Cashner vs. Rizzo

[brett05]

I just went back and reread your initial comment. I must have skimmed over the may part. My apologies. I read that as you were saying he had no chance to get that which is where my comment on Jackson came from. I agree that Garza isn't worth $20 mil a year in terms of value but I'd be surprised if he isn't in the $18-20 range in terms of what he actually gets.

As for the pitcher debate, I stand by my statement that 3-5 pitchers aren't that rare. If you want another example, look at the cardinals trotting out guys like Penny, Loshe, and Suppan for years and making them into quality starters. On the other hand #1 and #2 pitchers are much more difficult to find. And often, people will pay #1 prices for #2's. Garza is a good example of that.

I agree,

My point on quality #3 and #4 guys is that they are rarer then finding a quality first baseman and thus more valuable.

 

[HurricaneDij39]

Um, I'm a Cubs fan too, and always will be. That doesn't mean that I think that every move they make is golden.

The key information, obviously, to people who aren't slow, is that the ballparks effect both players and not just one. You insinuated that Cashner's numbers were a result of his new ballpark. My point is that if Rizzo was still in his old park, PETCO, his number would be even worse than they are. Thus evaluating them on an even playing field rather than discrediting Cashner and taking Rizzo at face value. Again, for people who aren't slow.

I'm not discrediting anyone. It is true that Rizzo was indeed a poor fit at PETCO, hence the reason they went with Yonder Alonso over him. That being said, the Cubs only play there for one series a year, so I prefer not to concern myself with however Rizzo performs at that ballpark.

Cashner is having a good year given the circumstances he was given. I just have a hard time believing he'd be equally as effective pitching his home games at Wrigley as opposed to at PETCO.

 

[SilenceS]

http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/the-new-old-andrew-cashner/

 

[HurricaneDij39]

Would like to see Rizzo get another home run to get to 23/80. For a power hitter, 23/80 looks a hell of a lot better than 22/high 70's.

 

[Boobaby1]

Would like to see Rizzo get another home run to get to 23/80. For a power hitter, 23/80 looks a hell of a lot better than 22/high 70's.

The numbers are not good at all for a hitter who primarily hit in the 3 hole, who is a power hitter, and only strokes 80 RBI's. I don't care how young, how bad the Cubs are, room to grow, no protection, or anyway anyone wants to spin it, he is not the centerpiece that some Cubs fans want to think he is. Rizzo is a future number 5-6 hitter in the line-up at best. At least he better be or we are in for a world of hurt for a long time. opcorn:

 

[beckdawg]

The numbers are not good at all for a hitter who primarily hit in the 3 hole, who is a power hitter, and only strokes 80 RBI's. I don't care how young, how bad the Cubs are, room to grow, no protection, or anyway anyone wants to spin it, he is not the centerpiece that some Cubs fans want to think he is. Rizzo is a future number 5-6 hitter in the line-up at best. At least he better be or we are in for a world of hurt for a long time. opcorn:

I'd say the team's .302 on base percentage(3rd worst in baseball) has a fair bit to do with his lack of RBIs. League average is 16 points higher. The also have had .321 and .310 OBP out of the 1 and 2 holes respectively. You can't drive in people if no one is on base. Your first two hitters really should be in the .340+ range. Compare that to say the cards who have .382 and .350 respectively out of their 1/2 hole and you see one of the reasons they are a playoff team and the cubs aren't.

That's not to say that Rizzo doesn't have flaws. He has been terrible with runners in scoring position. But to criticize him when he's been one of maybe 3-4 players who should be starting in the majors seems unfair to me.

 

[Boobaby1]

I'd say the team's .302 on base percentage(3rd worst in baseball) has a fair bit to do with his lack of RBIs. League average is 16 points higher. The also have had .321 and .310 OBP out of the 1 and 2 holes respectively. You can't drive in people if no one is on base. Your first two hitters really should be in the .340+ range. Compare that to say the cards who have .382 and .350 respectively out of their 1/2 hole and you see one of the reasons they are a playoff team and the cubs aren't.

That's not to say that Rizzo doesn't have flaws. He has been terrible with runners in scoring position. But to criticize him when he's been one of maybe 3-4 players who should be starting in the majors seems unfair to me.

I just said that his numbers were terrible for a 3-hole hitter including RBI's and you defended him for who was in front of him and the Cubs OBP as a whole, then turn right around and say that he has been terrible with runners in scoring position. Soriano had the same people in front of him and he managed to put up some respectable numbers for an aging player.

If Rizzo were driving in runners, this wouldn't be a conversation. You obviously don't agree and that's fine, but if you see Rizzo as the future 3-hole hitter or clean-up man, the Cubs again in my opinion are screwed.

Funny you mentioned the Cards because Rizzo right now isn't anywhere near Craig, Holliday, Molina, Carpenter, or Beltran for that matter.

I am surely hoping that Baez and Bryant are the real deal because that just means that the Cubs would be tough enough hitting-wise, to push him back in the line-up. I hope you feel the same way.

 

[beckdawg]

I just said that his numbers were terrible for a 3-hole hitter including RBI's and you defended him for who was in front of him and the Cubs OBP as a whole, then turn right around and say that he has been terrible with runners in scoring position. Soriano had the same people in front of him and he managed to put up some respectable numbers for an aging player.

If Rizzo were driving in runners, this wouldn't be a conversation. You obviously don't agree and that's fine, but if you see Rizzo as the future 3-hole hitter or clean-up man, the Cubs again in my opinion are screwed.

Funny you mentioned the Cards because Rizzo right now isn't anywhere near Craig, Holliday, Molina, Carpenter, or Beltran for that matter.

I am surely hoping that Baez and Bryant are the real deal because that just means that the Cubs would be tough enough hitting-wise, to push him back in the line-up. I hope you feel the same way.

You bring up Soriano. If you project his 51 RBI's with the cubs over 600 AB's that's 82 RBIs. Why is that bad for a young player and fine for Soriano? Also, since going to the Yankees who have a much better offense he has 50. That's my entire point. It's not about one player. It's about a team. Having good hitters in the 1/2 hole wear out the starter by seeing lots of pitches which leads to the bullpen who are often worse pitchers. Those players being on base make the pitcher change his delivery by being on base. All of these things lead to improved chances of hits/runs.

As for the 3 hole discussion, I didn't say anything about it. All I said was his RBI total was down because of poor team OBP. Also, I'm saying it's difficult to judge what he is right now. He came up to the majors at 21. The past two years he's been 22 and 23 and just turned 24 in August. Chris Davis is arguably the best power hitter in the game right now and didn't become that until he was 26. Same can be said for Edwin Encarnacion, Pedro Alvarez, Jose Bautista, Adrian Beltre, and Jay Bruce as well as 100's of other players.

 

[daddies3angels]

Problem with Rizzo is he should be hitting 6-7 range at his age. Idea is to have legit Vets hitting 3-5 range with the kids hitting lower in lineup to learn the league. Then once those Vets are gone then Rizzo can move up while new kids start hitting 6-7 range. Cubs instead didnt put any talent around the kids and expected them to be the main pieces which is awfull way to bring up young players. They need protection. They dont need 4th/5th OF or UTI player hitting in front or behind them everday

 

[Willrust]

Go look at Rizzo 2013 to Freddie Freeman 2011

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=5361&position=1B

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=3473&position=1B

Then consider a .258 BABIP.

 

[dabynsky]

Freddie Freeman's BABIP is fascinating to me. His LD% suggests that the ridiculously high BABIP might not be a complete fluke. Rizzo's other peripherals compare favorable to Freeman, but not sure his BABIP will match Freeman long term.

 

[beckdawg]

Freddie Freeman's BABIP is fascinating to me. His LD% suggests that the ridiculously high BABIP might not be a complete fluke. Rizzo's other peripherals compare favorable to Freeman, but not sure his BABIP will match Freeman long term.

I'm high on Rizzo but I doubt it will. That being said, I think .268 BABIP is still ridiculously low. It could easily go up 20 points and if he refines his approach just a little to add another 10-20 points to his average he's a .270-.280 hitter. That's obviously not an amazing average but it is quite a bit better. Additionally, he hit like .200 with runners in scoring position and still had 80 rbi's. If he has that kind of improvement it would be easy to see him with 95-100 RBIs if not more.

 

[SilenceS]

I'm high on Rizzo but I doubt it will. That being said, I think .268 BABIP is still ridiculously low. It could easily go up 20 points and if he refines his approach just a little to add another 10-20 points to his average he's a .270-.280 hitter. That's obviously not an amazing average but it is quite a bit better. Additionally, he hit like .200 with runners in scoring position and still had 80 rbi's. If he has that kind of improvement it would be easy to see him with 95-100 RBIs if not more.

I have no problem with Rizzo but to me he is a player you have to look at with more then stats. He has some majors holes. Hope he gets them corrected o makes the Cubs a much better team.

 

[beckdawg]

I have no problem with Rizzo but to me he is a player you have to look at with more then stats. He has some majors holes. Hope he gets them corrected o makes the Cubs a much better team.

The problem with allowing more than stats into the argument is that there's poor sample size and potentially biased opinion in either way. Regardless, there is strong reason to believe that this year is an anomaly. It's rather unusual for someone to have a low average with a high walk rate and average strike out rate. To put this in perspective of the 43 players with qualifying ABs and greater than 10% BB% this year, only Stanton, Uggla, Dunn, Smoak, LaRoche, Swisher, Chris Carter, Russell Martin, and Reynolds as well as Rizzo have an average under .250. And of those players, all of them are above 21.8% K% with about half being well over 25% where as Rizzo is at 18.4%. Those under 25% include Smoak, Martin, LaRoche and Swisher.

Swisher and LaRoche aren't terrible comparisons. Swisher's career BABIP is .291 and LaRoche's is .305. To give a little more of a sample size lets throw in some guys with similar career BB%/K% guys. Rizzo is at 10.2%/19.4%. Andre Ethier(9.7%/17%) has a career BABIP of .323. Prince Fielder obviously has more power but sits at 12.9%/17.5% with a career BABIP of .303. The aforementioned Freeman(9.6%/21.0%) with a career BABIP of .334. Josh Donaldson(9.2%/18.4%) sits at .313. So, Rizzo sitting at .258 BABIP really is that absurdly low.

I know your contention is Rizzo puts weak contact on balls. That's really difficult to debate because it's a judgement and is subject to sample size bias. For example, you may watch all the cubs games and various others on TV from time to time but you're not watching every game played in the majors and certainly aren't watching every game over the past 3 years. However, I did try to dig into this as best as you can with stats. If you look at the batted balls for those players you will see that they all have around 20% line drives, 13% HR/FB and 6-8% infield fly with the lone exception of Fielder who clearly has a higher HR/FB ratio. As such, its difficult for me to say he's worse with contact than any of the guys above. If he truly were putting weaker contact on the ball you would expect his line drive% to be significantly lower than the rest. Additionally, you would expect his HR/FB to be lower as well as his infield fly% to be higher and that just isn't the case.

With that being said, the worst of this grouping is Swisher at .291 BABIP which would basically make Rizzo a .266 hitter with no other improvements but better luck with balls in play. Additionally, in that light his .310 BABIP last year doesn't seem all that unreasonable especially when you consider every other season(including minors) where he's had 200 PA's his BABIP has been no lower than .297.

That all leads to the multi-million dollar question, what will he be? If we can all agree that he's at least a .265 hitter which seems fair, I'd postulate his low end is similar to Swisher's peak years. I'd point to Swisher's 2007 season with the A's as it is on a poor line up though arguably slightly better than the current cubs line up. Swisher was 26 at this point so Rizzo would have 2 full years to grow into that.

Season Team G PA HR R RBI SB BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+ WAR
2007 Athletics 150 659 22 84 78 3 15.2% 19.9% .193 .301 .262 .381 .455 .362 122 3.9

Compared to Rizzo's 2013
Season Team G PA HR R RBI SB BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+ WAR
2013 Cubs 160 690 23 71 80 6 11.0% 18.4% .186 .258 .233 .323 .419 .325 102 1.6

The more difficult question would be what's his peak. I'll say mid 5 WAR. If you compare his past to say Freeman, Rizzo has shown the ability to walk more and strike out less and Freeman put up roughly 5 WAR this year. At 4 WAR he'd be one of the top 40 hitters in baseball and top 20 at 5 WAR. To be any better than that, he'll either need to figure out how to get on base a lot more(.300+ average or a lot more walks), drive in an absurd amount of runs(120+) and/or be substantially better on defense(not that he's bad now but he's not say Andrelton Simmons levels of good).

That's why the talk about Rizzo is difficult for me. The majority of the numbers are already there. His value is just lessened by the fact he hasn't been able to get on base as much this year and that directly relates to his BABIP. If he had hit .265 this year his line would probably look something more like 80 runs 25+ HRs and 90 RBIs which makes him a 3-4 WAR player depending on some other things. To me, all the things he needs to have a huge rebound season next year are here and that's before you even talk about him getting better with age. This all reminds me of Jason Heywards 2010 season where his BABIP was .260 and the next year he rebounds to have a 6.4 WAR season.

 

[DewsSox79]

Im not reading through this archive of slop. I will take cashner over rizzo. that could change, but for now cash

 

[theberserkfury]

That was a great read, beckdawg... not sure if this Sox fan was referring to your post but if he was, ignore him.