The Other Fifteen

Consider this a lark with data; I wouldn't consider the conclusions definitive, or even necessarily meaningful. It's at least thought provoking.

First, I cobbled together a fascimile of a zone rating system based upon the work of Sean Smith on TotalZone. Let me be clear here: my zone rating system is probably the worst zone rating system in existence. If you want a Zone Rating system based on Retrosheet data, TotalZone or SFR are vastly superior; UZR and PMR are better still. And my system - let's call it SZR, for "Stupid Zone Rating" - only rates shortstops, making it even more, well, stupid. Or "special," if you're worried about hurting its feelings.

Here's how it works:

1. Shortstops are given credit every time they record an out or fielder's choice on a ground ball.
2. An "opportunity" to make a play is assigned for errors, and half of all ground ball singles hit to left and center field.

Stupid Zone Rating is simply Outs divided by Outs plus Opportunities.

So why invent the worst possible zone rating system? Because it lets me play around with the data a bit. In this specific case, what I wanted to know was simple. Aramis Ramirez had easily the best defensive season of his career last season. He also missed no small amount of playing time, which gives us a healthy amount of "non-Aramis" opportunities to compare to.

What I was curious about was, did A-Ram's big defensive season have an effect on the Cubs shortstops?

The average SZR of a shortstop from 2004-2007 was .766. During that time, the average SZR of Cubs shortstops when Ramirez didn't play was .801; when Ramirez played, the average SZR of Cubs shortstops was .761.

Now, we'll drill down to 2007. When Ramirez played in 2007, Cubs shortstops averaged a .762 SZR; when Ramirez was out of the lineup, the Cubs averaged a .797 SZR.

I have to go to my actual paying job now, so I'll leave figuring out what that data means as an exercise to the reader. The full spreadsheet is available to peruse.

(The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at 20 Sunset Rd., Newark, DE 19711.)

Labels: Aramis Ramirez, Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Defense, Mark DeRosa, Ronny Cedeno, Ryan Theriot

Felix Pie is being freed from the bench for at least one afternoon of baseball, according to Paul Sullivan. Not for good reasons like "defense" or "needing at-bats to develop." Nope. Because he's speedy!

Manager Lou Piniella said Pie sat so much because the Cubs faced four left-handers on the trip, and he expects him back in the lineup Tuesday night against Cincinnati's Aaron Harang. Piniella said he wants more speed in the lineup and to be more aggressive on the basepaths.

"The possibility there is to put as much speed as we can and force the action a little," Piniella said. "We've done that in a few games, but basically I've stayed with a set lineup."

The speediest Cubs lineup would include Pie in center and Ronny Cedeno at second, giving the Cubs four legitimate base-stealing threats, along with Ryan Theriot and Alfonso Soriano.

Of course, Pie and Soriano have to get on base to make use of their speed, and if Cedeno starts, Mark DeRosa would have to come off the bench.

I have no idea if Sullivan's remarks about Cedeno are indicative of all about Lou's thinking; the goal is certainly not to have Theriot and Cedeno in the lineup, so I certainly hope he's just idly musing about such things.

Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Felix Pie, Mark DeRosa, Ronny Cedeno, Ryan Theriot

Let's take a look at the accumulated press reports and see if we can't divine what Lou's plans are for the day, shall we?

• Henry Blanco will start. Soto's a young guy, but he hardly leads the team in days off at this point, and it's a long season. I'd prefer it to be J.D. Closser as the backup, but what do I know, right?
• Hill is going to pitch in relief today. I imagine this will change if Marquis is having a complete-game no hitter or something, but other than that the idea is to get a few innings out of Hill and hopefully see an improvement in his ability to pitch in the zone.
• Gordon Wittenmeyer hints that last night's odd arrangement (putting Fukudome in left center and DeRosa in right) might become more common, as the Cubs try to work Mike Fontenot into the lineup so that we can have two lefties. (May I suggest Eric Patterson?) [Sorry about the mixup - I typed left and meant center for Fukudome. -CW]
• Expect to see either Johnson or Cedeno or both today; both have hit Moyers very well in their careers. (Which is something I don't care about but Lou does.) Johnson was probably a given anyways. The other Cubs who have hit Moyers well are D-Lee and Rich Hill. (Maybe that's why he's starting today.)

Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Felix Pie, Geovanny Soto, Henry Blanco, Jason Marquis, Reed Johnson, Rich Hill, Ronny Cedeno, Ryan Theriot

The Cubs have had a wild ride the past few days, somewhat masking the fact that the Cubs have a four-game winning streak under their belts. They haven't been winning pretty, but they've been winning.

And while Lou calls it simply "playing his bench," I don't know how many teams are sitting two starters on back-to-back days in this early in the season. Ryan Theriot and Felix Pie have been sitting in favor of Ronny Cedeno and Reed Johnson. Both Cedeno and Johnson have been taking advantage of their opportunities; Johnson is hitting .375/.474/.438 so far, for an OPS of 912, while Cedeno hits .333/.400/.444, for an OPS of .844.

Meanwhile, Pie has a .200/.238/.200 line to his name, and Theriot is at an amazing .207/.281/.241 batting line on the season so far.

I don't think either Pie or Theriot have precisely lost their jobs yet - Pie is probably in a platoon situation for the time being, with Johnson eyeing more of Pie's playing time. His game-winning hit probably helped his cause some.

Theriot, on the other hand, needs to seriously keep his eyes open for some infield predation at this point. Pie was a top prospect who was held out of a lot of trading talks by the Cubs this winter; Theriot's no better than a lot of minor league journeymen at this point and is lucky to have a spot on a 25-man roster.

[Yes, there may be some wishful thinking in that paragraph. When June rolls around and Pie is either traded or at AAA, while Theriot is still our starting shortstop, I plan on eating my own arm off for fun.]

Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Felix Pie, Reed Johnson, Ronny Cedeno, Ryan Theriot

So much for Lou sticking with Theriot. At least for today, Ronny Cedeno is playing shortstop. This demands that I play his theme music:

(For those of you just joining us - I call Cedeno the Great Destroyer because of his incredible .189 ISO last season, even - or especially - because it accompanied a .203/.231/.392 batting line. He doesn't walk enough to be a real Three True Outcomes kind of hitter, but I think he could be the closest a shortstop has come to that ideal in a while.)

I'm pressed for time, but this occasion really demands some Infield Predation. I'll see what I can do about that today.

Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Ronny Cedeno, Ryan Theriot

The Orioles and Chicago Cubs have not had any recent talks about All-Star second baseman Brian Roberts, pushing the potential deal toward Opening Day or beyond.

Despite engaging in trade talks for more than three months, the two teams still have not agreed to a package that both find suitable. According to two baseball sources, the Cubs have offered infielder Ronny Cedeno, pitching prospects Sean Gallagher and Donald Veal, and one other player for Roberts, but the Orioles are holding out for a better offer.

...

The sticking point of the deal appears to be the inclusion of a fourth – or a possible fifth – player in the deal. The Orioles have inquired about several of the Cubs' prospects, including reliever Jose Ceda and outfielders Felix Pie and Tyler Colvin.

Labels: Baltimore Orioles, Baseball, Brian Roberts, Chicago Cubs, Donald Veal, Repetative, Ronny Cedeno, Sean Gallagher, Trade Rumors

People often say, "You can't have an All Star at every position!" Know this (tattoo it on yourself where you'll see it if you think you'll forget): any time this is brought up, you're talking about a crappy ballplayer. I mean, seriously. Nobody starts off conversations about good ballplayers that way. It's some sort of red flag that people want to keep a baseball player on the field for non-baseball reasons.

Apply that sort of thinking to your everyday life. Say your kid brings home a report card with an F on it. How would you react if he said, "You can't have an A+ in every class!" Or say your spouse is responsible for making dinner and sets it (and the kitchen) ablaze. "You can't have filet mignon at every meal!"

I'm not asking for straight As, and I'm not asking for fancy French cooking. I'm asking for the shortstop equivalent of a C, or some chili macaroni Hamburger Helper. I'm looking for average. It's a total straw man argument.

To go ahead and illustrate my point, I've compiled a list of what I've supposed to be the starting shortstops for every team in the majors, and calculated Wins Above Replacement using Sean Smith's projections. [In the case of the Angels and the Nationals, I've used two shortstops.] I've also included perpetual Cubs fan favorite, the Great Destroyer himself, Ronny Cedeno.

I held playing time constant for all players, and have not used any park adjustments. Both of those (false) assumptions would tend to favor Ryan Theriot in comparison to other shortstops.

Cubs players are in bold.

So, when I say that almost anybody would be an improvement on Ryan Theriot, I'm not exaggerating or showing some sort of bias against scrappy white guys. He's not the worst starting shortstop in the majors, but he's not too far away.

Now, obviously this is based upon projections of performance, and those projections could be wrong. The projections on offense are probably more reliable than the projections on defense. But that's as true for Troy Tulowitzki as it is for Luis Hernandez. Unless you have a specific reason that the projections are underrating Ryan Theriot relative to the other shortstops in baseball, I don't see a reason to think he'll be very good for the Cubs next year.

He's an average defender at shortstop - he's got sure hands, even if his range isn't very good; not a butcher like Michael Young or Hanley Ramirez, but not a solid defender like Troy Tulowitzki or Omar Vizquel. At the same time he's not a very good hitter - he's not as bad as the Felipe Lopez/Christian Guzman contingent, but he's certainly not even in the vicinity of the Orlando Cabrerra/Alex Gonzlez "respectable but not spectacular" benchmark. He does nothing particularly well.

The worst part of it is, you do not need a lot of advanced metrics to figure this out. The fact that his defense is good but not spectacular should be readily obvious to the armchair scouts out there; Cubs fans voting in the Fan's Scouting Report pretty much came to that conclusion. Cubs fans are equally able to figure out his deficiencies on offense; the Community Projections over at Bleed Cubbie Blue were very much in line with what other projection systems were saying.

In fact, let's rerun his WAR, this time using nothing more than the collected wisdom of Cubs fans. Converting the Fans' Scouting Report to runs using Tango's method puts Theriot at plus 7 runs; for a projection we really should factor in aging and regression to the mean, but screw it. Fans project Theriot to have a .316 wOBA, a whole four points above CHONE. That works out to a WAR of 1.29 - certainly more optimistic than what I have here, but far from outstanding.

As a group, Cubs fans seem very able to figure out Ryan Theriot's absolute value as a player. So why do they seem so unable to grasp his relative value? Maybe it's just a case of the vocal minority skewing my perception of Cubs fans, I dunno.

As a bonus, some quick, largely non-Cubs related, thoughts:

1. Troy Tulowitzki is an absolute monster. The second-best defensive shortstop in the game, and a solidly above-average hitter? There's a Coors Field effect in there, but damn.
2. Plus 31 runs for Adam Everett? Holy crap. If you can think of a more underrated player in all of baseball, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
3. Tejada shows up rather better than I thought he would. Without knowing the precise aging curve that Sean Smith used for his defensive projections, I'd have to be tempted to take the under on that projection, though.
4. Erick Aybar is just bad. Just... bad. I really wonder what the Angels are planning to do about that.
5. The Red Sox can't be happy about the Julio Lugo signing right now.
6. What the hell, Cardinals? Cesar the Wonder Out is making $2.85 million on a one-year deal; Eckstein is making $4.5 million on a one-year deal. There's almost no way that the difference in performance between the two is worth $1.5 million - and it's possible that Eckstein would have given the Cardinals a hometown discount. Especially given Eckstein's marketing potential for the Cards (he's absolutely beloved by them), this is just stupid on their part.

Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Defense, Linear Weights, Projections, Ronny Cedeno, Ryan Theriot, WAR

Harry Pavlidis over at Cubs f/x has a good overview of how capable Cintron is(n't).

Let's take a look at this based on our Cubs WAR chart:

What does this mean?

1. Hendry somehow managed to find a way to sign a shortstop worse than what we have already.
2. Interestingly enough, Theriot is somehow less valuable than Ronny Cedeno despite getting almost twice as many PAs on my depth chart.
3. Wow, Alex Cintron is bad.
4. Wow.

So... suffice it to say that Alex Cintron is not an infield predator. This is just a minor league, though, and Hendry says the right things:

"Obviously he had a few snags last year coming off (elbow) surgery," general manager Jim Hendry said. "But our people have been watching him in Puerto Rico. I think he'd done some working out with Carmelo Martinez earlier in the year, so we’ve had our eye on him. We felt like it made sense, especially with (Ronny) Cedeno getting some outfield time in the spring. So we felt like we needed someone else in camp that could play shortstop other than (Ryan) Theriot and Ronny."

It's okay to sign a replacement player at replacement salary if that's all you use him as. If Cintron ends up in AAA Iowa I'm perfectly happy with this. If not... well, kiss two wins goodbye.

Oh, and for those curious:

Replacing Cedeno with Cintron already pretty much eats away the benefits of a Roberts trade. (I don't know that taking a few hundred at-bats away from Mike Fontenot justifies the deal either, but I still have a little more work to do with the chaining here.)

Labels: Baseball, Brian Roberts, Chicago Cubs, Linear Weights, Mark DeRosa, Projections, Ronny Cedeno, Ryan Theriot, WAR

Your days of victimizing children infielders that look like children are over!

(Special thanks to the Ted Lilly Fan Club.)

Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Infield Predator, Repetative, Ronny Cedeno

Your grit and hustle cannot grant you flight to rival that of the infield predator!

Oh, and I advise you to look out for bears.

Reader Jettero2112 contribued this to my collection of infield predator graphics:

But even as we joke about such things, remember: there is a dark side to infield predation. We must never forget the face of our true enemy!

So how do we protect our children infielders that look like children from this growing menace? By banding together as a society! Show your support by adding this badge to your website:

Using it to link back here - to provide growing news about the menace of infield predators - is advised but not required.

[Oh, and Fire Joe Morgan is also making fun of this article as well. I'd like to think that I'm first, best and most exhaustive, but they write for real TV shows so I'm probably wrong.]

Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Infield Predator, Repetative, Ronny Cedeno, Ryan Theriot