Brett on Bleacher Nation has done a fantastic job rounding up the Theo rumors over the past week. It’s been one of the few sites I even bother to check for info. It’s something that would drive most people mad seeing as how conflicting the reports are. The only quibble I have with any of the reporting has been how …
Another shitty Cubs season in review: Alfonso Soriano
Alfonso Soriano hit 10 home runs and slugged .613 in April. Over the remaining five months he hit 16 home runs and slugged .435. Although he had a very good April, his OBP was only .278. It was only .292 the rest of the season and finished just below .290. Soriano has always been a guy who can carry a …
Offseason Roundtable, Part 1: The One Where We Discuss Z, Theo, and Cashner
Every now and again, we here at Obstructed View like to get together in a chat room and discuss our favorite Star Wars characters and how George Lucas is ruining them, but we also sometimes talk about baseball and the Cubs. In this portion of our latest discussion, we talked about Theo, Carlos Zambrano, and Andrew Cashner. mb21 : I …
Bill James Expected RBI and Apologizing For Shit You Shouldn't Have to Apologize For
I bought Solid Fool’s Gold by Bill James this morning and I always like writing about some of the things he discusses. Not everything he writes has a lot of practical value, but I find much of it entertaining and this was one of them. James found a way to estimate a player’s RBI. It’s surprisingly simple. Total Bases (TB) …
Evaluate GM Decisions At The Time They Are Made!
You’ve probably read similar articles elsewhere and are sure to read them in the future, but the Boston Globe took a look at Theo’s transactions and marked them as successes or failures. If you’ve been reading this site or ACB before it for any amount of time you know I have serious issues with how people classify transactions in that …
More on compensation for Theo
We’ve talked a bit about compensation for Theo Epstein here and it’s been discussed a lot all over the internet. I thought it would be interesting to compare what the Marlins gave up for Ozzie Guillen to what the Cubs might have to give up. The Marlins sent the White Sox as compensation for hiring Guillen Jhan Marinez and Osvaldo …
So John Henry Walks Into a Radio Station…
Apparently the Boston radio duo of Felger and Massarotti were doing their show on 98.5 FM when they got word that Boston owner, John Henry had come into the station and wanted to come on the radio to address “misinformation” that they had been spreading during this whole post-collapse implosion. It is a surreal interview that involves some refreshing candor, …
Compensation for Theo Epstein
Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe wrote that the compensation talks between the Red Sox and Cubs were set to begin soon. Apparently Ben Cherington has already been told he will be the new GM so Theo is gone from the Sox one way or another as I expected. There’s no take back here. While it’s been suggested here that …
Cubs next manager
The day we learned Jim Hendry was fired, I talked about how listing general manager candidates would be lazy. The reality at that time was that there wasn’t a general manager in baseball that wasn’t a candidate. The media now seems content to say that had the Red Sox not collapsed Theo would have stuck around, but that’s naive. The …
Theo is a Cub so what next?
When the reports of Theo Epstein signing with the Cubs began to trickle in this morning (or actually last night), I started thinking about what it means in the short-term for the Cubs. The truth is that I, and you, have literally no idea. I wrote this before reading Aisle 424’s most recent article so there may be some similarities. …