Nearly every player on the Cubs is a potential trade candidate so talking about each one would be exhaustive and pointless. Luis Valbuena is a trade candidate though why any team would trade for him, I don't know. It's not like there was a line of teams wanting to sign him after he was DFA'd and he's not been very …
Dale Sveum’s First Half MVPs: Shawn Camp and James Russell
NEW YORK — Who's your first half Most Valuable Player for the Cubs? Manager Dale Sveum picked relievers Shawn Camp and James Russell. Camp was 2-4 with a 2.86 ERA and one save, while Russell was 2-0 with a 2.43 ERA entering Sunday. Russell had a 2.30 ERA in 101 games since the start of 2011, the second-lowest mark by …
Updated End of Season Projections
Using Baseball Prospectus rest of season PECOTA projections I figured it might be fun to see just how many games the Cubs are expected to lose at this point. Since this is OV and we're Cubs fans we do things in reverse order. We're more focused on the 2013 draft order and which slot the Cubs may be picking from. …
10 Best Games By A Cubs Player So Far
We're only 31 games into the season, but I was curious for some unkown reason who had the best game of any player on the team. Win Probability Added (WPA) is the perfect stat for this. Below are the top 10 WPA's of the season for the Cubs. 10. Matt Garza, April 29th @ Phillies: The Cubs won 5-1 behind …
Where We Stand Now 5.1.12 – Batters
Now that a month has passed, let's take a look back at what's gone wrong (and a few things that have gone right). First, a look at the batters. Here are the regulars' current slash lines, wOBA, BABIP, and preseason projected wOBAs. I'm only doing Johnson and Mather because they've picked up the most PAs of the bench guys, and …
Daily Facepalm 4.2.2 – Almost there edition
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 …
Did the Cubs really add that much depth?
Over on Cubs Den (a really good blog), John talks about how the Cubs have quietly built depth to give them trade flexibility. I want to look at his bullets one by one because I just don't agree with the conclusion that John is reaching. John is attributing this depth to Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer too, which is another …
Worst Moves of the Epstein Era
Since opening day is here (well, not here, but somewhere), it seems like an appropriate time to catalog the numerous failures of the Cubs under The Epstein Regime. Sure, no actual games have been played, but it’s never too early to make like mb and don your three wolves tee and start excoriating optimistic chumps. After all, future blogging historians …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs: Backups
We've already published the projections for some of the backups along the way. Jeff Baker's was posted with the infield backups and the two possible back-up catchers were published in another article. Without commentary, the others are below. Projection Name PA H HR BB SO avg obp slg wOBA Guru Blake DeWitt 351 82 5 26 55 .256 .313 .376 …
Daily Facepalm 3.13.12
Practice game wrapup The Cubs knocked the eminently hittable Bronson Arroyo around in the first inning, capped off by an approximately 900 ft Alfonso Soriano HR (HR distance estimated by the sound it made coming off the bat and Len's reaction). Paul Maholm performed about as expected in his Cubs debut, giving up a homer to Reds outfielder Todd Frazier …