Edwin Jackson had a good/crappy night For the first time, Jackson looked like the pitcher the Cubs were expecting when they signed him to a four year deal. He hit 97 on the Sox gun (which Len and JD suggested may have been a little hot) with his fastball. Though the game ended up getting rained out, his pfx numbers are …
Series Preview: New York Mets (15-23) at Chicago Cubs (17-23)
The Mets have lost seven of their last ten games, including a sweep by the Pirates and a near-sweep by the Cardinals. Luckily for the Mets, they have the Marlins in their division so it will be difficult to drop into last place. I was surprised to read that they've placed foruth in the division for four straight years – …
Sweeney up, Sappelt down
From cubs.com: The Cubs are expected to call up outfielder Ryan Sweeney from Triple-A Iowa and option Dave Sappelt to the Minor Leagues on Monday. This is an interesting move. On one hand, Sweeney is almost certainly the better baseball player at this point. Sappelt just hasn't really made an impact at the major league level, for one reason or …
Prospect Profile: Nick Struck
This is a continuation of the weekly series of of writing about a Cubs prospect. Early on, I will be writing about guys that Dave and I did not cover in our Prospect Ratings. Links for past ratings and past profiles at at the end. Who is Nick Struck? Nick Struck was drafted in the 39th round of the 2009 …
2013 Cubs Prospects Ratings
A little over 2 weeks ago, I wrote an article with Uncle Dave's help about a different way to rate prospects. Dave got the idea from Hockey's Future. Dave's explanations of what each number grade (ceiling) represented was so awesome that I used it word for word. I did want to clarify something on the letter grades (floor). An A …
Baseball America Top 100 Prospects
Don't forget to check out the OV Bunt Tournament Contest if you haven't already entered. The Baseball America top 100 prospects are out today and Javier Baez is the highest ranked Cub, at 18. Albert Almora is 33rd and Jorge Soler 34th. Arodys Vizcaino is the final Cub in the top 100 at 83. This is an improvement over last …
2013 PECOTA Projections
The 2013 PECOTA projections are out and I thought I'd post some of the Cubs below. Since you have to be a subscriber in order to download the spreadsheet, I'm only going to include PA and wOBA, which I calculated using the basic formula. For pitchers I'll only show IP and FIP (I calculated this too). 2013 PECOTA Projections for …
Nick Cafardo on the Cubs and a Matt Garza non-rumor
MLBTR led to me this article by Nick Cafardo, which talks a bit about the Cubs. “We’re certainly farther along than we were last year at this time,” said Epstein. “When we got here, we identified one core player [Starlin Castro] and now we can look around and see Anthony Rizzo, Darwin Barney, Jeff Samardzija , and others. We do …
Muskat: Work in progress, but Cubs aim to be competitive
I saw the title of this article a couple days ago, but didn't bother reading it. I don't believe the Cubs have attempted to be competitive in the short term in any way whatsoever so the title made me laugh. I thought I'd answer the questions just for fun. 1. Are Matt Garza, Scott Baker and Arodys Vizcaino healthy? Yes. …
Free Agent signings from last year
The Cubs weren't very active last winter and the moves they made were relatively safe. They placed their bets on the likes of Paul Maholm, Reed Johnson and David DeJesus so as far as safe bets go, these are about as safe as it gets. Perhaps the Cubs ought to look into more sports betting online ideas to help improve …