Cubs Fun

I thinks it's important that we come up with the perfect term to describe the annihilation of the Brew Bitches from the North. So please fill-in with the most appropriate verb. All submissions are welcome.

The Cubs (blanked) the Brewers.

a few to start you off: dominated, beat-up, skull-fucked, etc... 

If you need to add a metaphor or point of reference to the end of the sentence, that is acceptable as well.

From a link on the new blog by Paul DePodesta (really), here's Carlos Zambrano helping out "career minor leaguer Ron Stilanovich" and his Hardball video series.

Lesson #19: Taking One For the Team

Or, how Baseball-Reference will be the death of me

The latest ridiculously interesting tool released by baseball-reference.com is its Batting Order Position Outcomes page. Plug in a team, a year, and a position in the batting order, and it will break down that position's results by the player batting in that slot.

For instance, did you know that on the 2007 Cubs team, Cesar Izturis logged the most games (41) and plate appearances (154) in the 8th spot in the order? He put up a .254/.314/.300/.614 line while hitting 8th, and the Cubs went 18-23 in games where he batted 8th. With Koyie Hill hitting 8th, the Cubs went an impressive 14-7. No thanks to Hill, necessarily, who hit .141/. 203/.211/.414 in those games. In stark contrast to Hill, Ronny Cedeno hit .368/.369/.737/1.052 in nine games there, and the Cubs went 2-7.

Other interesting but perhaps entirely meaningless discoveries include...

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.

Here's a couple of videos sent to me the last few days. The first comes from Rich at Home Run Derby, who emailed me this video of Kosuke Fukudome versus Josh Beckett circa 1997. Maybe we'll see a repeat in October...

The second video is courtesy of one of our readers who wishes to remain nameless. It's a clip of Jim Hendry down in the Dominican Republic watching Felix Pie hit a home run. A rather priceless reaction by Hendry; good to see he's still a fan of the game even though it's his everyday job.