The Cubs new closer, Kyuji Fujikawa has been placed on the 15-day DL. He has what they're calling a right forearm strain. "It can't get worse right now and being in an important role with the team if it's not helping the team and it's hurting them, it's better to make that decision," Fujikawa said through an interpreter. Fujikawa recently …
Cubs short list for 2013 MLB Draft
The 2013 MLB Draft gets under in under 2 months now. The draft is held June 6-8 and the Cubs have the 2nd pick in the draft. It appears the Cubs may have narrowed their choice down to 6 players according to cubs.com. The Cubs have narrowed the list of players they're looking at for the upcoming First-Year Player Draft …
Opening Day postgame thread – Cubs 3, Pirates 1
Cubs win! The Cubs took an early lead on a first inning home run by Anthony Rizzo that still hasn't landed. Combine that with eight strong innings by Jeff Samardzija (two hits, one walk, 9 strikeouts) and it's a recipe for a Cubs win. Carlos Marmol made the end of the game interesting by doing Carlos Marmol things at the …
PECOTA Percentiles are live
Baseball Prospectus has updated their player pages to show the PECOTA percentile forecasts. PECOTA percentiles are now available to subscribers. Those of you new to BP, or to PECOTA, might wonder why we publish percentiles in addition to the weighted-mean projections for players, which we’ve already released. The answer is that forecasting is an inexact science; the future is not …
Starlin Castro to bat 2nd
You know that news is rather light when you're writing about what you figured would happen all along: Starlin Castro will bat 2nd. If everybody lives up to their capabilities, hopefully we don't have to do anything [different]," Cubs manager Dale Sveum said Sunday of his projected lineup in which David DeJesus will lead off and be followed by Castro, …
Who Might Be Traded This Year?
A cursory glance at the Cubs' roster tells you a lot about the makeup of this team. They look be to a middling rotation, a middling bullpen, and a bottom-third offense. That's a good enough team to win 73-75 games (which would be a dozen or so win improvement); not the worst team in baseball, but not a good one …
How much is Jeff Samardzija worth?
With news that the Cubs have tried to extend Jeff Samardzija beyond his arbitration eligible seasons not once, but twice, I thought it might be a good idea to look into how much he's worth. Steamer projects 2.4 WAR and ZiPS projects 3.3. You can see these yourself on Fangraphs. Let's just split the difference and go with 2.9. Samardzija …
The Cubs Have Tried to Extend Jeff Samardzija Twice
John Heyman passes along a few nuggets today with respect to the Cubs' efforts to extend Jeff Samardzija. JefF7 is three years from free agency, and the Cubs have apparently made two distinct efforts to extend him, to no avail. The two are apparently far enough apart that talks are on hold. We have had some word about this previously, …
Random crap
I've had a very sore neck, back and shoulders for the last couple of weeks so I haven't written much over that time. It's still not 100% and I'm beginning to feel as though it never will be. But I am good enough that I can spread my infinite wisdom to our readers. You're welcome. Jeff Samardzija was named the …
Things Dale Sveum says
May as well make this a series. On Cubs.com now is a piece about Javier Baez and it has this money quote from Dale Sveum. MESA, Ariz. — Javier Baez found out in one day just how much he still has to learn. One of the Cubs' top prospects, Baez played in an early Wednesday "B" game against the Rangers …