When Felix Pie was sent to DesMoines two weeks ago, his parachute failed to open and he landed in a heap. He was oh-for-sixteen through four games when he got his first hit, an opposite-field homer. After Sunday’s two-hit performance, he now stands at 5 for 44, a .114 clip. He’ll do better, of course. [...]
The Cubs were never cursed until now. They shoot horses, don’t they? With a bad leg, Soriano is not much use to anyone. People think he can just move deeper in the batting order and hit home runs, but it’s not that simple. Home runs and stolen bases are correlated. If you’re a serious base [...]
The argument for voting Ron Santo into Cooperstown was never that the Hall should honor gold gloves. Rather, it was that a non-pitcher should be judged as a hitter, but particularly among his peers at the same defensive position. After all, you should be able to take a group from Cooperstown and form a baseball [...]
Edmonds gives the Cubs three things they need: a centerfielder who can catch and hit; a short-term solution to the centerfield riddle, which is what they wanted; and a lefty power bat for the 5, 6 or 7 hole. He’s perfect! As far as his being a former enemy, I consider that the Cubs’ fault. [...]
I’m a big Felix Pie booster. I love his tools, and I still think his future is golden; but I don’t think he knows the first thing about hitting. He has three hitting coaches right now, Dave Keller, Gerald Perry, and Lou Piniella, and another, Von Joshua, back in Iowa, who are not helping him, [...]
The baseball world’s current hitting stats of choice are on-base percentage (walks and hits divided by plate appearances, more or less) and slugging percentage (total bases divided by official at-bats). Nothing about scoring runs. What would hitting stats look like if they were based on runs? We might simply count runs scored plus runs driven [...]
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Posted 07 May 2008
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Runs-based stats
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Tagged: bonds, braun, jacque jones, matsui, obp, ops, pierre, rdip, rollins, rsp, slg, soriano, theriot, tri, uggla
. . . than it appears. So may the shortstop. Better not try to catch anything! It’s surprising to see a guy in the major leagues who can’t catch, when there are so many in the little leagues who can. But I’m not losing sleep over the size and duration of Soriano’s contract. First of [...]
This was one of those games where the next day, you’re still trying to get your bearings. Piniella doesn’t especially believe in closers, or ninth-inning closers, at any rate. If the Cubs have the lead, Piniella starts trying to close the deal in the 7th. That’s why Marmol comes in when he does. Marmol pitched [...]