Midway through the 2009 season the Cubs acquired Jeff Baker from the Rockies in exchange for Al Alburquerque. Alburquerque striked out a lot of batters, but walked more than his fair share. He was 23 at the time and at best appeared to be a middle reliever. The Cubs acquired someone with potential who at the very least would be …
Chris Bosio to be Cubs pitching coach
Per Carrie Muskat, Chris Bosio will be the Cubs new pitching coach. The official announcement will be next week. Bosio pitched with the Mariners and Brewers, no-hitting the Red Sox in 1993. He retired in 1998 and has largely worked in pitching instruction since. He worked with the Mariners minor league organization as a pitching coach after retirement, and later …
How much is Pujols worth?
There’s a very big image attached below. I think it mostly explains itself. I apologize for the poor formatting, but I didn’t care too much to make it that neat. The image contains numerous ways to estimate 7, 8 and 9 year contracts for Albert Pujols. I stuck with a -.5 WAR aging curve. I began with 5.5 WAR, increased …
Linear Weights Primer
Here’s a great introduction to Linear Weights that is worth reading.
Cubs sign David DeJesus
The Cubs have signed right fielder David DeJesus to a 2-year contract with a third year club option. It’s reportedly a 2-year deal for $10 million. Not sure how much the club option year is worth. Before I move on, how would you even Quadify this guy’s name? Would it be Davey? DeJey? Jesusy? DeJesus played RF for 116 games …
2012 Cubs Oliver Projections, Part 2
We took a look at the Oliver projections for the Cubs hitters yesterday and realized how bad the offense currently is. The pitching projections are below: Name IP H HR K BB ERA FIP WAR Matt Garza 205 191 21 180 66 3.69 3.74 4 Ryan Dempster 205 207 23 183 78 4.36 4.01 2.4 Carlos Zambrano 200 198 19 …
2012 Cubs Oliver Projections, Part 1
The Hardball Times has released their Oliver projections for the 2012 season. Berselius will once again be writing the player comments. Like the other projections, I’ll break them into multiple parts and then as we move closer to the season add a third part for each one. It’s kind of useless to calculate the team WAR at this point considering …
Cubs in on Pujols and Fielder
Per Robothal, the Cubs are pursuing both Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder. Not surprisingly, his sources say that the Cubs would rather go long-term with Pujols than Fielder. That’s a no-brainer given the current peak that Pujols would be coming down from without even considering Fielder’s probable age curve. Still, I don’t think the Cubs will be interested in beating …
A comparison of two prospects
I’m going to compare two Cubs prospects who I’ll refer to as X and Z until the end. X turns 22 in March while Z turned 22 at the end of August. Both players just finished their age 21 season, but Z is older by several months. X played a majority of his age 21 season in AA while Z …
Wanna help on a Big Ten Blog?
wv23 who unfortunately shut down my favorite Cubs blog on the internet quite awhile back is running a Big Ten blog with another guy. I’ll quote wv23. hey all – mb21 has graciously offered to provide some Iowa coverage at our new Big Ten site, when he can. Thanks, mb. That said, we are in need of Illinois and Northwestern …