Dave Kaplan wrote a post on the CSN Chicago site where he poses the question: Will the Cubs follow Marlins’ blueprint? I clicked on it because I thought maybe, just maybe, he would have some information from speaking with Jim Hendry or Tom Ricketts or anyone within the Cubs organization that would indicate the Cubs were actually considering such a …
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, …
It’s never too early to look ahead to next year
A few years ago I wouldn’t have considered writing something about looking ahead. The Cubs had the pieces in place to contend for as long as they were willing to supplement the roster when it was needed. Following the 2009 season the Cubs refused to do that and what they basically agreed to do at that time was a much …
Grades so far: Outfield
I haven’t gotten to this one as quickly as I’d hoped, but here it is. You can read about the article I wrote about the infield if you haven’t already. Alfonso Soriano – It hasn’t been pretty, but Soriano has been a productive hitter to this point in the season. He has a .359 wOBA thanks to his 11 home …
Cubs rWAR and fWAR
Most of you are at least somewhat familiar with WAR and how it works. I’d bet most of you are familiar that Fangraphs publishes their own WAR (fWAR) and Baseball Reference publishes their own. BRef’s WAR is based on Rally Monkey’s formula and it’s been referred to as rWAR for a few years now. There are some key differences between …
Cubs compared to their projections
I wrote this on Friday morning so it’s updated through Thursday’s games. I’m too lazy to update it to include Friday’s blowout loss. This is something I’ll try to update once a month just so we can see where players are at compared to their projections. It’s something SG has done on RLYW a few times over the last couple …
Should Brett Jackson be starting for the Cubs?
Brett Jackson was the Cubs first round pick in 2009 and the 31st pick overall. It was the first time that I could remember that the Cubs selected someone who knew how to get on base. Jackson took a lot of walks on college and there was never any doubt as to his ability to reach base. He also had …
Cubs Player Power Rankings
There are plenty of places you can go to read team power rankings for all of Major League Baseball. I believe most respectable bloggers and journalists are required by the code of moot speculation to incite as many arguments as possible by haphazardly or systematically arranging the teams from best to crappiest. Two things prevent me from doing that: a) …
5 Cubs Trends Sure to End
The Cubs are five games into the 2011 season, so naturally we know everything we need to know about this team. But for anyone who thinks the sample size isn’t quite large enough to draw conclusions, I just want to correct a few lies the opening weekend may have told us. For the record, I wrote this before today’s game, …
Series Preview: Arizona Diamondbacks (1-1) at Chicago Cubs (1-2)
All I should have to say about yesterday’s game is that the Cubs lost on a 2-run infield single. It was that kind of day. However, despite the fact that the Cubs lost two games to the emintently beatable Pirates there were things to be happy about. Here’s a breakdown of what we learned The Good Starlin Castro. What a …