Was there a Cubs game yesterday? Hola amigos. It's been a long time since I rapped at ya. The Cubs pounded the LAAoLAoAoDLoBA yesterday 8-1. Jared Weaver shut the Cubs down for five innning and fell apart in the sixth. Jeff Baker and Reed Johnson treated him like a lefty, hitting a monster HR off the batters eye and not …
How good is the Cubs rotation?
Player IP Matt Garza 193 Ryan Dempster 188 Paul Maholm 165 Chris Volstad 155 Jeff Samardzija 122 The Cubs opening day rotation is set with news that Randy Wells and Travis Wood have been optioned to AAA. That left Jeff Samardzija and Chris Volstad to join Ryan Dempster, Matt Garza and Paul Maholm. Using our playing time projections and the …
Other transformed Cubs
With Jeff Samardzija's "transformation" I thought it would be fun to find other Cubs player who have transformed this spring. Joe Mather: With a .412/.455/.745 batting line through today, he's established himself as a completely different ballplayer. We know this because he's had 55 plate appearances and that's absolutely enough to know whether or not a transformation has taken place. …
Wells and Wood optioned to minors, Clevenger over Castillo
I'd much rather have seen Randy Wells in the Chicago Cubs rotation, but rather than bullpenning him the Cubs have at least done the only other smart thing possible by optioning him to the minors. Good call on that even if it's the result of other poor decisions. I've been saying for awhile that Steve Clevenger is the better catcher …
Some thoughts on opening day starter and Brett Jackson
Dale Sveum decided to go with Ryan Dempster on opening day. There's little doubt that Matt Garza is the superior pitcher, but Dempster is still pretty good himself and it's not like Garza is awesome unless we look only at last season. Even if we do that, he only looks awesome when we look at his defense independent pitching stats. …
Daily Facepalm 3.23.12 – Too many DUIs edition
Practice game recap The Cubs pounded the rangers 11-4. Soriano, Mather, Jackson, and Ian Stewart all homered. Matt Garza threw 81 pitches in five innings, but could have gone deeper had Darwin Barney not committed two errors in the fourth inning. Marcos Mateo left the game with an injury and there's no word on how serious it could be. They …
OV’s Projected Playing Time for the 2012 Cubs
On Saturday I published this year's playing time survey and more than 50 of you took the time to fill it out. Thanks for taking the time. I'm going to go ahead and publish the results here. I didn't make any adjustments to the batters because you guys pretty much nailed it as far as position and team totals go. …
Daily Facepalm 3.16.12 – Too Much Chalk Edition
Was there a Cubs game yesterday? I was so in shock at Wisconsin's ability to score more than 60 points that I failed to pay attention to yesterday's games. It looks like it was probably a good thing. In the Dbacks game, Ryan Dempster gave up eight hits and a walk in three and 2/3 innings, but shocklingly only three …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs: Matt Garza
We move to the last member of the Cubs pitching staff who has a rotation spot locked down. As we all know, the should-have-been-rebuilding Cubs swapped three baseball players (and Sam Fuld) to the Rays at the beginning of last season for the getting-expensive Matt Garza. Garza went on to have a much better year than anyone expected, completely changing …
Position Battles: Back-up Catcher
The Cubs roster is mostly set with a few exceptions. Welington Castillo and Steve Clevenger are battling it out for the back-up catcher spot. There's been this invented competition for the rotation, which I think is mostly nonsense. You've got Matt Garza, Ryan Dempster and Paul Maholm who are guaranteed spots in the rotation. Certainly deserving of a spot is …