The Cubs 6.5% walk rate prior to last night's games was the lowest in baseball (league average 8.1%). The following Cubs with 150 PA or more are or were above league average: Geovany Soto (9.6%), Luis Valbuena (9.8%), Ian Stewart (10.4%), David DeJesus (10.6%) and Bryan LaHair (11.2%). One of those players is now with the Texas Rangers. Another is …
Worst Cubs offense ever?
I was checking out Starlin Castro's disappointing offensive season on Fangraphs and thought I'd check to see where the Cubs rank offensively as a team. I didn't realize it had gotten so ugly. Their 77 wRC+ is dead last behind the Mariners at 81. The two offense's may actually be equal if we eliminated the pitcher in the NL, but …
Trey McNutt makes best of it
Saw this on my rss feed today about Trey McNutt. As in the abstract, McNutt is saying, this process is not exact. Unfortunately, Chicago's seventh-ranked prospect has been far from spot-on himself. Southern League batters are batting .266 against him, and he's posted a 55-to-39 strikeout-to-walk ratio unbefitting his powerful repertoire. After 17 starts, his last eight appearances have come out of …
Arodys Vizcaino plans to be ready by spring
Arodys Vizcaino is planning to be ready by spring training. On Tuesday, Vizcaino was at Petco Park to work out for pitching coach Chris Bosio and meet the staff. He won't make his Cubs debut this season, having undergone Tommy John surgery in March. Vizcaino will continue his rehab in Mesa, Ariz., at the Cubs complex. "I'm going to be …
Revisiting the Cubs offseason transactions
Since the Cubs changed management this past offseason I thought it might be fun to look back at the transactions and see how they've turned out so far. Keep in mind these are a final analysis. There's still much time left for some of these deals to look different than they currently do. I considered breaking this into parts, but …
Cubs trade Jeff Baker to Tigers for 2 PTBNL
The Cubs dealt away another veteran player on Sunday, sending utility man Jeff Baker to the Tigers for two players to be named. Baker has played mostly first base, second base and right field this year, batting .269 with a .753 OPS, four home runs and 20 RBIs in 54 games. The 31-year-old is a career .304 hitter against left-handed …
Let’s play “What if”
Starlin Castro has established himself at the big league level and he's going to get better. How much so? Who really knows, but even if he never got any better, he's still an above average shortstop currently making league minimum. Anthony Rizzo hasn't established himself as Castro has, but he's more than shown in his first couple months with the …
New Cub Christian Villanueva
The main piece aquired in the Ryan Dempster trade was 21 year old Christian Villanueva. Villanueva was signed as an international free agent out of Mexico by the Rangers in 2008 and just recently turned 21. He's played the entire season in High A. His first season in the US was in 2010 in the AZL. Over 210 plate appearances …
New Cub Kyle Hendricks
Minutes before the deadline yesterday the Cubs matched up with the Rangers for the second time in less than 24 hours as they traded Ryan Dempster. In the trade the Cubs acquired Kyle Hendricks and Christian Villanueva. MILB.com lists the 22 year old right handed Hendricks at 6'3", 190 lbs. He's been described as the throw-in, but he has very …
Theo on Dempster
Theo talked about Ryan Dempster a bit today. "Ryan never got the opportunity for more than an hour to fully contemplate Atlanta with a deal actually in place," Epstein said. "I feel for him. Instead of having time to contemplate it privately, he had everyone telling him what to do and asking questions about it. I think it's hard to …