June 4: Cubs @ Astros (Game 54)

Cubs' MVP: Marlon Byrd, .174 WPA
The Byrdman finished 2-4 with two doubles, one of which knocked in the Cubs' only run in the fifth inning. Byrd's been in a big-time slump lately; he has a .539 OPS and .260 wOBA the last two weeks, and those two doubles he hit were the first extra-base hits for Byrd since May 16. He also has three walks since May 4. Naturally, Lou batted him leadoff last night. It's a way of life.

Astros' MVP: Felipe Paulino, .281 WPA (.333 pitching)
Paulino got his first win of the season last night after starting the year 0-7. In fact, in eleven starts this season Paulino has received a whopping sixteen runs of support, which for the Cubs is a solid offensive month. Paulino's peripherals, even traditional ones, indicate that he's been an OK pitcher: ERA of just 4.01, K/9 over 8, a FIP of 3.41 (but an xFIP of 4.46 due to his 2.8% HR/FB ratio, well below his career rate of 12.7%). Paulino had to get a win sometime, he might as well do it against the Cubs.

Cubs' LVP: Ryan Theriot, -.188 WPA
I don't know if words can describe how much I want Ryan Theriot off this team. I mentioned how Marlon Byrd has been slumping as of late. He looks like Honus Fucking Wagner compared to Theriot. Theriot's last thirty days: .213 OBP (zero walks, none since May 1), .196 SLG (zero extra base hits, none since May 4), and a .198 wOBA (Ryan Dempster's in that same time period is .217).

Theriot continued his ways of fail last night with an 0-4 night, which included his failure to drive in any runs in the third inning with men on second and third and just one out.

Astros' LVP: Pedro Feliz, -.096 WPA
Feliz went 1-4 in the game but ended two innings with the bases loaded.

Biggest Hit of the Game:
Jeff Keppinger hits and RBI single in the bottom of the fifth to give Houston the 2-1 lead. (.125 WPA)

Biggest Out of the Game:
Ryan Theriot pops out with runners on second and third and one out in the third inning. (-.092 WPA)

It was over when...
Kosuke Fukudome led off the ninth inning with a groundout.

Bush League Play of the Year (so far)

Is Houston Mentally Prepared for Z?

When Hurricane Ike rolled through the Houston area in September of 2008, their series with the Cubs was moved to Milwaukee to avoid the natural disaster. In the first game of the series, Z tossed a no-hitter. It was an incredible performance that punctuated the unforgettable 2008 regular season for Cubs fans.

The Astros handled it gracefully, humbly recognizing that the hardships of traveling one extra series over a 162 game season was peanuts compared to the hardships of Houston residents who had no Miller Park to flee to.

One might think that a feat as significant as a no-hitter would be void from scrutiny. But the lack of mental preparedness from the Astros has placed an asterisk on Z's achievement. Even the Chicago sports media (impartial friend of Carlos Zambrano) agreed:

As if to underscore that fact, Zambrano threw a no-hitter upon returning from an 11-day layoff caused by a mysterious shoulder problem last September. Never mind that he shut down an exhausted Houston Astros team that was escaping Hurricane Ike and playing a supposed home game in Cubs-friendly Miller Park.

That was from Sun-Times columnist Carol Slezak, almost a year after the performance in question.

Flash forward a year and a half, and the Cubs and Astros are playing once again amidst catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, and once again facing Carlos Zambrano, this time in his highly anticipated return to the starting rotation.

Sure, the slick of 39 million gallons of oil (and counting) isn't anywhere near the Houston shoreline, but it is close enough where if Carlos Zambrano pitches well tomorrow night, we can safely assume it's on the Astros' minds.

We won't know exactly how much the oil spill is bothering them until we see how Zambrano does. So to save columnists everywhere some time, I've compiled a list of headlines for Saturday morning's sports pages, depending on his performance.

W, 9 IP/0 ER/0 H/8 K/3 BB:
Zambrano tosses second questionable no-no against distraught club
Failure of 'top kill' leaves Astros mentally unprepared

W, 8 IP/2 ER/4 H/5 K/3 BB:
Z feasts on easy target
Carlos thinks of himself while Houston thinks of the marshlands 
 
W, 7.2 IP./1 ER/4 H/10 K/2 BB:
Heavy minds equal heavy bats 
Zambrano K's ten troubled 'Stros

L, 7.2 IP./1 ER/3 H/10 K/2 BB:
Back to the pen?
Zambrano fails in return against Houston

ND, 5 IP/3 ER/6 H/6 K/4 BB
BP can't stop oil, Big Z can't stop losing streak
Cubs non-ace tosses a junk shot of a game

L, 3.2 IP/7 ER/8 H/2 K/2 BB
Houston, we still have a problem
Same old Zambrano can't even beat woeful Astros

"I know it's easy for your mind to wander..."

June 1: Cubs @ Pirates (Game 53)

Cubs' MVP: Xavier Nady, .237 WPA
I wrote yesterday that Xavier Nady's batted ball numbers indicated that he was the unluckiest hitter on the team thus far. Nady had been hitting line drives 28% of the time with a minimal number of pop-ups, but was only batting at a .222 clip.

Well, that changed yesterday, as Nady had his finest offensive game as a Cub: four hits, including a double and a deep two-run home run to open up the scoring.

Pirates' MVP: Neil Walker, .449 WPA 
The Great Neil Walker delivered the deciding blow of the game, hitting a two-run homer off Ted Lilly in the bottom of the eighth, his first career home run. Walker is a former first round draft pick back in 2004, and his journey through the minor league ranks was recently charted in a Rotographs article by David Golebiewski. He's dropped off in the last few years, but playing the Cubs tends to bring out the best in people. He looks to be a super-utility player, as he's spent a decent amount of time at nearly every position in the minor leagues. The Pirates hope they have a future Ben Zobrist type player on their hands, or perhaps (OMG) Mark DeRosa.

Cubs' LVP: Ted Lilly, -.231 WPA (-.182 pitching)
Lilly was cruising along in this one until the eighth inning, when he walked Andrew McCutcheon with one out. The next batter was the aforementioned Neil Walker, who homered to one of the deepest areas of the park. Just for fun, Lilly stayed in the game for the next two batters, walking one of them, before Carlos Marmol came in and did what he does best: strike MFers out. Lilly ended up pitching 7.2 innings, striking out six, walking four, and surrendering two home runs (the other to Garrett Jones, who has officially achieved Cub Killer status).

I said I'd keep an eye on Ted Lilly's velocity because it's been down for a good portion of this year. Brooks has his fastball and sinker averaging around 85 mph, which is right about where he's been all season. However, Lilly's velocity was peaking last night towards the end of the game, which is an encouraging sign. Just take a look at pitch speed charts from his last two starts:

5/27 against LA:

6/1 against PIT:

So there was still some gas left in the tank towards the end of the game this time around, though he wasn't throwing those pitches for strikes. Something to keep an eye on.

Pirates' LVP: Ronny Cedeno, -.158 WPA
Cedeno went 0-3 with a strikeout and grounded into a double play to end the seventh inning.

Biggest Hit of the Game:
Walker's home run. (.548 WPA)

Biggest Out(s) of the Game:
Cedeno's double play in the seventh. (-.113 WPA)

It was over when*:
Marlon Byrd struck out leading off the ninth inning. (Pirate's Win Probability: 96.4%)

*Play in which the result allowed the eventual winning team's victory probability to surpass 95%, and stay above that mark for the remainder of the game

Today's Reason to be Excited About Starlin Castro:

 

Toying with BABIP

People always cite BABIP as a means of easily telling how lucky or unlucky a hitter has been. .300 is generally accepted as the average to which most (if not all) hitters regress with their BABIP. If you're over .300, you're lucky. If you're under .300 you're unlucky. Clear as day.

Quite frankly, it's an easy way to sound smart when talking about baseball. You're acknowledging that luck can play a large part in skewing a player's stats one way or another.

But not all BABIPs are created equal. For example, this season, Dan Uggla has a BABIP of .302. Pretty average. But he's only hitting line drives at rate of 10.1%, well below the league average of around 18-19%. So his average BABIP is in fact, pretty lucky. Contrast that with a guy like Derrek Lee, who has a below average BABIP of .275 but is hitting line drives at 23%.

I've always said you can't look at BABIP and draw accurate conclusions unless you couple it with line drive percentages. The same goes for judging the luck of pitchers.

There was discussion on the 126th best Cubs blog today about what Aramis Ramirez's woeful batting lines would look like if you regressed his BABIP and batted ball percentages to the average. Harry Pavlidis, Lord of the Internets, was quick to point out that regressing hitter's power numbers to the mean may not be the best idea because unlike pitchers, that's an individual skill.

I would tend to agree. But there's no reason to think that something as simple as batting average couldn't be normalized by taking a deeper look at BABIP and LD%.

The standard I've always heard to calculate expected BABIP (xBABIP) is LD% + .120. I've never completely comprehended the thinking behind that, but I'm sure someone much smarter than me came up with it. So we'll use that.

I also came across what I think is a better system on the Twins' blog Twinkie Town this afternoon. Essentially, you multiply the batted ball type (line drive, ground ball, flyout, pop fly) by the percentage that those batted balls typically fall for hits. The calculation for this expected BABIP, which we'll call eBABIP to avoid confusion is then as follows: (LD% * 0.720 + GB% * 0.231 + FB% * .171 + PF% * 0.019)

Using both of these methods, we'll take the average and find a new BABIP (nBABIP) that might be more representative because they're based on what types of batted balls the players are hitting.

With a new BABIP, we can calculate the new number of hits that player should have, based on the number of balls they put in play (not counting strikeouts, walks, or home runs, but adding in sacrifice flys). By adding home runs and strikeouts back into the equation, we can get a new batting average (nAVG), a number that we can use to easily compare how lucky or unlucky a batter has been in terms of not getting out when they hit the ball.

I've also included dBABIP and dAVG to represent the difference between the current numbers and my adjusted numbers.



Using these numbers, you can see that Xavier Nady has been the unluckiest hitter on the team. He's batting .222 on the season but in a normalized situation he should be batting .313, 91 points higher.

It should be noted that Nady only has 72 at bats on the season, so these numbers aren't as reliable as other regulars on the team. The more at bats a player gets, the more representative his batted ball percentages will be, and the more accurate these adjusted numbers become. Take note of the aforementioned Derrek Lee, who by these calculations should be batting near .280.

The luckiest hitter so far for the Cubs has been Marlon Byrd, who's .299 average drops to .268 when we normalize his batted balls. Kosuke and Starlin Castro appear to have been lucky in the early going this season as well.

I'm not going to bother trying to normalize these player's power numbers, or try to adjust using UZR or park or anything like that. This exercise is purely looking at batting average, admittedly a flawed stat. This is something I'm going to try and update throughout the season. We'll see how these numbers change as the season goes on.