Dave Allen has a good piece up on Fangraphs looking at the races in the AL and NL since 1995 and how different they’d have been if it was instead two 15-team leagues as suggested recently. I wanted to look at this in a slightly different, but also less thorough way than Allen did. I wanted to see how many …
Improving stats shown prior to at-bats
Tango brings up an interesting point. Why show the number of RBI when a player comes to bat when there’s nobody on base? I’ve always wondered why they show the same damn thing each time the batter comes up, but he makes a better point. The stats they show when the batter comes to bat can be much improved. Here …
Trade Value: Kosuke Fukudome
In Soto’s trade value piece I mentioned how inconsistent he has been in his career, but that’s nothing compared to Fukudome. Below is an image of his AVG/OBP/SLG/wOBA by month in his Cubs career. If you’d rather see the numbers, here they are. Month AVG OBP SLG wOBA 4/1/08 .327 .436 .480 .399 5/1/08 .293 .388 .404 .351 6/1/08 .264 …
Even Phil Rogers is sometimes right
Phil Rogers wonders how much longer Jim Hendry and Crane Kenney will be employed by the Cubs in his most recent article. In baseball, you usually can see the end coming, whether it’s for a player, manager or executive. It was a relief for almost everyone, not a surprise, when Lou Piniella opted to resign last August. His team was …
2011 MLB Draft: Rundown
Carrie Muskat has an article up about a few of the players the Cubs drafted that’s worth reading. A couple of things caught my attention. Cubs scouting director Tim Wilken said they did take more high school players than in the past and did so with Cubs chairman Tom Rickett’s endorsement. Ricketts was in Mesa, Ariz., at the team’s Draft …
Trade Value: Geovany Soto
The Cubs are done so there’s no more pretending they have a chance. They don’t. I don’t expect the Cubs front office or the players to give up. Not sure I really want them to at this point. It’s still early and there’s plenty of time to let the trade market develop. No need rushing into any trades. But that …
2011 MLB Draft: Day Two ***updated***
Rounds 2 through 30 will begin today at 11 am central. The best players still available according to Baseball America rankings include Josh Bell who was the 15th ranked draft prospect. From a talent basis, outfielder Josh Bell and lefthander Daniel Norris are both first-round talents. But their asking price ensured that they are the two highest-rated players left undrafted …
Cubs pick Javier Baez in first round (video)
Through 8 picks, no team had taken a player ranked under 9th according to Baseball America’s rankings. The Cubs then picked the 18th ranked Javier Baez. (click the link below to read more)
2011 MLB Draft: Day One
The MLB Draft begins at 6 pm central and is televised on MLB Network and probably on mlb.com as well. Baseball America’s final mock draft has the Cubs taking Bubba Starling. A few weeks ago I thought that absurd, but based on every scouting report I’ve read the Cubs would be lucky to get him. If you don’t have a …
Cubs to expand into new, untapped talent pool in tonight’s draft
Fresh off the Cubs fruitful forays into scouting and signing players in baseball powerhouses like Korea, Morocco, Mongolia, and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, the Cubs will further advance their reputation of being on the cutting edge of emerging talent markets. They didn’t need to travel far to find it – just think of how embarrassed all of the other …