Reply With QuoteYou sound shocked. You shouldn't be. It's been this way all year now. Snap out of it Will.
I'm sick of Lou's antics...
Lineups are out for tonights opener in Houston.... and guess who's batting 3 and 4 again.
That's right! Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez. Those lineup changes sure didn't last long especially with Tyler Colvin back on the bench and Castro batting at the bottom of the order.
I'm so sick of Lou and his approach. He's so predictable and isn't open to giving Colvin a chance despite Byrd and Fukudome's recent slides.
You sound shocked. You shouldn't be. It's been this way all year now. Snap out of it Will.
im sick of lou.
I'm not shocked. It's very "Piniella" like. I'm just more mad than normal.
lou is a sack of shit.
Yeah I think 4 years was to long for him. He was a decent manager but now I think the fire is gone. He cares to much about putting his veterans on the field and their spot in the line up so they don't get all butthurt about it.
I am not surprise at all. Nady went 4-4 and he is not in,Casttro should be higher. I would keep lee 3rd but put Ramirez 7th or 8th and I am good. But I actually like that Kosuke is 5th but woulod rather have Nady 5th. Why don't the Cubs just send sdown Colvin? I would .
whats even crazier is u put the 2 people who dont take walks batting 1 and 2....THis is getting sad.
Maybe Byrd does not take walks but he knows when to take pitches.
Bryd not very good at taking pitches at all....Originally Posted by waldo7239117
He is good when he knows he has too. And I think he will take pitches today. That is what I am saying.
you guys think he is gone by seasons end?
I think he will. The Cubs are going to go into selling mode and they can actually get something for him. Did he get a NTC in his contract?
He is gone tomorrow...you heard it here first.
WONT HAPPEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!Hendry to loyal
Ahh... nothing like a .160 hitter at cleanup.
Boys, like I've said in the past. You can blame Lou for this all you want, but if Lee and A-Ram aren't going to hit, we're not contending anyway. Lou knows this. Might as well keep them in and hope they snap out of it. He's done everything short of putting them down in the order, and I'm sure that's on the short list of other things to do.
A question for Lou Haters. How much better are the Cubs w/ another manager?
can it get any worse??
I'm a Lou hater. I agree that without Lee and Rami hitting, we aren't winning a World Series, but at least a different manager wouldn't trot out the same people every game that got us to 6 under .500.
I mean seriously what does Colvin have to do to get some PT. I'm not saying Colvin is the savior, but he can't be any worse than what Kosuke or Nady are bringing. Heck, even Byrd is struggling big time. Colvin should get a shot.
Lou said tonight that Colvin will start on Sat. Yeah, I've heard that before. Remember at the start of the season when Sweet Lou said Colvin would start multiple times a week? Colvin goes 2-3 weeks without a start. It's so stupid.
Hmmm....that's a tough question to put a definite number on, but let's try, if only for the Ramirez-Lee situation.
Now, Ramirez and Lee both have a vast majority of their plate appearances coming from the 3rd and 4th spots in the lineup, respectively, so let's assume (both for the sake of argument and for the sake of my sanity, because I really don't want to go through and account for days they hit fifth for some reason or other and the like) that all of their respective PA's have come from the 3rd and 4th spots in the lineup. Let's also assume that Lou "should have" realized Lee and Ramirez were struggling mightily early on in the season, pretty much 10 games into the season for both hitters (that's around 80 PA's total that we can't count against Lou, and we'll round it up to 100 to account for other variable "stuff").
Now, what "should" have Lou done? Well, it's not as simple as benching them in favor of a better hitter, and really we can't fault Lou for not benching two of the biggest stars on the squad, so let's say he should have moved them down to the 7 and 8 spots in the lineup to work out their problems. And last year in the NL, the 3-4 spots in the lineup received about 10% more PA's than the 7-8 spots did
Lee and Ramirez have a total of 412 PA's so far this season, and have a combined VORPr (Value Over Replacement Player tuned to per game rate) of -.363, meaning they are costing the team about .36 runs per game they play.
This is where things get tricky and the math gets fudgy: I have to turn VORPr from a per game rate to a per plate appearance rate, and I have no idea how many mathematical gods I am offending by doing this, but stick with me, because the premise is more important than the actual result.
Combined, Lee and Ramirez have appeared in 95 games, across which they accumulated those 412 PA's (and their VORPr), that's around 8.66 PA's per game (had to double the per game PA rate since we are looking at two players) for that -.363 VORPr. Applying that to VORPr, we get that Lee and Ramirez are costing the team, on average, .0419 runs per plate appearance (or .029 runs per PA individually).
Okay, so accounting for the 100 PA's we can't reasonably punish Lou for, that leaves us with 312 PA's garnered by Lee and Ramirez in the 3-4 spots that we can punish Lou for. Assuming that Lee and Ramirez would have seen 10% fewer PA's by this time had they been moved down in the line up past the artificial point we set earlier, this means that the Lee-Ramirez combo has seen roughly 31 PA's it shouldn't have, or at least wouldn't have had the combo been moved to the 7-8 spots, and those 31 PA's (for the duo as a whole) are worth about -1.3 runs.
So really, they wouldn't be any noticeably better thus far in the season had Lou (or another manager inserted the moment Lou decided to stick with the Lee-Ramirez combo past 100 PAs) moved them down in the lineup. However, across an entire season, that amount of run-costing can easily add-up to actual wins in the standings (probably between 1 and 2 marginal wins).
Though not much, that's just a small area of the game in which Lou has conceivably cost this team runs. Then we have to consider his other lineup decisions, bullpen usage, 1-run strategy uses, etc.
I will give you major props on your stats and your math (and the math-gods forgive you, no worries)...but what you basically told me is what I've been preaching all along.
If your two best offensive weapons become a major, glaring liability, you're eff'd. Doesn't matter what you do to any player.
Right, but we're not talking about the team as a whole at this point, we're talking about what Lou has and has not done to cost this team runs/wins. Over the course of an entire season (assuming Lou is set in his ways of batting Lee and Ramirez 3-4), his decision in this area alone will cost the Cubs about half of a win (4 marginal runs).
Add in the rate at which the team is currently costing itself runs with bunting and other 1-run strategies (7 runs across an entire season given current rates), and along with all the other "miscues" Lou has had (other lineup decisions, bullpen usage), and you're easily looking at two wins in the standings come September.
There's WAY too many variables there, but I'll buy that. However, every manager does "little things" to cost his team a win or drive them to victory. Lou is no different. So the question remains: How much more valuable would a different manager be? Who is to say the new manager wouldn't do the same thing, or do other "little things" to cost us victory? At this point, if Lou is going to "cost" us two games, would it even be worth the risk to bring in someone else who at best would be able to gain us those two games back, and have a possibility of him doing worse than our current manager?
Well that's the thing: every manager ever (save for a select few that benefited mainly from managing a long time with REALLY good players) has used 1-run strategies to their team's disadvantage (as far as marginal runs go), and very few managers have instituted "optimal" batting order construction (OBP ranked in descending order starting at the top, with exceptions for extreme power hitters) for any extended period of time.
So more than likely, a replacement manager, while he may not overuse or misuse strategies to the extent Lou has, will still overuse and misuse those strategies to the point of costing the team runs. That being said, I have come to want a GM of some team to finally bite the bullet and insert a "numbers guy" in their team's managerial role, someone that is aware of the overuse of certain strategies and realized the proper game situations in which to implement them and does so accordingly.
Measured against that type of manager, then, Lou has been costing his team runs (and wins) for some time now.
I don't really blame Lou for the teams issues this season. But I will say that hiring Lou was a mistake in that it was more of a knee jerk reaction to the Cubs seeing themselves as having a window to win a WS and Lou was the guy. The better option would have been to go with a younger guy like Girardi and expand your window in a way as now at the end of this season the Cubs have to find a new manager and re-load...to a certain extent.
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