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Delayed Gratification, Or Why Haven’t the Cubs Spent Money Yet?

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube53 Comments

There are a million things we can probably rehash about the whole thing where Shohei Ohtani basically wasted everyone’s time, but aside from acknowledging that the most consequential free agent in MLB history was the rate-limiting reagent for the offseason reaction here, let’s not do that rehash and instead figure out what the Cubs are doing (or not doing). Of …

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The “Deferred Spending” Plan

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube68 Comments

We’ve gotten to the part of the Winter Meetings where some news (like, actual maybe sort of legitimate news) might be finally leaking out and making the various beat folks confident enough to say that the Cubs are likely out on Shohei Ohtani (who’s probably going to be a Dodger but let’s wait and see) and Juan Soto (who looks …

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Don’t give up. Or do, I can’t tell you what to do.

In Commentary And Analysis, Major League Baseball, Playoffs by andcounting72 Comments

The Cubs are as on the brink of elimination as they can be. That the E hasn’t been posted next to their name in the Wild Card standings entering the penultimate game of the season is bittersweet. This officially official do-or-die moment comes at an earlier point than I could have imagined three weeks ago yet much later than I …

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The Critical Stretch

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube15 Comments

Well well, folks, another set of series that were not lost! At 69-61 (nice), I believe this is the first time all season the Cubs have been eight games over the mythical .500 mark. I’m looking at the breakdown and it would seem that other than that abysmal month of May, which somewhat coincidentally was when Cody Bellinger went on …

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The Season Does Not End Today

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube53 Comments

The Cubs enter this week having won a hard-fought series against the literal best team in baseball. They also did, once upon a time, win another series against the current best team in the American League as well. They also lost a bunch of winnable series but at this point, if you look at the breakdown, the only bad month …

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Fun Cubs Facts After the Reds Series

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube141 Comments

That was a fun series. Here’s some silly facts after the Cubs significantly improved their run differential. Somehow, those 150 runs represents the most in the National League or maybe even the majors, I forgot which, but it’s a lot. Beating the hell out of the team that used to lead the division up until you beat the snot out …

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The Final Countdown (UPDATES)

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube143 Comments

I think we would all have liked the Cubs to sweep the Cardinals, but sweeps are hard no matter the team, and winning the season series while basically forcing the other guys to sell off all their good players is fun too. But it hasn’t been just the bad teams that the Cubs have done well against, as I remarked …

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Tales of Triumph and Regret

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube229 Comments

I started thinking about this even before the Cubs laid a goose egg against the Cleveland Baseball Club the other night. I don’t actually recall the last time a club with a losing record, including the Cubs, had multiple All-Stars, but even though I’m not sharing tweets in case Elon Musk forgot to pay his server bill again, we heard …

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Division or Bust

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube99 Comments

Given the lull between games as the Cubs traveled to London and have to do their whole tour and marketing thing before the weekend games, there isn’t much in the way of Cubs news especially since they aren’t getting any players in the next round of All-Star voting anyway. We talked a wee bit about London and All-Star stuff on …