Pete LaCock is a good storyteller. The former first baseman is prone to embellishment — Retrosheet doesn’t see eye-to-eye to with some of his recollections — but his tales are certainly entertaining. The son of long-time Hollywood Squares host Peter Marshall, LaCock played for the Chicago Cubs (1972-1976), for the Kansas City Royals (1977-1980) and for the Yokohama Taiyo Whales, in Japan (1981).

——

LaCock on battling Bob Gibson:

“Billy Williams had broken his ankle, so the team was looking for a left-handed hitter. I had been hitting the ball pretty well, so they brought me up from Double-A. I was 19 years old. The game was in Chicago, and Bob Gibson was pitching for the Cardinals.

“It was 3-2, bottom of the ninth, and we had runners on second and third with two outs. Our pitcher was due up and Don Kessinger was the next hitter. He wasn’t a very good left-handed hitter — he was a better right-handed hitter — and Gibson had already struck him out a few times.

“I figured they were going to walk me. My run didn’t mean anything and putting me on meant they could get an out an any base. They had a meeting on the mound and somebody said, ‘Does anybody know this guy?’ Gibson said, ‘If they’re bringing in a rookie, I’m pitching to him.’ Ted Simmons was the catcher, and he told me this. When he comes back behind the plate, he goes, ‘They’re going to pitch to you, kid.’ I said, ‘Great.’ Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, will be released at FanGraphs this year. Below are the projections for the Chicago Cubs. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Astros / Athletics / Giants / Nationals / Phillies / Rangers.

Batters
The Cubs are projected by ZiPS to have, in shortstop Starlin Castro and first baseman Anthony Rizzo, to have a pair of basically All Star-type players who are also just 23 years old. Those are good kinds of players to have — especially for a team that isn’t likely to be very competitive this season, but has the resources to invest in free agents if and when such a thing is called for in the near future.

The rest of the starting lineup — besides human-shaped albatross Alfonso Soriano, that is — is a combination of decent organizational products (Darwin Barney, Wellington Castillo) and low-risk free agents (David DeJesus, Nate Schierholtz) acquired since the arrival of Theo Epstein et al.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam reflect on one of the slowest days of the offseason and then discuss the lack of movement in the market for Kyle Lohse.

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

It still feels like the holiday season, and the holiday season is a time for sharing. To be honest, every time is a time for sharing, but around the holiday season it seems a lot more important. With friends and family and sometimes perfect strangers, you share gifts and pleasantries and the warmth of your company. Baseball teams, too, can get into the sharing spirit. I don’t know how else to explain what’s been going on with Eli Whiteside, Sandy Rosario, and Scott Cousins.

For these three players, it’s already been an incredibly active offseason, and it’s barely January. For players who are hitting the market, the offseason is a time to find a new home. Whiteside, Rosario, and Cousins have cycled through several potential new homes. In case you haven’t been paying close attention — and I don’t know why you would be — I’ll try to go over the details as quickly as possible.

Read the rest of this entry »

In a week, on Jan. 9, the Hall of Fame will announce its newest inductees. We can predict one thing: Few people will make it in, so the logjam of deserving players will only get longer. The Hall is a nebulous institution, and no two people have quite the same understanding of who qualifies, which means it’s awfully hard for any candidate to get the minimum 75% of required ballots needed for entry.

But some voters are having so much trouble making up their minds they’ve decided not to vote at all — in particular, ESPN’s T.J. Quinn and the Cincinnati Enquirer’s John Fay — which means the denominator is getting smaller. Though not by much.
Read the rest of this entry »

With January here and a few big name free agents still on the market, one of the popular stories of the week is how the new compensation system is affecting free agent pricing. I wrote about it yesterday, as did Jeff Passan, and this morning, C. Trent Rosencrans documented some comments Kyle Lohse made on the radio. He seems to have a pretty good understanding of what’s going on:

“It’s not exactly an open, free market when you attach such things on a guy like myself, but yet a guy like a Zack Greinke or Anibal Sanchez got a get-out-of-jail-free card because they got traded midseason, so the rules don’t pertain to them,” Lohse said. “I’m obviously a little biased, but the rules could use some tweaking.”

Of course, Greinke and Sanchez also have the advantage of being younger and better than Lohse, but their lack of draft pick compensation almost certainly helped drive up their price a little bit, so Lohse isn’t wrong here. But, rather than spend another day talking about the rules themselves, I want to talk about the actual change that teams appear to be making this winter – significantly inflating the valuation of a draft pick.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brad Lidge is 36 years old. In December, when he was still 35, he announced his retirement from professional baseball. He hadn’t been much of a factor since 2010, so in that sense it felt inevitable that Lidge would hang them up. In discussing Lidge’s career, Mike Axisa wrote up the memorable moment that was Albert Pujols taking Lidge deep. Below, in the comments section of that post, some Phillies fans chimed in to say they most remember Lidge for completing the 2008 World Series. Me, I find both of those to be memorable moments, and when it comes to most memorable, that’s entirely subjective. But when I think of Brad Lidge, I don’t think first of Albert Pujols, nor do I think first of Eric Hinske. I don’t think of any one particular moment. I think of the whole sequence of moments that was Lidge’s 2004 season with the Astros.

Craig Kimbrel is coming off an impossible season with the Braves, in which he struck out more than half of the batters he faced. Opposing batters made some sort of contact 61% of the time that they swung. Aroldis Chapman, too, was incredible with the Reds, collecting 122 strikeouts. Opposing batters made some sort of contact 62% of the time that they swung. Going further back now, Eric Gagne was downright unfair as a Dodger in 2003. He won the National League Cy Young, and opposing batters made some sort of contact 56% of the time that they swung.

Read the rest of this entry »

Two arguments favoring the designated hitter popped up around the internet Wednesday, first from Anna Hiatt of The Week (published at Yahoo!) and then from Craig Calcaterra at Hardball Talk. Naturally, the posts galvanized debate in all the typical corners — comments sections and particularly Twitter — as to which style of baseball is morally superior.

Personally, my general position is ambivalence — baseball is baseball no matter who takes the ninth spot on the lineup card. A more interesting question, from the perspective of how teams compete and win win, is what National League teams do with their pitchers at the plate (and on the bases). Are certain teams consistently good at getting their pitchers to hit? Are some consistently bad?

To put it bluntly, is there any indication pitcher hitting is a team-level skill at all?

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam discuss Joe Maddon’s value and the ways in which managers might have more or less impact than the typical non-baseball boss.

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS