That isn't really my take. Well I mean I'm not opposed to have a prototypical lead off hitter. But in my view the cubs need to go after guys with higher batting averages and worry less about obp. The thing that bothered me about the team when they couldn't score runs is similar to what happened tonight. You might get a single or someone walks. Then another guy walks. And then another guy walks. And then you get 2 strike outs or something like that. They don't really have many guys outside of the top of their line up who are high batting average guys. Almora can do it but he's only one guy and he's not always playing.
Statistically speaking I know a walk is never really bad from a probability outcome stand point. But I do often wonder when I see someone like Contreras take a walk with a guy on if that's truly the best play because you're usually talking about the guy behind him being a worse hitter just by nature of a line up. I think walks can lead to big innings and I'm not saying you entirely abandon them but i think you need balance between guys who get on base a bunch and guys who put the ball into play to get them home. Seems to me the cubs have too much of one and not enough of another.
Yeah.BP is important in the right situations. But if there are two outs, nobody on, and a HR hitter is up, I want him trying to hit the HR. Seems like so many times we got two on after two were out only to strand them. It may not have been more than other teams, but it seemed like it happened a lot.
We were the very best team in baseball going first to third and scoring from second through the first half of the season. But in the second half, everything seemed to grind to a halt. May be perception, but it did not seem like we strung together several good at bats very often.
As you pointed out the other day, the 2013 Cubs scored 0 or 1 31 times. This team did it 40!
