Friday Chat: Marlins at Cubs Game Thread

ACB Chat Room Time and place: 1:20 pm, Wrigley Field TV: FS-F, CSN, mlb.tv Gameday, Box ACCUSCORE Projection: 74% chance Cubs win CubsF/X Preview Berselius's Preview ACB Preview 2009 W-L: 14-8 2009 RS/RA: 112/105 2009 Pythag W: 10.9 Playoff Odds: 9.7% 2009 Avg Prj W: 73 2008 Actual W: 84 2008 PythagenPat W: 81 Avg Prj RS: 735 2008 RS: 770 Avg RA: 813 2008 RA: 767 Division %: 1% Wild Card %: 1% Playoff %: 2% High W: 76 (chone) Low W: 66 (zips) Gap: 10 Avg Div Plc: 4 Starting Pitcher: Graham Taylor: 0-1, 9.82 Taylor vs. Cubs hitters (N/A) Platoon Splits PA HR SO/BB vs RHB 1253 25 4.4 vs LHB 396 3 5.9 Balls in Play BABIP WHIP GB% LD% FB% IF/F HR/F 0.273 0.89 54.7 15.7 27.7 13.8 3.6 0.298 1.12 52.9 14.5 30.6 11.0 8.1 Pitch Type Plate Discipline THT Stats Graphs PitchF/X Cubs F/X WPA Play Log LINEUP not available yet 2009 W-L: 10-11 2009 RS/RA: 97/104 2009 Pythag W: 9.8 Playoff Odds: 56.3% 2009 Avg Prj W: 91 2008 Actual W: 97 2008 PythagenPat W: 99 Avg Prj RS: 815 2008 RS: 855 Avg RA: 713 2008 RA: 671 Division %: 66% Wild Card %: 9% Playoff %: 75% High W: 95 (zips) Low W: 88 (chone) Gap: 7 Avg Div Plc: 1 Starting Pitcher: Rich Harden: 2-1, 3.86 Harden vs. Marlins hitters AB H HR BB SO BA OBP SLG Cantu 9 1 0 1 3 .111 .200 .111 Amezaga 6 0 0 1 2 .000 .143 .000 Hermida 5 1 1 0 2 .200 .333 .800 Uggla 5 2 1 0 2 .400 .400 1.200 Platoon Splits PA HR SO/BB OPS vs RHB 1242 25 2.93 .592 vs LHB 1374 27 1.99 .664 Balls in Play GB/FB LD% GB% FB% IFFB% HR/FB 1.1 0.2 0.4 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.7 0.2 0.3 0.5 0.3 0.3 Pitch Type Plate Discipline THT Stats Graphs PitchF/X Cubs F/X WPA Play Log LINEUP Soriano, LF Theriot, SS Bradley, RF Lee, 1B Johnson, CF Soto, C Miles, 2B Fontenot, 3B Harden, P Friday, 1:20 pm @ Wrigley Field -- Graham Taylor, LHP (0-1, 9.82) vs. Rich Harden, RHP (2-1, 3.86) Graham Taylor links: ESPN • THT • Fangraphs • B-ref • Minor League Splits Taylor has made only one career start and it lasted only 3.2 innings. He allowed 4 hits and 4 runs while walking 6, hitting a batter and striking out only 2. There's not much we can know about only 3.2 innings. He has thrown 428.2 innings in the minor leagues and has posted an FIP of 3.50. He's walked 64 while striking out 301. He's held opponents to a .249 batting average (.293 BABIP). He's a groundball pitcher (53.3%). Only 14.8% of his minor league balls in play have been line drives so that's going to go up. 29.9% have been fly balls. His MLE is a 5.06 FIP. Fangraphs has his fastball in his only appearance at 84.2 mph and he threw it 68.4% of the time. He also threw a slider 16.8% of the time and a changeup 14.7% of the time. Take those with a grain of salt though. Taylor's pitchf/x page on Fangraphs has him throwing primarily changeups in his first start (56.7%). It has his fastball velocity at 85.5 mph. I won't bother to post his pitch frequency chart since there's only one start. FIP Projections CHONE: 5.43 Taylor is the 30th ranked Florida Marlins prospect by Baseball America. He was 29th in 2008. Here is the scouting report from the 2009 annual. 30 Graham Taylor, LHP Born: April 22, 1987. Baths and throws: Left. Ht: 6-3. Wt: 225. Drafted: Miami (Ohio), 2006 (10th round). Signed By: Matt Anderson. Taylor won't wow anyone with his raw reportoire, as evidenced by his $10,000 signing bonus out of Miami (Ohio), but it's hard to argue with the results. He has gone 28-16, 3.07 while pitching his way to Double-A by the end of his third pro season, posting a 4.9-1 strikeout-walk ratio. If the commissioner's office hadn't blocked the Cubs from including significant cash in a proposed trade that would have sent Jacque Jones to the Marlins in mid-2007, Taylor reportedly would have been sent to Chicago. He succeeds by mixing his pitches and pounding the strike zone. He has a sneaky 85-89 mph fastball with plus life, a big-breaking slurve and a changeup with good tailing action. When he gets on a roll, he's a groundball machine. Deception is part of his delivery, as Taylor hides the ball well and confuses hitters. He works fast, follows the gameplan and has strong mound presence. Conditioning has been an issue in the past, but he has worked hard to lose the bad-body tag. Taylor battled his command a bit after a late callup to Double-A in 2008, but he'll rturn there this season and the Marlins will keep pushing him up the ladder until he fails. MINOR LEAGUE TOTALS (prior to 2009): 28-16, 3.07, 404 IP, 386 H, 164 R, 138 ER, 29 HR, 60 BB, 296 K, .251 BAA. Rich Harden links: ESPN • THT • Fangraphs • B-ref Rich Harden is good at sports. He's going to give up lots of home runs, but he's also going to strikeout lots of batters. He throws only 2 pitches (fastball and a changeup) and can be ridiculously dominating when he's on. He's one of the top 3 or 4 pitchers in all of baseball and when he's at his best there is no pitcher in the game that is his equal. Harden has made 4 starts this year and has 3 quality starts to show for it, but no outing has been as dominating as some of the ones we saw from him last year. He pitched particularly bad in his start against the Rockies on April 15th as he lasted only 3 innings and allowed 5 hits and 4 earned runs including 4 walks and 8 strikeouts. He has walked 2 in each of the other 3 starts and has struck out a combined 35 batters in 21 innings of work. He's also allowed only 15 hits in that span. Harden's FIP is 4.39 and his x-FIP is 2.83. 25% of the fly balls he has allowed so far have left the yard. That will come down to about 10% or a bit below (8.3% in his career). He's also allowed 15.4% of the balls in play on the infield to be turned into hits. His BABIP is .292 so he hasn't been lucky or unlucky in that department. He has also stranded 84.2% of the runners he allowed on base, which is higher than his 75.3% career mark. He stranded 84.4% of the runners in 2008 between the A's and the Cubs and an even better 88.7% in 2007. Harden's fastball was down in his 3rd start of the year, but it returned to normal in his last start and the final 3 innings he averaged over 94 mph on his fastball, which was among the top 2 or 3 stretches he's had since pitchf/x began according to Harry Pavlidis. He has thrown his fastball 66.1% of the time this year and his changeup 33.9%. Average contact rate for pitches is 80.6% in 2009 and Harden's Contact% is 62.0%. Average swing rate is 44.5% in 2009 and Harden gets batters to swing 50.1% of the time. most impressively is that the out of zone swing% is 24.3% in 2009, but Harden's is at 33.0%. The guy is ridiculously tough to hit. Harden's pitch f/x page on fangraphs has him throwing some sliders too, but I'm pretty sure Harry would tell us that's an error. The frequency chart for Harden is below: The Marlins hitters have only 35 at-bats against Harden. Cantu is 1-9. FIP Projections CHONE: 3.17 Marcel: 3.44 ZiPS 2.47 Bill James: 3.34