Chicago Cubs at Los Angeles Dodgers Game Thread (August 26 - 28)

One last thing: I'm glad Puig is leading off b/c when Kemp comes back, I'd hope Crawford is often the odd man out (under the assumption that Kemp comes back swinging well), but I ws fearing Don was gonna keep Crawford in there cause he's our "leadoff guy". No way, Mr. Mattingly. If he's the worst hitting out of the 4 OFs, then get him outta there homie.

 

What? The person I'd want up there is the person who is the best hitter who would get the best results and that is Uribe.

 

He's not hitting .338, he's hitting .312 and that is with a .761 OPS after a month of .524 OPS in July compared to Ethier who has a .875 OPS this month and had a .851 OPS last month. Ethier is the better hitter, and can play the more premiere position in Center Field, and can play it better than anyone else on the team.

And on the point of lefties, Ethier is actually hitting Lefties better than Crawford is in terms of OPS, and vs. righties theres a bigger gap.

The only thing crawford has right now over Ethier is speed but, with Crawford having 4 SBs in two months, it's not like he's heavily utilizing that advantage.

 

holy shit, Adrian and Ethier have the same OPS vs. righties

Adrian has got to pick that shit up

 

I wonder how differently we'd be talking about Adrian he was hitting 5th the entire year and had slightly worse results with RISP (Although Adrian has been statistically "clutch" as hell)

 

Here is one for the Drecists:

In the 2nd half Hanley Ramirez has a .377 wOBA / 146 WRC+ , Puig has a .375 wOBA / 145 WRC+, and Ethier has a .376 wOBA/ 145 WRC+....

Next best guy on the team (Crawford) has a .326 wOBA and 110 WRC+

 

It's not almost half the time... 29% of Ethiers ABs have gone against lefties, which goes around the usual data that says full time players usually go 70% against righties and 30% against lefties.

And well, Crawford nd Ethier have been pretty much equal against lefties this year so no matter what Crawford can do in terms of bunting vs. them or beating out infield hits, he hasn't done it enough to be substantially better than Ethier at it so at this point, with everything else favoring Ethier, theres no reason to stick Crawford in there at 1/2 just cause of the hope of speed.

 

Enough about Andre though cause the more I speak of him, the higher chances he goes 0-7 with 4 Double Plays and 3 Ks

Lets win today... Lets hope Nolasco pitches great again and we can score.

 

I'd rather have the best hitters up there, being a table setter doesn't matter if you aren't hitting well to begin with and/or not even using that speed that much. An extreme example is Dee Gordon, he could be the ultimate "table setter" but none of that matters cause he's atrocious at the plate. I'm not saying Crawford is that horrible at the plate by any means, but he shouldn't get starts over superior players just because of the possibility (a possibility that for the course of the year hasn't come to huge fruition) that he could run himself into more runs.

Yup, theres obvious value in what he does but at the end of the day, his numbers for 1B aren't extremely exciting. I think we also see them much better than other positions b/c last year we had James Loney there, the worst of the worst at 1B. So it's like "Hey guys, it could be worse!" but yeah. I hope he turns it around but he's been pretty cold lately, and I don't like the thought he needs to be the #3 hitter just cause.

 

I don't know where you are getting the .338 this month. Here are Crawford splits: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=crawfca02&year=2013&t=b. Here are Ethiers: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=ethiean01&year=2013&t=b

Crawford is hitting .312 with a .761 OPS this month. Ethiers OPS this month is .875, thats an outrageous gap. not to mention last month Crawfords OPS was .524 to Ethiers .851

Ethier has not only been better than Crawford lately, but he's been the third best hitter these past two months.

And since May, Crawford has 4 SBs and 1 Caught stealing. Ethier? 3 SBs and 1 Caught stealing. So if Crawford really is a much more dynamic runner, why does he only have 1 more stolen base than slowpoke Ethier? As for the defense, sure, Crawford is a real good defender in LF but the fact is he can only play LF. Ethier plays two more premiere OF positions as well as LF. not as good, but more value in playing all 3 average then playing LF above average.

And then as for vs. lefties: Ethiers OPS vs. lefties is .625, and Crawfords is .621

Both bad, both pretty much equal. So we're talking about offensively Ethier being equal to Crawford 30% of the time, and the other 70% Ethier is better. And then we have Ethier as far hotter the past two months, being able to play more premiere defensive positions, and Crawford not even using his speed to his great advantage. It seems easy the data to explain that if Kemp comes back and plays well that Crawford is the odd man out. He should probably play vs. righties if Kemp struggles against them and maybe vs. some lefties to rest Ethier but yeah.