:: ball talk ::

I find it enormously difficult to discuss what's going on in the Cubs' spring training camp, because, frankly, I haven't a clue. I spend a lot of my blogging time doing analysis of players, but I have trouble analyzing the performance of players so far this spring. Why?

1) sample size

2) visuals

The first is pretty self-evident. Todd Walker leads the club with about 30 plate appearances this spring, and I couldn't care less whether he's hit .450 with 5 home runs or has gone 2 for 30. I have a pretty good idea of what Walker's capable of, and I know that a ballplayer can perform in almost any way over a short stretch of time. If I find Walker's 30-plate-appearance to be uninteresting, you can imagine what weight I give David Kelton's 15 or so appearances.

The second point. I've seen exactly 1 1/2 games worth of Cubbie action so far this year. I taped the game that appeared on ESPN, and caught the last half of the Cubs-White Sox battle that appeared on MLB.tv. It is great to see the Cubs in these games, but virtually my only impression about a player's performance so far has been that I'm going to like LaTroy Hawkins in Cubbie blue. I also listen to the radio broadcasts, and while I'm a big fan of Ron Santo and Pat Hughes, Ron's commonly heard cries of "Ohhhh!" and "Yeah!" aren't particularly useful when I'm trying to visualize Jason Dubois at the plate.

I can look at the box scores and say that it seems like Todd Hollandsworth is hitting the ball well, and that Francis Beltran is getting creamed, but I'd like to see more of these players in action before deciding their quality. This may seem like blasphemy coming from a guy who likes his stats, but it shouldn't. I firmly believe that you can get a good impression of a player by looking at his numbers in a book. I also know that I'd still rather watch a baseball game than read about it.

Statistics don't replace our visual impressions of the game, but they do help ensure that we don't blindly believe what we see to be truth. Randall Simon looks like a tough out up there at the plate, making contact with balls over his head and under his shoes. But when we look at his stat line and see his .309 OBP, we realize that our eyes are lying -- he's one of the easier outs in the game.

Maybe I'm just hedging my bets. Maybe I don't want to feel stupid about getting so excited about a Maddux 8-k, 3-inning performance, or a Corey Patterson walk. But analysis or no, I'm still scraping for all the bits of Cubbie-dom I can find -- the Santo-isms, the always-delayed box scores, and the grainy spring video on my home PC. And while I may not be able to glean some greater truth from these scant impressions, they at least feed my hunger for the coming season.