Dear Season Ticket Waiting List Member,

I am happy to inform you…

My number had come up – the Cubs have Season Ticket packages available! This same mechanism is how I became a Bears season ticket holder in the mid-90’s.  But that email invitation at a good time, where I was glad to pony up the dollars and could make plenty of games. I only had those tickets for a few years becuase I quickly realized freezing my ass off sitting in Soldier Field was not as desirable as sitting on the couch at home and ordering a pizza at halftime.  But I digress.

So apparently there’s been some churn in the season ticket club at Wrigley. Given the economy, I guess that’s not a big surprise. But I will pass and move to the back of the line becuase the time is not right for me to commit to sitting in marginal seats in beautiful, historic Wrigley Field eighty-one times this year. I live in the Western suburbs and of course work a 9-5 job, so there is no way I can manage getting to Wrigley even 40x in a year.

View from upper deck box section 422

The seating areas I was told were available at this time are Upper Deck Reserved (IF & OF), Upper Deck Box Outfield, and Bleachers. I’m not a bleacher guy, plus its four grand per bleacher ticket so that’s out. Upper reserved are ok, but I prefer to pony up for Dugout Box seats a few days a year. Upper Deck Box are actually among my favorite seats (helllooo Aisle424!) when they are within a couple sections of aisle 420 and within the first row or two. So given seating choices, and the dollars involved (see below), I chose to pass.

Chicago Cubs 81-Game Season Ticket Plan

(Bold=2010 Season Ticket Packages Available)

See full Wrigley Field Seating Chart from CubHub.net.

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All the betting lines favor the Colts right now by five or six points, but in my book it’s a toss-up. If I were a betting man, I’d take the Saints and the points. But if you do that, don’t blame me if you lose. It’s that close.

In my Super Bowl prediction system there are 12 different indicators, each one taken by itself predicts the Super Bowl winner 56% to 69% of the time. Taken collectively, the indicators have an even better track record. The system favors the team that wins the most indicators and it has predicted 15 of the last 19 Super Bowl winners. This year the prediction system picks the New Orleans Saints to win a Super Bowl in their first appearance in history.

However…

The margin is the slimmest of margins. The system has the Saints winning 7 of the 12 indicators. That goes against the grain given that the Indianapolis Colts are favored in Las Vegas. I like that. The system has a strong track record going against the line. But the prediction system has not performed well when a team wins less than eight of the indicators. Going back 19 years to 1990, the system is only 3-2 on games with less than eight indicators going to the favored team. Going back all-time, the system is 6-7 with less than eight indicators.

Plus, if we had gone to the tiebreaker (when six indicators go to each team), the tiebreaker would favor the Colts. The tiebreaker gives the nod to the team with previous Super Bowl experience. In 17 Super Bowls where one team has been there and the other hasn’t, the experienced team has won 13 times.

For record keeping, if the Saints win, the system will also notch a victory. If the Colts win, the system loses. But I learned my lesson two years ago when the system favored the Patriots with 7 of the 12 indicators and the Giants won. I am calling it a toss-up.

Each indicator is shown here. Interestingly, while the system favors the Saints overall, the three best indicators (the bottom three) each favor the Colts.

There are five defensive indicators, four offensive ones, and three based on overall stats. The strongest indicators overall are the defensive ones.

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

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On Twitter the other day, I said Jim Hendry sometimes needs to be saved from himself. My comment was in reaction to the signing of Jose Contreras by the Phillies, preventing Hendry from getting him. Of all the players rumored to be interests of the Cubs, few have intrigued me. Jonny Gomes, Xavier Nady, and Ben Sheets, are all interesting to some degree but none really stir the baseball juices. They are all what I call “lightning in a bottle” guys. If the planets align they might have a solid year. But they are each a gamble that could prove costly both in dollars and in a roster spot. I would rather re-sign a known entity as fourth outfielder, such as Reed Johnson. At least you know what to expect from him playing in Wrigley Field.

As far as I can tell, the Cubs are in the same boat as last year at third base too. Brittle Aramis Ramirez has no legitimate backup. Sure you could play Jeff Baker over there for a couple games, but if/when he goes down for a month again, Hendry has nothing to back him up – again.  I think this was strategically one of the big mistakes of the 2009 Cubs roster and a primary reason for the disappointing season. We all know A-Ram will go down at some point, only question is for how long. With that wonky shoulder, he is conceivably one dive away from the DL and possibly surgery on every play. And if you slide Baker over to third, you lose run production in the middle of the lineup and further expose second base with Mike Fontenot.

Given the hole I perceive the Cubs have at second base (I still don’t fully trust Jeff Baker), early off season talk of packaging up Luis Castillo from the Mets sounded good to me IF he can still play. But if the rumors are true the Cubs have been interested in the likes of a Kiko Calero, Jose Contreras, and now 37 year old Chan Ho Park, Hendry is barking up the wrong tree.  And this from a team who is based in the city of Daniel Burnham, famous for the quote “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood…”  C’mon guys, reach higher! Ask Andy MacPhail how making a team merely competitive in their division is a good enough goal.

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I heard a Lou soundbite from the Cubs Convention: ‘We have a good team up here in Chicago’ he said. And Lou is absolutley right. The 2010 Cubs appear to be a good – not great – team. They have some good players, if they play up to expectations. But with most of the off-season additions so far having been by subtraction (Bradley, Miles & Gregg all gone), I haven’t seen or heard much to indicate anyone expects to win anything this year.

The "L" flag flies over Wrigley Field

The talk from Ricketts, Crane Kenney, and the overall takeaway message from the Cubs Convention have all been about improving Wrigley, wider concourses, better food selections, bathrooms, moving the weight room, the Triangle Building, and whether to raise the “L” flag when the team loses. I’m not hearing anything about how this team is going to win the division and win the playoffs. Jim Hendry seems to be counting on kid pitchers stepping up, Ted Lilly to come back 100% in May, and Carlos Zambrano to suddenly mature into the “good” Z.

As was typical under the Andy MacPhail regime, this team is built to be competitive, and hopefully catch lightning in a bottle by hitting the jackpot on a rookie and getting career years out of all the veterans.  It all simply can’t come together that way – not all at once as this plan would need to do.  The way things stand now, this team will probably end up over .500 – a mark of a “good” team, but not a winner.

I hope the brass at 1060 W. Addison have a bigger plan in place that just hasn’t revealed itself.

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I am personally thrilled at the Hawk getting HOF honors. Really, he is a role model – how he played the game, how he conducts himself (except for the game at Wrigley when he was tossed by an umpire and illustrated his frustration by emptying the bat rack onto the field of play – hehehe). Really, couldn’t be happier for Dawson or more proud as a Cubs fan.

But shouldn’t we as fans be a little more excited by the players on the field and the prospects for the new season? Shouldn’t Cubs management supply us with those players and inspire that enthusiasm? Maybe I’m just a little bitter by how unlikeable and unproductive last year’s team was. But it seems to me if the new Cubs ownership’s “one goal” is to bring a World Championship to Chicago, shouldn’t we have more exciting players to cheer for? Just asking.

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Nearly every category is identical within a percentage point or two. From games played to plate appearances, hits, doubles, RBI, batting average, on-base …all statistically even.  The only category where one player decisively wins is in (of all things!) hit by pitch.  Reed has been drilled twice as often as Marlon.

Reed Johnson at bat

Looking at their salary history, both guys made $3 million last year. So I wonder why the Cubs opted not to re-sign Reed at perhaps a slight raise (maybe 2 years at $4 million per??). Reed is a proven, known entity in Chicago and a fan favorite. Byrd has put up his numbers in Texas which is a known hitters paradise and few (Mark DeRosa the exception) seem to put up their Texas numbers elsewhere (hellooo Gary Matthews Jr). So there could reasonably be a drop off from even that production for Marlon.

I wonder how much influence or perhaps deference to Rudy Jaramillo went into this decision? I wonder if Rudy was asked who he would like to have and Rudy chose his guy? Will be interesting to see how this works out.  But I bet someone is going to get a better deal on signing Reed Johnson this year than the Cubs did on Marlon Byrd at 3-years, $15 million.

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Mark DeRosa as a Cub

The Cubs signed DeRosa for 7.5 million over 2 years and were widely questioned for it.  That move ended up working out fabulously for Chicago as he spent a great deal of time subbing for the oft-injured Aramis Ramirez. DeRosa also happened to put up the biggest numbers of his career while in Cubs pinstripes. Funny, but as it turns out the Cubs actually got a lot of value from him – compared to the bigger money and smaller numbers he put up for Cleveland & St. Louis last year.

I wish him the best with his new team – the sixth stop of his career. He made an impression on Chicago, but I feel the price of poker with Mark DeRosa is simply too high. If he had signed a contract for this year in the $4mil/yr range, I’d be disappointed if he wasn’t signing that deal with the Cubs.  But for $6mil per, best of luck elsewhere.

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Beginning with his HOF induction speech where he called out the modern ballplayer as selfish and challenged guys to play the game the “right” way, Sandberg’s personality is finally emerging. He has been tossed from many a minor league game for arguing which is a fire he never showed as a player. He led by example, and that’s fine, but it really isn’t prototypical for the personality of a baseball manager.

I’m pulling for Ryno just as I did as a fan. I hope if he gets a shot to manage in the bigs that the shot comes as a Cub. But as Ernie Banks can attest, managing and playing are two different things and being great at one doesn’t mean you will be successful in the other. I just hope when Ryno gets his chance, he does well. How can you root against Ryne Sandberg?

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In The Bill James Handbook 2010 we analyze a player’s baserunning ability.  For each player, we measure his ability to move first to third, second to home, and first to home in addition to the number of outs he records on the bases and how he fares in double plays. 

While this year’s Handbook evaluates how each player performed in 2009, I thought it would be fun to take a look at baserunners over the past five years.  We took a look at each player’s baserunning gain (stolen bases are not included) in order to determine baseball’s best and worst baserunners for the past five seasons.

Best Baserunners, 2005-2009

According to this study, Grady Sizemore is the best baserunner in baseball with a  +104, despite only a +4 in 106 games played this year.   Think of that +104 as 104 extra bases taken compared to an average runner. Chase Utley, the only infielder on this list, comes in second with +96 and had an excellent year this year with a +27.  Willy Taveras is slightly behind Utley, followed by Ichiro Suzuki and Randy Winn.

Worst Baserunners, 2005-2009

Ordinarily, when we do a Stat of the Week that involves catchers, the Molina brothers appear on some sort of  “best-of” leaderboard.  When it comes to baserunning, however, the two Molina brothers with starting jobs are two of the five worst baserunners in baseball over the past five years.  At -97, Carlos Lee is right behind Bengie Molina’s league worst net gain of -106.  Mike Lowell also makes the list of worst baserunners, and is the lone infielder in the bottom five.  In 2009, Lowell was an abysmal -27.  The worst baserunner in 2009, Juan Rivera at -35, just missed the five-year list with -80. 

Interestingly, despite Rivera’s -35, the Angels were baseball’s best baserunning team with a +77 team score.  The top five teams in 2009 were:

Best Baserunning Teams, 2009

The Kansas City Royals were the worst at -97 as a team.

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

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