2008 Chicago Cubs Preview: One Hundred Years of Suckitude

Nobody here needs to be reminded the Cubs last won a world series in 1908.  But you will be.  Repeatedly.  By everybody.  All season long.  That tired storyline should be made easier to stomach by one of the best baseball teams the organization has rolled out in the past half century or so.  Of course, that time span includes all of four 90 win ball clubs.  Embrace the century of futility knowing your optimism is a little less unfounded than usual.

The 2007 season featured a host of surprises both pleasant and otherwise.  The Cubs made several big gambles on the free agent market which all paid dividends in year one, guessed the foreign object in Jason Kendall’s back was not – in fact – a fork, hoped the LSU middle infield combo could hit at the major league level and stuck with Jacque Jones through his atrocious first half.  Not everything came up Cubs.  Michael Barrett’s hitting collapsed and a fistfight with Carlos Zambrano punched his ticket out of town, the middle infield combo from LSU never did hit, Felix Pie’s debut earned him a reprise at Iowa and Ryan Dempster forgot what happens to high fastballs in the low 90’s during the month of September.  The final tally affirmed that throwing money at the problems of 2006 was enough to pick up 19 more wins and a division title in the laughably weak NL Central.

The changes for 2008 look generally positive.  The team retained every single pitcher from the staff which posted the National League’s second best team ERA while adding John Lieber and, hopefully, getting a full season from a more effective Kerry Wood.  On the position player side of the roster, Chicago has two promising youngsters who will get everyday major league jobs and a new right fielder from Japan.  The improvements make the Cubs a slight favorite in what most view as a two horse race (two and half, let’s give the Reds their due) for the NL Central.

THE POSITION PLAYERS
FIRST BASE: Derrek Lee - Quietly battered the opposition for the third 131 OPS+ season of his career.  Our own Dan Szymborski projects him to replicate it for another excellent year at the plate.  The observation voiced by many here that Lee seemed to be chasing more balls out of the zone is not supported by the data.  Only 20% of Lee’s swings missed the pitch entirely – a better rate than all but one of his seasons since 2002. Should Derrek’s health fail: Daryle Ward, Micah Hoffpauir or possibly Matt Murton could fill the void.  Many teams in MLB would do worse than any of these three Plans B. 

SECOND BASE: Mark DeRosa – Now that the Brian Roberts rumors have died the Cubs are saddled with… a pretty good second baseman.  Roberts scores slightly above average on defense according to most of the metrics and his hitting projection is almost the definition of league average for second base - 276/.349/.405 by ZiPS.  His three year, $13 million deal is looking pretty good right now. Should injuries fell him there are a slew of weak alternatives: Mike Fontenot, Alex Cintron, Ronny Cedeno, Eric Patterson (now listed on the roster as an outfielder) and probably half a dozen more keystoners Jim Hendry will acquire for no particular reason.  DeRosa is the likely fill in for Aramis while one of the aforementioned backups would take over duties at second.  *DeRosa experienced heart palpitations earlier this week and is scheduled to undergo an outpatient heart surgery, whatever that could be*

SHORTSTOP: Ryan Theriot – His poor hitting will only be exacerbated by Piniella’s reported decision to bat him second in the lineup this season.  Theriot is highly unlikely to make vast improvements at the age of 28 and he isn’t a clearly better option than the younger Cedeno.  ZiPS sees the two as virtually identical at the plate.  We should, however, appreciate that most defensive systems see him as a capable defensive shortstop.  Dewan rated him as +5 in plays made last year.

THIRD BASE: Aramis Ramirez – Ramirez doesn’t tend to miss a lot of time but he does spend a large portion of each year hobbling around the basepaths and trying to fall in front of grounders at third base.  Last year he stayed healthy and it showed.  The defensive systems agreed he was a defensive plus to go with his usual strong hitting.  Nobody will mistake him for Brooks Robinson (partly because Aramis is not caucasian) but it is hard to believe he is the same player who made 33 errors in 2003.  At the age of 30 his perfect health is unlikely to repeat itself.  Even a dinged up Aramis produces at the plate, however, and there is no reason to believe 2008 will be any different.  Vaguely interesting factoid: he has improved his contact percentage in each of the past six seasons.

CATCHER: Geovany Soto – Dropped 25 pounds last offseason and took his hunger pangs out on the PCL.  Soto’s 1.076 OPS performance in Iowa came out of nowhere: John Sickels pegged him as the 12th best Cub prospect last offseason and he Soto had slugged nearly .300 points lower in his prior season at the same level.  He followed up on his Triple-A MVP with 54 ABs of 175 OPS+ in the middle of a playoff race.  On the strength of that season, ZiPS predicts 284/.342/.483 for 2008.  What the Cubs will get from their young catcher is nigh unpredictable but he shouldn’t have a lot of trouble besting the 79 OPS+ and terrible defense the Cubs received from their receivers last season.  If Soto fails to live up to his breakout year, Cub fans would be well served to take a deep breath and remind themselves what some of the other NL contenders are putting behind the plate this year.  Henry Blanco, the consummate backup catcher, will occasionally spell him.

LEFT FIELD: Alfonso Soriano – Year one of the mammoth 8 year contract went fairly well.  Sori provided solid offense (a SLG heavy 123 OPS+) and excellent defense to boot.  Dewan’s plus/minus system only rated him as -2 but Soriano was the best left fielder in all of baseball by UZR – a whopping +15 glove and 19 outfield assists.  I choose to believe in the granularity of UZR.  The best part?  Soriano may be Chicago’s worst defensive starting outfielder.

CENTER FIELD: Felix Pie – Center field is the biggest question mark amongst the hitters.  Pie does fairly well with the projection systems thanks to his MLEs (.269/.321/.429 by ZiPS and Baseball Prospectus continues to sing his praises).  His major league performance is another story.  Pie was given the opportunity to win the job from a putrid Jacque Jones and responded by hitting even putrid-er.  A player with that kind of speed can’t possibly be the .159 hitter on ground balls that we saw in 2007.  Pie’s substantial defensive value will make up for a lot of failure at the plate… maybe not as much failure as he has provided to date.  Should Pie falter, the Cubs will probably have to deal some pitching.  The in-house options are Slap-Hittin’ Sammy Fuld and one very green Tyler Colvin.

RIGHT FIELD: Kosuke Fukudome – Chicago’s biggest acquisition is charged with the double duty of ignoring obscene puns of his name and haunting Matt Murton’s nightmares. Fukudome is regarded as an excellent defensive outfielder with a good batting eye and a little bit of pop.  ZiPS sees a .293/.382/.460 translation in Wrigley Field (with home run totals cut by almost 2/3 from his Japanese days).  I think the Cubs would be pretty happy to get that, NPB hitters are an uncertain commodity in MLB.  Remember when BPro was referring to Kazuo Matsui as “the better Matsui”?  The capable Matt Murton also caddies for this position.

THE BENCH – The Cubs should now be considered a 12 pitcher team.  Aside from the aforementioned 8 starting position players, the virtual locks to head to Wrigley after spring training are: Henry Blanco, Matt Murton, Ronny Cedeno and Daryle Ward.  The final spot is likely a battle between Sam Fuld and Mike Fontenot.  Remember, Cedeno has been practicing in center field so it wouldn’t be a shock if the Cubs decided to err on the side of too many middle infielders.

THE PITCHERS
STARTERS
Carlos Zambrano – Got a shiny new contract and responded with his worst full season in major league baseball.  Maybe that’s a little too harsh. Big Z came through with a 118 ERA+ and one excellent postseason start.  On the whole his walks were slightly down (the good kind of down), his strikeouts were significantly down and he gave up the most home runs in his career.  ZiPS sees his 2008 as very similar aside from getting a few strikeouts back.  I am disinclined to believe a healthy Carlos will have his second worst season as a starting pitcher.

Ted Lilly – Set career highs in strikeouts and innings pitched.  Throw in a dramatic improvement in walk rate and you get a career year.  ERA actually understates how well he pitched.  In 207 innings he surrendered a meager 3 unearned runs. Now, he’s a good bet to regress this season but it’s not as if Ted’s career performance represents all that much of a dropoff.  The optimistic ZiPS projection, which is given a 15% probability, would trump his 2007.  The improved outfield defense should also help forestall regression - Ted typically gets grounders on only about one third of all balls allowed in play. 

Rich Hill – The curveballing, portsiding, late blooming not-so-youngster finally got his chance to pitch a full season for the big club and came through in a big way.  I was shocked to discover that Hill only used his devastating breaking ball 27% of the time.  In fact, he relies on the fastball more often (59%) than newcomer Jon Lieber and 6% more often than he did the year previous.  Nobody doubts Hill’s ability to miss bats.  The key to his success is spotting that fastball and if he continues to do so he just might make an all star team or two.

STARTERS?
Jason Marquis – Doesn’t strike out a whole lot of guys, posts mediocre control numbers and he is nothing special at suppressing homers.  Jason needs a very good defense behind him and that’s what he got.  To continue to be successful he must keep the ball in the park.  The 11.2% mark on HR/Fly Ball is unlikely to repeat itself.  Marquis hovered between 17.9 and 14.4 in a larger park during his years in St. Louis.  Despite all these warts he is the most dependable pitcher in this group.

Jon Lieber – The past 11 seasons have all seen Liebs fallen between 95 and 110 on the ERA+ scale.  Even the low end of that range would be a tremendous boon to the Cubs if they get 150 innings of it.  The real concern here is durability.  The recent scuttlebutt from the Chicago Tribune has Lieber in a competition for the fifth spot.  It would be a terrible idea to saddle him with bullpen duties in favor of…

Ryan Dempster – The plan to convert Ryan back to a starting role sounded like a poor attempt to boost his trade value after he went Chernobyl in September and allowed 7 home runs over 14 2/3 innings.  Now it’s getting scary.  Dempster remains a very useful relief arm unworthy of the closer’s role but I guess teams can’t demote closers – only move them laterally.  In each of the past four seasons his percentage of fastballs thrown has declined: 61,52,48,45.  I hope Ryan isn’t sliding into the realm of junk-baller when the team is expanding his role.

Sean Marshall – Like Jason Marquis, he doesn’t do anything particularly well and depends on good support from his glovemen.  Unlike Marquis, there are legitimate questions as to whether Marshall is capable of a full season’s workload.  Marshall’s pretty 3.92 ERA is a testament to Chicago’s defense and a little good fortune more than his pitching ability.  ZiPS sees him as adding more than a full run per nine innings this year.  Even with that extreme regression he would be just a hair below average for a starting pitcher.  The Cubs are in good shape to have that for their 7th or 8th best starting option.

THE BULLPEN
Kerry Wood – Finally a little bit healthy, he showed flashes of brilliance out of the pen.  Kerry adapted to his new role by scrapping his once-amazing curveball in the hope of saving his shoulder.  Early returns are quite positive.  Despite his struggles with control, Wood never gave up a triple or home run in his 24 1/3 innings.  Batters facing Kerry actually had a higher OBP (.310) than SLG (.299).  Never a guy to worry about the free passes, he performed worse than usual in the area and walked nearly five batters per nine innings… yet, he still posted an outstanding 140 ERA+ from the bullpen.  It should be no surprise the fireballer is well suited to a relief role.  If Kerry can sharpen his command as his recovery progresses he would be a true relief ace.  Or his shoulder could fall apart. 

Bobby Howry – The most consistent reliever in Chicago.  Remember how I dubbed Wood’s 140 ERA+ outstanding?  Howry has done at least that well in each of the past four seasons.  No matter who starts out as closer, he is the most likely to own the spot by September.  ZiPS thinks he will be, by ERA, the best pitcher in Chicago by a comfortable margin.  The runner up in that category might surprise you:

Mike Wuertz – Another one of Chicago’s wild but hard-to-hit pitchers.  No matter how the stats shake out, the Cubs will consider him the 4th best right handed option out of the bullpen.  This guy is one heck a pitcher to be that low on the totem pole, a 127 career ERA+ is a candidate to close games on a lot of teams.  Historically, he has a lot of success against left handed hitting (.704 OPS allowed from 2004-2007).  The Cubs should take note of that skill.  Their left handed relief might be a little thin.

Carlos Marmol – The platonic ideal of the fastball/slider relief pitcher.  Marmol’s funky wrist action and twisting delivery hide the ball from opposing hitters.  It’s almost unfair that he gets mid 90’s velocity with good movement after it leaves his hand.  Cut about 15 walks from last season (I know, that’s a significant number) and he’s a Papelbon clone.  But let’s not get carried away, he will have his hands full matching his own performance: 13.1 K/9, 16.3 LD%, 1.43 runs allowed per 9 innings.

Scott Eyre – Chicago’s left handed specialist turns 37 this season and his last one was nothing special.  What else is there to say about a LOOGY?  He went to Southern Idaho Junior College.  I’ll bet anybody ten bucks he’s on the alumni wall of fame there.

ON THE FRINGES
Neal Cotts – Spent most of the year at Iowa and pitched rather poorly.  His veteran experience might bump him up the depth chart if somebody throws a grenade into Chicago’s bullpen.
Sean Gallagher – Chicago’s best pitching prospect has done well at every stop and his 40 2/3 innings for Iowa in 2007 was no exception.
Angel Guzman – Expected to be throwing some time in the middle of the season.  He may have a shot at Wood’s simulated games record.
Kevin Hart – Has had one good year in professional ball to date.  Lou took a shine to him so don’t be too surprised if he gets a chance to stick in the event of injury.
Carmen Pigniatello – Left handed relief insurance option. 

THE OUTLOOK
We could take this opportunity to debate whether the Cubs look like an 83 win team or an 88 win team.  Or, we can be happy the latest version of the Cubs includes Scott Eyre as the worst reliever, Ryan Theriot as the worst hitter and Aramis Ramirez as the worst defensive player.  That’s not such a bad place to be.  Not even the Ryan Dempster experiment is going to bring me down.  After all, if he stinks up the joint as a starting pitcher, I doubt there will be a lot of patience considering the number of alternatives.

No, the newest Cubs aren’t exactly an offensive powerhouse and they aren’t exactly the favorites in a weaker National League.  What they are is a pretty good ball club that might have enough to end the drought.  And if not?  Well…

At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.