Clark & Addison Blog - CubHub.net

Notre Dame football phenom Jeff Samardzjia made his Cubs debut today at Wrigley Field, striking out the first major league batter he faced (Marlin pinch hitter Alfredo Amezaga) with a 97mph heater.  Welcome to the Bigs, kid.

Next batter Hanley Ramirez then singled, stole second, and Samardzjia promptly air-mailed a pitchout for a wild pitch. The rook’s probably rattled a bit which is to be understood. He gave up a single to tie the game in his first inning of work, but the kid did ok, going 1-2-3 in his second inning.  Interesting that Lou brought him in to debut in a tight game - usually a rookie debuts during ‘garbage time’ of a lopsided game.  That shows some confidence in his abilities and character.

Samardzjia was a standout on the vaunted University of Notre Dame football team and was projected as a possible first round NFL pick.  But he chose baseball instead and the Cubs got him with a 5-year, $10 million rookie deal.  He struggled in A and AA ball, but was remarkable at times for AAA Iowa so he gets the brief nod to get a taste of the big leagues in Kerry Wood’s absence.  He (like I wrote about Micah Hoffpauir) won’t be here long, as they say, he’s here for a cup of coffee.  Just a little motivation for him to see what he’s working for - to pitch in front of a packed and rockin’ Wrigley Field. 

I think Cub fans suffer some degree of post-traumatic stress when it comes to key injuries and late summer division leads. 

With the hopes of the franchise resting on the shoulders/arms of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior in the first part of this decade, it was bitterly disappointing to watch them self destruct with injury after injury. So when the news came down today that Woody would be making his 12th career trip to the Disabled List, Cub nation seemed to react some degree of doomsday feelings. In reality, Wood has been out 10 days already, so he will only miss a few more before rejoining the team as closer. GM Jim Hendry made a statement prior to today’s game that while Kerry’s blister was getting better, he is still a few days out and probably needs to throw some before he returns to live action. So he said that puts him on target for a Tuesday or Wednesday return to action.  See - not so bad.

With the surging Brewers and the Cardinals hanging around, the Cubs division lead has dwindled to just 1 game going into todays action. So the nay-sayers are coming out from under their rocks (mostly Sox fans, I would guess) with the smack talk of how the Cubbies are wilting and how they knew this team wouldn’t go all the way.  Some fans who lived through 1969 are still trying to make sense of what happened that year as well. 

The 2008 Chicago Cubs are not the 1969 Cubs, and the 2008 Kerry Wood is not necessarily the Wood-Prior of ‘04, ‘05, & ‘06.  Wood’s medical issue is not an arm or a shoulder or an elbow - its just a blister. Josh Beckett gets blisters. Heck, Big Daddy Rick Reuschel used to get blisters all the time too.

I say, cut ’em some slack, have some faith, and enjoy the ride!  All teams go through peaks and valleys throughout a long baseball season.  And during this discouraging stretch - whatta ya know - the Cubs are still in first place and starting to make some noise again!

Who are baseball’s best baserunners this year?

July 23, 2008

In the last three editions of The Bill James Handbook, we introduced a new statistic to measure baserunning.  It’s called Net Baserunning Gain and it’s simply how many extra bases beyond average a player gains.  For example, a runner goes first to third on a single about 30 percent of the time.  The average is three out of ten.  If a given player goes five out of ten, he is plus two.  We look at all the situations like this, scoring from first on a double, scoring from second on a single, and so on and so forth. If a player is thrown out on the bases, he receives a triple penalty (-3).  And we count stolen bases, but it’s only a plus if it’s better than a success rate of two out of three (67 percent).It makes a difference.  The top ten baserunning teams are a collective 58 games over .500 and the bottom ten are 51 games under .500.

Here are the best (and worst) baserunning teams so far this year:

Here are the best and worst baserunners:

For a complete discussion of this new statistic, The Bill James Handbook 2008 has an essay by Bill James that goes into detail.

Source: BillJamesOnline.com (through the games of Tuesday, July 22, 2008)

Used with permission from John Dewan’s Stat of the Week™, www.statoftheweek.com.

July has been an uninspired month for Cubs hitters.  With Alfonso Soriano out for the past six weeks, the team picked him up big-time going into the All Star break as the league’s leading offense. But over the past couple weeks, the 2, 3, 4, 5 hitters have been struggling to say the least.

• Kosuke Fukudome: batting a flat .200 in the past 30 days, but his numbers have declined each month of the season
• Derrek Lee: batting .250 in his last 10 games, but only has 2 home runs since June 1st
• Aramis Ramirez: batting .190 with 32 k’s in the past 30 days
• Geovany Soto: batting .189 in his last 10 games

That the Cubs are still in first place by a couple games (going into today’s action) is nearly a miracle the way the team has been floundering. 

Lack of run support has got to be just a killer for a pitcher’s morale. Take Rich Harden for example, in his Cubs debut, he leaves the game with 10k’s and a 7-0 lead only for the bullpen to blow the lead for him.  Then yesterday he goes another seven innings of 1-hit (albeit a homer), 10k baseball and gets tagged with a loss. 

Soriano is due back any day now, so maybe that will give this lineup a boost.  Something to build on. His presence may help to take some pressure off these guys and get back to takin’ care of business like we know they can.

Who has the cannons in the outfield so far this year?
July 18, 2008

In my book, The Fielding Bible, we came up with a way to evaluate outfielder arms. We look at two elements: Runner Advance Percentage — how often do runners succeed at taken an extra base on a single or double, and Baserunner Kills — how often does an outfielder directly throw out a runner at a base (no relays). Based on these two statistics, here’s how we evaluate players in the first half this year.

Starting in left field, the player with the most kills so far this year is Raul Ibanez with five. Also with five kills out of left field are Delmon Young and Ben Francisco. Ibanez has allowed only 35.8 percent of baserunners to take an extra base, which is above average for left field. However, Pat Burrell, while he has only four kills, has only allowed 29.9 percent of baserunners to advance. Based on his better advance percentage, we select Pat Burrell as the left fielder with the best throwing arm in baseball so far this year.

In center field we have former second baseman B.J. Upton with eight kills thus far. That ties him with right fielder Nick Markakis for the most baserunner kills in baseball. However, Upton’s 71.4 percent advance percentage is one of the worst among all center fielders. The best throwing center fielder for 2008 might come as no surprise. It’s former pitcher Rick Ankiel, who along with four kills, has only allowed 47.1 percent of baserunners to advance, the best figure among center fielders with 40 or more opportunities.

In right field, we already mentioned Nick Markakis with eight kills, but somewhat similar to B.J. Upton, his advance percentage of 54.7 percent is below average. The best throwing right fielders in baseball this year are Hunter Pence and Michael Cuddyer, each with five kills and each with a 46.3 advance percentage. They’re tied for second in best advance percentage among all right fielders. Kosuke Fukudome leads the way with a 45.2 percent advance percentage but only two kills.

In summary, here are the best so far this year (click for readable size):

Source: BillJamesOnline.com (through the All-Star break)

Used with permission from John Dewan’s Stat of the Week™, www.statoftheweek.com.

The Score (WSCR radio Chicago) had it wrong.  During their sports news updates today, they were reporting Inland Real Estate of Oak Brook, a publicly traded REIT (NYSE symbol IRC) has reportedly made an offer of $300,000,000 to buy the Cubs.  Then they chuckled the offer was off by about $700k.  In fact, the Inland offer was aparently just for Wrigley Field, not the entire baseball franchise.

Crain’s Chicago Business Reports:

Inland bids for Wrigley Field: report
(Crain’s) — Inland Real Estate Group of Cos., an Oak Brook-based real estate investment firm, has submitted an offer to buy Wrigley Field, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Inland, one of the nation’s largest shopping-center owners, is believed to have offered close to $300 million for the North Side baseball stadium, the Sun-Times reported Thursday on its Web site.

Inland Vice-chairman Joseph Cosenza would not confirm the offer, but said, “I think anyone would want to own Wrigley Field,” according to the report.

http://www.chicagorealestatedaily.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=30238