Who's really to blame for this bad season?

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Who's really to blame for this bad season?

By Wreckard on Aug 28 2009, 4:15p 126

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Amidst the recent Bradley-bashing that's been going on here and in the media, I keep seeing something that just didn't sit right with me: the notion being bandied about that Bradley's played a large part of the Cubs coming up short of expectations this year.

So I decided to do a little digging: using a reasonable set of expectations for the roster - something I'm sure Hendry was working with this off-season - who has underperformed the most? Especially given that even the most pessimistic of projections had the Cubs winning 90 games.

For my base set of expectations, I used ACB's excellent projections from the pre-season for the 2009 Cubs. Then I simply subtracted each player's actual WAR from their projected WAR. One caveat: remember that these projections are for a full season of baseball, while the actual WAR is based on a partial season. However, enough baseball's been played at this point that it's still a useful thing to look at.

Player	WAR Projected	WAR Actual	War Diff
Soriano	3.9	-0.7	-4.6
Soto	4.9	1	-3.9
Fontenot	3.3	0.4	-2.9
Harden	4	1.6	-2.4
Ramirez	4.1	1.9	-2.2
Bradley	3.3	1.2	-2.1
Miles	0.2	-1.3	-1.5
Marmol	1.8	0.3	-1.5
Marshall	1.6	0.5	-1.1
Hoffpauir	0.3	-0.7	-1
Dempster	3.1	2.1	-1
Gregg	0.7	-0.3	-1
Zambrano	3.2	2.3	-0.9
Lilly	2.6	2.3	-0.3
Heilman	0.3	0	-0.3
Johnson	0.1	0.1	0
Guzman	0	0.2	0.2
Hill	0	0.3	0.3
Theriot	2	2.4	0.4
Fukudome	2.4	3	0.6
Lee	2.6	3.3	0.7

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of SB Nation or Al Yellon, managing editor (unless it's a FanPost posted by Al). FanPost opinions are valued expressions of opinion by passionate and knowledgeable baseball fans.