bigfan wrote:
Just saw "MY CUBS GUY" and I asked for the off the radar news.
he gives me Junior Lake!
I am in no way jumping on the Junior Bandwagon! but my guy is telling me his eye is improved drastically, not that many more hits, but many more walks, many less K's and more SB's.
To kinda check and see if there is any UPPED projection on Jr. just saw the Bill James projection for Jr for 2015. (To be honest, I dont even have him on the team for sure!)
But James is dropping a .300 OBP...so nothing great, below average.
Just dropping the info, take it and run!
Your Cubs guy must read Bleacher Nation...here is what Brett had on Dec. 7 2014
"I’m not going to argue that a single offseason league should change your perspective on a player who may have otherwise looked lost in the big leagues, so don’t take this as that. But the caliber of competition in the Dominican Winter League ranges from upper minors to legit big league talent, so, if the sample size is large enough, you can take a little something away from it. That’s my preamble to noting just how good Junior Lake has been in the DR this year. He’s hitting .276/.421/.410, which gives him the 6th best OPS in the league. That .421 OBP is third best. (He’s a perfect 16 for 16 in stolen base attempts, for good measure.) To be sure, the guys around in in the stats tend to be fringe big leaguers, not unlike Lake, himself, and Lake put up an .843 OPS in the league last year. We saw how much that helped him in the bigs in 2014. But, the thing is, his performance is fundamentally different this year. In 2013, Lake’s OPS was built primarily on a huge BABIP and decent slugging – he took just 7 walks the entire DWL year. That was quintessential Lake, and was a summation of his raw talent … and questionable sustainability. This year? Lake’s hitting only .276 and he’s slugging only .410. But he’s walked 21(!) times for a walk rate higher than 16%(!). In the big leagues last year, Lake walked just 4.3% of the time. Walks are not uncommon in the DWL, but they have been for Lake until this year. (In case you’re wondering, Lake did walk a fair bit more in 2012 in the DWL, but the rate was still solidly under 10%.)
And then there’s this part, which is probably meaningless because of the sample size, but, following a demotion in August, Lake returned in September and had a walk rate near 20% to round out the year. Did he start working on some adjustments during the demotion, and he’s carrying them forward into the DWL? Is he trying to change his game from that of a slugger to a patient, walk-oriented hitter who takes advantage of his speed more than his power? We won’t know for sure for a while, and Lake’s strikeout rate remains enormous. But I’m suddenly far more intrigued to see what his approach looks like in Spring Training than I was a few months ago, when, I’ll be completely honest, I’d started to think he was done with the Cubs. The extreme change in his walk rate, over nearly 150 plate appearances between the DWL and September in the big leagues, is so profound that it’s hard not to take notice. You just don’t see guys go from 4/5% to 16/17% in a single year like that.
Can Lake win a job on the Cubs to open the season? Well, the answer to “can” is “of course.” But whether it actually happens will depend on a variety of factors, not all of which is within Lake’s control. Do the Cubs add a clear starter in the outfield? Are there injuries? Is there space to carry a project on the bench? Lake has an option left, so the Cubs may elect simply to send him to Iowa to start the year to see how his adjustments are playing there. It seems a lot less likely at this point that he’ll be dumped off of the 40-man roster for nothing."
_________________
Frank Coztansa wrote:
I don't waste my time with the Cubs.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
