Through Both Lenses: NL Supremacy

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

“In American Society our ways of teaching about baseball are better than our ways of teaching about anything else. No matter how your mind works, baseball reaches out to you.”

–Bill James

I

At my heart I’m a historian. My mind is stimulated by the pastoral, by history, by personal stories, by real emotions, my mind is stimulated by what was and how it can affect what will be. I had a rare opportunity at the All Star game in 2006 to sit down with Buck O’Neil and listen to him tell old war stories for 15 minutes. It’s a vivid memory that really won’t ever fade into my memory, and I’m glad I got to talk to him before his passing 4 months later.

The reason I’m so excited about this baseball season has very little to do with the local talent. Sure, Chris Sale looks like an absolute lefty monster on the South Side. Starlin Castro is a tremendous young shortstop that oozes potential and could become whatever he wants to become at this point. There’s some talent on both farms that warrant watching, but that’s not why I was so eager to start the 2012 baseball year. It really has nothing to do with Chicago, really.

II

The Washington Nationals (15-9) have never finished higher than 4th in the NL East until last year. After a surprise 81-81 inaugural season in Washington (they were originally the Montreal Expos), the franchise found itself stuck in the mud. They wouldn’t top 75 wins until 2011, and their winning percentages were pretty abysmal. They lost a combined 205 games in 2008 and 2009.

The fortunes of a franchise can change for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes they sign a few big name free agents, get the right coach, and go riding off into the sunset with a ring. Other times they get career years from everybody at the right time en route to a championship. And then there are the Nats who managed to be so bad that they got two potentially generational players in back to back years.

Stephen Strausburg  and Bryce Harper are extremes. Stories of their feats are the stuff fables are made of. “He throws 100 with plus command and has 2 wicked off-speed pitches. The other guy hits 500 foot homeruns and he’s only 17.”

That’s not made up, that’s the reality of the situation that the Nationals are in. They have 2 great talents on a roster that might just be good enough to win the pennant this year. Strausburg will have an innings cap, and Harper, for all of his physical tools, might not be ready to hit major league pitching just quite yet, but this Nationals team is for real everywhere else.

That’s ridiculous. Edwin Jackson is has the highest SP ERA at 3.69. For context, the current NL ERA is 3.72. He’s better than average this year but he’s about 2 runs worse than any other starter on the Nationals.

III

The Dodgers (17-8) have experienced some recent success, most recently reaching the NLCS in 2008 and 2009 before falling into a curious funk that some blame on the tumultuous McCourt divorce. Their ascension is linked directly to the maturation of two budding superstars, Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw.

Matt Kemp missed out on being a 40/40 guy by a single homerun last year. This was following an awful 2010 where he OPS’d .760 and was 19-34 on stolen base attempts. He cratered production-wise and decided to tinker with his batting motion. Kemp eliminated the stride that he took before he swung his hips and went with a no-stride approach. It resulted in a .226 jump in OPS and a 2nd place finish in the MVP voting. To start the 2012 year he’s just destroying everything.

Kershaw is 24 years old and has a Cy Young under his belt. He’s a legit Ace and just might be the best pitcher in baseball. His WHIP sits at 0.92, he strikes out 9 per 9, and last year he slashed his walk rate by 1 BB/9. What we’re watching with Kershaw is the evolution from a thrower to a pitcher. Not everyone gets it. Wood was a great thrower, but he never learned how to pitch. He never learned how to dial back the RPM’s and save the hard and good stuff for need situations (see Verlander, Justin). Jake Peavy looks like he’s just now starting to learn how to pitch, but he’s also 31 and past his prime stuff wise. Carlos Marmol never learned how to pitch and tried to make a career out of one pitch. Clayton Kershaw can pitch now.

That’s a dip in walks and hits allowed, and an increase in IP and K-BB ratio. The question on Kershaw was always whether he’d mature from a thrower to a pitcher and it looks like he’s supplying the answer. An ace in the truest sense of the word has no flaws. He’s durable, he has a plus-plus pitch, an arsenal of plus pitches, great command, great makeup, and he proves it, year after year. It’s a show me tag and Kershaw is in the process of showing us.

IV

Pennant chases make baseball. I wasn’t around for any of the good ones really. I didn’t get to see the Giants win the pennant, I missed out on Bucky Fucking Dent, I lost the most famous Cubs homer in the Gloamin, and I completely whiffed with the Gas House Gang comebacks. The true pennant chases are gone, and what we have left are division races and wild card finishes. The most recent amazing comeback was excellent and it brought me to a very happy baseball place where I threw my hands up in celebration as Dan Johnson hit a homerun that meant absolutely nothing to me in terms of rooting interest, but was probably the source of my highest high as a baseball fan. My heart broke with Uggla and Linebrink as the Braves melted, and I kinda dislike the Braves. Pennant chases bring out the best in baseball, and the Dodgers-Nationals thing has great potential to be an amazing cross-country rivalry.

Young superstars, one of them is a heritage franchise, the other is building up a fan base revolving around youth, it should be thrilling to watch. They gave us great theater during their first series match up this past April, Harper debuted, Kershaw was dominant, and Kemp won it in the 10th. It was a well played baseball game, it had drama for all the right reasons, and the star power was there. In time people should remember those matchups, when Scully called Kershaw vs. Strausburg, when Harper reached the bigs, when the Nationals and Dodgers played against each other in meaningful games. I hope more moments like that happen for Octobers to come.

Well, at least until the Cubs are good, in which case, fuck both of them.

Through Both Lenses – Cubs Pitcher Depth and Synopsis

by Mauricio Rubio Jr.
Email: mr@99sportsproblems.com
Twitter: @MRubio52 

Part one, which focuses on the infield, can be found here.

Part two, which focuses on the outfield, can be found here.

Pitchers

1. Matt Garza – It’s unfortunate that Garza is a legitimate ace because the Cubs aren’t ready to reward his talent. He’ll be 28 this year and he’s an absolute stud. There’s been a lot of talk that the cubs need to trade Garza and get a good haul of prospects back for him. I’m moving into the camp that thinks it’s not absolutely necessary. I wouldn’t be mad if it did happen, but I think that Garza will still be effective into his mid 30’s when the Cubs should be ready to compete. He won’t ever be considered an elite pitcher due to his penchant to give up the home run, but you can certainly make the argument that he should be. He’s actually maintained velocity on his fastball, but he works his offspeed stuff well enough that a slight dip won’t matter.

Matt Garza's velocity

2. Carlos Marmol – Marmol will always played a dangerous game with the base on balls, but it’s crawling into scary territory now. His historic 2010 season was probably him at his peak, and I believe the Cubs would have done well to trade him then. Marmol’s top comp has always been Rob Dibble. That’s kind of an issue because Dibble’s production fell off the table at age 28 and was done with baseball at age 31. Marmol’s production did taper off in 2011, his age 28 season, as he didn’t induce more batters to swing at his White Castle Slider (it’ll make you shit your pants). That’s the issue with slider dominant relievers that rely on the strikeout, the careers are short as batters just lay off the garbage. He’s losing velocity on his fastball as well and the window to trade him may have closed already.

Marmol's velocity

3. Ryan Dempster – I don’t like the guy’s personality and I think too many fans give him a free pass because he’s “funny.” He caught very little grief for being a no-show to the 2008 playoffs and that really turned me off to the dude. All that being said he’s a decent middle of the rotation option for contending teams, but on the Cubs he starts opening day. Don’t look at the ERA from last year too much, bad defense was to blame for being over 4, but if the Cubs are looking to get any value from him they need to move him now. He’s a crafty righty who mixes pitches well enough to be solid, but his average stuff keeps him from being elite.

4. Jeff Samardzija – Just when you think you can ridicule a product from Notre Dame and write him off completely, he comes around and does that for an entire season. I remember this being the one draft pick and subsequent signing that made me start hating Hendry. He’s confounding, he never was a strikeout artist in the minors, but he almost struck out a batter per inning in the majors. He’s always had a good fastball, but he learned a cutter last season and relied less on the heat with good results.

So of course it makes sense that he’s competing for a rotation slot and has a decent chance of winning the job. I don’t know what to make of him anymore, he wasn’t worth the money that Hendry dished out to him, but his second career as a starter, which was what he was drafted as to begin with, might actually be successful.

5. Paul Maholm – He doesn’t strike anyone out and he gives up a lot of hits. That’s a bad combo for any pitcher, but it’ll be especially bad for Maholm in a Cubs uni. The Cubs defense is still trying to improve and it won’t do any favors for a Livan Hernandez like pitcher. Maholm isn’t quite the workhorse that Livan was, and he can’t handle the bat like him either. Maholm shouldn’t last long with the Cubs, he’s effectively holding the spot for someone else.

6. Travis Wood – He was much better in 2010 than he was in 2011 when he became much more hittable and saw his K-rate get slashed. LoMo vouches for Wood’s stuff, but as we all know, baseball is one big nasty game of adjustments. The league clearly adjusted to Wood and the tape is out on him, it’s up to Travis to adjust back. He’ll need to if he wants to find significant big league success. He’ll be 25 this year.

7. Chris Volstad – He’s slowly been lowering his walk rate and he posted the highest strikeout rate of his young major league career last year, but he was more hittable than ever in 2011 and he saw an uptick in his HR/9 ratio. That’s a bad combo for the Cubs. Volstad filled out physically last year, but his stuff didn’t. He’s likely to make the rotation, but the 25 year old will need to work hard to avoid the “Rotation Filler” tag that he seems destined to acquire.

8. Randy Wells – Remember him? There were the whispers that he was enjoying the North Side night life a little too much in 2010 and the allegations carried into 2011. He’s not fooling anyone with his stuff and his walk rate has been climbing since 2009. He was blasted for 23 HR’s in 135 ip last year, that’s awful. He’s a curious case and he’s going to have to find some answers in 2012 if he wants to stick around with the big club.

9. Marcos Mateo – There’s a lot of ifs with Mateo. If he’s healthy and if he can cut his contact rate, he can close if Marmol implodes. He has a good strikeout rate for a late inning reliever, but he doesn’t avoid many bats yet. He has the stuff, and he has moderate command, if he takes a step forward he can be a sleeper candidate for the closer’s role moving forward in a post-Marmol time. At the time of this writing an MRI showed no damage to his elbow but he is getting shut down for 10 days.

10. Trey McNutt – I was a fan of the McNutt experience since he was drafted, but as we all should know, AA ball is nut cutting time for prospects, and McNutt looks lost there. He needs a third pitch (and eventually a fourth) to deliever on his SP promise, but the first item on the docket is to find his mechanics again. McNutt still has age on his side, but as Chili Davis once said, “Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.” Time to grow up, McNutt.

11. Jay Jackson – Jackson has been sliding backwards since his promotion to AA in 2009. If he ever figures “it” out, he can be a useful back of the rotation option, but for now he looks like a reliever. Jackson has average stuff and a plus fastball, but he has a good combo of pitches that would be more useful in the rotation than in the pen.

12. Kerry Wood – This speaks more to the lack of organizational depth than Kerry Wood’s importance to the 2012 Cubs. I like Wood, I always have. He was a warrior and he wanted to be out there, but his body consistently failed him as he threw with an unhealthy delivery that cut his career down. He’ll be solid in 2012, but he’s likely to be done after that. I don’t know why the Cubs resigned Wood, I won’t complain too much about it since he’s a cheapish option for the ‘pen, but he won’t be on the next Cubs contender.

Synopsis

This organization is pretty bare. It’s not on the level of the White Sox (that’s not a shot kids, the Sox system is universally panned as the worst in baseball), but there isn’t a lot of help down on the farm that can compete for starting jobs. Jay Jackson is a significant prospect in the system, and that’s an issue. As for the big league club, they will struggle to win 72 games this year. The future of this team lies in the amateur drafts that take place in June. The Cubs need pitching help the most as the system is noticeably bare of impact SP talent. Effective relievers can be found through various means, but finding a solid #1 or #2 starter is difficult. The makeup of this team should be drastically different by September as Cub fans should be introduced to young talent that can make a difference at the Major League level. Anthony Rizzo is the best prospect on the team in my opinion, and his call up date should be around May-June, depending on what Bryan LaHair is up to. Brett Jackson should be a star, but not necessarily a superstar. I would be happy with his development if he ended up being Curtis Granderson before the HR explosion, or Mike Cameron.  Trey McNutt is the best pitching prospect with the departure of Cashner and Carpenter, and that’s worrisome. Dillon Maples is a name to pay attention to, but he is yet to make his pro debut.

There’s a lot of work to do, but I do trust in TheoCo. to get it done.