The injuries are piling up for the Cubs. In the outfield, our centerfielder and unlikely three hitter is down with a BROKEN FACE, the $136 million dollar man’s legs are all but useless at this point, and even our scrappy reclamation project veteran is down with a bad back, presumably from lugging around a giant bag of awesome all by …
Soriano to miss some time and more weather blaming
No word on the MRI for Soriano, but he’s going to miss at least a few days. Blake DeWitt will start in LF in his absence and Paul Sullivan mentions Tyler Colvin and Brett Jackson as potential replacements if he’s out for awhile. You know how the Cubs have blamed the cold weather all season long? Yeah, now it’s the …
The Cubs Are Still In It!
Tim is right: 2011 is not the Cubs’ year. (see also: 1909-2010). But not everybody needs to think that way. There are two approaches to being a fan (probably more, but I’m concerning this argument about these two alone . . . unless I get so inspired to consider others; I doubt it): thinking like a player and thinking like …
Cubs Lose Game and Any Semblance of Being a Decent Team to the Pirates
Last year in an interview with Tom Ricketts, Al Yellon repeatedly asked Tom who owned the Cubs. He asked 3 or 4 different times in only marginally different ways who owned the Cubs and we all had a good laugh. I think we can all agree at this point, however, that we no longer need to ask who owns the …
The All Average wOBA hitters
I was looking on Fangraphs at Starlin Castro‘s stats this morning and couldn’t help but notice that his .357 wOBA was almost entirely batting average (.330). It doesn’t really matter how you accomplish it, but I started to wonder about the difference in wOBA and AVG. I was specifically interested in batters who had hit .300, which is what we …
Cashner to the bullpen when he returns
No decision has been made on what type of a role he will have long term with us. I will leave all of that up to Dr. Gryzlo and Dr. Yocum who are treating him for his shoulder injury. I will tell you that I think that if he is out for a while it is probably unrealistic to think …
These Cubs Are Not the 1997 Marlins
Dave Kaplan wrote a post on the CSN Chicago site where he poses the question: Will the Cubs follow Marlins’ blueprint? I clicked on it because I thought maybe, just maybe, he would have some information from speaking with Jim Hendry or Tom Ricketts or anyone within the Cubs organization that would indicate the Cubs were actually considering such a …
The Cubs just aren’t very good
About a quarter of the 2011 season is in the books and the Cubs have performed about as we expected overall. The pitching, particularly the rotation, has been worse than we thought. Part of that can be explained by the injury to Randy Wells who is an above average starting pitcher. The pitchers they’ve used to fill in for Wells, …
Random facts
Jose Bautista has more home runs than all these Cubs players combined: Geovany Soto, Koyie Hill, Jeff Baker, Darwin Barney, Blake DeWitt, Starlin Castro, Aramis Ramirez, Tony Campana, Reed Jonson, Kosuke Fukudome, Tyler Colvin, and Marlon Byrd. Bautista has 18 and those players have combined for 15. The following players have combined for one more walk than Jose Bautista has: …
Random Cubs Notes and Ramblings
The world won’t end today, but by the 5th inning of tonight’s game, you’ll wish it had. The Cubs aren’t just modeling themselves after the Red Sox, they’re four years ahead of the curve. They signed a speedy left fielder with diminishing potential to a gaudy longterm contract long before Theo Epstein made it fashionable. (h/t, of course, to Berselius) …