beckdawg
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Last season the cubs 1-8 hit the following
1st - .253/.303/.373 with 85 runs, 9 HRs, 55 RBI, 20 SB in 749 PAs
2nd - .240/.301/.404 with 83 runs, 23 HRs, 71 RBI, 13 SB in 731 PAs
3rd - .282/.375/.503 with 102 runs, 33 HRs, 81 RBI, 5 SB in 715 PAs
4th - .285/.337/.462 with 75 runs, 22 HRs, 91 RBI, 7 SB in 698 PAs
5th - .228/.302/.366 with 65 runs, 16 HRs, 59 RBI, 1 SB in 679 PAs
6th - .214/.268/.372 with 60 runs, 20 HRs, 84 RBI, 9 SB in 662 PAs
7th - .252/.304/.410 with 57 runs, 20 HRs, 65 RBI, 6 SB in 643 PAs
8th - .200/.259/.294 with 41 runs, 10 HRs, 52 RBI, 4 SB in 623 PAs
The takeaway you're mainly looking for here is that outside of the 3 and 4 holes(eg Rizzo and Castro) you're talking about replacement level players or in the case of the 8 and 6 holes well below replacement level players. That's a term that gets thrown around a lot and some might not be familiar with it. So, I'll explain it. Basically the concept of a replacement level player is something WAR uses to distinguish between what a MLB player does as opposed to any fresh body from AAA. The idea here being that if you were to have to call just anyone up from AAA that a replacement level player(eg average AAA) would be able to put up <x> stats. Last season Gerardo Parra hit .261/.308/.369 with 64 runs, 9 HRs, 40 RBIs, 9 SB in 574 PAs. He was also a -0.2 UZR/150 in the OF or basically average defensively. That all together gave him a grand total of 0.1 fWAR. Put another way, that's your prototypical "replacement" level performance. So, when I say the cubs really only had 2 major league hitters, I really do mean that. Others like Valbuena(primarily hit 5th) played well but they moved around the order and the players who they shared order spots with tanked hard enough to drive down their performance.
This is why projections love the cubs. The theory here goes you should be able to find anyone off the FA market to improve or at the very least replicate that performance. What sort of gets lost about last season is how ridiculously good the cubs pitching was. In terms of fWAR, they were 6th in the majors behind, the Nationals, Yanks, Tigers, Indians and Royals. Likewise, they were 6th in FIP. While they did obviously trade Shark, Lester should be of a similar level pitcher. Hammel is back. Arrieta is back. Hendricks pitched well and whomever ends up winning the 5th spot, they arguably should be as good as Wood/Jackson were considering both are still candidates. Long story short, it's hard to imagine the cubs being worse offensively, and while they were very good last season pitching wise, on paper they have the arms to be as good.
How does this relate to Alcantara/Fowler? Well last season the NL average for runs was 640. I'm using NL because obviously the DH confuses matters when talking about a NL team. The cubs scored 614 runs(-26 from average -141 from COL the NL leader) which was 12th in the NL. Fowler's OBP last season was .375 and he's got a career .366 OBP. Now it's slightly disingenuous to move his 2014 numbers in and say he will have that impact. But for the sake of argument here, I'm going to compare the difference his .375 OBP has to the .303 they got out of the 1 hole. If we assume that runs scored at a similar rate per PAs(749 * .303 = 226.9 / 85) we basically get a run scored every 2.67 times the #1 hitter was on base. If we do the same for Fowler you're talking about 105 runs(749 * .375 = 280.9 / 2.67 = 105.1). Now, almost no MLB player plays all 162 games and Fowler in particular has had injury issues in the past. But for the sake of argument let's say he gets 550 PAs. That would give him around 77 runs with roughly 200 more PAs going to someone else. If that someone else hits the league average of .314 OBP then you're talking about another 23.5 runs or ~100 runs overall. So, conservatively speaking if we say they get 95 runs out of the 1 hole next season, you've added 10 runs to that -26 deficit.
As for Alcantara, my love for him isn't exactly hidden. And on face value alone I can see why some would be skeptical. I would however like to point out how he batted in various spots in the line up
1st - .223/.205/.428 in 94 PAs
2nd - .263/.358/.474 in 67 PAs
6th - .167/.208/.333 in 78 PAs
7th - .280/.280/.580 in 50 PAs
Presumably, when he was batting 1st it was almost always Baez behind him given the timeline up their call ups and the fact Baez exclusively batted 2nd. Additionally, the motley crew of players batting 7th/8th I've already outlined as not exactly being stellar. What I find interesting however is that batting line when he hit 2nd which given the timeline of Rizzo's injury should have always been Rizzo. I would make the case that Alcantara really wasn't given much if any protection as a young hitter. I'd also look at his DWL numbers where he hit .324/.395/.544. The DWL from what I've gathered is roughly equivalent to AAA level competition. So, when you add in the .307/.353/.537 he hit in AAA last season that really shouldn't be a shock. Additionally, Alcantara is often being compared to Zobrist given the Maddon hiring. Zobrist has 1204 PAs hitting 2nd which is 294 more than the next highest(batting 3rd) and over 600 more than the third highest which are roughly a tie between 1st/4th/5th. While, it's possible I'm just looking for confirmation bias here I honestly think that batting Alcantara makes a lot of sense. He's been an extra base machine and given Fowler is one of the best OBP in the league that has great synergy. Additionally, albeit a small sample Alcantara hit quite well in front of Rizzo last season. He walked 10.4% of the time and k'd 23.9% which are well above his overall 5.7%/31% rates. With that sort of walk rate he can do some serious damage on the base paths with his speed both in terms of steals and being able to stretch a Rizzo single into an extra base.
It's hard to speculate what Alcantara will hit. I'm just going to throw out a .320 OBP as a conservative number. I think that's fair given his AAA/DWL numbers were well above that. If we do similar math to the Fowler thing, you're talking about +5ish runs meaning they need to pick up another 10 or so runs to be NL average. Overall, it really wouldn't be that surprising for a 1/2 combo of Alcantara and Fowler to add around 15-20 runs comparative to last seasons' 1/2 hitters which obviously basically erases the difference between cubs and NL average. That's before you even start to talk about Soler/Bryant/Baez impact. Assuming the cubs get replacement level play out of the 6/8 holes that's another +15ish runs.
So, it's really not hard to see the cubs having at least an NL average offense and probably being better than that. I think the main thing I wanted to get across here was while the Fowler pick up seems kinda "meh" or marginally interesting, the true impact could be quite large.
1st - .253/.303/.373 with 85 runs, 9 HRs, 55 RBI, 20 SB in 749 PAs
2nd - .240/.301/.404 with 83 runs, 23 HRs, 71 RBI, 13 SB in 731 PAs
3rd - .282/.375/.503 with 102 runs, 33 HRs, 81 RBI, 5 SB in 715 PAs
4th - .285/.337/.462 with 75 runs, 22 HRs, 91 RBI, 7 SB in 698 PAs
5th - .228/.302/.366 with 65 runs, 16 HRs, 59 RBI, 1 SB in 679 PAs
6th - .214/.268/.372 with 60 runs, 20 HRs, 84 RBI, 9 SB in 662 PAs
7th - .252/.304/.410 with 57 runs, 20 HRs, 65 RBI, 6 SB in 643 PAs
8th - .200/.259/.294 with 41 runs, 10 HRs, 52 RBI, 4 SB in 623 PAs
The takeaway you're mainly looking for here is that outside of the 3 and 4 holes(eg Rizzo and Castro) you're talking about replacement level players or in the case of the 8 and 6 holes well below replacement level players. That's a term that gets thrown around a lot and some might not be familiar with it. So, I'll explain it. Basically the concept of a replacement level player is something WAR uses to distinguish between what a MLB player does as opposed to any fresh body from AAA. The idea here being that if you were to have to call just anyone up from AAA that a replacement level player(eg average AAA) would be able to put up <x> stats. Last season Gerardo Parra hit .261/.308/.369 with 64 runs, 9 HRs, 40 RBIs, 9 SB in 574 PAs. He was also a -0.2 UZR/150 in the OF or basically average defensively. That all together gave him a grand total of 0.1 fWAR. Put another way, that's your prototypical "replacement" level performance. So, when I say the cubs really only had 2 major league hitters, I really do mean that. Others like Valbuena(primarily hit 5th) played well but they moved around the order and the players who they shared order spots with tanked hard enough to drive down their performance.
This is why projections love the cubs. The theory here goes you should be able to find anyone off the FA market to improve or at the very least replicate that performance. What sort of gets lost about last season is how ridiculously good the cubs pitching was. In terms of fWAR, they were 6th in the majors behind, the Nationals, Yanks, Tigers, Indians and Royals. Likewise, they were 6th in FIP. While they did obviously trade Shark, Lester should be of a similar level pitcher. Hammel is back. Arrieta is back. Hendricks pitched well and whomever ends up winning the 5th spot, they arguably should be as good as Wood/Jackson were considering both are still candidates. Long story short, it's hard to imagine the cubs being worse offensively, and while they were very good last season pitching wise, on paper they have the arms to be as good.
How does this relate to Alcantara/Fowler? Well last season the NL average for runs was 640. I'm using NL because obviously the DH confuses matters when talking about a NL team. The cubs scored 614 runs(-26 from average -141 from COL the NL leader) which was 12th in the NL. Fowler's OBP last season was .375 and he's got a career .366 OBP. Now it's slightly disingenuous to move his 2014 numbers in and say he will have that impact. But for the sake of argument here, I'm going to compare the difference his .375 OBP has to the .303 they got out of the 1 hole. If we assume that runs scored at a similar rate per PAs(749 * .303 = 226.9 / 85) we basically get a run scored every 2.67 times the #1 hitter was on base. If we do the same for Fowler you're talking about 105 runs(749 * .375 = 280.9 / 2.67 = 105.1). Now, almost no MLB player plays all 162 games and Fowler in particular has had injury issues in the past. But for the sake of argument let's say he gets 550 PAs. That would give him around 77 runs with roughly 200 more PAs going to someone else. If that someone else hits the league average of .314 OBP then you're talking about another 23.5 runs or ~100 runs overall. So, conservatively speaking if we say they get 95 runs out of the 1 hole next season, you've added 10 runs to that -26 deficit.
As for Alcantara, my love for him isn't exactly hidden. And on face value alone I can see why some would be skeptical. I would however like to point out how he batted in various spots in the line up
1st - .223/.205/.428 in 94 PAs
2nd - .263/.358/.474 in 67 PAs
6th - .167/.208/.333 in 78 PAs
7th - .280/.280/.580 in 50 PAs
Presumably, when he was batting 1st it was almost always Baez behind him given the timeline up their call ups and the fact Baez exclusively batted 2nd. Additionally, the motley crew of players batting 7th/8th I've already outlined as not exactly being stellar. What I find interesting however is that batting line when he hit 2nd which given the timeline of Rizzo's injury should have always been Rizzo. I would make the case that Alcantara really wasn't given much if any protection as a young hitter. I'd also look at his DWL numbers where he hit .324/.395/.544. The DWL from what I've gathered is roughly equivalent to AAA level competition. So, when you add in the .307/.353/.537 he hit in AAA last season that really shouldn't be a shock. Additionally, Alcantara is often being compared to Zobrist given the Maddon hiring. Zobrist has 1204 PAs hitting 2nd which is 294 more than the next highest(batting 3rd) and over 600 more than the third highest which are roughly a tie between 1st/4th/5th. While, it's possible I'm just looking for confirmation bias here I honestly think that batting Alcantara makes a lot of sense. He's been an extra base machine and given Fowler is one of the best OBP in the league that has great synergy. Additionally, albeit a small sample Alcantara hit quite well in front of Rizzo last season. He walked 10.4% of the time and k'd 23.9% which are well above his overall 5.7%/31% rates. With that sort of walk rate he can do some serious damage on the base paths with his speed both in terms of steals and being able to stretch a Rizzo single into an extra base.
It's hard to speculate what Alcantara will hit. I'm just going to throw out a .320 OBP as a conservative number. I think that's fair given his AAA/DWL numbers were well above that. If we do similar math to the Fowler thing, you're talking about +5ish runs meaning they need to pick up another 10 or so runs to be NL average. Overall, it really wouldn't be that surprising for a 1/2 combo of Alcantara and Fowler to add around 15-20 runs comparative to last seasons' 1/2 hitters which obviously basically erases the difference between cubs and NL average. That's before you even start to talk about Soler/Bryant/Baez impact. Assuming the cubs get replacement level play out of the 6/8 holes that's another +15ish runs.
So, it's really not hard to see the cubs having at least an NL average offense and probably being better than that. I think the main thing I wanted to get across here was while the Fowler pick up seems kinda "meh" or marginally interesting, the true impact could be quite large.
