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

With the Cubs out of the race in '06, Baker often played veteran Neifi Perez over rookie Ryan Theriot, leading to criticism he slowed Theriot's development.

"I don't think that's a fair criticism," Theriot said. "Neifi was a great player, and a proven veteran, a guy that did a lot of good things for a long time. There's a flip side you never hear about. He could've thrown me to the wolves and it could've turned out bad. I learned a lot just sitting back watching. There wasn't very much pressure, so just sit there and understand the big-league life. I learned from guys like Neifi and Todd [Walker]. They taught me a lot. One thing Dusty did do, when he started seeing some confidence, a couple good games in a row, he kept throwing you back out there."

Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Dusty Baker, 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

It has to be hard to be a beat writer for the Cubs. Piniella mocks you in the post-game press conferences. The fans mock you on your own blog (unless you're Mariotti, in which case you can hide in your Hall of Doom while your lackeys do the dirty work). Sometimes you have to feel underappreciated.

Well, here's your opportunity to make up for that, in cold hard cash!

See this? This is the face of the President who freed the slaves and reunited the Union. He's valid legal tender, and he's all yours... IF you can do this simple favor for me.

Next time you're in a room with Lou in some sort of a Q&A forum, ask him if he's concerned about Theriot's slow start. Pie and Hill have been demoted for less, after all.

Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Media, 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

Labels: Chicago Cubs, Ryan Theriot

I'll go ahead and be honest; baserunning is something I don't pay a lot of attention to. If a guy can hit the ball and field the ball, that's usually good enough for me. I mean, usually a guy has to be on the bases to run them, right?

But something that sticks in my craw is when people tell me that baserunning is one of the things "your stats can't measure." First of all, they're not my stats - I don't know that I've contributed one thing to the larger body of knowledge about baseball. Second - my damned stats sure as hell can measure your baserunning! And so that's what we're going to do here.

I should note that what I said above still holds true - I rely greatly upon the work and ideas of other, better people. I am not a sabermetrician, just someone that writes about sabermetrics. So it behooves me to say that I'm standing on the shoulders of giants here.

First of all, none of this would be possible without a database of play-by-play data. Therefore, the required boilerplate text:

"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."

Truly, Retrosheet is gold-plated awesome.

Second, many acknowledgements to Dan Fox; you can read more about his (far superior) EqBRR stats on his blog or at Baseball Prospectus. Also of great help was Lee Panas of Tiger Tales; I highly recommend his excellent series on baserunning metrics. And in case you haven't notice already, I rely very heavily on the research of Tom Tango.

Parsing the Retrosheet logs, I took a look at twelve different common baserunning events. Only the lead runner was considered; it's not fair to judge a runner based on how well the guy on base in front of him is running. (Dusty Baker infamously referred to this as "clogging the bases.")

Every time one of those events occurred, several things got recorded into a table. First, I noted one of three outcomes: the "normal" outcome, the XB, or "extra base," outcome, or the runner being thrown out on the play. I also noted how many outs there were in the inning - the correct decision on whether or not to run is dependant upon the number of outs in the inning, and heads-up baserunners will change their baserunning strategy accordingly. All of those things are then assigned to a baserunner and totaled up. [More accurately, there's a set of SQL queries and an Excel spreadsheet that does most of the work.] Balls not in play includes stolen bases, wild pitches and passed balls.

Every play is then assigned a run value based upon its run expectancy. We'll use the scenario Tango uses to explain this with. let's say you have a runner on first base with one out. According to Tango's run expectancy chart, an average of .573 runs scores in an inning in that situation. Suppose that the next runner hits a single. (That would be an event code 1B_2B in my system.)

If the runner on first advances to second, then the run expectancy increases to .971. A better baserunner will, depending on the situation, advance to third instead; the run expectancy with runners at the corners and one out is 1.243. Sometimes, however, a baserunner will get thrown out advancing to third; with a runner at first and two outs, the run expectancy drops to .251.

[Note that we assume that the trail runner stays on first in either the extra base or thrown out scenarios; that's a convenient abstraction, one that introduces a small amount of inaccuracy in exchange for avoiding a large computational headache.]

So, using the run expectancy formula, we assign run values to all of our event outcomes, based on the number of outs in the inning. For each runner, we multiply his outcomes by their run expectancy values, and sum up. Then, for a final step, we take a look at how the average baserunner would have performed given the same opportunities, and subtract that number from the sum. That gives us our +/- rating of runs above/below average.

Since I'm a miserable computer programmer, all of my SQL queries take about forever to run, so I limited myself to the years 2004-2007. Fair warning: single season performances are subject to sample size issues, especially with things like baserunning.

Okay, let's take a look at the top 10 best and worst baserunning seasons:

Makes sense, yes? Speedy middle infielders and outfielders run better than slow corner infielders and outfielders. Lee is a surprising entry on our trailers; he has a reputation for being a very good basestealer for a first baseman. But on the whole it doesn't seem very controversial.

What we also get here are the run values of being a good or poor baserunner. The difference between the best and worst over this four year period was about 23 runs, or roughly two wins. Now two wins is nothing to scoff at, but it pales in comparison to defense or offense; nobody would look at this chart and say, "Gee, I think that the Sox should try and see if they can trade David Ortiz for Aaron Miles."

And, since this is ostensibly a Cubs blog - your 2007 Chicago Cubs!

This will come as a surprise to nobody who watched the Cubs last season, but good Lord the Cubs sucked at running the bases. Daryle Ward was saved from himself on the basepaths by aggressive pinch-running by Lou Piniella; the same couldn't be said for Lee, Ramirez and Barrett. Oh, and that number for Soto in just 17 opportunities? Ah, catchers and their appreciable lack of knees.

The numbers on Soriano and Lee surprise me. Soriano was below average in 2006 as well (possibly a byproduct of an excessive amount of caught stealings that occurred chasing the mythical 40/40), but was very solid the previous two seasons. Lee, on the other hand, has been a below-average baserunner the past four years.

Oh, and I just have to add - Ryan Theriot is a below-average baserunner. That is all.

Spreadsheet available for download.

The next step is to work out a Marcels-like projection system using this data, so that I can incorporate it into my WAR depth chart.

Labels: Alfonso Soriano, Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Derrek Lee, Ryan Theriot

Okay, so there's talk of the Cubs acquiring Felipe Lopez. On the surface, this looks pretty dumb - if the Cubs were going to acquire a guy that plays shortstop, there were a lot of better options available earlier in the offseason. And Lopez provides more value than Theriot according to my new, park-adjusted WAR chart (which I'm still cleaning up, in addition to some other projects) but not to the extent where I thing it would show up in the standings -a tenth of a win isn't much to write home about.

But let's think outside of the box here. Lopez had a bad season last year at the plate, but even so still outhit Ryan Theriot after you adjust for park effect. Of the two, Lopez is a better bet to hit well. On the flipside, Ryan Theriot is the better defensive player. If you combined Lopez's hitting with Theriot's fielding, you might have a legitimate major league shortstop.

Well... can we do that?

Let's take a look at some of the Cubs pitching staff. For example, last season, 46.9 % of the balls put into play off Carlos Zambrano were ground balls. With Rich Hill, only 36.0 % of his balls in play were grounders. Here's the breakdown:

• Zambrano, 46.9%
• Lieber, 43.8 %
• Marquis, 49.5 %
• Dempster, 47.1 %
• Lilly, 33.7 %
• Hill, 36.0%

Do you see where I'm headed with this? Give Lopez as much time as possible playing behind Hill and Lilly, and give him plenty of time off when whichever of Lieber, Marquis or Dempster are on the mound, and have they pretty much split time with Z (whose high strikeout rate lets him overcome defensive inadequacies behind him). You might end up with a halfway to decent shortstop that way.

Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Felipe Lopez, Ryan Theriot, WAR

Cesar Izturis sucked. The Bush Administration sucks. The season finale of
Project Runway sucked.

Ryan Theriot is a solid, young player with speed, attitude and
perseverance.What's your beef with him?

I mean, I can see "Ryan Theriot should be a bench player" or whatever, but,
geez, lighten up, Francis.

Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Ryan Theriot

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, spring training statistics and results are meaningless. People mostly use them to justify opinions they already held, so far as I can tell.

And like I said yesterday, Lou wouldn't be looking at this crazy new lineup of his unless he saw something in it already. And, sure enough, the early returns have come up rosy:

That lineup experiment with Ryan Theriot batting leadoff and Alfonso Soriano batting second? It just may have passed the experimental stage after Cubs manager Lou Piniella used what might be his Opening Day lineup Thursday.

"We're going to stay in that configuration for a bit and take a good look at it," Piniella said.

And he later drove home the point: "The weather's cold in Chicago when we play the first six weeks or so of the season. And to get [Soriano] to the point where he might have to run [batting first], it's just taking chances."

Which... whatever. He got to see the game today and I was watching Gameday, but I really don't know what convinced him that today's lineup was working. Okay, I do know: he liked the idea of the lineup going into the game, and getting the W didn't hurt the idea. It's like pouring lead or reading tea leaves; you get out of it largely what you put into it. Like I said, spring training results are basically meaningless, so if Lou decides to start acting like some mystic when it comes to justifying his decisions - whatever, they're the decisions he wanted to make anyway, so I don't know what would stop him exactly.

[An aside - Lou has convinced himself that it was a lack of small-ball ability that caused the team's struggles early on last season. I'm more convinced that it was a small sample size effect that worked itself out as the season progressed. Lou seems less likely than I to accept that there are things out of Lou Piniella's control, which I suppose I understand but I am growing more and more frustrated with overall.]

Wittenmyer chimes in, calling this a prelude to a Roberts deal. I'm growing rather calloused to Roberts trade talks; I refuse to believe in any such thing until Roberts is actually traded, if that ever comes to pass.

UPDATE: Bruce Miles is my frakkin' hero. Just... go read it all.

Labels: Alfonso Soriano, Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Lou Piniella, Ryan Theriot

Piniella said he plans to move Alfonso Soriano out of the leadoff spot and bat him second, with Ryan Theriot leading off. If it looks good in camp, that could be the order he settles on for the regular season, he said before today’s game against the Texas Rangers.

That is, until/unless the Cubs make the much anticipated trade with Baltimore for leadoff hitter Brian Roberts, in which case Soriano might stay in the 2 hole or even move closer to the middle.

"This gives us a sneak preview,"’ Piniella said.

Until then, he said, "We’re just going to look at it. That’s what spring training is for."

1. Theriot
   
2. Soriano
   
3. Lee
   
4. Ramirez
   
5. Fukudome
   
6. DeRosa
   
7. Soto
   
8. Pie
   
9. Pitcher

Maybe I should give Lou the benefit of the doubt and move Soto up and DeRosa down, but at this point Lou can get the benefit of the doubt back when he does something to earn it, as far as I'm concerned.

Lou's brilliantly conceived lineup scores 4.953 runs per game; the optimal lineup scores 5.224 runs per game. Let's look at how many runs that will cost the team over 138 games - basically, 85% of the season. We'll leave some room for days off in our analysis.

The Lou Lineup scores roughly 684 runs; the computer-gerenated lineup scores roughly 721 runs, for a difference of about 36 runs or about 3.5 wins.

3.5 wins.

Can I go back to the whole "rage" thing again?

UPDATE: I've run some more lineup numbers and go over them at BCB. Consider it "Colin in syndication."

Upon further reflection, once you have Ryan Theriot in your lineup, arguing over where to bat his is probably a question of what caliber bullet you want to shoot yourself in the foot with. [I'm cribbing from myself here.] So a lot of this is just a few month's frustrations with Lou and the team's overall philosophy coming to a head.

Lou is obsessed with getting some speed at the top of the order. I just want to get some people at the top of the order who will get on base in front of our big bats. It's starting to look like there are irreconcilable differences here.

Labels: Alfonso Soriano, Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Projections, Ryan Theriot

Closest by Baseball-Reference.com similarity scores, anyway.

First off, credit for this idea goes to Harry Pavlidis, or at least credit for stealing it.

Second - this is junk analysis. I know that B-Ref does their sim scores in fluky ways, and they don't have a lot of the things (like height and weight) in there that you'd really like to have for this sort of analysis, much less something like sim scores. And I chose four players mostly because that's what made the graph look clean enough. So take this with a massive grain of salt. It's mostly a curiosity, like the geek show at the circus.

And I'm using OPS+, because it's cheap and its available. Average is a weighted average of Theriot and his four comps; the weight is plate appearances. [Weighted average, in this case, will tend to slightly overrate better players in our "sample" and underrate worse players. Again: junk analysis.]

A few notes on interpreting this graph: players are listed in order of their Theriotness, as judged by sim scores; Ryan Theriot is the most Theriot of any of them, and Buddy Rosar is the least Theriot.

Just going by his four top comps, we'd expect Theriot's OPS+ next season to be about 85. Again, take with a grain of salt.

And we can take a look at the same four players, this time by plate appearances:

Again, just going by his four top comps, we'd expect Ryan Theriot's playing time to drop to about 490 plate appearances; more of a super-sub than a starter. Again, take with a grain of salt.

What have we learned from all of this?

1. I like graphs.
2. Ryan Theriot is a white Tony Womack, according to B-Ref.
3. I like graphs a lot.

But mostly, I like graphs.

Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Projections, Ryan Theriot

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

Did the little one not teach you the value of avoiding an infield predator?

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

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

Infield predators both respect and fear Mark DeRosa's slugging prowess, tending to leave him alone in favor of weaker prey.

It won't be long now until the predator makes his kill.

Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Infield Predator, Mark DeRosa, Repetative, Ryan Theriot

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

You can't take the extra base in the presence of the infield predator!

Labels: Chicago Cubs, Infield Predator, Repetative, Ryan Theriot