2015 Cubs Offseason: Building a Winner Around David Ross

[SKO]

Some fun facts from Tristan Cockroft's ESPN piece today.

- After striking out in 33.9 percent of his trips to the plate between the majors and minors in 2014, seventh-highest of any pro, Javier Baez cut his whiff rate to 24.5 percent between the majors and minors in 2015. That 9.4 percent improvement was the second-best among any professional baseball player who had at least 400 plate appearances in both seasons, behind only Nick Williams (28.6 percent to 18.8, 9.8 percent improvement).

- Kyle Schwarber is only the 10th player in the past 100 years to manage at least 16 home runs and 36 walks through his first 69 career games. He is the only one of the 10 to have caught a single one of those 69 games; he caught 21 games and totaled five home runs and eight walks while playing that position.

- In 2015, Kris Bryant became only the 17th player in history to manage at least 25 home runs, .200 isolated power and a 10 percent walk rate during their rookie seasons. Among some of the other names on the list: Joe Gordon, Albert Pujols, Al Rosen, Mike Trout, Ted Williams.

The Schwarber and Bryant stats are pretty amazing. I saw somewhere Schwarber was the first guy to have 15 homers in his first 60 career games or whatever since Albert Pujols. Dude's special.

[R-V]

Joe Sheehan shits all over the 2016 Cubs. Time to unsubscribe for not liking my team.

"What I have since described as the Plexiglas Principle: If a team improves in one season, it will likely decline in the next."

--Bill James, The Bill James Baseball Abstract, 1983

So, I think I'm going to be the low man on the Cubs in 2016, and the Plexiglas Principle is a big part of why. The Cubs improved by 24 games in 2015, going from 73-89 to 97-65. (The improvement was a little smaller than that, 19 games, if you just look at their Pythagorean record.) Thirty years after James wrote about the concept, it's still applicable today. Since 1997 -- the shortened seasons of 1994 and 1995 provide a natural break point -- 23 teams, plus the 2015 Cubs, have improved by at least 20 games in a single season.

The Plexiglas Principle

                 Year -1   Year 0    Year +1
2014 Angels        78        +20       -13
2013 Red Sox       69        +28       -26
2013 Indians       68        +24        -7
2012 Orioles       69        +24        -8
2012 A's           74        +20        +2
2009 Mariners      61        +24       -24
2008 Rays          66        +31       -13
2006 Tigers        71        +24        -7
2004 Cardinals     85        +20        -5
2004 Tigers        43        +29        -1
2004 Padres        76        +22        -5
2003 Royals        62        +21       -25
2003 Cubs          67        +21        +1
2002 Angels        75        +24       -22
2001 Cubs          65        +23       -21
2001 Phillies      65        +21        -6
2001 Mariners      91        +25       -23
2000 Cardinals     75        +20        -2
2000 White Sox     75        +20       -12
1998 Cubs          68        +22       -23
1998 Padres        76        +22       -24
1997 Tigers        53        +26       -14
1997 Giants        68        +22        -1

There's a lot going on there, but focus on the third column, the one that indicates what the team did in the year after its big improvement. Of the 23 teams that were +20 in one year, just two of them improved again the following year, and those by just one and two wins, respectively. Twelve teams, more than half the pool, declined by at least ten wins. Of the teams you might consider the Cubs' peers, ones that went from being below .500 to winning 90 or more...

The Plexiglas Principle, Cubs-Like Substances

2014 Angels        78        +20       -13
2013 Red Sox       69        +28       -26
2013 Indians       68        +24        -7
2012 Orioles       69        +24        -8
2012 A's           74        +20        +2
2008 Rays          66        +31       -13
2006 Tigers        71        +24        -7
2004 Padres        76        +22        -5
2002 Angels        75        +24       -22
2000 Cardinals     75        +20        -2
2000 White Sox     75        +20       -12
1998 Cubs          68        +22       -23
1998 Padres        76        +22       -24
1997 Giants        68        +22        -1

Looking at it this way removes some of the stone flukes and the teams, like the 2001 Mariners and 2004 Tigers, who don't really compare to the 2015 Cubs. Even at that, 13 of 14 teams went backwards and seven of 14 did so by at least ten games. The Plexiglas Principle is a powerful force that applies to pretty much every team. Teams that go from below .500 to more than 90 wins almost always go backwards the next year. If you're picking the Cubs to win even 97 games again, you're doing so in the face of a mountain of evidence that they won't do so. If you're picking them to win even 90, you're on the wrong side of history. Just three of these teams did so...

[R-V]

The Plexiglas Principle exists because teams that improve significantly year over year don't usually do so just because they got better at playing baseball. We've shied away from using the word "luck" in analyzing the game, but "Year 0" up there is a record of good luck, whether in close games (2012 Orioles), the timing of big years (2013 Red Sox), having excellent team health, or some combination of all those factors. What often happens is that teams having these years attribute their success entirely to their own doing, and become complacent.

The 2002 Angels went from 75-87 to 99-63, won the AL wild card and went on to win the World Series. That team had nine regulars play at least 122 games, and had just 10 players account for 89% of their position-player PAs. Five of their nine starters, none of them stars, had the best seasons of their careers. Their top three starting pitchers made every start and their #4 made 26. The Angels brought back almost the entire team, essentially untouched, for 2003 and went 77-85. Troy Glaus, Darin Erstad and Brad Fullmer got hurt. The players who weren't hurt were almost all worse in 2003 than they'd been in 2002, just as they'd been better in 2002 than they'd been in 2001. The Angels looked at 2002 as the flawless execution of a plan, when it was actually execution mixed with good fortune. This list is littered with teams who didn't recognize that their ascent was about more than just hard work come to fruition.

The 2015 Cubs look a bit like those 2002 Angels, save for the anomalous postseason power surge. Chicago had excellent health, with four starting pitchers making at least 31 starts. Their position-player playing time was spread around a bit more not due to injuries, but to mid-season changes such as the promotion of Kyle Schwarber. Miguel Montero and Jorge Soler missed time with injuries; the six other regulars played in at least 142 games. The Cubs didn't have a bunch of journeymen having career years; instead, they had one of the best rookie crops in history. Schwarber, Kris Bryant, Addison Russell and Jorge Soler combined for nearly 30 percent of the Cubs' PAs and nearly half of their position-player bWAR. The Cubs out-won their runs scored and allowed in part thanks to a bullpen in which a number of fairly anonymous pieces had huge years.

Cubs Bullpen    2015 ERA   pre-2015
Hector Rondon         3.51     1.67
Pedro Strop           3.41     2.91
Justin Grimm          5.37     1.99
Travis Wood           4.11     2.95*

*as reliever

James Russell and Jason Motte didn't pitch quite as well, but it was Rondon and Strop who got most of the high-leverage work, and they had career years doing so...

[R-V]

The Cubs had great health, integrated four rookies without much problem, and got great work out of relievers who couldn't have been picked out of a crowd at Goose Island on Opening Day. That's the recipe for a huge improvement, but not all of that can be counted on for a second year. The Cubs, to their credit, did not show the complacency so many teams in those charts above did; they went out and signed a #2/#3 starter, John Lackey, to deepen the rotation and provide a bulwark against injuries. They added the best free-agent position player available in Jason Heyward, and another good one in Ben Zobrist. As you would expect from this front office, they recognized that a 28-game improvement reflected both the progress of an organization and its short-term good fortune, as opposed to just the former.

Even recognizing the great offseason the Cubs had, I have concerns. They're bringing back almost the same bullpen they did last year, which is just asking for regression. The Royals have managed to have strong bullpens three years running, but they're an exception to the rule. Rondon, Strop and Grimm will almost certainly be worse this year as a group, and that will cost the team some wins. The Cubs' remarkable health last year seems unlikely to be repeated, and while they have enviable position-player depth, they have just six starting pitchers, with Adam Warren the extra man and Wood, who lost his rotation job last year, also here.

Perhaps my biggest concern is with that crop of rookies. As well as they played, all four had very high strikeout rates, high enough to create concern about their ability to maintain a playable batting average and, by extension, an OBP. While Bryant and Russell will play every day, the acquisitions of Heyward and Zobrist and the late return of Dexter Fowler mean that Kyle Schwarber and Jorge Soler will be fighting for their at-bats. Javier Baez, a top-five prospect just a few years ago, seems to have nowhere to play. This isn't entirely sabermetric, but I'm dogmatic on the idea that young players have to play every day, that irregular playing time is destructive to their development. It's hard to see where more than one, and perhaps not even one, of Schwarber, Soler and Baez has a path to that kind of usage.

The Cubs' talent base protects them against the kind of fall that plagued those championship Angels, and, indeed, most of the other teams that dropped off significantly. However, the track record of teams that jump up the way the Cubs did, coupled with a recognition of just how many things went right for them last year, is sobering. The Cubs will probably be my pick to win the NL Central, but the Plexiglas Principle dictates that the gap between them and the Cardinals and Pirates is far smaller than the hype would have you believe.

[SKO]

I get that argument, I really do, but I think few teams in history have ever really been on the same kind of plan as the Cubs and have the same collection of young position player talent. The 2014 Cubs had an arguably artificially deflated win total. They could easily have tried to field an 81 win team in 2014 and then improved in 2015 and have had it seem "more natural." I think the relatively new concept of tanking really screws with this.

I will try and post it later but the Baseball Prospectus Annual had a really good essay about the Cubs that compared them to other young teams that got similar value WAR-wise from a core of young position players and how they tended to do going forward and over a three year period they almost all either improved or at least remained very competitive.

Interestingly one of the teams similar to the 2015 Cubs listed in that BP article were the 2001 Cardinals, the team that jumped from 75 wins in 2000 to 95 in 2001, then dropped to 93 the next year and basically started the run of contention for St. Louis that continues to today. Much as we loathe the Cardinals, I'd say the situations are fairly similar.

[R-V]

I get that argument, I really do, but I think few teams in history have ever really been on the same kind of plan as the Cubs and have the same collection of young position player talent. The 2014 Cubs had an arguably artificially deflated win total. They could easily have tried to field an 81 win team in 2014 and then improved in 2015 and have had it seem "more natural." I think the relatively new concept of tanking really screws with this.

I will try and post it later but the Baseball Prospectus Annual had a really good essay about the Cubs that compared them to other young teams that got similar value WAR-wise from a core of young position players and how they tended to do going forward and over a three year period they almost all either improved or at least remained very competitive.

Interestingly one of the teams similar to the 2015 Cubs listed in that BP article were the 2001 Cardinals, the team that jumped from 75 wins in 2000 to 95 in 2001, then dropped to 93 the next year and basically started the run of contention for St. Louis that continues to today. Much as we loathe the Cardinals, I'd say the situations are fairly similar.

Also, Sheehan spends about 3 seconds talking about the Cubs offseason. They added 14 rassafrassin wins in Heyward, Lackey, Zobrist and Warren. And gave up...a 1 win player in Starlin. He also talks about regression in the bullpen and rotation, without mentioning that they have FOUR swingmen who could all be very good, and can lighten the load for both the rotation and the late relief crew, and also spot start when needed. There are many, many reasons why this team is different than other teams that have had a big jump in win totals.

[SKO]

I get that argument, I really do, but I think few teams in history have ever really been on the same kind of plan as the Cubs and have the same collection of young position player talent. The 2014 Cubs had an arguably artificially deflated win total. They could easily have tried to field an 81 win team in 2014 and then improved in 2015 and have had it seem "more natural." I think the relatively new concept of tanking really screws with this.

I will try and post it later but the Baseball Prospectus Annual had a really good essay about the Cubs that compared them to other young teams that got similar value WAR-wise from a core of young position players and how they tended to do going forward and over a three year period they almost all either improved or at least remained very competitive.

Interestingly one of the teams similar to the 2015 Cubs listed in that BP article were the 2001 Cardinals, the team that jumped from 75 wins in 2000 to 95 in 2001, then dropped to 93 the next year and basically started the run of contention for St. Louis that continues to today. Much as we loathe the Cardinals, I'd say the situations are fairly similar.

Also, Sheehan spends about 3 seconds talking about the Cubs offseason. They added 14 rassafrassin wins in Heyward, Lackey, Zobrist and Warren. And gave up...a 1 win player in Starlin. He also talks about regression in the bullpen and rotation, without mentioning that they have FOUR swingmen who could all be very good, and can lighten the load for both the rotation and the late relief crew, and also spot start when needed. There are many, many reasons why this team is different than other teams that have had a big jump in win totals.

Also I really don't like the idea that their bullpen came out of nowhere. Strop/Rondon/Grimm/Ramirez were all very good down the stretch in 2014. The fact that no one paid much attention to the bullpen on a 73 win team doesn't mean anything about their talent level or ability to sustain what they did. Hector Rondon throws a 97 MPH splitter. Pedro Strop's slider has induced more swings and misses than any other pitch in the majors the last few years. I don't give a shit if you'd heard of them before last year or not, man.

[Quality Start Machine]

Looks like the Cubs just got one more paradigm to shift.

[Slaky]

I get that argument, I really do, but I think few teams in history have ever really been on the same kind of plan as the Cubs and have the same collection of young position player talent. The 2014 Cubs had an arguably artificially deflated win total. They could easily have tried to field an 81 win team in 2014 and then improved in 2015 and have had it seem "more natural." I think the relatively new concept of tanking really screws with this.

I will try and post it later but the Baseball Prospectus Annual had a really good essay about the Cubs that compared them to other young teams that got similar value WAR-wise from a core of young position players and how they tended to do going forward and over a three year period they almost all either improved or at least remained very competitive.

Interestingly one of the teams similar to the 2015 Cubs listed in that BP article were the 2001 Cardinals, the team that jumped from 75 wins in 2000 to 95 in 2001, then dropped to 93 the next year and basically started the run of contention for St. Louis that continues to today. Much as we loathe the Cardinals, I'd say the situations are fairly similar.

Also, Sheehan spends about 3 seconds talking about the Cubs offseason. They added 14 rassafrassin wins in Heyward, Lackey, Zobrist and Warren. And gave up...a 1 win player in Starlin. He also talks about regression in the bullpen and rotation, without mentioning that they have FOUR swingmen who could all be very good, and can lighten the load for both the rotation and the late relief crew, and also spot start when needed. There are many, many reasons why this team is different than other teams that have had a big jump in win totals.

Joe Sheehan is just Trueblood with a newsletter.

[Saul Goodman]

Looks like the Cubs just got one more paradigm to shift.

What's a pair-a-diggum

[SKO]

I get that argument, I really do, but I think few teams in history have ever really been on the same kind of plan as the Cubs and have the same collection of young position player talent. The 2014 Cubs had an arguably artificially deflated win total. They could easily have tried to field an 81 win team in 2014 and then improved in 2015 and have had it seem "more natural." I think the relatively new concept of tanking really screws with this.

I will try and post it later but the Baseball Prospectus Annual had a really good essay about the Cubs that compared them to other young teams that got similar value WAR-wise from a core of young position players and how they tended to do going forward and over a three year period they almost all either improved or at least remained very competitive.

Interestingly one of the teams similar to the 2015 Cubs listed in that BP article were the 2001 Cardinals, the team that jumped from 75 wins in 2000 to 95 in 2001, then dropped to 93 the next year and basically started the run of contention for St. Louis that continues to today. Much as we loathe the Cardinals, I'd say the situations are fairly similar.

[SKO]

[SKO]

[Slaky]

I get that argument, I really do, but I think few teams in history have ever really been on the same kind of plan as the Cubs and have the same collection of young position player talent. The 2014 Cubs had an arguably artificially deflated win total. They could easily have tried to field an 81 win team in 2014 and then improved in 2015 and have had it seem "more natural." I think the relatively new concept of tanking really screws with this.

I will try and post it later but the Baseball Prospectus Annual had a really good essay about the Cubs that compared them to other young teams that got similar value WAR-wise from a core of young position players and how they tended to do going forward and over a three year period they almost all either improved or at least remained very competitive.

Interestingly one of the teams similar to the 2015 Cubs listed in that BP article were the 2001 Cardinals, the team that jumped from 75 wins in 2000 to 95 in 2001, then dropped to 93 the next year and basically started the run of contention for St. Louis that continues to today. Much as we loathe the Cardinals, I'd say the situations are fairly similar.

I don't know what happened to me where this stuff makes me numb but here we are.

[Quality Start Machine]

What this trend analysis is leaving out is the fact that bottom-feeding teams are now more willing to completely tank a season or more for the sake of draft position and slotting. That means better teams winning 95+ should become a more common occurrence.

With the Cubs sharing a division with Milwaukee and Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh arguably taking a step backward, they should be able to pile up another impressive amount of wins.