Over on Cubs Den (a really good blog), John talks about how the Cubs have quietly built depth to give them trade flexibility. I want to look at his bullets one by one because I just don't agree with the conclusion that John is reaching. John is attributing this depth to Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer too, which is another …
Worst Moves of the Epstein Era
Since opening day is here (well, not here, but somewhere), it seems like an appropriate time to catalog the numerous failures of the Cubs under The Epstein Regime. Sure, no actual games have been played, but it’s never too early to make like mb and don your three wolves tee and start excoriating optimistic chumps. After all, future blogging historians …
This is a year
A year ago today we joined together to start Obstructed View. We could write about our individual thoughts over the last year, but a blog is a community. We've published over 730 articles and there have been more than 85,000 comments left on them. Your participation makes this much more enjoyable for us. So thanks and we hope you keep …
Daily Facepalm 3.27.12
Practice Game Recap Paul Maholm had a good outing, striking out six over five innings and allowing no runs. Carlos Marmol also pitched a scoreless inning in his first outing since having an MRI on his neck for a hand problem. Castro drew his first walk of the spring. Is there a Cubs game today? The Cubs travel to the …
Burning Lesson
h/t Rice Cube
Why Won’t ESPN Leave Steve Bartman Alone?
It's March Madness and everyone is doing brackets. Lots of people are taking part in an office or family pool, and are all pissed off about the state of their actual NCAA brackets. Others are using this time to create their own versions of a tournament. The Cubs did their bunting tournament, Sarah Spain over at espnW put together a …
Daily Facepalm 3.26.12
Anything interesting happen over the weekend? Eh. Dempster was knocked around in a minor league game yesterday, but who knows if he was working on something. I missed yesterday's game, but apparently Joe Mather had a Johnsonian/Fuldian incredible catch in CF. Is there a Cubs game today? It's going on right now, apparently. The Cubs are playing the Padres. Len …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs: Backups
We've already published the projections for some of the backups along the way. Jeff Baker's was posted with the infield backups and the two possible back-up catchers were published in another article. Without commentary, the others are below. Projection Name PA H HR BB SO avg obp slg wOBA Guru Blake DeWitt 351 82 5 26 55 .256 .313 .376 …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs – Randy Wells
Somehow Jeff Samardzija has more upside than Randy Wells, despite the fact that Wells posted back to back 3 WAR seasons in 2009-2010 before last year's injury rattled season. Wells hit the DL the same day as Andrew Cashner last April, and when he came back in June he clearly wasn't the same pitcher. The Cubs had great need of …
Some thoughts on opening day starter and Brett Jackson
Dale Sveum decided to go with Ryan Dempster on opening day. There's little doubt that Matt Garza is the superior pitcher, but Dempster is still pretty good himself and it's not like Garza is awesome unless we look only at last season. Even if we do that, he only looks awesome when we look at his defense independent pitching stats. …