Through Both Lenses: Cubs Notes And Why Samardzija Might Be Good

by: Mauricio Rubio Jr.
email: mr@99sportsproblems.com
twitter: @MRubio52

I love the very beginning of baseball season for a multitude of reasons. Small sample sizes make for fun numbers, like guys with OBP’s lower than their AVG’s, players with more home runs than entire teams, guys who haven’t walked or struck out all year, the dudes that are on pace for 300 RBI’s, it’s great for nonsensical stuff like that. It’s also fun for identifying who actually watches baseball vs. who is a football fan and is just killing time complaining about things that don’t matter. To be clear for all you football fans, the MLB season is a 6  month (7 if your team is good) long odyssey that begins as nature wakes up from it’s slumber, thrives as the world around it gets greener and warmer, and finishes when the outside world dies. It’s cyclical, natural, and takes a long fucking time to complete. They play 162 games in a season. Some teams are gunning to win this year, some teams are caught in the middle of rebuilding and competing, and others are instituting a plan that revolves around youth and smart spending.

I’m talking to my fellow Cub fans. Yes, yes, Theo was hired this year, but as some ignorant White Sox fans are quick to remind me, he doesn’t play a position (BTW, White Sox fans, I’m aware of this. He doesn’t swing a bat nor throw a ball for the Chicago Cubs. I don’t need to be reminded of this). The team this year is awful. They told you they were going to be awful all off-season. They made no major moves, they acquired no impact talent, they did not change anything from last years squad that was also awful, really. So why are you so surprised about their struggles? Is it hard to watch? Yeah, nobody likes blown leads or bad fielding or an anemic offense.

“DEN WHAT DA FUCK AM I GONNA WATCH FOR TREE FUCKING MONTS UNTIL DA FOOTBALL COMES BACK AND DA MIDWAY MONSTERS OF HALAS HALL COME CRASHING BACK WIT DA VENGEANCE OF A TOUSAND MINI DITKAS?!?!?!?!?!”

I have no idea. I can’t help you.

“Good sir, if I may inquire, what shall I remain vigilant for this season on the North Side?”

Soccer, go back to Europe. Try again.

“Dude, they suck, is there anything that I can look for as a reasonable Cubs fan with realistic expectations for this year and the next three years?”

On the Major League roster there are a few players you should be watching for a myriad of reasons. I’ll be doing my best to update you guys on them as the season drags on, but for now, here’s my list.

1. Starlin Castro – Nobody makes me say “That’s a great play,” and “That’s a dumbass play,” in the same game quite like Starlin.
2. Marlon Byrd – If he manages to get his average up he will be a valuable piece to a team that’s in contention. Players with solid contact skills and good defense don’t fall out of trees these days. Could bring back an ok haul of prospects if a team decides to buy high at the deadline.
3. Matt Garza – The goal is to either extend him because of the thin crop of FA starters in the coming years, or to bring back a better haul than you gave up to acquire him. I still think he ends up a Tiger.
4. Darwin Barney – It’s debatable, but I think he might be on the Cubs the next time they are ready to compete. TheoCo (thanks Short-E) values defense a lot, and I think his bat might stick as a 2-hitter.
5. Bryan LaHair – If his bat is legit, he can play in left and then you can have a 3-4 of Rizzo and LaHair. That’s awesome to think about.

Which brings us to who I think is the most intriguing Cub, Jeff Samardzija. The Cubs did the right thing and stuck Shark (Jeff’s rather unfortunate nickname) in the rotation. He had some interesting gains last year as a reliever, but if he was going to be worth anything to the organization, it was going to be in the rotation. As I stated before, I love small sample sizes, they’re fun, and when we talk about Shark’s numbers it’s in the tiniest of sample sizes, but dating back to last year he’s gained something valuable; the ability to miss bats.

See, dating back to his minor league days, Shark was always a bit of a mystery. He had good-great stuff, and a 98 MPH heater, but he never consistently posted legit prospect K/9 numbers.

His fastball was described as fast and straight, which is an issue. Major League hitters will time up fast if it’s straight, just ask Armando Benitez. Since 2011 however, his K rate jumped to 8+ and it looks like it’ll stay there. Begs the question, what’s different?

Well, this year he’s walking less people. His BB/9 rate is dramatically slashed so far this year, but we’ll get to that in a moment. The difference is that his stuff is just, better. Let’s look at his PitchF/X data for a second.

PitchFx tracks the movement and speed of pitches thrown. In this case it’s illustrating Shark’s improved movement on all of his pitches. SL=Slider, CH=Changeup, and FT=Two Seamer, something that is a relatively new classification and can be misleading. Before ’11, Shark’s slider wasn’t moving across the plate much, it was simply spinning and dropping with gravity. In 2011 however, that pitch improved, and it’s clear when you watch him. I don’t know for a fact if he improved his grip on the slider or if he just has a better feel for it, but it’s a real pitch now. It’s become a wipeout pitch. The Changeup has also greatly improved, even if he limited his use of it in 2011. This year it has legitimate drop  to it and it looks like it comes out of the same slot, with similar arm action, as his fastball. The Two-Seamer is a bit of a mystery, PitchFx did mis-classify this pitch as a regular fastball until around 2010, but it has live action and is a few ticks slower than his 4 seamer. All of his pitches have good movement on them, with his two fastballs being his best pitches. The slider is now a legit weapon and the changeup is coming along. That alone explains the uptick in strikeouts, but there’s also one more trend that appeared during spring training and has some people (myself included) optimistic about his future as a starter.

He’s walking less people.

Let’s go back to his Baseball Reference card

During Spring Training Shark walked 1 batter and struck out 16 in 20 innings of work. Spring Training stats are misleading sometimes, but I don’t think they were with Samardzija this year. His command has dramatically improved this year in limited innings. To properly illustrate that:

That’s shark in a nutshell. Drop in ERA, rise in K/9, cliff dive in BB/9 and a rocket trip in K/BB ratio.

Conclusion

He’ll probably have some missteps over the course of a long season, but the improved control and the improvement on the movement of his pitches are all reasons to be optimistic. Shark’s change in approach will raise his ceiling, the questions for the remainder of the year revolve around the durability of his arm, I think. Can he throw 150+ innings? Can he retain the gains he’s made in control? Can he be a dependable starter? I don’t know for sure, but I’m finally optimistic about Samardzija.

Through Both Lenses: Focused on Mobile’s Finest

There are 108 stitches on a baseball. A pitcher manipulates those stitches to make the ball do certain things, he will use 4 seams to make a ball go fast and straight (ish). He will use two seams to cut the ball a bit. He will use torque to make it curve. Pitching is the most unnatural athletic feat in all of sports. It’s hell on your arm, it destroys ligaments in your elbow, it shreds your rotator cuff, it gives you pain like no other the morning after, but when you are able to master the artistry of pitching, I argue that nothing is more rewarding.

Jake Peavy mastered the art, but his body has betrayed him. It has led to an identity crisis that derailed a once promising career. Peavy was a great pitcher at the height of his powers. He was overwhelming at one point. Plus movement on all his pitches, command of the strike zone and a mentality that screamed “Ace.”

It’s a funny word, “Ace.” It’s a heavy word that sounds ultimately silly. How often would you take a man named Ace seriously? Almost never. In the baseball lexicon, home of the silly moniker, Ace is the ultimate compliment a pitcher can be paid. It means so many things because it has no set parameters. An Ace can be like Greg Maddux or Roger Clemens. He can be Pedro Martinez or Tom Glavine. To be an Ace is to be both a competitor and a sublime talent.

Jake was either an Ace, or on his way to being an Ace. He was simply outstanding from 2005-2007. He was a 20-something year old phenom with the mentality of a pitbull. He increased his repertoire in 2005, mixing in a cutter to go along with his standard power pitcher’s array of fastball, slider, curve and changeup.

As you can see, he experimented with the pitch in 2004 and threw it with increased volume from there. Peavy’s health has always stood in his way to continuing to build on the success that he established in 2005. In this chart you’ll note that since joining the White Sox he is throwing his fastball less and less, bottoming out at 49% in 2011. This can be due to a couple of factors. Peavy has moved to a more difficult league that employs a DH. Pitchers usually get a steady diet of fastballs. Perhaps the more important reason is that he’s lost confidence in his fastball, which is an issue. Peavy’s fastball used to sit in the 94-96 range. However:

vFA and vFT are his fastball velocity values. That’s a fairly precipitous drop. He’s becoming more of a junkballer and less of a fireballer. Reputation is a hard thing to overcome, and Peavy’s was that of a gamer. It still is. He famously volunteered to throw a 4 inning relief stint when his team desperately needed it last year, but after that outing he was hardly effective. More alarming is the in-between area he occupies as a pitcher. Consider the following:

He gets hit the first time around, which kind of puts a damper on the whole theory that you could put him in the pen, and he gets pounded after pitch #75. If he could somehow exist as a 2-3 inning reliever every 2-3 games, I feel that his effectiveness would be high. It’s clear that arm fatigue take miles away from his fastball, and that he has lost confidence in the pitch. What isn’t clear is what the Sox plan to do to fix it, if anything. Peavy is penciled in as a starter on this squad entering the 2012 season. He’ll need to perform in order for the Sox to have a chance at competing this year. I don’t see him gaining a few MPH’s on his fastball, so that cutter/change combination he’s grown fond of will have to be his bread and butter when he navigates through the improved lineups of the AL Central. If’s are big with Peavy, and it’s no guarantee that if he stays healthy he’ll be effective. Detroit is no joke and the Royals will have a solid lineup this year. Peavy has a long road ahead of him if he wants to stay relevant in the Sox rotation this year.