Matt Garza and Gio Gonzalez are today's starting pitchers. Garza is trying to duplicate the season he had last year, which won't be easy. The Cubs will have their work cut out for them again today as Gonzalez is a pretty good pitcher. He's been worth more than 9 rWAR over the last 2 seasons. The Cubs stacked their lineup …
Cubs start season on left foot
Ryan Dempster threw 7.2 impressive innings today as the Cubs beat the Cubs. I imagine the Cubs will be beating themselves a lot this season so they're just getting us used to it right away. Dempster allowed only 2 hits, but 1 of those was a ball that Jeff Baker didn't feel like bending over to field. Baker, playing because …
Nationals at Cubs Chat
The games threads this year, for as long as we do them anyway, are going to be abbreviated compared to the past. Stephen Strasburg gets the ball for the Nationals and Ryan Dempster gets his 2nd consecutive opening day start. Let's hope it goes better than the last one. Opening Day hasn't gone well for Cubs starters since 2005. They've …
Random Opening Day Thoughts
This current roster couldn't even bring a smile to an easily excitable child. If you look at the lineup we'll see most frequently it's a little depressing. Darwin Barney. Bryan LaHair. Ian Stewart. Marlon Byrd. David DeJesus. Some of them have some value, but who is going to watch a game to see those guys in action? I'm a half …
A Real Game Tonight
The Cardinals begin defense of their championship tonight by helping the newly named Miami Marlins open their new stadium. Kyle Lohse gets the ball for the Cardinals while Josh Johnson goes for the Marlins. The Cardinals also play their first game in a decade without Albert Pujols on the roster. Despite that loss, the projections still expect the Cardinals to …
RLYW’s Annual Projections Blowout
For the last several years, SG from RLYW has run simulations for various projections. This year, the average for the Cubs is 71 wins, which is good for 5th place (1 win behind the Pirates). If you go to their home page you can find the various projected standings for each projections (clidk on the image to the right). The …
An Obstructed View Contest: Enter Now And Win Big
Over the course of the offseason we've published the various projections for players and have been calculating an average with them. One thing we like to talk about is whether or not a player is going to beat his projections, or underperform them. Over the course of the season we tend to say we thought whatever was happening at the …
How good is the Cubs rotation?
Player IP Matt Garza 193 Ryan Dempster 188 Paul Maholm 165 Chris Volstad 155 Jeff Samardzija 122 The Cubs opening day rotation is set with news that Randy Wells and Travis Wood have been optioned to AAA. That left Jeff Samardzija and Chris Volstad to join Ryan Dempster, Matt Garza and Paul Maholm. Using our playing time projections and the …
Other transformed Cubs
With Jeff Samardzija's "transformation" I thought it would be fun to find other Cubs player who have transformed this spring. Joe Mather: With a .412/.455/.745 batting line through today, he's established himself as a completely different ballplayer. We know this because he's had 55 plate appearances and that's absolutely enough to know whether or not a transformation has taken place. …
Wells and Wood optioned to minors, Clevenger over Castillo
I'd much rather have seen Randy Wells in the Chicago Cubs rotation, but rather than bullpenning him the Cubs have at least done the only other smart thing possible by optioning him to the minors. Good call on that even if it's the result of other poor decisions. I've been saying for awhile that Steve Clevenger is the better catcher …