Today’s ESPN Insider Dine-N-Dash

filed under Fantasy : Baseball

Once again, we pluck the Karablog for our daily stolen item from ESPN Insider with the hopes of toppling its fantasy oligarchy. Today, the bird-chestedly handsome Karabell digs in deep to the Chicago Cubs demotion of once proud and mighty outfielder Corey Patterson. We know we’d like to find out what happened and how this will impact our team. And you would too.

Of course, if your soul is clean, go here and pay the toll. But, if not, after the jump ditch all the caramel kernels and head straight for the peanuts.

Corey’s Clueless Cubs

Yesterday, I wrote about the Red Sox and why Curt Schilling could succeed as a closer. Feedback from Red Sox fans was good, very positive.
Today, it’s time to write about another national, popular, sometimes cursed team and another interesting, controversial decision. Only this time the move is mystifying and I’m not as upbeat.

Every team, apparently, wants to be like the Braves. That makes sense; the last time Atlanta did NOT win its division B.J. Upton was starting kindergarten. So the Cubs got swept in a doubleheader last night in Atlanta, by a team with 10 rookies, and Dusty Baker, in his infinite wisdom, decided the smart thing to do was demote Corey Patterson to the minor leagues.

Sure, blame the 25-year-old speedster for your team being four games under .500. Was Patterson struggling? No doubt he was. He hit .157 in June, and was 3-for-18 so far in July. He’s not a leadoff hitter, despite Baker’s insistence on hitting him there, but he wasn’t much of a power hitter for the last six weeks either.

What I think happened here is Baker saw young Brave outfielder Jeff Francoeur smack a three-run homer in the eighth for his first major league hit and decided, well, we can do that! Let’s bring up some kids nobody knows! Look at the Braves: Kelly Johnson is turning into a nice player, and really has far better stats in OBP and slugging than Patterson (because he takes walks, which I’ll get to). Adam LaRoche shouldn’t be hitting fourth or fifth for anyone, but he’s on a 100-RBI pace anyway. How do they do it? Pete Orr and Brian McCann are hitting .300. Ryan Langerhans and Wilson Betemit are productive. Hey, we can do it, too!

But there are differences here. The Braves are using 10 rookies on their 25-man roster out of necessity. Chipper Jones and Brian Jordan are on the disabled list. Raul Mondesi was a joke. The middle infield, until recently, was underwhelming. Don’t ask about the pitching staff, with the 2, 3 and 4 starters all injured. The Braves, through all this, are a playoff team.

The Cubs, meanwhile, continue to make senseless moves with no apparent direction. This team’s problems appear to have been on the mound, with the injuries to Mark Prior and Kerry Wood and a shaky bullpen. At least that’s what gets blamed. Sure, that hasn’t helped. But this team’s losing because of its offense, because despite having a guy batting .377 in the middle of the order and being a legit triple crown threat, there’s nobody setting the table.

As always, some random thoughts:

• Patterson should never have been leading off in the first place, and that’s Baker’s fault. Who should have? Well, Jerry Hairston Jr., for as woefully average as he might be, does have a .367 on-base percentage. He walks a bit, and unlike Patterson, doesn’t strike out. As a team the Cubs have a .312 on-base percentage in the leadoff spot, and that stinks. In the NL only Florida and the Mets are worse, and when Juan Pierre starts to hit, the Marlins will score more runs. The Mets have realized the error of their Jose Reyes ways (and nobody’s sending HIM to the minors, despite his age). Hairston, in 36 games leading off, has a .384 OBP there. Just play him every day and lead him off. It appears that will happen now, but in center field. I would have chosen left field, now that Todd Walker is back to man second.

• Neifi Perez is not a good hitter. He’s tricked everyone, and his numbers are slipping, as expected. Not only have the Cubs not put people on base leading off, but their No. 2 hitters have a .286 OBP! Perez has a .314 OBP in 44 games hitting second. So the Cubs are 27th in the majors in leadoff OBP, and 29th in OBP for No. 2 hitters (only Pittsburgh is worse). Gee, Dusty, do you think this is why you don’t score runs?

• Derrek Lee, by the way, has 25 homers, 67 RBI and leads the bigs in slugging. Remember that season that Carlos Delgado nearly knocked in 100 runs by the break? Lee is actually getting cheated, big time. If he wins two-thirds of the triple crown but falls just short in RBI, he can blame Dusty. I just found this stat this morning, and it’s incredible. Look at the RBI leaders; they obviously get many chances to knock in runs, right? Well, not really. Lee has ONLY 119 at-bats with runners on base, which ranks him tied for 94th in baseball (Miguel Cabrera has 177 such at-bats). However, Lee has 67 RBI, only 10 off the ML lead and six behind NL leader Carlos Lee.

But look at how many more chances those guys get! The Cubs are cheating Lee. He should have about 100 RBI by now. I’ll list a few names who have more at-bats than Derrek Lee with runners on base: Cristian Guzman, Jason Phillips, Aaron Boone, Angel Berroa and every regular starter for the Red Sox except Jason Varitek, who’s only two AB back. Lee is hitting a crazy .370 with runners on; if he had the chances Edgar Renteria had with men on (Edgar’s fifth in baseball in AB with men on), and hit the same average, he actually would have 100 RBI by now.

But Lee doesn’t, because nobody is ever on base for him.

• The middle of the Cubs order, actually, has been quite potent. Lee, Aramis Ramirez and Jeromy Burnitz are each doing their jobs. Michael Barrett is fine at catcher, and actually could have made the All-Star team. Todd Hollandsworth gets picked on a lot, but he’s not embarrassing himself. He’s a fourth outfielder. Perez should be hitting eighth.

• What about the kids the Cubs called up to be their Kelly Johnsons? Adam Greenberg and Matt Murton are the new kids at Wrigley, but I don’t know if they’ll play. The Cubs also demoted Jason Dubois, for more obvious reasons. I’d think Baker, a noted favorite of veterans, will go with Hollandsworth in left and Hairston in center. Greenberg can play center field, but he hasn’t hit for much power. Murton has, but he was in Double-A. It’s a stretch to compare these fellas with Francoeur, a top prospect in Atlanta’s system. However, and we should give the Cubbies some credit here, each of these outfielders have plate discipline and speed. Just like Kelly Johnson. If either hits, they could stick and become fantasy relevant.

• So back to Patterson. What should the Cubs do with him? Well, Patterson’s biggest problem is making contact. He can be an electric player when he hits the ball, and of course he can run. Baker confused speed with being able to lead off. Patterson’s 83 strikeouts rank tied for fifth in baseball. The people ahead of him all hit for power, but they also walk. Mark Bellhorn leads in K’s, and he’s another problem, but at least he takes a walk and has his deficiencies hidden by the top scoring team in baseball. Richie Sexson, Adam Dunn and Brad Wilkerson also take walks and have power. Patterson had 16 walks in half a season; Only three players in the top 40 in strikeouts have fewer walks than that. Alfonso Soriano, a well-documented hacker who manages to overcome it, and Dallas McPherson and Angel Berroa, who can’t. McPherson will eventually walk, I think. He is just a rookie. Patterson isn’t, though he hits like it.

Why do we harp on walks so much, or the ability to avoid strikeouts? Put the ball in play more and good things happen occasionally. Errors get made. Runners get moved up. You get on by fielder’s choice and you can steal a base, score a run. Strike out and you just walk back to the bench.

Patterson has been a Cub much of this decade. He was a regular player in 2002. By now he should be improving. But I don’t know if a stint in the minors will help. And we must point out that despite the nasty batting average, Patterson was on a pace to reach 21 home runs and 23 steals. As bad as things got, you know how many players are on a pace for those homers and steals? Four players in baseball that have as many as 12 steals have double digit home runs. I think you’ve heard of Bobby Abreu, Torii Hunter, Brian Roberts and Reggie Sanders.

• What would I do with Patterson? I’d leave him in the lineup and bat him sixth or seventh. Teams don’t need OBP freaks hitting there, they need guys to knock runs in because the middle of the order guys also get on base. Patterson had 33 at-bats in the seventh hole this year, and while it’s way too small a sample, he did hit five extra base hits in that time. As the leadoff hitter, he had seven extra base hits in 119 at-bats.

• Two other problems with Patterson: He wasn’t hitting lefties, an affliction quite a few lefty hitters have, and he wasn’t hitting well deep in the count. Neither of these are shocking, or easily solved. Patterson’s batting average when hitting the first pitch was .311. On 0-1 counts, he was hitting .452 with four home runs. The Cubs were trying to get him to be more patient, see more pitches, but instead of it resulting in walks, Patterson was just striking out. After an 0-1 count, he had 60 strikeouts and two walks, and a .190 average. For comparison, Hairston, after an 0-1 count, has a .271 average. Lee, by the way, hits .376 after an 0-1 count. He’s just in another world.

OK, let’s sum it up, because this is, after all, a fantasy blog, and you want to know the fantasy implications here. Well, this is all important information, really, and it goes to show that if Patterson slightly improves in certain areas, he’ll become more valuable to the Cubs, and in fantasy. I don’t know when Patterson will be back in the majors. Maybe the Cubs want to give him a wakeup call, like the Royals did with Berroa last season. Maybe the Cubs think he can straighten out his swing and be a bopper upon return. Maybe the Cubs are about to send Patterson to the Yankees for Tony Womack and a pitcher, who knows. Nothing would surprise me.

But Patterson cannot be forgotten by us. Last year he hit 24 home runs and stole 32 bases. Before the season I labeled six players as at least having some chance at reaching 30-30 this season. The list, in no particular order, was Patterson, Carlos Beltran, Bobby Abreu, Alfonso Soriano, Alex Rodriguez and Mike Cameron. A bunch of others could become that, but it would have been very surprising: Torii Hunter, Coco Crisp, Aaron Rowand and even Vladimir Guerrero. So Patterson belongs in an exclusive group.

You can’t drop him. (He’ll be back in the majors soon.) You can’t trade him. (Good luck getting even 20-20 value at this point.) You can’t cry. (Well, you can, but it won’t help.) You just have to be patient.

Other notes: Final weekend of the first half, and some teams might sit a few regulars to tack on extra rest. Next week I’ll discuss what you should be doing with your fantasy teams without nightly baseball. … Pittsburgh lefty Zach Duke sure looked composed in shutting down Philly. That might seem like no big deal, but the Phils do hit left-handed pitching. … Craig Wilson is hitting well on rehab, and should return in a week. Activate him, because he is streaky. … The San Francisco Chronicle reports the Red Sox will trade Jay Payton to Oakland for Chad Bradford soon. Fantasy meaning? Not much. Bradford wouldn’t figure into Boston’s closing situation, and Payton doesn’t hit much. It could mean a Mark Kotsay trade is imminent, though. Do you really think the Yankees will have someone named Melky manning center field in two weeks?

Eric Chavez has his average up to career levels. Adrian Beltre is almost there. Mike Lowell, are you still with us? … If you have Orlando Cabrera, give up. He will return, but hitting with his elbow problem and pending surgery isn’t going to be easy. He wasn’t a great hitter to start with. … Todd Helton sure looked good Thursday. Really, he’s not that far from hitting .300, and a 15-50 second half would do real well. … Jason Giambi has homered in three straight games. Now he is a definite add. I don’t think this is a Tino Martinez hide-and-seek hot streak, but Giambi clearly has fixed something. … Morgan Ensberg should homer every day this weekend and take over the ML lead to prove how silly it is that he’s not on the All-Star team. Sure, Jimmy Rollins plays shortstop. But he’s not having an All-Star year. For an inning, Ensberg would do fine at short late in the game.

The broken-down Dodgers have a Triple-A lineup and have to face Roger Clemens and Roy Oswalt. Start Brandon Backe on Sunday as well. This just isn’t fair. … Mets manager Willie Randolph told the New York Daily News he plans to sit Mike Piazza more in the second half. Great. Just what fantasy owners want to hear. You know, this might actually be good for fantasy; his average shouldn’t drop as far if he’s better rested. … Edwin Encarnacion is back in the minors, but the minute Joe Randa gets traded, he’ll be back. In NL only leagues, he could become a factor. … Chris Shelton plays his 20th game at first base on Saturday. Just a note for those where that matters, because you probably have him stuck at DH right now. He’s up to 24 RBI in as many starts.
posted: July 8, 2005 10:25:02 AM PDT | Feedback