Following the announced agreement that the maximum bid for a posted Japanase player would be $20 million, it made it less likely that Masahiro Tanaka would be posted. According to this, the team president has said he will not be posted (h/t to RC). Rakuten was the lone NPB team to vote against the agreement and were said to be very angry …
Winter Meetings Roundup
The annual Winter Meetings took place this week and we had you covered here on Obstructed View we were lazy bastards and kept you uninformed. I'd apologize for this. It is the first of the meetings that I have not covered thoroughly in 10 years. I'm just tired of apologizing so let's just get to it. The biggest news is that …
Is there any coal in the Cubs hot stove?
This is a guest post by SVB. Both Myles and dmick have noted some constraints in their ability to write recently, so I’m writing in an attempt to give Myles and dmick a break, as well as to prevent another unloadable 200+ comment thread from developing. Don’t worry, I won’t become the Jay Leno (or even the David Brenner) of …
Cubs re-sign Darnell McDonald, non-tender Daniel Bard
The Cubs re-signed Darnell McDonald to a minor league contract on the non-tender deadline. #Cubs re-sign OF Darnell McDonald to minor league deal. Career .285/.353/.453 vs big league LHPs. Played 25 G for Chicago in 2013. — Matt Eddy (@MattEddyBA) December 2, 2013 This removes McDonald from the 40-man roster and is essentially the Cubs non-tendering him and re-signing him. …
Non-tender deadline is today
The Cubs have 11 arbitration eligible players and today they have to decide which ones to tender a contract to. Those 11, and their projected salaries (Matt Swartz) are below. The service time for each player is in parentheses. Jeff Samardzija (4.028): $4.9MM Nate Schierholtz (5.078): $3.8MM Travis Wood (3.004): $3.6MM Darwin Barney (3.053): $2.1MM Daniel Bard (3.079): $1.8625MM James …
2014 Cubs Projections: CAIRO
SG has released version 0.1 of his annual project, CAIRO, to the public. Now it's time to post some of the Cubs players here and talk about a few things. First, this is version 0.1 and there are still some errors. Mike Olt is listed as a 1st baseman. He's not, but that will get fixed. Due to this, I have …
2014 Cubs Projections: Bill James ***UPDATED***
The 2014 Cubs Projections are available now in the Bill James Handbook, or online. I thought I'd post them here and discuss a few things. First, the BJ projections tend to use a higher league average so please consider that when viewing the projections. In fact, please consider the league average of each projection system when you're looking at projections. …
Masahiro Tanaka Stats and Scouting Report, Why the Cubs are Interested
Masahiro Tanaka is among the leaders in who the OV crowd predicts the Cubs will sign and not too surprisingly, we've already learned they are interested. According to Phil Rogers, Tanaka will be the Cubs top priority this offseason. There's good reason for that, but I wanted to compare him to some other Japanese pitchers, as well as taking a …
Minor League Roundtable Part 1: The Top 4 Prospects/Trading Assets/Playing SS
This is the first of a many-part roundtable between sitrick, dmick, and myself. We touch on many minor league topics (so many, in fact, that we still haven't finished the roundtable!), the first of which is presented today. Myles: I'm here. What would you like to discuss first? dmick: Our Top 4s? Javier Baez, Kris Bryant, Jorge Soler and either Albert Almora …
Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (66-93) at St. Louis Cardinals (94-65)
As long and tedious as this disappointing season has been, I'm still kind of surprised that it's now ending. Given that I haven't written a post in over a month (other than a quick aside about Marvin Miller's legacy on Labor Day), it's safe to say that I haven't been paying much attention to watching the Cubs circle the drain. I …