Not everything about the Cubs sucks completely

I don't write at length for myself very often these days (maybe 4 times in the past two years?) but I've got some time today so I decided to type up some observations from the most recent instance of something I do pretty much every day, which is look at Cubs stats.

The Cubs have one of the worst win-loss records in the major leagues, but they are actually pretty good at some things. The first baseman is hitting his way into the All-Star Game, and the starting pitching has been surprisingly, shockingly, delightfully good. It's the latter point I'll be writing a bit more about today.

Before Sunday, May 12, with about three dozen games in the books, Cubs starters as a staff were 6th in MLB in ERA. That's incredible. (Prefer FIP? They're 7th.) So how are they doing it?

First let's look at strikeouts. Of course, in the era of SABR, the strikeout has become king. That's because when hitters put the ball in play against you, they make outs roughly 70 percent of the time; when they strike out, it's closer to 100%. So are the Cubs getting Ks? The answer is yes -- they're 10th in K% (percent of batters faced that strike out).

But when I look at the Cubs' starting pitching performance, that's not what jumps out at me. Here's what I see:

1. They throw the fewest fastballs of any starting staff.

Seriously, if you believe Fangraphs' pitch classifications, they are 30th out of 30 teams. Part of that comes from the fact that Travis Wood and Scott Feldman each throw heat about 40% of the time, but then there's also good ol' Jeffy.

Jeff Samardzija's best pitch is his slider. I know this for two reasons. One, Fangraphs' pitch values suggests that it is true. Two, the Cubs front office appears to be altering Shark's approach based on what the data are suggesting. A guy that used to throw his heater nearly 70% of the time (2008-2009), then 60%, then 55%, is down to 47% fastballs thrown so far in 2013. What's he replacing the heat with? Sliders and cutters. Speaking of which.

2. The Cubs are 2nd in cut fastballs thrown, and 3rd in sliders thrown (as % of all pitches).

Point 2 follows pretty closely from point 1. Wood and Feldman each throw cutters about 30 percent of the time, and Shark is using his 13% of the time, his highest rate ever.

3. The Cubs are 28th in changeups thrown.

This ranking will fall even further if Carlos Villanueva is removed from the rotation for Garza, and I believe he will be. Charlie uses the change once every four pitches. Travis Wood will throw a few per game, and then that's basically it. Why so few changes? I think the Cubs prefer weak contact to swings and misses. Because:

4. The Cubs are fourth in GB%.

That's a lot of ground ball outs. Instead of playing the straight speed game (are FBs and CHs more vulnerable to the home run?), Cubs starters are using more moving stuff to prevent hitters from squaring up. Maybe the staff's exceptionally low BABIP is luck, or maybe it's because ground balls are scooped up more frequently than line drives? Or maybe I'm overinterpreting results.

Anyways, just some stuff I noticed.

Do like Jobs did, and, love computers?

It's a tough economy out there these days. It has been for quite some time.

For me, the most tangible realization of that fact comes from talking to my friends about the job market. I know lots of extremely talented, well-behaved, nice, and at least marginally ambitious people that are struggling to find full-time, well-paying work at any point along their desired career path.

I never met Steve Jobs, but he certainly seems to have had talent and ambition going for him. After news of his passing made its way around the wire, many folks chose to pay tribute to him by posting quotes of his to their various social media accounts. Some of them I saw most frequently were (paraphrased here):

Live life your way.

Take risks.

Do what you love.

I watched some of Mr. Jobs' most pivotal keynote presentations last night, I guess as a sort of remembrance on my part. There were several things about his pitches that struck me.

First, he was grateful for his opportunities in life, specifically those in his professional pursuits. There he was, ready to announce the debut of the iPhone, which he was pretty sure was going to revolutionize the mobile device marketplace (obviously it did). But within the first 30 seconds of his pitch, he acknowledged, "One's very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these," referring to the sorts of game-changing devices he was prepared to talk about that day. To me, the gratitude was genuine. Perhaps this is just part of how he became the greatest salesman of his time! But I tend to believe the former instead.

A year later, just before debuting the iPhone 3G, Mr. Jobs spent about a minute going over the various accolades already received by the iPhone from throughout the media over the previous year, until this: "That's all great," he said, "but the thing that makes us the happiest is that users love their iPhones." Again, this could easily be construed as a pitch aimed at winning over customers' emotions (in which case, I suppose, I was had). But when I watch that grainy three-year old video on YouTube, to me it looks like he really is happy about having created a product that people love.

It's hard to call a man who dies at the age of 56 in this century lucky, no matter how wealthy he lived to be. Money is often scarce, but by far the most finite resource in any of our lives is time, and there's no doubt that Mr. Jobs deserved more of that.

While he was healthy, though, Mr. Jobs had the good fortune of being given an opportunity to change the planet as an end result of his career. To me this is the most striking thing about his public image as CEO of an innovative company, and it's what I've been trying to get at with the quotes I attributed to him earlier: I truly believe his having gotten obscenely rich was a secondary achievement to his primary goal, which was literally to change the world.

It's often really, really difficult for young folks to pursue the things that make them happy. A recessionary economic environment makes that proposition even more challenging. But through Apple, and through Pixar — an animation studio! a bunch of guys drawing pictures! —  Mr. Jobs was, I think, able to do what he loved and be successful at it.

Maybe the lesson here is that everyone should convince themselves to really like computers, starting yesterday. But I don't think that's it.

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