A few other random NFL thoughts

Teams I'm down on this year, relative to my perception of the preseason hype

• The Jets - I just have no faith in the Sanchize. At all.


• The Steelers - for obvious reasons. Even when Roethlisberger is back he'll be rusty, and I think that team was showing signs of age last year


• The Cowboys - No particular reason other than I think Romo sucks

I would include the Redskins, but everyone already knows they're going to suck (again) this year.


Teams I think will surprise this year

• Baltimore - I just really like this squad for some reason. Can't put my finger on it


• Cincinnati - Everyone loves to bloviate about the TO+Ochocinco combo, but FWIW I think those two love to have fun, and I think they'll draw that out of one another. I'm also a big Carson Palmer partisan - I think he's underrated by many. They were throwing less last year, but I think that was more of a factor of Ochocinco being their only real threat and Benson's incredible year (though he definitely won't repeat that). The AFC North should be a great division to watch this year

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

Making the most of the Scrap Heap

Let's take a look at the Cubs' collection of scrappy middle infielders, all of whom have seen much more playing time due to Ramirez's injury. Note, per media parlance, Bobby Scales cannot be a 'scrappy' middle infielder - we'll just have to call him 'athletic' instead.

The projections here are taken from the Updated ZiPS projections on Fangraphs, which take into account performance so far this year for the end of season line and as inputs to the rest of season projection.

Player	Slash Line	wOBA	K%	Projected Slash Line	Projected wOBA	Career K%
Fontenot	.193/.290/.361	.289	21.8%	.235/.317/.392	.315	20.1%
Miles	.207/.255/.272	.243	15.2%	.255/.300/.319	.282	10.3%
Scales	.286/.429/.536	.421	28.6%	.268/.349/.414	.338	N/A
Freel	.120/.267/.120	.209	28%	.235/.321/.336	.303	17.4%
Theriot	.276/.343/.454	.351	16.4%	.281/.348/.397	.336	10.8%

Fun fact: Theriot is projected to hit 4 more HR by ZiPS.

The clear 'winner' in these projections is Bobby Scales, who should be playing every day with Ramirez out. Fontenot has been terribly unlucky (more on that in a moment), but even when readjusted for luck it appears that he isn't nearly as good as some of those optimistic .340+ wOBA projections were giving him. To be fair though, ZiPS was the most down on Fontenot of any of the projection systems on Fangraphs. From what I recall PECTOA was really down on him, but I don't have my annual with me here in NM. Miles and Freel have been especially awful. Freel will probably be sent packing when Ramiriez comes back, though it would behoove the Cubs to give Scales and Fontenot some reps at SS, because Miles's ability to play that position is the only thing keeping him on the roster.

There is some reason to suspect that Fontenot (especially) will bounce back - he's had some terrible luck. Looking at the numbers:

Player	BABIP (2009)	BABIP (Careeer)	LD% (2009)	LD% (Career)
Fontenot	.205	.315	11.7	19.7
Miles	.244	.313	23.4	19.9

I left off Scales and Freel for sample size reasons, and because we don't have any career data for Scales. It actually looks like Miles has been even more unlucky than Fontenot - despite a LD% significantly above his career norms, Miles has a terrible BABIP.

What this boils down to is that even though Fontenot doesn't appaer to be nearly as good as we were thinking he would be going into the season, he's not *THIS* awful. It's pretty tough to sustain a .205 BABIP, and it's not like he's hacking any more than usual either. The Cubs should run him out there against every RHP, and Scales too.

Project-a-tron Roundup

Summary of the projections

Player	WAR
Soto	4.5
Hill	0.1
Lee	3.2
Hoffpauir	0.1
Fontenot	2.8
Miles	0.1
Theriot	1.7
Ramirez	4.1
Soriano	4.6
Fukudome	2.8
Bradley	3.0
Johnson	0.3
Gathright	0.3
Batting	8.8
Baserunning	-0.3
Fielding	3.3
Zambrano	3.3
Harden	4.4
Dempster	3.6
Lilly	3.7
Marshall	2.1
Gregg	1.1
Marmol	1.4
Heilman	0.6
Cotts	0.1
Guzman	0.3
Vizcaino	0.1
Patton	-0.2
Samardzija	0.0
Starters	17.5
Relievers	3.1
Hitting	27.7
Pitching	20.6
Win Talent	96.8

Given the Cubs's weak schedule, I think a final projection of 99 wins is more than reasonable. This is a great baseball team.

Further bonus predictions:
Most likely batter to outperfom his projection: Bradley
Most likely batter to underperfom his projection: Fukudome (though he's certainly looking good right now)
Most likely pitcher to outperform his projection: Harden (purely based on possible pitching time)
Most likely pitcher to underperform his projection: Lilly

Project-a-tron: The bullpen

I was waiting until the season started to do my bullpen projections (since I had no idea who would make the team), but I've been pretty busy for the past week. Here's who made the team (and their roles)

Closer: Gregg
Fireman/Setup: Marmol
Setup: Heilman
LOOGY: Cotts
ROOGY: Vizcaino
Out of options: Guzman
Rule 5: Patton
Released: Chad Gaudin

Waiting in the wings:
Samardzija
Ascanio
Hart
Stevens
Wells

Working backwards up the bullpen ladder:

From a purely statistical perspective, releasing Chad Gaudin seems to be a bad idea. Based on his past numbers, his talent level is that of a 3rd or 4th best reliever, with additional value in his ability to be a spot starter. Working on the logic of his release, there are a few explanations:

1. Gaudin never recovered from his drunken dumpster injury from last season, and is still pitching ineffectively because of it. If this is the case, then maybe releasing him was a good idea (since it essentially results in a change in his true talent level).


2. Gaudin was still in Lou's doghouse, and had a crappy spring, and was released because of it (whether or not he was injured). If this is the case, this was a foolish move by Hendry/Lou. Lou's doghouse is pretty hard to escape though, so maybe Gaudin was doomed from the start


3. Gaudin was extraneous, since the Cubs have many other 6th/7th starter alternatives. If this was the reason, this was also a foolish move by the Cubs, because even if Gaudin is not expected to long relieve or spot start, he's still likely one of the 7 best relievers on this team.
4. The Cubs wanted to keep Guzman and Patton because they had them under team control for more years. I don't like this reasoning either, because if one of them tanks, the Cubs can't hang on to them. Of course, I don't think Gaudin has options either, so this doesn't hold a lot of water either.

I'm guessing what happened was #2 (with a touch of #1), and I think it's a bad move.

Guzman and Patton are on thin ice, since Guzman is out of options and Patton is a rule 5 guy. They're probably going to leave the organization if the Cubs try to replace them on the roster. Patton has shown good stuff in his single outing so far this year, with a really good breaking ball. I'm worried that he's going to get hit hard once other teams get some scouting on him - he has never pitched above A ball before this year, which is worrisome. Guzman was hit hard early in the spring, but seemed to pitch better after making some adjustments with Rothschild. He had absolutely filthy stuff in his first two appearances this year, including throwing a probable cutter in the low 90s, which is insane. I hope he sticks, but I'm not going to keep my hopes up on a oft-injured reliever.

Vizcaino is around because of his contract and the fact that he can get right-handers out. He's not going to earn that money on his contract, but he's *probably* one of the top 7 guys on the team. So far it seems that Lou recognizes that he is not one of our top relievers, and has used him as such. If he continues to be used in less leveraged situations, we'll get some value out of it at least.

Cotts is ostensibly the LOOGY on this team. I really hoped that the Cubs picked up someone like Ohman or Beimel instead to be their primary left-hander. Cotts is a better all around reliever which is nice, but if you want to have someone to *specifically* get lefties out, I'd rather have someone with a more extreme split. In fact, wierdly enough, Cotts actually has a lower OPS against for right handers over lefthanders by 3 points. Looking at these numbers make me really wish we signed Ohman, especially considering what little he signed for (a minor league contract? Seriously? I hope someone is investigating collusion this year). He has been a frequent resident of Lou's doghouse as well.

Player	OPS vs RHH	OPS vs LHH	2009 Salary
Cotts	.758	.761	$1.1MM
Ohman	.755	.609	$1.55MM
Beimel	.794	.721	$2MM

Heilman is a pretty good pitcher, and gave Marshall a decent run for his money for the 5th starter role. Marshall pretty much had the job going into spring training though - if Marshall stunk up the joint he probably would have won the job but all he really needed to do was just be adequate to win the job. It seems like Heilman isn't the '6th' starter either - most of the chatter I've heard has Atkins (or maybe Samardzija) as the 6th starter, not Heilman. He'll do a decent job in the 7th/8th inning (depending on where Marmol comes in), and hopefully will help keep Marmol's innings down.

Marmol is our best reliever, and I was secretly pleased that he was not named the closer. He's penciled in as our 8th inning guy, but so far it seems that Lou is continuing to use Marmol as he did last year (to get any of the other relievers out of jams before the 9th inning). He'll be used in the 8th if he's not needed before then, which is about as optimally you can use a reliever withing the current managing framework in the majors these days. As foolish as it is, once you attach the 'closer' label to someone, not throwing him in the 9th inning is going perceived as a sign of a lack of confidence (unless they're pitching multiple innings). Hopefully Heilman saps away some of those innings that Marmol picked up last season, when he was overused due to the fact that he was the only reliever Lou trusted for large stretches last year.

Gregg should be okay in the closer's role, though he hasn't exactly gotten himself off to a great start. There's been lots of grumbling for him replacing Wood, and while his peripherals aren't quite as good, the fact that he's cheaper and more durable makes him a decent option. At least we have Marmol to step in if he falters (and after he leaves). Clearly (see below) Wood is much better than Gregg, but I'd much rather have Milton Bradley than Kerry Wood. They're being paid the same, but Bradley is going to have a much bigger impact on this club.

Player	Projected FIP	Salary
Gregg	3.91	1yr/$4.2MM
Wood	3.21	2yr/$20.5MM + $11MM option

It will be interesting to see what the Cubs will do with their bullpen next year, after Gregg and Heilman leave. I wouldn't be surprised to see Heilman come back if he has a decent season (he lives in Chicago).

Finally, the projections:

Player	IP	FIP	LEV	WAR
Gregg	80	3.91	2.0	1.1
Marmol	85	3.62	1.5	1.4
Heilman	80	4.16	1.1	0.3
Cotts	55	4.33	0.9	0.1
Guzman	50	3.92	0.8	0.3
Vizcaino	45	4.33	0.7	0.1
Patton	30	5.37	0.6	-0.1
Samardzija	35	4.59	0.8	0
Replacement Level	30	4.55	0.4	0

The Patton projection is based of his CHONE ERA projection (not FIP). He's looked pretty good so far, but I don't think he will stick, given that he hasn't pitched above A ball.

Project-a-tron: The rest of the starting rotation

The projections

Player	IP	K	K/BB	WHIP	ERA	WAR
Dempster	195	158	2.04	1.31	3.82	3.6
Lilly	210	183	2.54	1.29	3.88	3.7
Marshall	170	124	1.96	1.37	4.3	2.1
Heilman (as starter)	28	25	2.13	1.38	4.19	0.3

Before any comments, you gotta love the strikeout staff that the Cubs have assembled.

Dempster's numbers are obviously going to regress to the mean after last year's stellar performance. Even the most optimistic of Cubs fans have to admit that he won't put up those kinds of numbers again. The fact that he was able to pitch so many effective innings last year is a good sign of his conditioning, and the likely drop in numbers will be more indicative of his true talent than some sort of late-age Verducci Effect. Strangely enough, Dempster's ZiPS projection has him with an ERA of 4.08 but a BABIP of .254, without any other big variations in his other stats. Wierd.

Lilly had a much better season than his aggregate stats let on - he was just shelled in April (6.46 ERA at the end of the month), but he managed to shave about 2 and a half runs off his ERA over the rest of the season. Really Lilly's problem is that if he doesn't have it (or there's a strong wind blowing out), he gets hit hard, and if he does have his stuff, he's an incredibly effective pitcher. For a long time he has struck me as the kind of guy who has a good true talent level but with a very high variance in his performances when compared to other pitchers - If I have some time I might make a blog post about it someday.

I originally had Marshall pegged for 130 innings or so, but I think he can pitch for more. 170 innings might be stretching it, but since he'll be the team's defacto 4th starter he should see a lot of action. I'm still having a hard time getting over my perception of him from 2006 - which was that he was a guy who got hit very hard his second and third time through the order and would fade down the stretch as the league figured him out. But, I think that most of these problems stemmed from the fact that he was too young and pressed into service too soon. Marshall has grown as a pitcher and should do a fine job of delivering league average innings for a few years, though I don't see much potential in him to do much more than that.

Heilman seems like the most likely candidate at this point to soak up the extra Marshall/Harden innings. If Samardzija does end up going to Iowa he might end up filling this slot instead, which would not be so good - if Heilman excells as a bullpen guy this would make this more likely to happen as well.

Project-a-tron: Rich Harden

Rich Harden has the most pitching talent on this team, and, arguably, in the National league. His projected ERA is nearly a run better than any other starter on the Cubs staff. ZiPS has him projected at an obscene 2.37 ERA for next season (albeit over 17 starts), and for all of the hand-wringing that goes on over Rich Harden, he actually pitched a lot more than I thought last season. Between the Cubs and Oakland, he made 25 starts and pitched 148 innings, which seems to be about what most people are expecting out of him this year as well. I would bump him up another 30 innings this year again, but he still does have that shoulder strain from last year hanging around. With the quality of their team and the weakness of the rest of the NL central, the Cubs have no reason to work him very hard, so I'm going to stick with 150 innings (~25 starts) for Harden once again this year. Hopefully he will be healthy heading into October this year.

Projection:

Player	IP	K	K/BB	WHIP	ERA	WAR
Harden	150	181	3.02	1.15	3.02	4.4

Those are some sick numbers.

Project-a-tron: Carlos Zambrano

Zambrano has been my favorite Cubs player for many years. People use lots of adjectives to describe Zambrano, such as "Fiery", "Emotional", "Injury-waiting-to-happen" (thanks for that, Will Carroll), "Angry", and other such names. However, my favorite is "goofy", which I first read in BP's "It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over" in the chapter on the 2003 Cubs. What better word to describe Carlos? He's a fun-loving guy who loves baseball.

Z has seen his strikeout rate decline for the past 2 seasons. However, this has been tempered by an equal decline in his walk rate, which had always been a problem for Z (especially in 2006, when he had a 4.84 BB/9). Instead, he began to rely more on his groudball tendencies to get his outs. You would think that this would lead to Z going deeper into games, but in fact this number has declined, as he has been hit harder (6.75, 6.35, and 6.27 IP/Start, respectively). I'm no expert, but I don't know if Z is as due for an injury as Will Carroll seems to be. He's been beating the drum on this for years, and only at the end of last season did Z start breaking down. He's certainly been pitching differently than he did in his prime years (lower arm slot), but it still seems to be working for him, though not as well as his prime years. His projection, perhaps not coincedentally, sees him continuing to produce at this new level.

Player	IP	K	K/BB	WHIP	ERA	WAR
Zambrano	180	152	1.85	1.33	3.83	3.3

Amending some projections

As MB21 pointed out in the comments of my Aaron Miles post, my defensive projections for Miles away from 2b are not very realistic, especially at 3b, where he has only had 61 innings of big-league time. I'm zeroing out his numbers there (since I still feel that 3b is a *little* more difficult) than 2b, where I have him at +2 runs. I guess it's not that big a deal anyway, since he's going to get the bulk of his time at 2b. I still think it's a poor signing - I think we should have gone with a cheapo shortstop (think Alex Cintron from last year's spring training) or, if we were actually spending money on a utility guy, nabbed Nick Punto (who has obscene defensive numbers). Of course, that's not very fair to the Cubs since he signed with MIN in early December, well before the DeRosa trade. In general though, just don't feel that we should be spending much more than the major league minimum on a utility player.

Over in the Lee vs. Hoffpauir thread on BCB, a discussion with Colin about Lee's projections has made me change my mind on my projections as well. I leaned heavily towards the more pessimistic projections for Lee (especially Marcel), projecting him at a .362 wOBA. My opinion was that Lee's 2007 was an up year for Lee, and 2008 was closer to his true talent level (since it looked so much like 2006). However, what I did not take into account (and neither did Lee's Marcels, given how that works) was that 2006 was Lee's injury bounceback year, and the data point just before it was Lee's career year in 2005. This would suggest instead that 2007 was closer to his true talent, while last year was a down year for him. I'm still not as high as CHONE is (.381 wOBA), but I think bumping Lee's wOBA up to .375 would be more than reasonable. Here are the new numbers:

Player	PA	HR	OBP	SLG	wOBA	UZR	WAR
Lee	685	22	.370	.481	.375	+3.5	3.2
Miles	350	3	.328	.370	.305	+1 (2B) -9 (SS) 0 (3B)	0.1

Project-a-tron part 4 - Why Aaron Miles Sucks

Player	PA	HR	OBP	SLG	wOBA	UZR	WAR
Miles	330	3	.328	.370	.305	+1 (2B) -9 (SS) -5 (3B)	0.1

Hendry did many things right this offseason - most notably, signing Milton Bradley and not re-signing Henry Blanco. However, I think that signing Aaron Miles was a big mistake. We already had a player who could do what Miles could do, for a lot less money. His name is Ronny Cedeno. Here is my projection for him in Miles's role:

Player	PA	HR	OBP	SLG	wOBA	UZR	WAR
Cedeno	330	5	.311	.379	.304	+15 (2B) -2 (SS) 0 (3B)	0.5

This deal only makes sense in two scenarios: either Cedeno was part of a Peavy trade that was a lot closer than anyone thought, or Lou flat-out told Hendry that he wanted Cedeno traded. The problem here is that although Miles and Cedeno have very similar offensive numbers, Cedeno's defense makes a pretty big difference in his value. Miles can play 2B just fine, but he is lousy at SS and 3b. In my opinion you need to do one (or both) of the following to be a decent utility player:

1. Provide competent defense at multiple positions, especially at one primary defensive position (usually SS or CF, since they are the hardest to play


2. Be able to fake multiple positions on defense, but hit well enough to make up for the runs you aren't preventing

Cedeno satisfies #1. Miles satisfies neither of them, which is why the Cubs are still looking for someone who can backup 3b, though SS is my main concern. My defensive projection for Miles is pretty much a WAG, but I'm basing it off the fact that he has been a very poor SS. 3B is a little easier, in theory, but I think the rap on Miles is that much like Theriot and other short guys he has a second baseman's arm. If Hendry had waited he could have brought in, say, a better SS (Orlando Cabrera anyone), or even some other ACTUAL shortstop, who can be expected to handle the other IF positions than Miles, who is only really suited to 2b

Project-a-tron Part 3 - Ryan Theriot

Now, on to the middle infield

Player	PA	HR	OBP	SLG	wOBA	UZR	WAR
Theriot	610	3	.345	.352	.316	+4	1.7

Theriot is a pretty polarizing figure in the Cubs blogosphere. Love of (or disdain for) his scrap factor aside, he too is a decent (though not particuarly good) shortstop. He had a surprisingly good year last year, but I suspect that it was a career year for Theriot. He often looks bad defensively but his UZR grades him out to be a slightly above average SS. He also spawned the "TOOTBLAN" statistic due to his often boneheaded baserunning. Theriot's biggest problem though is his lack of power. He is a singles hitter, and thus his value is very tied into his BABIP. Take a look at these numbers:

Ryan Theriot:

Year	BA	OBP	BABIP	SLG
2007	.266	.326	.289	.346
2008	.307	.387	.340	.359

His BABIP jumped by 50 points, and, shockingly, his OBP jumped by 60 points! Everyone was pointing to Theriot's improved OBP as a sign that he made it, but I only see a marginal improvement. Singles hitters like Theriot live and die by how many balls make it out of the infield, and if teams start putting a shift on him (unlikely as it may be), he would be screwed. If you assume his BABIP to fall back down to typical values, Theriot's OBP will drop back down to the .340s, which combined with his defense and poor slugging puts him as a just-below average SS.

Project-a-tron, part 2 --- (some of) the infield

Next up is the Cubs infield. Here's what it is looking like right now

(Note: This was originally going to be about the entire IF, but I had so much to write about for 2B/SS that it got chopped up into 2 posts)

Player	PA	HR	OBP	SLG	wOBA	UZR	WAR
Soto	575	24	.365	.499	.369	5	4.5
Bako	100	2	.285	.299	.260	0	-0.2
Hill	100	3	.294	.360	.293	0	0.1
Lee	685	22	.370	.474	.362	+3.5	2.4
Hoffpauir	180	8	.322	.480	.340	0 (1B) -10 (LF/RF)	0.1
Ramirez	660	33	.362	.522	.376	-0.3	4.1

Soto is the most underrated player on this team, and is just a shade below my bullish projection for Soriano in terms of total WAR. Defensively, he's not vintage Pudge out there, but it's not like he's Mike Piazza either. His defense is good enough that he can stick at catcher, and even if it wasn't, having his bat at that position is a huge asset for this and future Cubs teams.

I get the feeling that Bako has the backup catcher job sewn up no matter how he performs, due to his 'veteran presence' tag and the fact that he won't make a very big impact on the team, given the number of PAs that Soto is likely going to receive. Hill is better offensively, and it's tough to tell who is better defensively (none of them particularly shine). Given the small spread in their abilities, I would pick Hill over Bako even if he were worse offensively, mainly because he is younger and thus less prone to the random breakdown injuries that old catchers get, which means that we don't have to do any roster shuffling if he goes down.

Derrek Lee is a slightly higher than league-average player at this point in his career. We will never see the 2005 MVP-caliber Lee again, and most criticism of Lee comes from unfair comparisions to that season and the fact that he is still batting third in the lineup when he should probably be moved elsewhere. In fact, while his power has been overrated for the past two seasons by most Cubs fans, his fantastic OBP has been largely ignored. I actually think that Lee's ideal lineup position would be second, since he still has *some* power, but if he moves anywhere it will probably be to 5th or 6th.

Aramis Ramirez is a good baseball player, and is probably slightly underrated by most Cubs fans. Ramirez can hit baseballs. A long way. But it's not just home runs (though he does hit a fair few of those) - he hits a ton of doubles. Add the fact that he can also adequately field his position and you have one of the top third basemen in the National League.

Micah Hoffpauir is a good bat to have on the bench, but let's not pretend that he's anything more. He's a statue in a corner OF spot (the UZR I gave above is probably too generous), and isn't that great defensively at 1B either. He doesn't have very much patience at the plate either. He will be an adequate replacement for Daryle Ward. Lou has said that Hoffpauir is pretty much a lock to make the roster this year.

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.

Looking ahead

Since the Cubs are now at 99.9977% to reach the playoffs, I feel safe in talking about the PLAYOFFS now. First, the NL playoff teams, as they stand today

Cubs
Phillies
Dodgers
Mets (WC)

It would be extremely shocking if the Cubs and Dodgers lose their divisions at this point. The only real contenders left for playoff spots are the Brewers, Phillies, Mets, and Astros. Sadly, I see the Astros continuiug their post-hurricane slump, so the only real contenders left are the Brewers, Phils, and Mets. here are the possiblilities

1. Brewers win WC, Phllies win NL east
2. Brewers in WC, Mets win NL east
3. Mets win WC, Phillies win NL east
4. Phillies win WC, Mets win NL east

In situations 1 and 2, the Cubs play the Dodgers, in 3 and 4, the Cubs play the WC leaders. If we look purely at Nate Silver's Secret Sauce , we can get some insight on what would be best for the Cubs.

Note: The secret sauce is a pretty simple formula - Nate determined that the 3 variables that best suggest success in the playoffs are Team Defense, Starting Pitching, and having a Shutdown Closer. Simply rank each team in these categories, add up the 3 rankings, and the lowest score has the best Secret Sauce rating. Here's how things break down for these teams

Cubs: Fielding - 1, Pitching - 3, Closer - 20, total - 24
Phils: Fielding - 14, Pitching - 20, Closer - 1, total - 35
Brew Crew: Fielding - 10, Pitching - 17, Closer - 9, total - 36
Mets: Fielding - 8, Pitching - 14, Closer - 22, Total - 44
Dodgers: Fielding - 17, Pitching - 11, Closer - 16, total - 44

Thus, clearly the Cubs should be rooting for the Phillies to win the division, as we would get the Dodgers or Mets in the first round (even better would be the mets, since that calculation was made using Wagner's numbers, and their BP is even more in shambles now). A 1-game playoff for the Brewers and Mets (as mentioned in an earlier post) would be especially choice, as it would weaken both of them heading in to the playoffs. My personal feeling though is that I would rather play the Dodgers - Manny is their only star offensive player, and none of their starters scare me. The Mets at least have Santana and some legitimate hitters (Wright, Beltran, Reyes, Delgado) that we would have to worry about, flammabile bullpen notwithstanding. They would throw Santana at us twice in a 5 game series, which would be tough to beat...though we have beaten the Brewers on both of Sabathia's starts...(power lefties...)


On a personal note, I'm hoping that the Cubs split their remaning games with the Brewers (losing tonight would be fine since it's Sheets v Marquis, our most average pitcher). That way, we don't clinch on Thursday, and could clinch on Saturday instead vs. the Cardinals. I only say this because I will BE at that game (thanks to my awesome in-laws). That would be freaking awesome. What would be doubly awesome would be if Holy Shit Carlos Zambrano gets pushed back a day, due to his high pitch count in the no-hitter and need to cruise into the playoffs, and starts that game, because we love us some Carlos. Lilly is great too though...just glad that we won't get Marquis. I have a tendency to get 5th/spot starters at Cubs games that I go to for some reason so it will be nice to break the trend.

I'm curious how our playoff rotation will shake down. We probably won't have to go to a 3 man rotation, because who do you leave out of Zambrano, Harden, Dempster, Lilly? I could *maybe* see bouncing Lilly, depending on how well a team hits lefties. He should be great against the Dodgers though, if he can pitch in their stadium. My feeling is that we will see Z, Demp, Harden, Lilly, but I have no idea how it will break down. What a rotation!

Anyway, Go Cubs Go! (and Go Phillies Go!)