Bleacher Bums Forum

The thing about the Cubs' hitting is that it's feast or famine.  The hitters in the top half of the lineup--Castro, Fukudome, Barney, and Ramirez--are getting on base constantly.  They're not hitting for power, but their collective OBP has to be somewhere around .400.

Unfortunately, the bottom of the lineup is doing nothing outside of a few Soriano homers.  Pena and Soto aren't hitting for power, and their OBPs are well below where they need to be.  Soriano is hitting a bunch of homers, but his OBP is awful.  Colvin and Byrd are adding no value in any way.  Do the 5-8 hitters have a collective OBP over .300?  I'm kind of doubtful.

It's hard to score a lot of runs when you have so many guys who can't extend innings or knock the ball out of the ballpark.  When the top half of the lineup strings together 3 or 4 singles, they still only come away with 2 runs, tops.  And then you have 4 guys who are close to automatic outs.  It's just not a recipe for scoring often, which is why their run scoring is so far behind some of their other stats.

Ominous sign for the future, but there are only four teams in baseball with a worse run differential than the Cubs.

Nobody look at who is leading in run differential.

Cubs are 13th in the NL in RISP.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/batting/split/39/league/nl/sort/avg/order/true

And they lead the league in frustrating.

It's astounding how Pena is killing the offense.  His overall OPS is .492 with no HRs.  His OPS with runners in scoring position is .480.  Historically, he hits better in hot weather but in the meantime he has been brutal.

Historically (recent history) he has sucked.

I thought it was good risk to take, signing Pena for one year.  But it's increasingly looking like it is not going to work out well.  Maybe we'll all be wrong, but I doubt it.

This is one sloppy mess of a team Hendry has put together.