Archive - Feb 2008

Chicago’s favorite former Chunichi Dragon gets the attention of the New York Times today. The article talks about how Fukudome played shortstop (badly) for his first three years as a pro, and the memory of that evoked this funny, self-deprecating description of what kind of shortstop Fukudome was:

“The kind that caused my pitchers great anxiety.”

(Actually, the comment came through Fukudome’s translator. I guess that means the comment wasn’t self-deprecating...just deprecating.)

Most interesting part of the piece to me was the connection drawn between Fukudome’s move to the outfield and his emergence as a big-time hitter. Fukudome thinks it's no coincidence that the events happened in tandem; says he found playing the outfield "much more relaxing."

If Fukudome struggles early, I hope the right field bleacher creatures at Wrigley give him a break. Otherwise "relaxing" will be the last word he'll use to describe his new home.

Part of what makes TCR great is the knowledgeable and active participation of the readers. I mean, it's a very SMALL part, of course, but still a part. Keep sending stuff in, and we'll keep reading it. And maybe, just maybe, posting it. - Trans

YOUR 2007 AVERAGE BATTING PARTNERS (ABPs)
By Lawhide

Being bored recently, I decided to work on some statistical tomfoolery: I decided to find out who was the ABP for each Cubs pitcher in the majors. What’s an ABP? I took the OBP- and SLG-against for each pitcher and tried to find the most comparable 2007 MLB hitter. For instance, batters hitting against Will Ohman in 2007 hit a line of .355 OBP and .436 SLG (an OPS-against of .791). Luis Gonzalez (the old one) hit .359/.433/.792 this year, making him Will Ohman’s Average Batting Partner, or ABP.

Keep in mind that there’s not really any useful statistical information in an exercise like this, it’s purely for fun (at least, fun for those of us who are into the numbers side of things). That being said, here are your 2007 Cubs Pitcher ABPs.

With Cubs pitchers & catchers scheduled to report to Fitch Park in Mesa this week, and with position players scheduled to report next week, let's take a quick look at the Cubs 2008 Spring Training roster:

...for those that missed out on the West Coast scores.

- One of our wonderful readers, "Wolf at the Door" has been burning the midnight oil with all kinds of fancy charts and graphs over at the Wolf-Report. Fantastic stuff. His latest is a comparison of Japanese players making the transition to the majors, although he did forget one player....

- Tadahito Iguchi, who John Dewan points out had remarkably similar numbers to Fukudome in their age 29 seasons in Japan (that was two years ago for Fukudome). Iguchi's first season with the White Sox produced a 278/342/438 line with 15 HR's. That doesn't sound $12M worthy.

- Another Dewan factoid questioning the effectiveness of the Cubs seven-year run as NL strikeout kings.

- I was actually going to mention that same "Stat of the Day" that Cubnut did earlier, but more for the fact that Zambrano has the most plate appearances (84) for a .300 hitter or above without a hit by pitch or a walk in a season (in 2005). I also wanted to note the one about "The Most Average Batters of All Time". Bill Buckner leads the list of hitters with most career plate appearances and an OPS+ between 99 and 101.

- I thought this article was a fun read by Ken Arneson on "How to Defeat a Sabermetrician in an Argument".

- A few weeks back I put up a video of Hendry watching a Felix Pie home run. Here's the clip of the actual moonshot.

Enjoy the weekend....

-- Dayn Perry’s anti-All Star list–the worst National Leaguers, position by position–includes no Cubs, but two exes, Jason Kendall and Juan Pierre.

Congratulations, men.

-- Riffing off of Friday's Stat of the Day feature at Baseball-Reference.com, a list of players who went an entire season without a BB or HBP, here’s a list of Cub hitters who achieved the feat, in descending number of plate appearances:

Joe Carter (52 PA’s in 1983)
Dee Fondy (51 PA’s in 1957)
Mike Hubbard (39 PA’s in 1996)
Bubbles Hargrave (37 PA’s in 1914)
Don Young (36 PA’s in 1965)
Billy Cowan (36 PA’s in 1963)
Coaker Triplett (36 PA’s in 1938)
Rob Talbot (32 PA’s in 1953)
Sandy Martinez (30 PA’s in 1999)
Jeff Kunkel (29 PA’s in 1992)

Note: no Neifi Perez. Just doesn’t seem right. (And yes, Bubbles Hargrave is Pinky's brother.)

-- A tv-related note by way of the Muskrat: Comcast marks the 10th anniversary of Harry Caray’s passing with a day of Harry-related programming on February 18th. Included will be a documentary on Harry’s life and complete rebroadcasts of three big games from Caray’s time with the Cubs, including the NL East clincher in 1984.

--The sun is out in Chicago today for what seems like the first time in months. A fitting reason to point out that pitchers and catchers report to Mesa 5 days, 23 hours, 48 minutes and 26 seconds from now.

...we have rumors. 

Today, Carrie Muskat asks herself, "Can Dempster make a successful conversion from closer to starter?"
Her answer:

After three seasons as the closer, Dempster is switching back to the rotation for the first time, full-time, since 2002. The right-hander has trained hard this offseason, but it won't be easy to go from one-inning outings to seven or eight. He'll be challenged with the addition of Lieber.

I think Dempster will mostly be challenged by the fact that he is not a very good starting pitcher.
Dempster's career numbers as a starting pitcher only, along with those of another guy who we often kick around: