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Cubs Lineup
It's a Threepeat—Cards Beat Punchless Cubs to Complete the Sweep
Let the autopsy report on this ghastly series read: three games, two runs, 14 hits, three losses.
Lou Piniella made a lineup change on Thursday night, sliding Mike Fontenot from third base to the more familiar ground at second and starting the seldom-used Ryan Freel at third. The moves paid dividends...to the Cardinals:
Tonight's Lineup...Sort Of
According to Gordon Wittenmyer, Lou is moving Alfonso Soriano out of the leadoff spot for the time being and putting Ryan Theriot up there. It looks like Theriot, Fukudome, Soriano, Ramirez, Lee in the first five spots for tonight. It'll probably be some combination of Reed Johnson, Soto and either Fontenot or Miles for the last three spots.
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Cubs Lineup If They Play (Maybe They Shouldn't)
Update: First pitch now set for 2pm.
2007 Batting Order Results
Or, how Baseball-Reference will be the death of me
The latest ridiculously interesting tool released by baseball-reference.com is its Batting Order Position Outcomes page. Plug in a team, a year, and a position in the batting order, and it will break down that position's results by the player batting in that slot.
For instance, did you know that on the 2007 Cubs team, Cesar Izturis logged the most games (41) and plate appearances (154) in the 8th spot in the order? He put up a .254/.314/.300/.614 line while hitting 8th, and the Cubs went 18-23 in games where he batted 8th. With Koyie Hill hitting 8th, the Cubs went an impressive 14-7. No thanks to Hill, necessarily, who hit .141/. 203/.211/.414 in those games. In stark contrast to Hill, Ronny Cedeno hit .368/.369/.737/1.052 in nine games there, and the Cubs went 2-7.
Other interesting but perhaps entirely meaningless discoveries include...
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Cubs Lineup Fun
With the wind chill factor in Chicago approaching 137 degrees below zero and Spring Training still 21 days, 14 hours, 9 minutes and 41 seconds away, I found this fun little diversion courtesy of David Pinto at Baseball Musings.
Based on work by Cyril Morong (Beyond The Box Score), Ken Arneson (Catfish Stew), and Ryan Armbrust (The Pastime), Pinto has fashioned a Lineup Analysis machine. You simply feed nine players into the formula along with their OBP's and slugging percentages, and what you get back is a series of run projection numbers, based on various lineup permutations of the players you entered.
For yucks, I entered numbers for Soriano, Theriot, Lee, Ramirez, Fukudome, Pie, DeRosa and Soto, plus a generic Cub Pitchers line (.167 OBP, .207 SLG, based on the Cub pitchers’ ’07 hitting performance).
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Recent comments
Arizona Phil (view)
Childersb3: Miguel Cruz walked six in 1.2 IP in his last start, so I guess he is improving. Wilme Mora also walked six in one of his appearances a week or two ago, and one or two others have walked five. I don't know what would be the most I have ever seen a pitcher throw in a game out here, because the manager / pitching coach usually gets the pitcher out of the game if it gets too ridiculous.
As for the attendance, probably about 20 of the 25 were early arrivals for the Savannah Bananas game who came over to Field # 1 to see what was going on, and once they saw all the bases on balls (12 walks by Cubs pitchers and four by Angels pitchers) they ran away screaming. I'm used to it so it didn't bother me that much.
Childersb3 (view)
Jed has added Teheran, Tyranski, Kissaki, and now Straily and Nico Zeglin today.
Zeglin is 24 yrs old. Pitched well at Long Beach St in '23 and well in some Indy Ball.
They also added Reilly and Viets in late ST.
Have to search for MiLB arm depth anywhere you can and at all times!!!
Childersb3 (view)
25 in Attendance!!!
Phil, is that a backfield record?
Also, 6 BBs for Cruz in 2 IP. What's the most walks you've seen in one EXT ST outing that you can recall?
TarzanJoeWallis (view)
He has a pulse. Apparently that’s the only requirement at this point.
crunch (view)
cubs sign dan straily...for some reason. minor league deal.
welcome back.
zac rosscup is down in mexico trying to make it happen...maybe they could throw him a contract, too. junior lake is his teammate. shore up a bunch of holes with some washups.
fullykräusened (view)
The great thing about going to live sports events is you don't know if you're going to see something historic. Today I went to the Cub game, after putting the liner back in my coat and fishing my Cubs knit hat out of the closet. I needed all that- my seats are in the upper deck, left, so the east wind was in my face. Both teams failed to capitalize on good situations, but both starters did a good job to accomplish this. So, we go to the bottom of the sixth inning. The Cubs tie it up, and then Pete Crow-Armstrong comes up. We all know he would still be in AAA if not for injuries, and future Hall-of-Famer Justin Verlander absolutely carved up the young fellow up in his first two plate appearances. So this time he hits a fly ball. The wind was blowing in and had suppressed several strong fly balls- including a rocket off Altuve's bat that Canario hauled in (does anybody else remind me of Jorge Soler?) , but the ball kept carrying and carrying. 107mph, legit angle and carry. The crowd went nuts, the dugout went nuts. Maybe, just maybe, I saw the first homer from a long-term Cub.
TarzanJoeWallis (view)
Which was my original premise. They won the trades but lost their souls. They no longer employ the Cardinal way which had been so successful for so long.
crunch (view)
STL traded away a lot of minor league talent that went on to do nothing in the arenado + goldschmidt trades. neither guy blocked any of their minor league talent in the pipeline, too. that's ideal places to add talent.
TarzanJoeWallis (view)
Natural cycle of baseball. Pitching makes adjustments in approach to counter a hot young rookie. Now it’s time for Busch and his coaches to counter those adjustments. Busch is very good and will figure it out, I think sooner than later.
TarzanJoeWallis (view)
In 2020, the pandemic year and the year before they acquired Arenado, the Cardinals finished second and were a playoff team. Of the 12 batters with 100 plate appearances, 8 of them were home grown. Every member of the starting rotation (if you include Wainwright) and all but one of the significant relievers were home grown. While there have been a relative handful of very good trades interspersed which have been mentioned, player development had been their predominant pattern for decades - ever since I became an aware fan in the ‘70’s
The Arenado deal was not a deal made out of dire need or desperation. It was a splashy, headline making deal for a perennial playoff team intended to be the one piece that brought the Cardinals from a very good team to a World Series contender. They have continued to wheel and deal and have been in a slide ever since. I stand by my supposition that that deal marked a notable turning point within the organization. They broke what had been a very successful formula for a very long time.