Who is this total stranger posting on Al's blog? Well a long, long time ago I was one of the original "statheads" at BCB. After posting for a while at a couple other blogs, I wrote some pieces for last year's Maple Street Press Cubs Annual. (Still available online!) After that, Al asked me to come on board BCB to post statistical-oriented stories. I agreed... and soon thereafter disappeared. I have a good excuse, though: I was captured by the government. Well, OK. The true story is I've been working at NASA Headquarters the last year, helping run NASA's astrobiology program. As an academic that needs to publish more papers (and doesn't have much time to at work due to administrative duties) my "free time" has been spent on my research. But I recently decided to get back into the blogging game, and I started a new blog about astrobiology and Earth/space sciences. (Check it out!) Starting that up caused the "blog bug" to bite, giving me the motivation to come around here again.... and so here I am. 

One thing I'd like to do here is bring over a regular feature I used to post at Another Cubs Blog: the "Where We Stand Now" post. I'll try to do this on Mondays or Tuesdays, as those are often days without games, and also come at the start of the work week. Follow me below the fold to find out where the Cubs stand as of today...

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Here are some issues the Cubs currently face:

1.) Their bullpen has been an toxic disaster. In the NL, the Cubs pen ranks 11th in ERA and FIP, and 13th in their total WPA/LI (a stat that measures the rate at which a player improves the chances of the team winning a game). What's more, the Cubs haven't been scoring many runs, and this has placed more of a dependence on the bullpen. Their failures in close games has been driving Lou crazy, as most of his questionable decisions this year seem to stem from a lack of faith in the the pen.

2.) The Cubs have too many starters! This isn't a huge problem, but having too many guys pitching well from the rotation could lead to some chemistry issues. Carlos Zambrano seems much happier now that he's moving back to the rotation, and Tom Gorzelanny is apparently disappointed he's heading to the pen.

3.) The team's chances of making the postseason are plummeting, and are now less than 10% according to the Baseball Prospects rest of season simulations. Their season isn't over, but it may be time to start changing the focus to 2011 and beyond while still trying to win this year. That's tough to do.

4.) While the Cubs have some talented young arms, they need to be stretched out if they're going to end up in the rotation come 2011. Although the statistical evidence in support of the Verducci effect - which claims increasing a young pitcher's workload by 30 or more IP per season significantly increases their chance of getting hurt the following season - is inconclusive, many GM's are wary of dramatically increasing the IP of their young pitchers. That goes double for the Cubs, given their history of devastating injuries to outstanding young pitchers. Assuming for the moment the Cubs will try to avoid increasing workloads by more then 30 IP per season, they'll need to stretch both Andrew Cashner and Jay Jackson out if want to have the option of having all those guys in the rotation for the 2011 season.

I have an outside the box solution to all these problems: a bullpen rotation. Follow me below the fold to see how it would work.

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Last Saturday, Shawn Goldman made this BCB post arguing that the numbers suggested that Carlos Silva should be the one going to the bullpen when Carlos Zambrano returned.

Shawn wrote his post before Silva's great outing on Saturday was completed (and now that we know that Tom Gorzelanny will be the one moved to the bullpen), and predictably, many of the comments after such a dominant outing were along the lines of "How could you say that after he pitched so well?"

Unfortunately, that made the discussion degenerate into the "stats vs. observation" (for lack of a better term) argument that we've seen all too often on this site. One of the reasons I asked Shawn to make posts on statistical analysis is that I think some have the perception that I am "against" using advanced metrics. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a place for using advanced statistical analysis in baseball. There is also, I believe, a place for using scouting, inside knowledge, and yes, hunches. These things should work in tandem, not against each other.

With that in mind I thought I'd ask Shawn to have a dialogue with me about this particular instance (the use of the numbers to say that Silva should be the one put in the pen), and also a more general discussion of how statistics are used and should be used. Follow me after the jump for our exchange. And please -- since one of the points of making this post is to try to make dialogue on this topic less contentious -- try to keep your comments on topic, and no personal attacks. Thanks.

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A few weeks ago, I posted a story on how to calculate WAR for pitchers. Now, I'm going use the move of Z to the bullpen to show how to employ pitching WAR.

Heading into the season, Zambrano was projected to be the Cubs' 2nd-best starter, with an expected FIP of 3.95 that was behind only Ryan Dempster (3.86) and a projected ERA (3.86) only behind Dempster (3.81) and Ted Lilly (3.78). When you consider Z's prowess as a hitting pitcher, he's probably the Cubs' best player to put on the mound on any given day. However, the season started off a little rocky for Zambrano, and for the Cubs' bullpen. Meanwhile, Randy Wells, Tom Gorzelanny, and Carlos Silva all performed admirably while Ted Lilly was out with an injury. When Lilly came back, the team decided to move Zambrano to the bullpen. At that point, they already had enough lefties in the pen (apparently ruling out Gorzelanny and Lilly) didn't want to mess with Silva or Wells, and Dempster was pitching like the team's ace. Meanwhile, Zambrano had a few rough starts and a bloated ERA. So was this decision wise? Well, no. It was pretty damn stupid. More importantly, who should they send to the pen now, with Z returning to the rotation? In my opinion, that should be Carlos Silva. Follow me below the fold to see how I answered these questions using modern pitching metrics...

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We talked last time about how we can calculate the number of wins based on the number of runs created or produced. If you missed it, the equation is pretty simple:

Wins ~ Runs/10.

The "~" sign there means "approximately," and that's an approximation because (amongst other things) the pitcher affects the run-scoring environment. Think of it this way: If all baseball games were won 1-0, then each run would be worth a win. If all baseball games were won 100-99, it would take a LOT of runs to increase your team's win total. So the number of runs/game affects the number of runs it takes to generate a win. Because a pitcher will have the ball in his hands for half the time he's in the game, he has a large influence on the run-scoring environment. In other words, good pitchers change the game so that each run becomes more valuable. This is part of the reason why managers are more likely to make sacrifices in games involving two great pitchers. Now that we know this, we can figure out how many wins a pitcher contributes to a team by calculating the number of runs they save compared to some baseline or compared to some other player, and calculating how many wins those prevented runs are worth. Follow me below the fold for more on how this works.

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What gives a team more value, Marlon Byrd's glove or Milton Bradley's bat? Answer: they're about even. Who should we expect to contribute more to the Cubs successes in 2010: Ted Lilly or Derrek Lee? Answer: Ryan Dempster. How important was the bad baserunning of the 2009 Cubs? Answer: it cost them about one and a half wins. Whose 2009 on-field performance was the most damaging: Alfonso Soriano's or Geovany Soto's? Answer: Alfonso Soriano's -- by a LONG shot. How many wins can we expect the Cubs to total in 2010? Answer: about 85. Has Kosuke Fukudome been worth his contract thus far? Answer: roughly speaking, yes (but you could also make an argument of "close, but not quite" h/t D98).

Believe it or not, I answered all of these questions using one statistic: WAR (Wins Above Replacement). There are two things about WAR that make it the one statistic I choose above all others when I want to make a quick assessment of a player's potential impact:

1.) WAR has the same unit of measurement for everything. This allows us to compare, for example, the net impact of Marlon Byrd's glove to the net impact of Milton Bradley's bat (they're about even). It also allows us to include all aspects of a player's on-field contributions, leaving us with a very comprehensive view of a player. I'll use Carlos Zambrano as an example of this in a future post.

2.) WAR stands for Wins Above Replacement. Thus, the unit of this metric is the most important number in baseball (or any sport, for that matter): wins. It is literally a measurement of the number of wins a player contributes to his team.

Follow me more below the fold to see how WAR is calculated, and how it can be used to answer the questions above.

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Here begins my introductory series on sabermeric concepts, which is going to use WAR (Wins Above Replacement) as a unifying framework. I plan to use WAR for a few reasons. For one, if you're just going to use one stat for both evaluating past player performance and valuing future player production, it should be WAR. Why does WAR have this prominence as the best single number to know about a player? I can answer this by defining the statistic. Simply put, WAR is the number of wins you'd expect a team to have added to its total due to the presence of a particular player, instead of a replacement from the minor league ranks. Thus, WAR is important for the exact same reason why many people are misled into thinking the W-L record of a pitcher it so important: WAR is measured in the same units as the ultimate measure of success... wins! I hope to talk about this later, but the difference between WAR and W-L records is that WAR succeeds in this goal whereas W-L records fail. W-L records represent a very poor attempt to attribute wins to a pitcher. WAR does this, too... only WAR does it much, much, much better, and more precisely than W-L records do and they have they have the tremendous advantage of being capable of awarding "wins" to position players and pitchers on an equal footing. In order to do this properly, WAR need to be all-encompassing; this necessitates the inclusion of many components. Thus, by framing things with WAR, I can also introduce all of you to a variety of tools and concepts currently adopted for use by much of the sabermetric community: linear weights, wOBA, UZR, FIP, EqBRR, replacement-level, positional adjustments, player valuation, forecasting systems, and, error and uncertainty. This article is the first in a series of 10 parts. (For now... maybe the series will end up being 11 parts? 8 parts? I'm honestly not sure yet... We'll see where this goes.) Anyways, this is Part I: Linear Weights. Jump below the fold to for an introduction to a very central gear in the WAR machine...

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I came across this idea when someone posted a link to this trade rumor earlier tonight, which has Carlos Zambrano going to the Mets for Luis Castillo, Fernando Martinez, and a AA prospect. I thinks the Cubs should do this, and enact a plan similar to the nice idea BLou posted a few days ago. But before I go any further, let me qualify everything else with two statements:

1. I don't believe this rumor is going to lead to anything, but it's a fun idea to discuss

2. I'm not one of the guys trying to run Z out of town. He's one of my favorite players. That said, trading him would give the Cubs a lot of flexibility in an offseason where players are seemingly being undervalued

Follow me below the fold to see a step-by-step plan for the rest of the offseason I think even BLou and I can agree on...

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