Did the Cubs Win?

Yes.

(h/t Aisle424)

In Soviet Russia, Prospects Block You

Yesterday in the comments it was suggested that perhaps it’s time to send Mike Olt back to AAA and see whether he can sort some things out there. Uncle Dave pointed out that Olt is more or less blocked at both AAA and AA by better prospects, which is probably true. And pretty amusing.

San Diego GM Update

CBS’s Jon Heyman points out that a half-dozen candidates for the vacant general manager position in San Diego have removed themselves from consideration, including Cub scouting guru Jason Mcleod and interim GMs A.J. Hinch and Omar Minaya. It’s possible that these reported withdrawals were preemptive, and that the candidates weren’t really under serious consideration. If that is not the case, I find the whole thing to be shocking, frankly.

General Manager is more or less the pinnacle of achievement for aspiring front office types, and there are only 30 positions available. Moreover, the Padres’ vacancy is the first since 2011. How unattractive must the job be for even one candidate to turn it down out of hand?

LeBron James to Cleveland

Usually we steer clear of NBA happenings around these parts, but it seems that the NBA offseason has reached a climax, as LeBron announced his return to Cleveland yesterday. The fallout from the Decision pt II can’t possibly live up to it’s predecessor (unless you are from Cleveland, I suppose). My favorite part of the Talents —> South Beach incident was the ensuing public referendum on the Comic Sans font, which ultimately led to this quote from its creator coming to light:

If you love it, you don’t know much about typography. If you hate it, you really don’t know much about typography, either…

The move from Miami to Cleveland has instantly transformed the Cavs into the favorites to win the championship, which highlights just how different team-building is in the NBA as compared to MLB. (And thank goodness for that.) No one is all that surprised when the Angels end up sucking despite the presence of Mike Trout. Over at Fangraphs, Jeff Sullivan takes a stab at what a baseball version of LeBron would have to look like, and comes up with either:

…absolute peak Barry Bonds at the plate with, I don’t know, absolute peak Ozzie Smith in the field.

Or

…Micah Owings crossed with God.

Curiously, Mark DeRosa‘s name wasn’t mentioned.

Bulls

Meanwhile, it looks like the Bulls are going to miss out on their primary target in free agency yet again, as Carmelo is poised to return to the Knicks. The advanced stats movement in the NBA is pretty fascinating to me. For the longest time, Carmelo was viewed as a high volume, low efficiency scorer that may actually hurt his team. Two good years in New York, and suddenly he’s universally lauded. Now, it’s likely that he was underrated in his Denver days, and that most folks have come to a more nuanced understanding of the metrics. Still, I think that philosophically, baseball analysts would look on him with a lot more skepticism. 30 years old, a huge contract to fit under the cap, two good seasons after a host of only OK ones… perhaps we should up our offer for Kevin Love.

Of course, the Bulls have no offense, the alternative looks to be Ben Wallace Rip Hamilton Dwyane Wade Pau Gasol, and the team will likely have to give up assets to avoid a Carlos Boozer amnesty, so… yeah, it’s not great.