The Fall of Rome
Pinpointing the Cubs demise this year is worthy of a dissertation, but if I were to paint some broad strokes, I'd start - in order of importance - with the overreaction to last year's playoff loss, injuries, underperforming players (duh!) and good-old fashioned luck (good last year, bad this year). I did take a look at some team offensive numbers from ESPN.com and Baseball Reference just for fun.
Stat | 2008 | 2009 |
BA w/RISP |
.278 |
.241 |
BA w/RISP, 2 outs |
.222 |
.230 |
BA w/Runners On |
.279 |
.257 |
SLG w/Runners On |
.438 |
.404 |
BABIP |
.321 |
.294 |
SO% |
18.6% |
19.2% |
BB% |
9.5% |
10% |
AB/HR% |
30.4% |
32% |
LD% |
19% |
18% |
SO/BB |
1.86 |
2.03 |
GB/FB |
0.76 |
0.78 |
That .321 BABIP the Cubs put up last year was tops in the league by the way, so some of that regression should have been expected and i do think to a degree many of us expected some drop-off to the Cubs offense this year. The 30 pt drop in BABIP has contributed to the 30 pt drop in BA and SLG with RISP and Runners On, which has coincided with the Cubs leaving runners on base. The patience that many of us wished for during all the Dusty years is still there, but they basically just can't get the big hit. And I know we don't need a lot of fancy numbers to tell us that, but I like the fancy numbers and often times our perceptions don't match up with reality. In this case, they do seem to do just that.
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