Rampaging Bears

Stat of the day: the Cubs are batting .272/.480/.327 since the All-Star Break. Of course, a .480 team slugging percentage for a full season would be most impressive by historical standards. For the starting lineup, the numbers are even more impressive:

PLAYER G AB H 2B 3B HR R RBI BB AVG SLG OBP
Michael Barrett 53 177 56 16 3 6 25 21 12 .316 .542 .361
Derrek Lee 65 252 68 19 0 10 44 47 25 .270 .536 .338
Mark Grudzielanek 55 174 54 10 1 4 21 16 8 .310 .448 .342
Nomar Garciaparra 33 127 38 10 0 4 21 16 9 .299 .472 .353
Aramis Ramirez 56 201 62 9 0 19 35 44 18 .308 .637 .363
Sammy Sosa 61 238 56 7 0 17 33 37 18 .235 .479 .295
Corey Patterson 63 264 74 17 0 13 43 33 16 .280 .492 .329
Moises Alou 63 230 70 17 2 18 48 49 34 .304 .630 .388
Starting 8 65 1663 478 96 6 100 270 263 140 .287 .533 .343

Once again, the Cubs have a team that’s long on home runs and short on patience. But when you’ve got this kind of wall-to-wall power, it hardly matters. While Mark Prior, Kerry Wood and Matt Clement have struggled, it’s been the less-vaunted Cubbie offense – even adjusting for the fact that it’s been a good hitters’ year at Wrigley – that’s carried the load as the Cubs stay in the wild-card hunt down the stretch run. And while Nomar and Sammy may be the biggest names here, they haven’t been particularly close to the biggest bats, as Moises Alou, Aramis Ramirez and the long-awaited breakout of Michael Barrett have made a much bigger impact.

3 thoughts on “Rampaging Bears”

  1. But they’re still the cubs (not worthy of a capitalization). They’l find a way to fail. But then I’m an Astros fan, and we tend to find a way to fail as well.

  2. I know Dusty cannot do it, because he’s “a player’s manager”, but the Cubs should not re-sign Sosa. Spend his $100,000 per game somewhere else, like signing a center fielder that can actually play 162 games without going 0 for a whole damn week in the September stretch run.
    The relief pitching will take the hit for today’s loss, but Sosa’s LOB percentage is higher than his slugging.

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