Relocating

Ross and I have decided to start our own Chicago baseball blog, Snobsvsslobs.com. I will be posting there from now on, but I will leave Taft's Baseball Blog up to refer back to things I have written in the past.

Thanks for everybody who read, and I hope you'll follow me to Snobs vs. Slobs.

Home Opener Preview

Kerry Wood makes his 2005 debut today at the Cubs home opener in Chicago. It is a rare thing to have a home opener on a day as beautiful and sunny as today is; it's not uncommon for it still to be snowing this time of the year in Chicago. But the weather gods are smiling down upon Wrigley today, and let's hope the baseball gods are, too, as the Cubs will have to go up against Chris Capuano.

Capuano was 2-2 against the Cubs last year. In his winning outings, Capuano baffled Cub hitters, going 12 1/3 innings pitched, giving up 3 runs on a 8 hits while striking out 9 and walking 6. In his losing outings, Capuano went 5 2/3, giving up 15 runs on 14 hits while striking out 9 and walking 4.

Capuano's problem throughout his career at both the minor and major league level has been that he gives up way too many hits. Last year he gave up118 hits in 121 innings, including 21 home runs. Opponents hit .269 against him, and his OPS allowed was .842.

Key Matchups (Numbers vs. Capuano, Wood)
Derrek Lee, 5-for-9, 2 HR, 1.933 OPS
Aramis Ramirez, 3-for-12, 1 HR, .891 OPS
Jeromy Burnitz, 0-for-8, 4 SO

Carlos Lee, 8-for-17, 1 HR, 1.232 OPS
Wes Helms, 4-for-9, 1.000 OPS
Damian Miller, 0-for-8, 5 SO

Prior's Minor League Outing

Mark Prior gave up seven runs on nine hits in five innings in his spring training outing. That's not much of an outing, unless one considers that the outing took place in Albuquerque. The Albuquerque Isotopes play in the minor league equivalent to Coors Field. The city of Albuquerque's elevation is 5,314 feet, which is even higher than Coors Field in Denver (which is 5,200 feet above sea level). To make matters worse for pitchers, the thin air caused by the elevation, the air in Albuquerque is very dry due to the surrounding desert conditions.

According to Baseball America's 2004 Minor League Park Factors (I'd use Baseball Prospectus' but they don't list them online), Albuquerque had a park factor of 1313, which is an absolutely staggering number. This means that Albuquerque allowed 31.3% more runs than a "neutral" park.

I'm not trying to make excuses for Prior's performance. He didn't pitch well. However, the most important thing is that he did pitch five innings despite giving up a lot of hits, and that he felt strong.

Blog Relocation

I really dislike Blogger. They don't allow tables, they don't allow pictures (unless you use their painfully annoying Picasa software); they don't really allow you to do much of anything other than type and link. With that in mind, I'm going to relocate my blog as soon as I find a service whose features I like, and I will also rename the blog, as "Taft's baseball blog" doesn't exactly scream originality.

The name is the thing I really need help with. Here are the names I've come up with so far. I'm not particularly attached or excited about any of them, but this is all I've thought of so far:

Despair at Clark and Addison
The Rational Cub Fan
You Can't Walk Across Home

Let me know which, if any, of those names you like by posting a comment or emailing me. If you have any ideas for a new blog name, please let me know. If I like it and I use it, I will give you $5. Seriously.

Already Doubting Dusty

Boy, it didn't take long for Dusty Baker to make some questionable managerial decisions, did it? On Tuesday night, the Cubs came to the plate with the tying run in scoring position with two outs. The pitchers spot came up, and Dusty elected to pinch hit with Mr. Career .680 OPS himself, Neifi Perez when there were clearly better options available.

Then in last night's game, Dusty made the brilliant decision of going with Ryan Dempster over Glendon Rusch for the third start of the season. Let's think about this objectively by looking at the last full season for each of these pitchers:

Pitcher A: 115.2 IP, 6.54 ERA, .845 OPS against, 6.54 K/9, 5.4 BB/9
Pitcher B: 129.2 IP, 3.47 ERA, .683 OPS against, 6.25 K/9, 2.3 BB/9

It doesn't take a genius to see that one of these pitchers is better than the other. While they both have similar strikeout ratios, Pitcher B walks 3 fewer batters per nine innings, and has a much better OPS against. It's obvious that Pitcher B is better, but what if I told you that Pitcher A was coming off of surgery and only pitched 20 innings last year, and that those numbers above were from 2003? Doesn't that make the choice that much easier?

In case you haven't figured it out by now, Pitcher A is last night's starter, Ryan Dempster, who went 3 2/3 innings and gave up 7 earned runs. In true Ryan Dempster fashion, he gave up a lot of hits (9) and a lot of walks (3 - one per inning). Why anyone thinks he will be anything better than a league average starting pitcher is a mystery to me.