What We Learned In Week Three
The lessons from week three.
Jason Heyward isn’t the only rookie outfielder impressing people.
While Heyward has had the big play moments, Tyler Colvin has been tearing the cover off the ball up in Chicago. Since he had never played above Double-A and showed an aggressive approach in the minors last year, many assumed that major league pitchers would eat him alive. So far, though, he’s been crushing every fastball he sees, hitting .333/.405/.697 in 38 trips to the plate. Six of his 11 hits have gone for extra bases, and he’s already drawn four walks, 25 percent of his Double-A total from last year.
In fact, Colvin’s wFB/C (runs above average per 100 fastballs seen) is second highest in baseball, behind only Ryan Braun. He’s been below average against soft stuff, so don’t be surprised if pitchers start feeding him a steady diet of breaking balls in the near future. His minor league track record suggests that he’ll have trouble making the adjustment when they do, but there are few doubts left that Colvin can hit a big league fastball.
The entire Cubs outfield is on fire.
Colvin isn’t the only one who is swinging a hot bat in Chicago right now. In the last seven days, the Cubs got a .627 wOBA from Colvin, a .579 wOBA from Kosuke Fukudome, a .490 wOBA from Marlon Byrd, and a .457 wOBA from Alfonso Soriano. As a whole, their outfield hit .402/.455/.701 in the past week. If you’re wondering how they managed to win four of their last five games, look no further than those four.
Lyle Overbay is not dead.
In his first 55 trips to the plate in 2010, Overbay went 4 for 50, racking up a horrific .080/.145/.140 line. The calls for Brett Wallace began to get louder, as Overbay was the worst hitter in baseball for a couple of weeks. He’s revived himself in the last week, though, hitting .375/.524/.750, racking up four extra base hits and five walks in 22 trips to the plate.
It’s still unlikely that Overbay finishes the final year of his contract in Toronto, but the Blue Jays will have a much easier time trading him if he is actually hitting the baseball. After a rough start to the season, Blue Jays fans have been reminded that he can actually still do that.
The Astros realized the 2010 season has begun.
Houston lost their first eight game of the season, and were the butt of jokes all around the league. Since then, they’ve won eight of ten, and are actually within spitting distance of .500 again. Last week, they ranked 3rd in team wOBA at .363 and first in team xFIP at 3.31.
Michael Bourn led the charge, getting on base 52 percent of the time last week and giving the rest of their order a chance to drive him in. Wandy Rodriguez and Brett Myers gave the team’s rotation a boost behind Roy Oswalt, and the bullpen was lights out, running a 1/15 BB/K ratio in 16 innings of work, in which they only allowed two runs.
Their roster still has all kinds of problems, but after a beginning to the season that made them look like the worst team in baseball, the Astros have played really good baseball the last week.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
It helps when you play the Pirates. Myers gave up 13 baserunners in 6 IP yesterday, but only allowed 2 runs. Care to guess how? Not a single one of those baserunners reached via extra base hit! What a limp dick offense.
Who cares? The Mets still crushed them and the beat up the Brewers worst three starting pitchers.
Don’t overrate Marlon Byrd. He’s not going to continue to see LHPs at a rate of 1/3 of his PAs. He also won’t sustain his early level of success against LHPs. He’s looked horrible in the vast majority of his PAs against RHPs. If the Cubs smarten up and play Colvin against RHPs and Byrd against LHPs (and occasionally spelling Soriano against some RHPs), then they might actually have a potent offense going forward to match up with their ridiculous starting pitching.
The real reason for the Cubs winning 4 of 5 (other than the fantastic starting pitching), was the return of Ryan Theriot to something useful and Kosuke Fukudome’s continued production leading into Derrek Lee and Colvin/Byrd and Soriano. Having Soto getting on base leading into the top part of the lineup has helped tremendously as well.
All this said, they’re still just sniffing .500 and haven’t really faced any tough teams. This is still a team that lost 2/3 from the Astros and 3/4 to the Mets.
Byrd hits righties better than lefties…
Unfortunately… you don’t have anything to backup that opinion.
Byrd vs LHP (Career): .283/.342/.447/.789
Byrd vs RHP (Career): .279/.340/.416/.756
well I was just looking at last 3 years. if you want to count 2006 and prior, cool.
Then I hope you also realized his numbers for the last three years were all over the place… and those three-year splits are heavily weighted towards one of only two years in his career that don’t have him neutral or better against LHPs than RHPs. The only consistency in his performances the last three years was the stark contrast in his home and road stats. I have no confidence Byrd can continue to put up the numbers he put up while playing in Texas and not the numbers he put up 2006 and prior… much less the numbers he’s put up so far in Chicago (which are obviously heavily weighted towards his success against LHPs).
It’s funny how the first two commenters had to attack positive news from two teams (Cubs and Astros) that people pretty much continually crap on. I guess snarknyness begets snarkyness.
“If you’re wondering how they managed to win four of their last five games, look no further than those four.”
False. It is all because of moving Carlos Zambrano to the bullpen. You statheads have all been proven wrong!
Well, it certainly helped them win the game today. Seven solid innings by Silva and 1 2/3 scoreless innings from Z to get the game to Marmol. Whatever works…
Overbay would not be a bad mid-season acquisition for a playoff contending team to platoon at first or DH with.
One more thing that we should have learned this week is that the Giants offense has not improved at all from last season after a dreadfull trip to San Deigo where they scored a total of 4 runs and have socred 11 runs in their last 7 games.
They lead the league in runs allowed but have not backed up the good pitching at all. The hot start from the offense looks to have been a mirage.
The Giants have one really good one hitter and a bunch of other hitters that range from pretty bad to somewhat decent. That’s not enough. When the Giants were good in the early 2000s, the team featured Bonds, Kent and Burks. When the team was good in the late ’80s, it featured Will Clark, Matt Williams and Kevin Mitchell.
There was never any reason looking at this roster to think that this offense would be enough. It’s as if Sabean signs players and expects that they’ll put up the same numbers they did in their career years, even if those years came five years ago. Unfortunately, he also seems to pay them based on those same years!
Very frustrating time to be a Giants fan, and the fact that the pitching is this good just makes it worse, since it is such a rare thing and it’s being wasted…
Agreed fully, that pitching is going to get expensive fast, if there was ever a time to parlay some prospects into a legitimate hitter, it’s now.
And yet somehow that same Giants’ offense just rocked Roy Halladay.
Baseball is weird.
Regarding the Cubs, don’t forget Geovany Soto. His OPS is currently 1.064.
That clearly isn’t sustainable, but in the 159 games he played in 2007-2008 (15 G in 2007 as a late call-up), his OPS was .891.
both catchers are performing very well so far. Not sure how long they can let Soto bat 8th.
You forgot to mention that we ‘learned’ that the Giants can’t freaking hit. Given the last couple years’ worth of evidence, I guess this doesn’t qualify as news..
Roy Halladay would beg to differ.
Colvin has looked sharp at the plate for the most part. He had another walk today and is generally laying off of bad pitches. It’s too early too tell if this is really a permanent change in his approach, or just a fluke over a small sample size, but I’m hoping it continues. He looks like a solid hitter right now.
I would like to add that 3 of his last 4 hits have been off of a curveball (double), changeup (single) and a curveball (triple), so perhaps pitchers are starting that diet already…but Colvin looks ready to feast on that as well.