"At the end of the day, boys, you don't tell me how rough the water is, you bring in the ship." – Steve Stone
A Goat Riders Affiliate
Go Cubs!

Wrigley Rooftop Directory
Ryne Sandberg Fan Page
The Cubdom Photo Gallery
The Cubs Prayer
Cubs Calendar
Jim Hendry Page
Cubs Ownership History
Baseball Business Essays
TheCubdom Hall of Cubs


Recent Blog Updates

Editor's Pick:

Goat Riders of the Apocalypse
Bleed Cubbie Blue
Desipio Media Ventures
Hire Jim Essian!
Cub Reporter
Ivy Chat
Cub Town
Ghost of Paul Noce
The Cubdom
Thunder Matt's Saloon
View From the Bleachers
Cubby-Blue
WGN-TV Baseball Blog

Honorable Mention:

A Hundred Next Years
A League of Her Own
Agony and Ivy
Bad News Cubs
Baseball Diamond News
Boys of Spring
Bush League Times
Chicago Cubs Baseball
Chicago Cubs Blog
Chicago Cubs Online
Church of Baseball
Clark & Addison blog
College of Idiots
Cubs f/x
Cubs Hot Stove
Cubs Hub
CubsNet.com
Cubs Obsession
Five Outs to go
Gonfalon Cubs
Kosuke Fukodome
Lollygaggers
Out of Right Field
The Cubs Brickyard
The Other Fifteen
The Ted Lilly Fan Club
Temporary Bleachers
TheCubsfan.com
Wrigleyville23

Newbies:

Cubbie Nation
Holy Cow Bell
Ivy Envy
Towel Drills
Turning Two
Wasting away in Wrigleyville

Soldiering On:

Die-hard Cubs Fun
Fire Dusty Baker
Northside Lounge
Peoria Northsider Report
Yarbage Cub Review

Cubs Sites:

Desipio Boards
North Side Baseball
Cubscast.com
Inside the Ivy
The Heckler
My Wrigleyville

Just Read 'em!

Baseball Analysts
Baseball Musings
Baseball Prospectus
Baseball Think Factory
Hardball Times

Conglomerates

Baseball Toaster
Most Valuable Network
SportsBlog Nation

NL Central

Brew Crew Ball MIL
Bucs Dugout PIT
Crawfish Boxes HOU
Get Up Baby STL
Honest Wagner PIT
Red Hot Mama CIN
Red Reporter CIN
Viva El Birdos STL

NL East

Amazin Avenue NYM
Citizens Blog PHI
Federal Baseball WAS
Fish Stripes FLA
The Good Phight PHI
Sabernomics ATL

NL West

6-4-2 LAD, LAA
AZ Snake Pit AZ
Dodger Thoughts LAD
Ducksnorts SD
Gas Lamp Ball SD
McCovey Chronicles SF
Only Baseball Matters SF
Purple Row COL

AL East

Batters Box TOR
Bronx Banter NYY
Camden Chat BAL
DRays Bay TB
Futility Infielder NYY
Joy of Sox BOS
Over the Monster BOS
Pinstripe Alley NYY
Replacement Level Yankees Weblog NYY

AL Central

Aaron's Baseball Blog MIN
Bless You Boys DET
Let's Go Tribe CLE
Royals Review KC
South Side Sox CHW
Sox Machine CHW
Tiger Blog DET
Twins Geek MIN

AL West

Athletics Nation OAK
Halo's Heaven LAA
Lone Star Ball TEX
Lookout Landing SEA
USS Mariner SEA

Miscellany

Beyond the Boxscore
Minor League Ball

Chicago Sports

Blog-A-Bull
Section 8 Fire
Windy City Gridiron Bears

News Sources

Chicagosports.com
Cubs.com
MLB.com
Sun-Times Cubs
Daily Herald Sports
Daily Southtown Sports
BaseballReference.com

The fallacy of lost home runs

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

How many times have you heard that the Cubs 'lost' 74 home runs over the offseason? If I were Antonio Alfonseca, I would have run out of fingers and toes to count on a long time ago, even with the 20% bonus.

Player Name "Lost" Home Runs
Moises Alou 39
Sammy Sosa 35
Mark Grudzielanek 6
Ramon Martinez 3
Alex Gonzalez 3
Rey Ordonez 1
Paul Bako 1
Damian Jackson 1
Total 89

Well, somebody had the audacity to mention this "fact" to me again yesterday, and I'm tired of hearing about it. For one, its completely stupid from a mathematical viewpoint, and second, it assumes that Moises Alou and Sammy Sosa, a year older, would have continued at the same pace as they played last year.

Let's first look at the 74 in the above offending statement. 74 = 35 + 39 = # of home runs hit by Sammy and Moises. But what about Mark Grudzielanek, Alex Gonzalez, Ramon Martinez, et al? Looking at the table at right, we see a listing of all the players who hit a home run for the Cubs in 2004 that are no longer on the roster. So, if we are going to define "lost" home runs as dingers hit by players no longer on the team, then the Cubs "lost" 89 round-trippers over the offseason.

But, any fair representation of the decline in power the Cubs suffered due to roster changes ought to include the number of home runs hit last year by players who are now on the roster this year.

Over the offseason, Jim Hendry was pretty quiet in the free agent market. Instead, he chose to bring back several players who had served partial stints with the Cubs last year (Nomar, Neifi, Ben Grieve, etc.) He also decided to go with some farm hands, such as Jason Dubois. All of these players are excluded from the list of "found home runs."

Player Name "Found" Home Runs
Jeromy Burnitz 37
Henry Blanco 10
Jerry Hairston Jr. 2
Total 49

In fact, Hendry only added three position players who did not play for the Cubs last year: Jeromy Burnitz, Henry Blanco, and Jerry Hairston Jr. These three players combined for 49 home runs in 2004.

Therefore, a fair statement would be this: Due to roster changes, the Cubs current roster hit 40 fewer home runs in 2004 than the team actually did in 2004.

However, even this interpretation is inherently false. For instance, Jason Dubois hit 1 home run in 23 at-bats during his September call-up. Although he's been relegated to the bench for much of 2005, Dubois has already hit 4 home runs in only 35 at-bats. Its quite possible that Dubois could end up hitting about 20 home runs this year.

So, to wind up, the Cubs did not lose 74 home runs in the offseason. They "lost" 40. Secondly, you can expect certain players to hit more home runs in 2005 than they did in 2004... and some players will hit fewer. In my opinion, the Cubs will probably hit about 20 fewer dingers in 2005 than they did in 2004... but 20 is a far cry from 74, 89, or even 40.

Posted by Byron at May 11, 2005 1:04 PM | Bookmark and Share | BallHype: hype it up!
Subscribe to The Cubdom - get emails with the latest Cubs info and pictures

This post has been tagged:

2 Comments

Personally, I don't care if we lost 400 home runs. Sosa and Alou were negative players who made me ashamed of being a Cubs fan. I would rather have a mediocre team but have fun playing then a "successful" team that's always bellyaching.

Well, I think you got your mediocre team. Personally I don't find them much more fun to watch, but I think that has something to do with all the losing.

That being said, I don't miss either player. I think, what with the steriod testing and all, the number of homers would be down anyway, so we don't need those extra 40 homers.

wait a minute...


AddThis Feed Button

Get The Cubdom email updates


Search

Google
Web
TheCubdom.com

eXTReMe Tracker
Since Mar 18, 2004

Recent Entries


Monthly Archives



Cubs Sale Articles

© 2004 – 2015 Byron Clarke
legal - about thecubdom.com - site index