Baseball Prospectus has an interesting free article today that covers a subject dear and true to Cubs' fans: Wendell Kim. The premise of the piece is to see what teams do the worst job of making poor decisions about trying to advance an extra base on a hit. Is "Wavin' Wendell", as he's known, one of the culprits, and do the Cubs undermine good work by getting thrown out stretching singles into doubles, or making a hell-or-high water leap towards home plate?
Sadly, the answers appear to be "yes" and "yes". The Cubs were one of the worst teams at getting thrown out on the bases last year, and the vast majority of those errors happened at third and home. Mr. Kim, charged like a battery behind third, was most decidedly not doing a good job of judging when or when not to hold the runners.
I especially like the following bit from the article:
The Cubs had a whopping five runners thrown out at the plate with none out last year. For comparison, almost half the teams in MLB (14 of 30) had none, and 10 others had just one. In one game in Baltimore, Kim sent two separate runners to be thrown out by a mile with none out--the fleet-footed Alex Gonzalez and the speedy Eric Karros, no less. We've heard of taking calculated risks, but that's like playing Russian roulette. With all six chambers loaded.
Wendell Kim seems like a happy lil' guy, and its fun to watch him leap out of the way of line drives hit in his vicinity. But it sure would be nice to see him try to acquire a different nickname this year. I'm not especially optimistic -- "Good-Judgement Wendell" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
