The Yankees head to town this week, fittingly the week after the Cubs did their Babe Ruth called shot giveaway. Nice work on that one, Cubs marketing department. The Yankees are missing a lot of key players to injury, not surprising given the age of the team. Carlos Beltran went down last week with a bone spur in his elbow …
Series Preview: Milwaukee Brewers (26-15) at Chicago Cubs (13-26)
The Brewers have cooled off a bit relative to their hot start to the season, ‘merely’ going .500 over their last 10 games. They’re down a few offensive weapons, with Aramis Rodrigo on the DL due to a hamstring injury and Carlos Gomez serving his suspension from last month’s brawl to take a few days to recover from some back …
Series Preview: Cubes (12-21) at Barves (18-15)
Atlanta has been having trouble scoring runs this year, and is currently on a 2-8 skid that included sweeps by the Marlins and Giants. To get an idea of how awful the Braves offense has been, they have score 24 runs fewer than the mighty Cubs offense. Ouch. We could see less than 15 total runs scored this entire series. They’ve managed …
Series Preview: Chicago White Sox (15-17) vs Chicago Cubs (11-18)
As far as I can tell, the Crosstown Cup no longer has BP as a sponsor. Fear not, I’m sure we’ll find out tonight that the Cubs sold the naming rights to Donald Sterling two weeks ago. As awful as the Cubs have been this year, they only have a -6 run differential. The Phillies actually have a worse one …
Cubs Report Card
The season is 1/7th over. Since we essentially are at the end of April, I thought it’d be a good time to go down the roster and assign grades to everyone. I’ll put a short blurb out as well. Welington Castillo Beef Castle has been more-or-less what he’s been his whole career; league-average at the plate and below-average behind it. …
Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (8-16) at Cincinnati Reds (11-14)
The Cubs haven’t been swept yet*, so, uh, I guess they got that going for them. The Reds do not enjoy this property, as they are coming off a sweep at the hands of the Barves. Sunday’s loss was capped off (well, pre-capped off) by ejections Reds manager Bryan Price and Homer Bailey, who was on one of his offdays, …
Cubs 4, Brewers 0 (4/28/14)
Did the Cubs Win? OSS: The Cubs play their most complete game of the season against the “best” team in baseball. Three Up 1. Jason Hammel was absolutely sublime all game. It seemed like he had the best control of his pitches out of any Cub in the past 3 years – especially the low outside corner against righties. Hammel …
Cubs 5, Diamondbacks 7 (4/24/14)
Did The Cubs Win? OSS: Cubs celebrate 100 years of Wrigley Field in fitting fashion. Three Up 1. Jeff Samardzija was brilliant (again). He deserved to win (again). He didn’t win (again). 2. Hector Rondon has to be the best Rule 5 pick of the past 5 years, right? A short reflection of the past Rule 5 drafts: 2013: too …
Series Preview: Worst Record vs Third-Worst Record
As you might have heard, it’s the 100th anniversary of the opening of Wrigley Field this week. Seeing how the two teams that are playing are in the bottom five of the standings right now, it’s no wonder that the Cubs have been using “Party of the Century” as their main marketing gimmick this season. On Wednesday the teams will …
Doubleheader Preview: Chicago Cubs (4-8) at New York Yankees (7-6)
Rain turned this short series into a day-night doubleheader. The two teams will meet again in mid-May, and hopefully we won’t have to get bummed out yet again by seeing Tanaka on the mound in a Yankees jersey. Aside from Tanaka, the Yankees also picked up Carlos Beltran, Brian McCann, Kelly Johnson, Brian Roberts, and Jacoby Ellsbury this offseason. I guess …