Ever since Aramis Ramirez remembered how to hit baseballs there has been increasing talk here and elsewhere about how his trade value suddenly jumped. Him hitting baseballs well again certainly did not hurt his value and did even increase it slightly, but we’re still talking two months for a guy who will make $4.9 million. His current ZiPS rest of …
2012 NL Central Champion Cubs, part 3
Wreckard took a look at how the 2007 Cubs improved compared to the 2006 team and what kind of improvements this current team would need to make for next year. In the first part of this series. we took a look at payroll and named several players the Cubs should keep if they plan to contend next season. The second part …
2012 NL Central Champion Cubs, part 2
In part 1 we found that there were currently 13 players on the Cubs roster that the Cubs want to keep assuming they try to contend next year, which they will. We left off talking briefly about Aramis Ramirez and the club option the Cubs hold for $16 million (or a $2 million buyout). Using Ramirez’s .354 rest of season …
2012 NL Central Champion Cubs, part 1
As much as I’ve written about the need to rebuild, it’s not going ot happen. The Cubs have some decent players on their roster and some you’d really like to get rid of. Since they’re planning on contending, we have to first figure out which of the current players on the roster are worth keeping around. To do that, we …
Bruce Levine’s 5 most likely to be traded, yo
Happy Breaking Bad Day … bitch! After xoomwaffle posted this link to Levine’s article earlier today I started writing something and then lost interest about a half sentence in. That’s been happening a lot lately. I started writing something yesterday and lost interest about 3 paragraphs in. A few days ago I began writing something where I was comparing Starlin …
A Tale of Two Sluggers
It was the worst of times, it was the best of times.They were the suckiest of sluggers, they were the strongest of sluggers. They couldn’t hit, they couldn’t be retired. This is the tale of two sluggers who gave us two quarter seasons of two extremes . . . that apparently made no difference. Aramis Ramirez and Carlos Pena began …
Mid-Season Good and Bad: Position Players
Last year over at Aisle 424, I decided that grading players on a scale of objectivity was ultimately dumb and subjective. But since it’s like a blog law that you have to do something like that at the All-Star break, I developed my Yin and Yang system wherein I say one good thing and one bad thing about every player. …
Some thoughts on the so-called team meetings
On Saturday Tim explained how silly the Cubs are, but I came to a much different conclusion than he did after reading the same thing. Let me start with just quoting some of the same things Tim did. General manager Jim Hendry and assistant GM Randy Bush will preside over the two days of meetings. Hendry’s objective will be to …
Aramis Ramirez is Due
With the news that Darwin Barney is now headed to the DL, I thought it would be “fun” to see if the Cubs could field an entire squad of players who have been on the DL this season. SS Darwin Barney 2B Jeff Baker C Geovany Soto 1B Alfonso Soriano LF Marlon Byrd RF Reed Johnson CF Brett Jackson SP …
Cubs swept by Astros, things about to get much worse
The Cubs just completed a 9-game home stand against the Mets, Pirates and Astros. The Cubs entered the home stand 5 games below .500 and it was concluding the easiest part of their schedule. The Cubs needed to make up ground during this home stand because even if they play well after, it’s unlikely they can improve their record all …