We've seen various reports throughout the offseason that the Cubs are interested in signing a right-handed set-up man.  Carrie Muskat talks about that again.

The Cubs are still looking for late-inning relief help, preferably right-handed. That said, they could open camp without adding anyone else and possibly make a deal during Spring Training. There were rumors the team was interested in free agent Kiko Calero, 35, but he missed time in 2008 because of a torn rotator cuff and was sidelined last season because of inflammation in his shoulder. Calero is looking for a two-year contract, and the Cubs are probably hesitant to do something like that considering his injuries. They do have in-house candidates to consider such as Angel Guzman, Michael Parisi, Justin Berg and Esmailin Caridad.

Harry Pavlidis covered Kiko Calero last month on Cubs F/X.  Calero's success is in part his ability to keep lefties from pulling the ball.  Between Heilman (who he'd replace) and Marmol, Calero is better than either by quite a bit at not allowing lefties to pull the ball.

Harry also covered the potential rookie bullpen candidates in this post.  Of that group, Jeff Gray's 95 mph 2-seam fastball stands out.  Atkins and Caridad throw the most pitches in the wide strikezone with John Gaub finishing last.  Harry thinks Caridad is ready to step up.

The Cubs signed Xavier Nady to platoon with Kosuke Fukudome in right field.  Fukudome only had 67 PA last year against lefties and that included a long stint on the DL for Reed Johnson as well as missed time throughout the season by Milton Bradley.  It's safe to say had either of them been able to take the field more often that Fukudome would have had even fewer PA vs lefties.  Lou hasn't specifically said that Nady and Fukudome will platoon, but I think it's fairly obvious.  We already took a look at the 2010 projections for Kosuke Fukudome and Xavier Nady, but knowing the two will platoon will have a big impact just as the platoon at 2nd base.

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These projections are going to be posted in a random order at this point.  So far we've covered all of the regular position players and 3 of the rookie bullpen arms.  You can always check out the projections for the players and the NL Central by clicking on the Projections link on the menu.

I decided to start with 2nd base because it's one of the two positions the Cubs will more than likely be employing a platoon.  I do think Jeff Baker will get a few weeks to win the everyday job, but in all likelihood the position becomes a platoon before the end of April.  I'm going to ignore that for a moment and pretend that Baker and Fontenot are platooned from the start and I'm also pretending it's a perfect world in which Baker never faces a right handed pitcher and Fontenot never faces a lefty.

Thanks to SG of Replacement Level Yankee Weblog, I'm able to calculate the split projection using the CAIRO system.  These can be considered the player's true talent level against righties and lefties.  I appreciate SG's help and I greatly appreciate all of his work in putting together the CAIRO projections and running a great Yankees blog.

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I missed this the other day, but RLYW has come out with an updated projected standings using version 3 of CAIRO.  You can check it out here.  These are still very early projections at this point.  The first look at the projected standings using CAIRO had the Cubs with 84 wins and in 3rd place behind the Cardinals and Reds.  SG mentioned that for some reason the sytem had Zambrano at 160 innings and Wells at only 100 innings so the adjustment improved their projected record by 2 wins.

One standard deviation in the projections is about 6 wins so the Cubs range of expected wins (1 SD) is 80-92.  The Cardinals are 84-97.  The Cardinals are undoubtedly the better team.  That's not news to anyone here, but it's way too early to write them off.  They'll need a little luck, but they can win the division.

Apparently, something happened this week. In addition to that, some Cubs bloggers got rather pissy. And things were said. About us.

So, without further ado, here is a picture of Erik Estrada:

QED

Rally has run the projected standings for the 2010 season using his CHONE projections.

1. Cardinals: 91-71
2. Brewers: 81-81
3. Reds: 81-81
4. Cubs 79-83
5. Pirates: 74-88
6. Astros: 73-89

Only the Yankees and Red Sox are projected to have more wins than the Cardinals.  Rally writes just a bit about the NL Central.

Thanks to resigning Matt Holliday, the St Louis Pujols should have a comfortable season in the NL central.  Most of the teams in that division don't spend enough money to compete.  Then there are the Cubs and Astros, who have spent on some real albatrosses.  I like the young talent in Cincinnati, but they probably aren't ready to challenge prince Albert just yet.

A 10 game advantage is better than the Cubs had in 2009.

Jeff Gray is probably unfamiliar to a lot of Cubs fans.  He's the guy they acquired in the Aaron Miles trade.  He just turned 28 years old and hads a little MLB experience.  Fangraphs has his fastball at nearly 95 mph last year and we know how much Lou loves the right handed flame-throwers.  Odds are pretty good we'll hear Lou rave about his fastball early in spring training.

According to Fangraphs, he threw that fastball about 73% of the time and most of the other pitches were sliders that averaged an impressive 86.6 mph.  He also throws a few curveballs and an occasional changeup.  I'm skeptical of Fangraphs' numbers so I checked out Harry Pavlidis' Cubs F/X page and since he's covered every pitcher on the planet, it was no surprise to see he had discussed Gray back in December.

Of the 8 rookie relief candidates HP looked at, Gray's 95 mph fastball was 2 mph better than Caridad's.  HP is much more accurate than Fangraphs and here's what he has for Gray.

Only 6 change-ups thrown, but 91 mph.  That's an indication of just how hard Gray can throw, but it's not a large enough difference to the fastball to be effective.  He throws both the 2-seamer and 4-seamer and he throws about twice as many sliders as curves.  Here's what HP has to say about Gray.

Gray was the key piece of the Jake Fox/Aaron Miles trade. He looks good, with one glaring issue. On the plus side, he gets a ton of ground balls with everything but his 4-seam fastball, which is intended to miss bats (.225 whiff) and get pop-ups (.10). His slider has a gaudy whiff rate of .417 and I have to admit I have a innate appreciation for 95 mph 2-seam fastballs. Problem: the curveball can't find the zone (.2 IWZ), but he uses it when ahead on lefties. Tends to give up pitcher's counts by throwing it for a ball. I'll have more on Gray in a separate piece, too much to go into here.

Gray did well in the American League and the NL Central shouldn't pose as many challenges. His chances for a job in April are as good, if not better, than anyone's in this group.

In my opinion, there is no one better at analyzing pitchers than HP is.  He hasn't yet covered him more in detail so I'm going to stop with this little introduction and wait for him to do it, because he'll do it better than me.

Mercurial Outfielder asked to see Gray's projections this morning and I always do what I'm told.  Initially I didn't think there would be many projections, but it turned out 5 of the systems had a projection for him.

That's only replacement level, but there is definitely reason to be optimistic.  Those home run numbers seem off to me.  He's given up more than his fair share at the MLB level, but the sample is very small.  He's a groundball pitcher who has kept the ball in the yard in the minors so I think we should expect to see fewer home runs than that.  Oddly enough, for a hard throwing righty, Gray doesn't get as many strikeouts as you'd think.  Larry Rothschild has coached a lot of strikeout pitchers in his day and it's one of the things he stresses to pitchers.  I'm optimistic that we'll see his K-rate increase a bit.

James and CAIRO's projections are for an AL team so that might be important here too, but I've made no adjustments for it.

We basically projected Gray to be the 7th reliever on the team and have him at 30 innings.  As I've said before, we will update these again.

We shouldn't expect much of a contribution from Gray, but that fastball and slider along with Rothschild might make him much better than he's projected.  There's certainly reason to think he will be.

We talk a lot around here about the value of the win.  For those not familiar, we mean the value of the win above replacement level (WAR).  Teams pay player for wins.  That's true for 99% of the signings anyway.  There is the occasional signing (Kosuke Fukudome) that will also consider the increase in television viewership, but for the overwhelming majority of players that's not the case.

While not all teams are willing to pay the same amount for the win, the average win value over the last few years has remained at around $4.4 million.  Prior to 2007 it was increasing by 10% each year.  The economy changed that and in fact, the players signed this offseason have signed for $3.56 million per win.

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Ok, this is a new series here that I'll be publishing over the next week or two.  I think it's fairly obvious that from the posts/comments on Thursday that this is about the beat reporters.  Some of you probably wonder why I'd even waste my time with something like this.  Well, I like to think I can take a look at something without bias.  After all, I criticize reporters for their bias all the time and while I have never attempted to argue I am not biased (I am), I'm going to start out with no opinions on any of the beat writers whatsoever.

I wan to compare their writing each day and highlight the best and worst parts of the articles.  I'm mostly doing this for my own good, but will force you to read it.  A Yeti mentioned something today about how ACB hasn't criticized other beat reporters that much.  That's not necessarily true.  We have spent plenty of time criticizing Whittenmeyer, Muskat and Miles.  It is true we've become more focused on Sullivan over the last year and I hope that's because he deserve it more than the others, but I want to find out.

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