This is probably a moot point right now - seeing as Hall is no longer an outfielder - but I was doing some graphing this morning and I had a question.

Here's a graph of Bill Hall in the outfield last year:

Compared to, say, Jim Edmonds:

 

Color-coding indicates frequency of plays made at that location - blue means a lot of plays, red means fewer plays.

(If you're curious - I'm looking at Edmonds for obvious reasons; Hall had similar RZR/OOZ numbers in a similar amount of opportunities and so I thought it might be an interesting one-on-one comparison.)

The larger number of blue "clusters" in the Hall graph indicates (to me, at least) a larger number of starting positions for Hall than Edmonds. Does that match up well with your experience watching Hall last season?

Let's start a little project here. We have a few hitters (Soriano and Ramirez come to mind) that like to appreciate their work at the plate a little more than some might appreciate.

So let's start a thread here (I'll keep a link to it available as much as I can, so that it doesn't get lost - if you need a link to it later, just ask me) to keep track of just how often Cubs players sit there and admire a hit that isn't a home run. Then at the end of the season, we can take a look at how often it happens, and what the "cost" is to the team in runs/wins/etc.

I'll start us off, with an example of how to specify it:

04/11/2008 @ Philadelphia - Aramis Ramirez gazes at a fly ball in the ninth inning; ends up with a double to deep center off So Taguchi

Your participation in this project is greatly appreciated, and you have my thanks in advance. Have I missed any plays so far this season?

You were warned.

The Baltimore Sun is still talking about a Gallagher/Outfielder for Roberts trade.

We're the "most likely landing spot" for Roberts. It seems like MacPhail would like to get a deal done before spring training if a deal gets done at all.

Side note: oh for the love of God just make it stop. Thank you.

Not kidding.

Pujols had a press conference a few days ago during the Cardinals Fan Fest. Mostly it was a conversation about steroids and journalistic ethics. But then there's this:

Pujols said he decided against offseason surgery on his right elbow, a trouble spot for several years, because he would have had to miss a significant portion if not all the 2008 season. Pujols still is unable to straighten his arm, but team doctors concluded that because he plays first base, an operation can be postponed.

He said his elbow bothered him the second half of last season, and said if that happens again he wouldn't try to soldier through it.

"If the same problem is happening this year, I don't think I'm to play the whole year the same way," Pujols said. "I sacrificed my body."

That can't be entirely good news for the Cardinals.

The New York Times is reporting that the FBI looked into allegations that Canseco tried to extort Magglio Ordonez into financing a movie project in exchange for not being named in Canseco's upcoming book.

Yep. "Vindicated," all right. Canseco is pretty much setting flame to any good will he may have had after "Juiced" came out. This is what it looks like to watch a man put the last of his credibility up for wholesale.

This is a bit old (from about the 15th), but I just ran into it today and figured someone might be as interested in it as I am. An early Diamond Mind simulation of the '08 season favors the Cubs. They use Diamond Mind Baseball and the CHONE projections.

Certainly take these with a grain of salt; last season's DMB projections from SG had the Cardinals winning the division by a hair. PECOTA was the only projection system that foresaw the Cardinals having problems last season.

But we'll take what we can get for now. Some interesting data points to discuss:

1. 
   
2. The division seems to fall off after the Brewers and the Reds significantly. That seems to agree with what most of us around here see when we look around the Central. The projections seem to see Cincy having a (slighly) losing record.
   
3. Our lead over the Brewers is slight - about 3-4 games. That's why our odds of winning the division are only 47% to their 24%. (The Reds have a 19% chance, sayeth the simulation.) So even though the Cubs look like strong favorites, there's still a lot of work to be done.
   
4. Last year the Cubs scored 752 and allowed 690. The simulation sees us scoring 804 and allowing 765; essentially the Cubs' returns improving the offense are expected to do no more than offset our regression on pitching/defense.
   
5. The Astros gain a whole two wins over last season and the White Sox actually get worse. And I had it on good authority from Phil Rodgers that both teams had shown real improvement!
   

He calls it a clarification. I call it a huhwhathuh?

When I wrote about this the first time, I tried to explain that it was just one way to evaluate the ebb and flow of talent, not to judge an off-season. ... The reality is there is no true way to project performance, no matter how many incredibly smart people spend a lot of time trying. Yes, you'd rather have added Miguel Cabrera than Milton Bradley. But in baseball you can't rule out Bradley having a better year than Cabrera (raise your hand if you knew 102 players would drive in more runs than Alfonso Soriano last year, including Brandon Phillips, Bengie Molina, Mark Ellis, Jack Cust, Curtis Granderson and Mark DeRosa). By looking only at the addition and subtraction of proven players, you can get a decent reading on a team's depth.

...

This time around, it's easy to get excited about the Cubs adding Kosuke Fukudome, but it shouldn't be forgotten that they have subtracted Jacque Jones, Cliff Floyd and Jason Kendall, who did make contributions in 2007.

It seems to me the plus-minus does a decent job of showing the White Sox have improved more than the Cubs, even while missing out on Torii Hunter and Miguel Cabrera (they lose only Jon Garland among their most significant players and add Orlando Cabrera, Nick Swisher, Scott Linebrink and Octavio Dotel). I'd also say it accurately suggests a long season for St. Louis, which has lost Jim Edmonds, Eckstein, Preston Wilson, Troy Percival and Kip Wells while adding no one more significant than Cesar Izturis, who wasn't a regular in 2007.

URK!

Ok, Phil, if you just want to look at team depth - why don't you, I don't know, look at team depth? Just get a depth chart out and see out deep each team is.

It's not just that the system equates Alex Rodriguez and David Eckstein equally -- although that enough makes the system close to worthless. It's that it absolutely fails to take into account any sort of marginal value, just absolute value.

The fact is that no matter what, a ballclub is going to have 25 players on its active roster. Those players are coming from somewhere. Players who are being added displace other players. Players who leave are replaced somehow.

And let me just say - losing Floyd, Jones and Kendall helps this team. We have replacements for them who are better - in the case of Kendall specifically MUCH better. And I don't think it's obvious at all that the Sox have improved more than the Cubs. Adding Dotel and Linebrink are questionable moves at best. Nobody knows if Alexei Ramirez is ready to produce at the majors. (Cuba being right around A-ball level.)

This annoys me way too mucn, and I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir right now.

Tony LaRussa seems to rapidly be losing his ability to shut his mouth, and I'm not sure that it's the best thing for clubhouse unity.

We all remember when Mad Tony ran Scott Rolen out of town on rails. Well, with Rolen gone, he's apparently had to find new targets.

Cardinals manager Tony La Russa is annoyed that second baseman Adam Kennedy skipped the team's annual Winter Warmup fan fest.

"I'm disappointed he's not here," La Russa said. "This is a statement we make to our fans: 'Thanks for coming out,' and he's not here."

La Russa said Kennedy owed it to the team, especially after the manager stuck with Kennedy for so long despite his struggles on offense.

To be quite frank, I'm not sure I'd show up to a fan event after a season where I'd slugged .290 either. (That's right - that's his slugging percentage.)

But LaRussa doesn't stop there!

"In the first three months of the season, his playing time was extensive when he really wasn't productive," La Russa said. "I really gave him the benefit of the doubt a lot, to the detriment of a guy like Aaron Miles."

La Russa said even if Miles had a big day in a spot start, he'd go right back to Kennedy. The manager said that won't be the case this year.

That ignores the fact that Miles hits like Theriot and fields about like Todd Walker. (A younger Todd Walker, to be fair.)

And LaRussa apparently has some harsh words for the Imperial too:

La Russa was also unhappy with utilityman Scott Spiezio, who showed up late for his autograph signing session on Monday.

"That's one dot off his resume," La Russa said. "I don't care what the excuse was, that's not a good way to get started."

You know what's also a dot off your resume, Tony? Drunk driving. Funny how nobody decided to hold your feet to the fire on that one.

It's like having front-row seats to a full-dress performance of Mozart's famous operetta "How To Lose Your Clubhouse" with an all-star cast. Wow.