I noticed Sunday that twice the players swung at 3-0. I’m guessing that’s a Lou thing?

Also, when you get to 3-0 and strike out at least your getting the pitcher to throw at least 6 pitches. If he’s being dominant atleast you’re getting the pitch count up.

What concerns me (or is of more interest to me) is getting the runner in from 3rd w/ less than 2 out. Last night was sooooo frustrating when Dome was on 3rd w/ no out in the 4th and he did score. Lee & Milton both K’d in the “less than 2 out scenario.” I thought we were doomed after that. Glad I was wrong.

I mean I believe in the law of averages and this disparity will narrow as season goes on but its not like the season is 5 games old. It’s 1/5 over. What i do notice and the numbers back up is that even guys who are not strikeout prone (Fontenot, Theroit) do seem to K in these key situations.

According to Baseball Reference, we’re at the league average in 3-0 counts, 6%. In fact, while we are 5th in K’s, we’re 6th in BB. As a team we seem to be in the middle when you look at the overall numbers. In the most significant stat, OPS, we’re 8th.

There is one stat that seems to well below par. That is advancing runners. The definition is productive outs. It includes a pitcher bunting with one out and advancing the runner, It also includes advancing any runner with no outs. Finally, it evaluates scoring a runner while making the 2nd out of the inning. We’re at 26% against a league average of 32%. Some of that is reflected by the K’s by our guys with baserunners.

One question. How many times have you seen our hitters had a base hit on a 3-0 versus the number of times we’ve seen an out that seemed to squash a potential rally?

but, the strikeouts w/runner on 3rd and less than 2 outs is inexcusable. Them’s a lot of runs they’re leaving on the basepaths.

And there’s no data to back this guy up. (the article from the wall street journal). Don’t know where he got his info or stats from but they’re real vague and it sounds as though he’s biased against the cubs, and trying to find data to support that.

Having said that, I have been frustrated on a number of occasions where the cubs had runners on in scoring position and couldn’t move them over. Lots of K’s or non productive outs. But, there has been a lot of mixing and matching in this lineup over the season so far, and I think Al pointed out that only what 6 times has the orginial starting lineup coming out of spring training been used? That right there could account for a lot of strikeouts, guys that aren’t accustomed to hitting in certain situations and spots in the lineup, call ups from the minors, etc. I’m not terribbly worried about this, but it is something to watch over the course of the season.