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, …
Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (17-23) at Florida Marlins (24-16)
The battle for 4th place is heating up, as the Pirates have topped the Cubs three game losing streak with a six game slide of their own. Luckily for the Pirates the Cubs are heading to Florida, a state were they’ve traditionally been steamrolled. At least it’s only 2 games – the Cubs play the Marlins in a four game …
Series preview: World Champions (21-16) at Chicago Cubs (16-20)
Team Overview Team stats (and NL ranks) wOBA: .297 (15th)UZR: -8.1 (12th)DRS: -6 (6th)SP FIP: 3.22 (3rd)SP xFIP: 3.47 (4th)RP FIP: 2.79 (3rd)RP xFIP: 3.14 (2nd) Batters Player wOBA ZiPS wOBA CF Andres Torres .390 .337 2B Freddy Sanchez .301 .313 1B Aubrey Huff .283 .344 C Buster Posey .319 .365 RF Nate Schierholtz .334 .327 LF Pat Burrell .354 …
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 …
Series Preview: Cincinnati Reds (16-15) at Chicago Cubs (14-16)
The Cubs went 4-3 on their trip out west, and a winning record on any such trip is a nice feat no matter the quality of the teams played. Today they start a 2 plus week stretch of games against good to great teams, capped off by an inevitable steamrolling in Fenway. They start this stretch with the Reds, my …
When could Wells and Cashner return?
LOS ANGELES — Cubs pitchers Andrew Cashner and Randy Wells headed to Arizona on Wednesday to continue their rehab there and both could be facing batters next week. — Carrie Muskat So let’s say they begin facing batters on Monday, May 9th. They get their 4 days off and go back out to face some hitters again on May 14th. …
Chicago Cubs @ Los Angeles Dodgers
GamedayB-Ref Preview Cubs wOBA wRC Def Dodgers wOBA wRC Def Kosuke Fukudome .343 .58 -.06 Jamey Carroll .346 .59 -.02 Darwin Barney .297 .39 .03 Jerry Sands .326 .50 .00 Starlin Castro .330 .50 -.03 Andre Ethier .374 .66 -.01 Aramis Ramirez .347 .54 -.03 Matt Kemp .356 .58 -.02 Marlon Byrd .334 .48 -.01 Juan Uribe .322 .44 .01 …
Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (12-15) at Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles (14-15)
Team Overview Dodgers team stats (NL rank in parens): wOBA: .310 (11th)UZR: -2.9 (10th)DRS: -11 (11th)SP FIP: 3.77 (8th)SP xFIP: 3.64 (5th)RP FIP: 4.52 (16th)RP xFIP: 4.09 (12th) Batters: Player wOBA ZiPS wOBA 2B Aaron Miles .270 .272 LF Jerry Sands .252 .326 RF Andre Ethier .430 .374 CF Matt Kemp .460 .356 3B Juan Uribe .305 .322 1B James …
Chicago Cubs @ Arizona Diamondbacks
Gameday Cubs wOBA wRC RS Diamondbacks wOBA wRC RS Kosuke Fukudome .343 .56 -.06 Chris Young .339 .55 .00 Starlin Castro .332 .51 -.03 Kelly Johnson .360 .61 -.01 Jeff Baker .312 .42 -.01 Justin Upton .381 .67 .03 Aramis Ramirez .350 .54 -.03 Stephen Drew .341 .51 -.01 Carlos Pena .378 .62 -.01 Miguel Montero .339 .49 -.01 Marlon …
Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (10-13) at Arizona Diamondbacks (10-13)
The Cubs basically canceled yesterday’s game because they didn’t like the matchup. No other explanation makes sense to me – the rain had passed the Chicago area after an hour or two, and it didn’t look like there were further huge storms that could delay ther teams’ flights out of town. I think it had a lot more to do …