….or, the Return of the Contract Retrospective.

Jim Hendry is reportedly out as the general manager of the Cubs. I’ll leave a general summary of Hendry’s tenure to someone else. In the meantime, I thought that an appropriate tribute to Hendry’s time at the Cubs’ helm might be a retrospective look back at one of his signature moves: the eight-year, $136 million contract with Alfonso Soriano that began in 2007. The idea behind a contract retrospective is simple: it is easy enough to look at a contract and call it good or bad after the fact, but if we reconstruct what was known about the player at the time, did it make sense from that perspective? This one’s for you, Mr. Hendry.

Read the rest of this entry »

Carlos Zambrano is back in the news. Unfortunately, in the world of Carlos Zambrano, no news is good news. This time, Zambrano exploded after giving up five home runs to the Atlanta Braves on Friday: he threw up-and-in at Chipper Jones, was ejected, and then promptly emptied out his locker and left the Cubs clubhouse with rumors of his retirement abound. Of course, Zambrano realized some $25 million over the next year-and-a-half is too much to walk away from. Now, the Cubs have placed Zambrano on the disqualified list for the next 30 days, and we surely haven’t heard the end of this battle.

All too often, Zambrano has made it difficult to remember he also, you know, pitches every once in a while. As Fox Sports’s Jon Morosi reminds us:

So while Zambrano told the Associated Press that he had a “fresh mind” after signing the extension, it didn’t last. Yes, he threw a no-hitter in 2008, but that’s not what comes to mind when you hear his name. You think about him attacking the Gatorade machine with the baseball bat (on live television). You think about him pitching a fit at Derrek Lee in the dugout (again, on live television). You think about him declaring the anger management issues a thing of the past, when in fact they were not.

Read the rest of this entry »

A five home-run game has never happened for a hitter, but it has happened for pitchers plenty of times. It’s certainly less of a positive achievement there, but just as notable. Or more notable because it’s actually happened and I can note the times that it has. It happened another two times already tonight, as noted by Jeff Sullivan.

CC Sabathia surrendered five home runs to the Rays, all from different hitters, and Carlos Zambrano gave up five to the Braves, two coming from Dan Uggla and his now 32-game hitting streak. On their own, they are worth noting and then moving on. A pitching giving up five home runs is certainly unusual but it’s not incredibly rare. James Shields, Tim Wakefield and R.A. Dickey have allowed six in a game once and that’s only looking at the past decade. All in all, there have now been 34 instances of a five-homer game since 2000. For reference, over the same time period there have been a total of 39 triple plays turned. What I did notice however, is that Sabathia’s five home runs were all solo shots and that’s a much rarer event.

In the entire Retrosheet era, there are only 22 other cases of a pitcher giving up at least five solo home runs in a game. James Shields ruins a bit of the fun by having done it so recently as 7 August 2010 when five of the ultimately six home runs hit off him were solo dingers. More fascinating is that Tim Wakefield has actually done it twice. In the aforementioned six home run game in 2004, five of the home runs were solo shots in Detroit. The other was a two-run shot and Wakefield only allowed 2 non-HR hits over his five innings that game. Prior to that, in 1996 pitching at Fenway to the White Sox, Wakefield served up solo home runs to Frank Thomas (three times), Danny Tartabull and Robin Ventura. Similar to the other game, Wakefield only allowed a single hit that wasn’t a home run and completed six innings. Amazingly, the Red Sox won both those games.

Turning from the opposite of solo home runs, in case you needed another daily fun fact, the most amount of runs allowed by a pitcher via the long ball in one game is 11. Gio Gonzalez was responsible in July of 2009 by the Twins in Oakland of all places (and Oakland won despite being down 12-2 at one point) and Shawn Chacon was brutalized by the Angels in Colorado in 2001, which makes way more sense.

In a post earlier this week, I mentioned a Bill James quote: “If you could split [Henderson] in two, you’d have two Hall of Famers.” James was totally serious. Since James wrote those words, Wins Above Replacement (WAR) has become the Nerdosphere’s favorite total value stat. Does it support James’ contention? Let’s “split Rickey in two” and found out.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes money can buy you happiness. For instance, I’m sure the Cubs would be happy to be rid of Alfonso Soriano and the remainder of the eight-year, $136 million contract he signed after the 2006 season. According to a recent report from Bruce Levine at ESPN Chicago, they might be aiming for just that. Levine’s source says that the Cubs “would be willing to absorb a high percentage” of the roughly $60 million remaining on his contract, which runs through 2014. That will certainly make him more palatable to other teams, but I still wonder if he’s worth a trade even at a steep discount.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago Cubs general manager, Jim Hendry, has been described by many as a lame duck, but team owner Tom Ricketts may want to get out the hunting rifle now before the situation deteriorates any further.

Hendry took over the Cubs GM position midway through the 2002 season and has never quite assembled the impressive major league team comparable to the impressive farm system he built in the late 1990s. Once touted for assembling a farm system that included future stars like Corey Patterson, Mark Prior, Eric Patterson, Felix Pie, Rich Hill, and (hey, mildly positive ones!) Kerry Wood and Carlos Zambrano, Hendry is now widely considered a neither great nor terrible GM.

His on-the-field product reflects that dichotomy:

His great times (2008, 2004) have been great; his good times (2003, 2007, 2009) have been okay; and his bad times (2005, 2006, 2010, 2011) have been numerous.

Read the rest of this entry »

Whence we last examined yonder batting orders, we came away with several expected observations (Jose Bautista plays baseball like a video game, the Oakland Athletics do not care much for scoring runs, Rick Ankiel and Ian Desmond are not feared hitters, and so forth) as well as a number of curious findings (the Cubs lead-off combo was tops in the majors, the 7th hitters on AL teams were worse than the 9th hitters, NL managers effectively managed the bottoms of their lineups, and such).

Read the rest of this entry »

While trade season primarily involves contenders raiding also-rans for useful players, we always hope for that trade that makes us go: what? When the Red Sox traded Manny to the Dodgers in 2008: What? (Which was preceded, of course, but a much louder what when it was reported they traded him to Florida.) We don’t see those very often, because they often involve high-profile players with big contracts, which complicates matters. Chances are we won’t see any jaw-dropping moves this off-season, but that doesn’t preclude us from writing about possibilities.

Today we’ll hold a bad contract swap meet. There aren’t too many huge, horrible contracts out there — that is, contracts that a team would dump if possible and not really miss the player’s production. The entrants, with the year their contracts expire and the money they’re owed beyond 2011 (assuming options declined):

Boston Red Sox: John Lackey (2014, $47.85m)
New York Mets: Jason Bay (2013, $39.26m)
San Francisco Giants: Barry Zito (2013, $46m)
Chicago Cubs: Alfonso Soriano (2014, $57m)

Read the rest of this entry »

According to ESPN Chicago, the Cubs are already preparing to internally discuss trading some of their expensive, veteran pieces away. This should come as little surprise. The trade deadline is a mere five weeks away, and the Cubs sit in fifth place, ten games out of first with little hope for a comeback. The Cubs have plenty of high-cost veterans they will look to move, such as Alfonso Soriano, Aramis Ramirez, Carlos Zambrano, and Kosuke Fukudome. The question: can they find anybody willing to take these players on, and if so, how much much cash will the Cubs themselves have to throw into the deal?

Read the rest of this entry »

Bats, they are sick. I cannot hit curveball. Straightball I hit it very much. Curveball, bats are afraid. I ask Jobu to come, take fear from bats. I offer him cigar, rum. He will come.

— Pedro Cerrano in Major League

Every baseball fan is familiar with the Pedro Cerrano archetype: the hard-hitting batter who blasts fastballs into the next county but whose knees turn to jelly when the pitcher snaps off a breaking ball. I caught part of Major League while flipping through the channels the other day and I began to wonder, who in the majors today most resembles the Cleveland Indians’ Jobu-worshipping, cigar-smoking slugger?

Read the rest of this entry »