What in the world was that lineup against last year's NL Cy Young Award winner? This whole left/righty thing is killing me! Did anyone look up Lincecum's numbers against lefties and righties? Lou went with mostly lefties yesterday (forget that they were mostly AAA players for a second), yet a simple check of the stats shows righties hit .279 off him this year while lefties .197. Does Lou even have a computer? Someone should let him know about www.baseball-reference.com (THE BEST website in the history of the world, by the way) where you can check every stat imaginable. That's a HUGE disparity, don't you think? Maybe something Lou should have been aware of, right?
WHY bench Theriot when he's ON FIRE as he has been all weekend? This is just another big mistake by Lou benching a guy when he's seeing the ball so well. Dusty used to do the same thing. It's like he made a calendar last week and regardless of the situation, he's going with it. Let's see if Theriot can get it going again tonight in Houston.
WHY did Sean Marshall go out there to start the 8th inning? He had a very gutsy effort going to that point and everyone "knew" Marshall was done after finishing up the 7th; everyone apparently except Lou. So very predictably, Marshall goes out there and promptly walks the first batter and allows a single to the second batter. THEN Lou goes to the pen and sticks Samardzija in a jam instead of letting him start the inning fresh. I've got nothing else to say other than that was really STUPID Lou.
Is it me or is Derrek Lee the LEAST clutch player to ever sign a $65 million contract? I'll have another Post dealing with DP Lee as there is too much to say here.
Let's face it...Lou gave away this game. I thought it was called "get-away day" not "give-away day" referring to the fact the Cubs were traveling to Houston right after yesterday's game. Too bad the fans had to pay full price for this give-away. It was a sham from the very first pitch.
Derrek Lee has not hit into a double play this year. He is 0-28 in opportunities to hit into a double play. Mr. DP year-to-date is Geovany Soto who has hit into 6 double plays in 18 opportunities (33%)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHC/2009-batting.shtml
(Navigate down to Team PH/HR/Situational Hitting)
Thanks Rob. He may not be DP Lee this year, but other than the grand slam he hit the other day, he has missed MANY, MANY opportunities to drive in big runs in big situations which you would fully expect from a $13 million #3 hitter on a good team. With the 2005 version of D-Lee, this team would be ahead of the Cardinals and well on its way to the division title. With the every other year ho-hum D-Lee, this team is just good enough for another first round exit in the playoffs. I mentioned I will have a separate post on D-Lee coming soon to expand on my thoughts and throw out some stats of my own from the fantastic www.baseball-reference.com website.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting!
Lee is average to slightly above average in rbi opportunties.
ReplyDeleteDerrek Lee -- PA: 99 RBI: 15
ML Avg. Player with PA: 99 RBI: 11
Geovany Soto -- PA: 72 RBI: 4
ML Avg. Player with PA: 72 RBI: 8
Alfonso Soriano -- PA: 118 RBI: 14
ML Avg. Player with PA: 118 RBI: 13
I guess you just can't wait for the D-Lee blog. Let's see..."average to slightly above average" you say, huh? Do you know what the MLB average salary is these days? It just went over $3 million this year...and your boy D-Lee is making just "slightly above average" there at $13.5 million. So we would have to seriously expand the definition of "slightly above average" to gauge D-Lee's production, wouldn't you say?
ReplyDeleteSoto is having a predictable "sophomore slump" in his second year as a regular. He also participated in that stupid Selig pipe-dream called the WBC (Marmol did too and I believe he is struggling as well). But the biggest difference between Soto and D-Lee is Soto is making about 20% of the league average ($575K) compared to Lee's 450% of the league average.
One other flaw in your logic or at least your reporting of the stats is that you make it sound like you are talking about "rbi opportunities" but your stats are straight up plate appearances. Baseball reference has some cool new stats categorized as "Clutch Stats" and this is where a $13 million player should be making his money. In the category called "Late & Close", he is hitting .059 thus far. Isn't that THE story here? Isn't that when your "big gun" is supposed to swoop in and save the day? He just doesn't do that at least not very often to justify his HUGE salary.