Last Update (2/21/2013): Removed Tony Campana from the 40-man roster. Added Scott Hairston to the 40-man roster. Earlier this week the Cubs re-signed Shawn Camp to a 1-year, $1.35 million contract. They also made a series of moves in preparation of protecting players from next month's Rule 5 Draft. They added Logan Watkins to the roster along with Trey McNutt, Christian …
C'mon, What's Ol' Gil Gotta Do to Get a Bunch of Overpaid Players on the Cubs?
The Patience Plan that the Cubs are executing was first met with wide appeal when Theo and Jed first arrived on the scene about a year ago. They came in and stated quite clearly that they would be building from within, re-stocking the largely barren farm system they inherited from Jim Hendry, and any free agent signings in the near …
Have the Cubs Hit Rock Bottom Yet?
We all knew that the methods the Superfriends were employing to build up the overall strength of the entire Cubs organization was going to get ugly at the major league level. Theo and Jed came in and immediately started implementing a long term strategy, which in many cases, was very damaging to the short term quality of the team. We …
2013 Cubs Projections: CAIRO
SG has finished his first batch of his CAIRO projections. He includes just about everyone so I've reduced it to the players I think we might see this coming season. I'll update this post as updates are made. He usually releases several versions so consider this the early version. Name PA 2B 3B HR BB SO avg obp slg wOBA …
Cubs interested in Brandon McCarthy and Shaun Marcum
We first heard about the Cubs possible interest in Brandon McCarthy a couple days ago and Gordon Whittenmeyer is confirming the Cubs interest, as well as throwing another name out there: Shaun Marcum. With starting pitching the Cubs’ primary focus again this winter, they already have expressed interest in Athletics right-hander Brandon McCarthy, who was having a good season until …
Projecting the 2013 Cubs: Bill James
I enjoy looking at the projections for the upcoming season when they're released. Sometimes I enjoy it more than others. If the Cubs are going to be good I'm excited. When they aren't, not so much. This is one of those years. Despite that, Berselius and I have posted projections for the Cubs going back to 2007 so we'll do …
Cubs offseason begins now
The end of the World Series marked the start of the baseball offseason. We'll hear tons of rumors over the next few month, some of them may even have to do with the Cubs. Most of them won't and most of them will be nonsense, but it's still fun. In the past this time of the year was quite busy. …
Epstein, Bush, and the coaching staff
Theo Epstein talked Cubs a year after his hiring was official. One year ago, the Cubs had one player who projected as part of the core Epstein and Co. are trying to develop and that was shortstop Starlin Castro. Today, Epstein said there are at least half a dozen in the organization, including pitcher Jeff Samardzija, first baseman Anthony Rizzo, …
Arbitration salary projections for the Cubs
MLBTR has posted their salary projections for the Cubs arbittation eligible players. The projections are done by Matt Swartz who did a bunch of math and came up with a system to estimate the value that each arbitration eligible player would receieve. First time: Luis Valbuena ($900K), Jeff Samardzija ($2.9MM), James Russell ($900K) Second time: Chris Volstad ($3MM) Third time: …
The Top 20 Cubs performances in a 2012 game
I was curious which players had the best games in 2012 for this shitty team we follow. I used Win Probability Added (WPA) from Baseball Reference to compile the list. There's no reason to write more of an introduction than that so here they are. 20. Travis Wood, .395 WPA Despite Wood's up and down season, he ended up having …