Cubs unbeaten in Rich Harden Era
The Cubs beat up on the Reds tonight 7-3. Dempster was again spectacular allowing only 2 hits in 7 innings. He allowed 1 run (he walked 4 in one inning), but the Cubs took lots of walks against Harang and had a couple of sac flies to make it 2-0 early. Fontenot went deep to make it 4-0 and it was pretty much over at that point with the way Dempster was pitching.
The Cardinals won and the Brewers won so the Cubs remain 3.5 and 4.0 up, respectively. CC Sabathia made his Brewers debut tonight and went 6 innings, allowed 5 hits, walked 5 and allowed 3 runs (2 earned) and got the Win.
Earlier I calculated the WAR improvement for the Cubs like I did for Sabathia and the Brewers. I don’t feel like getting into that much, except to give you the numbers. I haven’t included Gaudin or taken out a starting pitcher, but I figure those 2 even out anyway.
If Harden continues to pitch as he has this season, the Cubs improve by 3.81 WAR. Using pre-season CHONE projections, Harden improves the Cubs by 1.73 WAR. For Sabathia it was 1.51 WAR if he continued to pitch as he has this season and 2.24 WAR if he pitched as CHONE projected. So Harden has a 2.08 WAR advantage over Sabathia using 2008 stats and Sabathia has a 0.51 WAR advantage over Harden using pre-season CHONE projections, which, to be honest, are out-dated. I could use the in-season ZIPs projection tool to get more accurate numbers and since Harden has been better it’s likely his projection would be better than Sabathia’s, but the long and short of it is that the Cubs, more than likely, improved more than the Brewers did.
Thanks to SS for the image of Rich Harden in a Cubs uniform.
