i fell for cabrera too. he MUST be salvageable somehow. he's got such good stuff. how does one teach control, though?

how does one teach control, though?

Primarily via pitching mechanics, including finding a consistent delivery and release point from the windup and stretch positions for all pitches. Cabrera started the year trying to strike out everyone, which caused him to overthrow the more he got behind in the count. Owing to poor results, I believe he gradually lost confidence in himself and his problems now have to do with his head as much as his mechanics.

I totally got hosed on Cabrera also. I drafted him thinking he'd probably run an ERA around 4, but if I got lucky he'd break out and be my number two starter. Instead he's in the minors, David Wells is on the DL, and my rotation consists of Johan Santana, Joel Piniero and four starts by relievers every week.

And hey, the Reds are only 15.5 games up on the Pirates. A few more trades like the one they made last week, and your prediction might yet come true. I believe it is the Reds' goal to field a team made up entirely of Ryan Freel and 24 middle relievers.

I liked this column a lot primarily because I think it is essential that the sabermetric community (so much of which deals with prediction) closely scrutinize the accuracy of its forecasts.

Here's a couple more views the sabermetric community held before the season that have turned out to be wrong:

1) Alfonso Soriano. Everyone was looking at his road splits and his move to DC and thinking: disaster time. Well, he's slowed down as of late but will still probably crack 40 dingers. How did we miss this?

2) Rickie Weeks. Felix Hernandez. 'nuff said. Where did we go wrong here?

Anyone know?

Thanks, Nolan.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I missed on Soriano as well as those mentioned in my article. I wrongly figured his move from the AL to the NL and from a hitter friendly to a pitcher friendly ballpark would negatively affect his numbers. Instead, he is having a career year, walking and hitting HR at a greater pace than ever before. Kudos to Alfonso.

With respect to Weeks, I can't say I missed on him. I didn't forecast Rickie to take a big step forward this season. Others may have but I didn't. That doesn't mean I don't like Weeks because I do and, in fact, would not give up on him at all. We need to remember that he is only 23. Sure, Rickie's IsoP and BB/PA are both down from last year but his AVG and OBP aren't all that bad. He is a tremendous athlete and should improve over time.

Now, Felix has had an interesting season. Not nearly as good as his supporters (which you could call me one) anticipated but neither as bad as his detractors believe. His K/9 (and K/100P) and G/F ratios have remained outstanding and among the best in the majors. The SO and GB combo gives me confidence that Hernandez is still on course to become a great pitcher. His H/9 and HR/9 are much higher than last year, influenced by a decidedly worse BABIP (.335 vs. 258) and HR/FB (19.0% vs. 11.9%). I'm not saying the difference between last year and this year is simply a matter of bad breaks or luck--heck, I think he is making some mistakes and paying the price for them--but I am also not about to jump off the bandwagon either. I would be a lot more concerned about him if he didn't have such high strikeout and groundball rates. With time, I think the 20-year-old kid will be just fine.

I really bagged on Jacque Jones and Alfonso Soriano, they've both come back to bite me. My worst prediction the last few years was after the 2004 season, calling Odalis Perez "one of the wiser buys on the free agent starting pitching market." Yikes.

Similar to Cabrera, I knew a lot of people who boasted this would be the comeback year of Oliver Perez, the lefty who either led or was 2nd in the majors in K/9 in 2004. Ouch.

The Pittsburgh Pirates thing was botched by a lot of people. PECOTA had the Pirates down for finishing 3rd in the NL Central. Ha. Ha. Ha. I don't think it's happening.

Rich -

Any idea what the defensive efficiency numbers are on Seattle? Felix had another good-compenent/bad-result outing today and I'm starting to think that Seattle's defense must just be terrible.

Where can I find a zone rating on Betancourt and Lopez? Betancourt is reputed as being a good fielder, but Felix seems to be suffering from some systematic ball-in-play disadvantages...

Seattle's defensive effciency ratio (DER) was seventh best in the AL at .697 through 7/15/06 (vs. a league average of .693). The Mariners have allowed the fifth fewest number of errors and unearned runs in the AL. The team is fourth in the league in fielding runs (second best on groundballs and third worst on flyballs).

Betancourt is ninth out of 12 qualified SS in zone rating. He ranks sixth among AL SS in fielding Win Shares while Lopez is fifth in ZR and WS. FWIW, Beltre ranks third in ZR and sixth in fielding WS.

Put it all together and it seems as if it would be difficult to say that Hernandez has been a victim of poor defense.

Interestingly, I noticed that Felix is getting killed by left-handed batters this year. LHB are hitting .307/.362/.531 vs. Hernandez this year, whereas they hit just .182/.255/.243 against him last year. Thirteen of the 15 HR he has allowed have been to LHB (vs. one out of five last year). Teams are even stacking their lineups with lefties (54.5% of the AB in 2006 vs. 49.3% in 2005).

Given these splits, I'm beginning to wonder if his changeup--generally the out pitch of choice vs. LHB for RHP who have it in their arsenal--has been less effective this year. King Felix was purported to have one of the best changes in the game last year. This matter may be worth investigating further.

Interesting, interesting...Thanks for that - I didn't know that HBT kept Win Share stats. Cool.