

In each PA, we generate a random number between 0 and 1. If it is less than the first number, it is a single. If not, we check to see if it is less than the next number, which gives a double. If it's bigger than the last one the player generates an out.

Now, we simply do this moving through the lineup, keeping track of outs and the number of innings. As this is a first-cut lineup simulator, I'm making the unrealistic (though perhaps not for the Cubs...) assumption that all baserunning is done station-to-station. Thus if someone hits a single, everyone moves up only one base. There are no productive outs. Obviously the next step is to add in a few baserunning possibilities since many players score from 2b on singles.

This is the key feature that defines what a Markov process is. Basically, in brief in a Markov simulator each event is entirely independent from the previous one. Thus each batter in this simulator bats the same whether the generic pitcher is throwing a no-hitter or has just given up 5 straight HRs. Another more glaring consequence of this is that there is no situational hitting or baserunning (i.e. sacrifices, hit and runs, stolen bases, sacrifice flies, etc). We should keep this in mind when we see the results of the simulator.

Some results
In a million simulatons, the Cubs lineup of

• Theriot
• Fukudome
• Lee
• Ramirez
• Byrd
• Soriano
• Soto
• Baker
• Zambrano (using career numbers, since he doesn't have a hitting projections)

scores an average of 3.2862 runs per game.

The Cardinals lineup of

• Schumacher
• Rasmus
• God
• Holliday
• Ludwick
• Molina
• Freese
• Wainwright
• Ryan

scores an average of 3.3504 runs per game over a million sims.

I'm not sure that even a million runs are enough to really get a good number. The Central Limit Theorem is nice in theory but can get a bit frustrating in practice. Running 100,000 games takes roughly a minute.

Up next:

• Obviously, these runs/game numbers are pretty low. Changing the baserunning should make a big difference, especially for the scoring from second stuff mentioned above. I'll try to find some average advancement numbers to factor this into the code.
• It would be nice to add a lineup optimizer option, that takes 9 players and finds the optimum distribution of players. It would be pretty expensive to brute force though, since there are 9! = 362880 possible configurations of 9 players, so there would either have to be some sort of mixed-integer type discrete optimization to do (ugly and expensive) or we'll pretty much just have to plug in some guesses
• Figure out how much noise there is in the runs per game depending on the number of simluations. I should be able to find a standard deviation, at least (empirically or not).
• Set it up to draw players from some sort of database or other external file. Having to enter the numbers in by hand is annoying.
• Write this in some sort of cross-platform language. I think perl is probably the best best, though I don't know a ton about running perl scripts on windows machines.

If you want to download and play with my 0.1 code (and can run matlab), you can find it at this link.

(EDIT: you should be able to run this code in OCTAVE, which is an open-sourced version of matlab and can be found at http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/index.html )

Projections, defense (Baseball?! Wut?)

I've been dumping most of my baseball thoughts/opinions/etc over at ACB for a while now, but I'm still hopeful that I can dump a thought or two that I'm chewing on over here from time to time. I do like to make grandiose plans for baseball stuff from time to time but things (math, dogs, processed cheese balls, general laziness) tend to change my plans. Something I'm still planning is making a project-a-tron of my own. Just off the top of my head, this would require me trying to figure out things like, off the top of my head,

• Minor league, college, and international player stat translations


• Aging patterns (relative to specific players)


• Platoon splits + usage


• Reliability + variance of baseball stats


• Defense-neutral pitching


• Park effects


• Defensive models (more on this below)


• Database management for managing all this data

That's a lot of stuff, for sure, and I'm sure it just scratches the surface. It's certainly too much for me to do anything for 2010! I'll probably say a thing or two about all the players during spring training like I usually do, mostly based off the publicly available projections at fangraphs plus the just-released 2010 PECOTAs, which I now have access to.
Anyway, here are the two things on my mind right now

1. If I do create a project-a-tron, I have to make sure it has a name first (which is obviously the most important thing). The custom seems to be to name it after some sort of scrappy, not necessarily terrible middle infielder from their favorite team (see pecota, chone, cairo, etc). It seems like people have eschewed actually making an acronym from these names now. I know Shawn has already staked a claim on 'Shawon', who would qualify in that he was both a Cub and a medicore middle infielder, but we has before my time in Cubs fandom anyway. I'm leaning towards breaking this tradition though, and naming it after just a player I'm a fan of (see Sosa, Zambrano, Prior). So I pose this question to my ones of readers: what do you guys think? I'm leaning toward the Z's myself.

2, Colin Wyers just published his first article ($) at Baseball Prospectus about the new defensive metric that he is rolling out. I'm excited by the fact that he's going pretty slow with this, since I've never really looked into these metrics and it will be a good opportunity for learning about them. I've found the comments pretty amusing on that article, though. My view of modeling anything (defense, etc.) is that it's precisely that, a model. Yes, you can add more things, but it's important to make sure that the absolute basics of it make sense, which is exactly what Colin seems to be doing.
But the kind of complaints people seem to be giving are pretty dumb, or at least obvious. Most of the complaints have to do with

• Defensive positioning (especially shifts v LHB)
• Hard-hittedness of balls

These are valid questions, and should be included in the Perfect Defense Model™, but it seems foolish to complain about the lack of them when we DON'T HAVE ANY DATA ON THESE THINGS (yet). When hit f/x and field f/x roll out, this stuff can be incorporated into models. But for now, we don't have the data, and you have to build your model based on the available data you have.
One caveat: at least in recent years, there has been more classification on batted balls (i.e. stuff hit 'sharply', 'softly', etc. I'm not really a big fan of this kind of binning though. It's pretty subjective, and I'd rather just wait until we have hit f/x. Not to mention that Colin has pointed out that there's already a significant error in batted ball data as to whether hits are line drives, grounders, or fly balls.

-b

World Series preview

My World Series preview is up over at ACB. The short version: Yankees in 7

Offseason plans

Aside from writing my thesis and applying for jobs, I have a few ideas for some baseball-related stuff to do this offseason. The two biggest ones are

1. Finally get around to reading The Book and make posts/do some work in keeping with the content of each chapter as I go. It's a tough read - you can only do it a chapter at a time anyway so it should make for some good blag posts.

2. Attempt to make a comprehensive glossary of the various stats and projections we use over at ACB. shawndgoldman and I talked about doing this offseason series awhile ago and it should be fun, not the least of which because I don't know a lot of the details about where some of the formulas come from myself

And of course, the usual run-down of roster signings, stumping for free agents, hair pulling at stupid signings, and predictions of doom-and-gloom for the 2010 Cubs.

Book Review: Lords of the Realm

I've been so lazy about reviewing these books that I've gone and reread the book already. It's especially egregious in this case, as this is one of my favorite books that I've ever read - certainly the best baseball book. It's written by John Helyar, who was one of the co-authors of Barbarians at the Gate (which I also read this summer).

The book is basically a history of the owners of baseball (the so-called Lords), and by extension the business of baseball. The blurb on the back describes several of the colorful characters in the history of the game, but the real meat of the book lies in its history of owner-player relations, especially the rise of the players' union from the early 60s up until the 94 strike. A lot of it focuses on the players battles with the reserve clause (Flood, Hunter, Messersmith, McNally), but one thing it points out was that salary arbitration arguable became the best victory the players had against the owners.

I must say, after reading this book I have HUGE respect for Marvin Miller, and all the player leaders of that era. Suddenly I'm a much bigger fan of Joe Torre, Phil Garner, and (gasp) Tim McCarver. Miller was their leader, but he did a great job in those days in making sure that everyone was involved. He educated the player-leaders about labor relations and they took the lead in negotiating several CBAs, with Miller only as a consultant. I don't remember who mentioned it, but when Kuhn was recently elected into the HOF while Miller was snubbed, it was just a 40 years-delayed 'fuck you' from the Lords to their old enemy. It's a travesty that a bumbling idiot like Kuhn is there and Miller is not.

The other, related story, is of course about the owners themselves and their inability to agree on what to have for lunch, let alone what is in the best interests of their businesses. It shows how much money baseball was losing (or projected to lose) that they were able to keep collusion going for 2 years in the late 80s. If any commissioner has had a real impact on the game it's probably Ueberroth, since he was the one who dragged baseball into modern business (especially with regards to TV), though collusion poisoned labor relations for years afterwords. The book ends with the rise of Bud Selig's clique and a precursor of the large vs small market battles that have dominated recent baseball history. Fun bonus: we get to see a pre-political George W. Bush running around as owner of the Rangers.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys baseball

The Project-a-tron, part 1

We will start with the Cubs outfield, and I'll work my way through the team as spring training continues.

The Cubs outfield projects to be:
LF Alfonso Soriano
CF Kosuke Fukudome
RF Milton Bradley
OF Reed Johnson
OF Joey Gathright

Johnson will likely pick up a big chunk of starts in CF against left-handed pitching, and will be the first guy to make substitutions if anyone else needs a break/is injured. Gathright will mainly be used as a defensive replacement/pinch runner, from what I can guess.

Without further ado, here are the projections. The WAR values are calculated based on the projected wOBA.

Player	PA	HR	OBP	SLG	wOBA	UZR	WAR
Soriano	750	38	.325	.522	.365	+11	4.6
Fukudome	520	9	.367	.410	.345	+6	2.8
Bradley	480	25	.387	.502	.386	+2	3.0
Johnson	385	7	.338	.400	.327	+10 (LF) -10 (CF)+0 (RF)	0.3
Gathright	175	1	.340	.325	.310	+7 (CF)	0.2

As you can see from the amount of PAs above, I'm feeling quite optimistic about Soriano staying healthy this year. He is a talented baseball player, and he is criminally underrated by most Cubs fans. He also has a cannon for an arm in LF, which boosts his defensive rating. He may take terrible routes on balls, but his speed makes up for it. Plus, compared to most of the statues that teams put into LF, Soriano looks pretty good.

I don't think we will see the April/May 2008 Fukudome this year...but I also don't think we will see the often terrible-looking Fukodome who faded down the stretch in the worst way as the season wore on. Fukudome is a professional, and he will make adjustments. I don't have hope that the power people were hoping to see when he entered the league will emerge, but he is for real as an OBP machine, and I'd love to see him in the leadoff spot if it looks like he's gotten things together.

Bradley can hit the crap out of baseballs. I don't take (much) stock in the "oft-injured" label that Bradley has aquired - everyone seems convinced that he can't play the outfield and that he will have a season-ending injury at some point this year, which is just crazy talk. He played plenty of outfield (and did it quite well) while with LA and Oakland, and then blew out his ACL in an altercation with a racist umpire (or technically, his manager) after a fantastic season in San Diego in 2007. He mainly DHed in Texas last year, and hit the crap out of the ball, because his knee wasn't still 100%. Certainly his injury history makes him more likely to be injured in the future, but it's not like he's a ticking time bomb. He was rightly the centerpiece of Hendry's offseason, and replacing him with DeRosa was the right move:

Player	PA	wOBA	UZR	WAR
Bradley	480	.386	+2	3.0
DeRosa	620	.340	+6	2.2

DeRosa looks great as a 2b, but as a RF, he is barely league average (and a lot of that comes from defense, which I think is a very generous projection. He does have much better UZR numbers in RF than I thought though). As we will see later, Fontenot is also a quite good 2b, which made DeRosa expendable.

Johnson is a serviceable fourth outfielder - he can play all three positions (though he's not really a CF), and he hits the crap out of lefties. Right handed pitchers, however, turn him into Neifi Perez, which is why he should never be more than a 4th OF.

Gathright will likely be Bradley/Soriano's late game defensive caddy, and be kept around for his speed for pinch-running and as a pinch hitting leadoff type player. His value would multiply by a factor of 10 if the outfield were littered with cars.

Quote of the day

From ShysterBall:

At this point I am sort of hoping that Philly pulls away and that New York has to battle it out with Milwaukee for the wild card in a one-game playoff. Scientists would have to invent new equipment in order to calculate the levels of stress and anxiety such a game would would inspire among its participants.

Note: Insert relevant Physics joke about matter at high pressure, etc etc

Awesome site of the day

I found a link in a Harball Times article today to a site called Fangraphs. At first look, it looks like your usual run of the mill baseball analysis site...except for these:



This tracks the win expectancy (supposedly live) for each team as a game goes on. This is too damn cool. I'm going to check it out during the Cubs game this afternoon.

Playoff Predictions

NL:

Dodgers over Mets in 5
Cubs over Snakes in 4

Cubs over Dodgers in 6

AL:
BoSox over Tigers in 4
Indians over Angels in 3

BoSox over Indians in 6

WS:
Red Sox over Cubs in 5

This is probably too optimistic for the Cubs...but I really do think the Dodgers match up well with the Mets. The rest of their rotation is much better than the non-Santana Mets starters, and they have an underrated offense. Really the Cubs should probably lose to the Snakes, then one of the NL West teams should get the honor of being obliterated by the Red Sox.

NL Predictions

NL East

NYM: 95-67
ATL: 84-78
PHI: 81-81
WAS: 73-89
FLA: 72-90

This prediction would appear that I am all over the Mets' bandwagon...but I assure you that I am not. Santana is fantastic, but I say meh to everyone else in their rotation. Their win total is more a reflection of how overrated I think their main 'competition' is. I see Philly as a .500 team, great offense notwithstanding. As bad as their pitching was last season, several of their guys were pitching above their ability. Moving Myers back into the rotation was the right move, but I don't think it will make up for some regression on Hamels (good, but not great), yet more attrition on Jaime Moyer, the revelation that Kyle Kendrick is a league average pitcher at best, and whoever occupies the rotating door at the 5th starter position. Offense can only get you so far, and this team matches up especially poorly with the Mets, who also have a great offense but better pitching. While the Phillies are overrated, everyone continues to underrate the Braves. They do have the pitching to go with a decent (not great offense) and that's a better formula for getting some wins. Washington should be a little better this year...though I'm probably just biased since I'm a HUGE Manny Acta fan. No one else gets more production from so little talent. Their outfield situation should be interesting this year, but their pitching isn't going to get them anywhere. As for Florida, I hope Loria enjoys all the cash he's pocketing from the team and his new sweetheart staduim deal. Here's hoping they call it 'Taxpayers' Stadium'.

NL Central
CHC: 91-71
MIL: 85-77
CIN: 80-82
PIT: 75-89
STL: 74-88
HOU: 69-93

The fact that the Cubs' record isn't much better, given so many crappy teams in the division (see the Mets, above) is that the Cubs are still a pretty flawed team. Their biggest asset is their bullpen - aside from that I see them as having a merely above-average offense and rotation (good but not especially great). Defense should be pretty good - we have 4 plus defenders on the field at any moment (maybe 5 if Soto is as good defensively as people are projecting). I am still a little worried about our D up the middle though. The club's biggest needs are upgrades at SS and at starting pitcher, but we're really only throwing out 3 replacement level players in our entire effective starting lineup (Theriot, Marquis, Dempster), which is more than anyone else in the division can say.

Milwaukee, on the other hand, has a great offense, combined with a very shaky rotation and a bullpen that probably isn't much better than last year's. The lack of depth in the starting rotation will make it seem like deja vu all over again for their overworked bullpen, and Gagne is definitely a downgrade from Cordero (and I don't think he will do as well as most seem to think). Actually, the best thing they did was sign Mike Cameron, which radically realigned their defense. Braun goes from a butcher at 3B to merely a crummy (at worst) defensive left fielder, which should be worth a win or two.

Cincy is a team with a ton of upside, but Dusty Baker + Young upside = bad combination. The fortunes of this team depend on how many ABs Bruce and Votto get. Even if they all get in there and Cueto/Volquez have good seasons, I don't think this is their year. But man, watch out in 2009/2010.

As for the rest, I put Pitssburgh above the rest on the strength of their pitching. They might have the trio of starters in the division with Snell, Duke, and Gorzelanny. Too bad the rest of their team is replacement level. St. Louis should just move their team to Birmingham, AL this year, due to their close relationship with Dr. James Andrews. This team is Pujols, Wainwright, and a whole ton of reclamation projects. I get the feeling that La Russa is going to just take it easy this year. As for Houston - hooray for the Ed Wade era! They should make their front office motto "Keeping mediocre middle infielders and middle relievers away from YOU since 2007"

NL West:
ARI: 94-68
LAD: 88-74
SDP: 86-76
COL: 81-81
SFG: 59-103

While Arizona's great season last year was kind of fluky, this year they truly have reloaded to make themselves a 90+ win team. There should be lots of development on their young players, and getting Haren was a great deal for them too. The NL west should be a tough division, but I think that they are the cream of the crop. The Dodgers should do well too, despite Joe Torre and Ned Coletti. That said, the more ABs Juan Pierre gets, the less likely they will win the wild card. Also, let's have a Moment of Silence for Scott Proctor's and Jonathon Broxton's arms...they will be hanging on by a thread by the end of this season. The Padres will continue their all pitching, no offense ways but they just don't have enough talent to compete with the top 2 teams in the division. I don't get all the love for the Rockies. Last year was certainly a great story, but they're still the Colorado Rockies. Look, I admire their retooling to offset the Coors effect, but they're really just the Phillies in a different stadium. The Giants will be awful. At least last year they had Bonds (still one of the top 5 players in baseball, when he plays at least). This year...well....they have Lincecum and Cain. And, um... (maybe I better change that...)

AL Predictions

Here are my predictions for the AL

AL East:
BOS: 98-64
NYY: 85-77
TBA: 81-81
TOR: 80-82
BAL: 60-102

I'm not as high on the Yankees as a lot of people. Chances are that at least one of their young pitchers will get injured/be ineffective, and the longer that Joba is in the bullpen the more it will hurt this team. Wang and Pettite should be good to great, but I don't expect them to have truly stellar seasons. They don't have very much pitching depth if more than one person goes down.

Likewise, I'm not wild about the Jays. Their rotation should regress, and I don't see much upside in their offense either other than Alex Rios. Tampa Bay is a good, young, up-and-coming team that should take advantage of down years by the Yankees and Toronto, and of course the terrible, terrible Orioles. It's going to be a long, long year in Baltimore.

AL Central:
CLE: 95-67
DET: 89-73
CHW; 77-85
MIN: 76-86
KCA: 75-87

Everyone seems to be all over Detroit, but I still think Cleveland is the better team. Detroit has a good offense but their rotation and especially their bullpen is much more voliatile. I still like them to grab the Wild Card in the AL though. The White Sox could have been a lot worse - they made some decent moves in the offseason but now was not the time to do it. They needed to rebuild in the face of the twin juggernaughts of Cleveland and Detroit this season. I could see the Twins or Royals moving up a few wins here, but really the teams right now are pictures of small market mediocrity (though they certianly still have more upside than, say, the Pirates).

AL West;
ANA: 87-75
SEA: 80-82
OAK: 77-85
TEX: 77-85

Even with the injuries to Lackey and Escobar, the Angels are clearly the best team in this division. Seatlle waaaay overplayed its talent last year, and while they did improve by adding Bedard, losing Adam Jones will hurt them. Oakland will be better than most rebuilding teams, but still has no shot. Texas still doesn't have pitching (who'd a thunk it?)

Bullpen Breakdown

For the most part, the people in the bullpen are pretty set. Here are the locks

Marmol
Wood
Howry
Eyre
Wuertz

I think we can probably add Pignatiello to this list too, considering how terrible Cotts has looked so far

The last slot is the long reliever - I expect this will be Marshall or Dempster (if he loses out on a rotation spot and we don't trade Marquis).

The question that remains is what everyone's roles will be. Clearly Marmol is our best reliever, but Lou used him the way you're supposed to use your best reliever last season, i.e., putting him in to kill rallies, or to face the heart of the lineup late in the game (but not the 9th inning). I'm hoping that he remains in that role, though I'm worried that he might get overworked. Lou really leaned hard on Marmol last season, but luckily he only got worked during the stretch as opposed to the full season. He showed he still had it in the winter leagues, so maybe he is a little more durable than the typical reliever.

My guess is that Wood will end up with the closer's role, but I bet it will be more of a classical 'Nasty Boys' style of bullpen, where Wood is favored for saves but not the mandatory choice if he's been working for several days.

Bullpen predictions
Wood (Primary Closer) -28 saves, 31 save opps, 60 IP, 65 K, 30 BB, 3.20 ERA, 1.28 WHIP
Howry (Backup Closer) - 9 saves, 10 save opps, 78 IP, 70 K, 15 BB, 3.48 ERA, 1.23 WHIP
Marmol (Fireman) - 2 saves, 2 save opps, 88 IP, 115 K, 40BB, 2.67 ERA, 1.11 WHIP
Wuertz - 70 IP, 72 K, 30 BB, 3.78 ERA, 1.32 WHIP
Eyre - 50 IP, 45 K, 25 BB, 4.12 ERA, 1.39 WHIP
Pignatiello - 35 IP, 20 K, 12 BB, 3.98 ERA, 1.28 WHIP
Marshall (as reliever) - 63 IP, 52 K, 28 BB, 4.84 ERA, 1.44 WHIP

Pignatiello will look pretty good if you isolate his stats against lefties...most LOOGYs have deceptively good statlines because for the most part they are only brought in where they are expected to succeed (see Will Ohman, 2005). The reason why his numbers aren't even lower is that I expect him to pitch in some garbage time as well against a more general sample of batters.

Rotation breakdown

I've been reading the community projections over at Bleed Cubbie Blue and there is far more optimism with regards to our starting pitching than I feel is warranted. Let's look at who we have

Locks for the rotation
Carlos Zambrano - Most starting pitchers are pretty consistent. If they stink, they tend to get hit hard. If they're good, they tend to pitch well. Every pitcher tends to have a fluke start or two, but Z's swings seem to take much longer. Look at last year - he was terrible in April and May, great in June and July, terrible again in August, and great down the stretch in September. He ended up with a 3.9 ERA, which is good, but certainly not ace-worthy. Other worrying Zambrano trends include his rising walk rate and his huge workload over the past few seasons. That said, I think Z should bounce back this year. He'll still probably have a terrbile stretch or two but I don't think they will be as long. My guess is that he'll end up at around

18-11, 190 Ks, 100 BBs, a 3.5 ERA and a 1.25 WHIP

Overall this isn't ace-quality numbers, but when he is on, he should be pretty damn near unstoppable.

Ted Lilly - Lilly was a nice surprise last year, and for several stretches (see above) was the best pitcher on the team. That said, I think he's going to backslide a little bit this year. He's still a flyball pitcher pitching in a fickle park. When he gets hit, he gets hit hard. My guess is

12-11. 155 Ks, 80 BBs, 4.3 ERA, 1.3 WHIP

Rich Hill - I'm not as high on Hill as many Cubs fans, though I think he will be a good pitcher. It's really a matter of whether you think he's a 1-2 type pitcher (no) or a 3-4 type pitcher (yes). I'd probably lean more towards a third guy. Hill's got a wicked curveball and a decent fastball, and it's tough to get by with only 2 real pitches. Like Lilly, he's a flyball pitcher, so he doesn't really have Wrigley working for him. On the other hand, his stuff is better than Lilly's. Hill showed a lot of growth last season. He kicked ass in the minors, but somehow forgot to throw strikes when he got to the majors in 2006. Heading back to the minors after being thrown under the bus by Dusty Baker, he was called back up in August and seemed a different pitcher (Pre callup: 1.96 WHIP, after callup: 1.05). He looked like he had settled down last season too: his WHIP was 1.19, which is certainly decent. He gave up a fair amount of homers but it seemed like all of them were solo shots. Anyway, I expect him to improve a little bit more as he gets more experience and enters his prime. I'm guessing

15-8, 200 Ks, 58 BB, 3.71 ERA, 1.16 WHIP.

The (best of the?) rest
Jon Lieber - This was a great signing for Hendry, and surprisingly for this offseason, seemed to come out of left field. It seemed like everyone forgot about Lieber after he missed the second half of last year with foot problems. He was great for the Cubs in the past, and put up league-average numbers in a few seasons with Philly. The thing I like most about Lieber is that he rarely walks anyone, and I think that this is why he's the most likely out of everyone else I list here to make the rotation. Nothing drives Lou crazier than pitchers who can't throw strikes. He's more of a ground ball pitcher, but that's a pretty neutral factor with this Cubs defense. The advantage he gets from moving from Philly's hitters' paradise will likely be offset by the lack of Rollins and Utley vacuuming up grounders. The Cubs are much better on the corners, but up the middle is really what counts. Anyway, I'm guessing

7-7, 87 Ks, 20 BB, 4.68 ERA, 1.32 WHIP in 20 games.

Jason Marquis - Ugh. He looked great in the first half last season and was awful in the second half, which seems to be a trend for him. I've never really figured him out...he's a groundball pitcher that somehow coughs up a ton of home runs. That K/BB ratio isn't something to write home about either....unless you're writing that it sucks. My hope is that he is traded as a part of the never-ending saga of the Brian Roberts deal. If not though, this is what I would expect (if he started the year as the 5th starter):

8-12, 90 K, 75 BB, 4.98 ERA, 1.45 WHIP

Ryan Dempster - Apparently he's been impressing in bullpen sessions. The file's still out on him until the end of spring to see what he really has as a starter. That said, I actually feel shockingly optimistic about Demp. All the data seems to be pointing the other way - he only had one good season as a starter (in 2000). After his TJ surgery the Cubs tried starting him again, and it was a miserable failure. Luckily he turned in the best season of his career after he was moved to the bullpen (if you just look at his relief stats)...he was pretty unstoppable. He didn't look quite so good last year in the closer's role, however. He did his best to try to kill Ron, but luckily for all of us he did not succed. Despite all this (1 good season as a starter, declining as a reliever), I'm inclined to side with Demp. It just feels right. So, per Stephen Colbert, it's gotta be true. My guess (with a full season - no Marquis!):

13-10, 135 Ks, 75 BBs, 4.51 ERA, 1.38 WHIP.

Note that my optimism doesn't mean that he will revert to 2000 Dempster. But I think he will be a little better than league average.

The Longshots
Sean Marshall - Everyone loves to look at his stats (e.g., Rotoworld, for one) and wonder why he's behind all the competition above? Really it's just a matter of talent. Marshall's stuff is not great, and you could see other teams figuring him out as the season progressed. His ERA continued to creep upward as the season went on, and the debate is whether it was overexposure or just fatigure from the innings he pitched. Plus, I don't think having 3 not-overpowering leftys in our lineup is a good idea anyway. Even though their styles are different, it just gives too many looks. Here's the projection as if he won and more or less kept the 5th starter spot

7-14, 90K, 50 BB, 5.12 ERA, 1.42 WHIP

He'll be hit harder as the season goes on. He might stick around as the long man, which would be OK with me.

Sean Gallagher - The other Sean has more promise, but I don't think he's *quite* ready yet. I doubt he wins a rotation spot out of ST, but I do expect him to be the front-runner to be called up if someone goes down/sucks in the Lieber/Marquis/Dempster trio. He's got 3-4 potential, but needs a little more time to refine it. I think he gets called up during the summer for a few spot starts, with an outside chance that he sticks in the back end of the rotation down the stretch. Prediction:

3-3, 47Ks, 29 BB, 4.44 ERA, 1.34 WHIP, (10 GS, 58 IP)



Overall I predict the starts to break down as
Z - 34
Lilly - 33
Hill - 30
Lieber - 20
Dempster - 27
Gallagher - 11
Marquis/Marshall/Hart - 7

Glee

You gotta love it when your division rivals make moves that make their teams crummier. Let's look at the offseason so far

1. Dusty Baker signs with the Reds

The Reds are actually a very dangerous team, on paper. Luckily, the shakiest part of their team is their pitching staff, and Cubs fans have first-hand experience with how Dusty handles pitchers (especially young ones). Homer Bailey had better make a precautionary appointment with Dr. James Andrews. I did like the Cordero signing, sort of, for the Reds....but the rest of their bullpen still stinks and Cordero can be pretty streaky.

2. Brewers trade Estrada and sign Kendall.

This makes no sense to me at all. They got rid of Estrada because his bat is declining and he can't throw anyone out. Then they signed Kendall (for more money!), who can't hit the ball out of the infield and also can't throw anyone out. Great job guys. Also, please make Turnbow your closer...the rest of the division will thank you for it (the sad part is, he *is* the best reliever that they have...unless they swap in one of their mediocre starters to give some room for Parra and Villanueva. That would be too smart though)

3. Cardinals sign Cesar Izturis.

He's still okay defensively...but he's just David Eckstein with a little more glove and a less bat (and that's not saying a lot).

4. Astros sign Kaz Matsui

Thank God....for awhile there it looked like the Cubs would get him. Moving to Coors inflated his numbers from lousy to merely mediocre (and that's mainly from when he played at home - he's even worse on the road). This will be even better if it gets Chris Burke out of their lineup, since he actually has some upside.

5. The Pirates are the Pirates
The best move that the Pirates have made (so far) is NOT trading Jason Bay. He's still their best player, and if Littlefield were still there you know he would have traded him while he had the lowest value of his career. Good luck, successor guy. You've got a lot to work with