Did anyone think the Orioles would be in the playoffs? Did anyone think the O's might actually pull off the AL East division win? Well, they're in the playoffs and they very nearly won the AL East. The O's essentially replaced the Red Sox so the AL East still had 3 very good teams as it has for the last …
How much is Darwin Barney worth in a trade?
Before we look into Darwin Barney's trade value, I was thinking I wouldn't be that confident in the numbers below. Most of the time I am, but for someone like Barney I'm not. At all. Why? Because of Placido Polanco. To understand why you can check these two links out. IN the first link written after the 2006 seaosn, Tangotiger …
Bryan LaHair's Fantastic Start
Some Cubs fans entered the season with relatively high expectations for Bryan LaHair. Others weren't optimistic at all. I was somewhere in between. I was fairly certain LaHair's numbers were so damn good at AAA that it indicated he should probably be about a league average ballplayer at the MLB level. To this point we've all been wrong. MLB's best …
Starlin Castro Year 1 and Year 2
All numbers updated through games ending on August 6th. Starlin Castro has nearly had as many plate appearances this season as he did last so it seems a good time to compare the two seasons. In 2010 Castro made his big league debut in early May and went on to hit .300/.347/.408. His wOBA was .325 and his wRC+ was …
Series Preview: New York Yankees (39-28) vs Hapless Victims (28-40)
Before I get to previewing this bloodbath, I just want to mention that it was fun to watch the Cubs take three of four from their little brothers to the north. Team Overviews Teams stats with respective league rankings in parens. Yankees Cubs wOBA .353 (1st) .318 (6th) UBR -1.9 (9th) -7.1 (16th) UZR 11.6 (3rd) -15.5 (15th) SP FIP …
The Cubs just aren’t very good
About a quarter of the 2011 season is in the books and the Cubs have performed about as we expected overall. The pitching, particularly the rotation, has been worse than we thought. Part of that can be explained by the injury to Randy Wells who is an above average starting pitcher. The pitchers they’ve used to fill in for Wells, …