No game to talk about yesterday, so this will be a quick little hit on how the top FA of 2014 have performed so far. 1. Robinson Cano – .326/.396/.370 (109 wRC+) Cano hasn’t exactly done the heavy lifting for the Mariners, but Smoak, Zunino, and Ackley have been more than sufficient so far. 2. Jacoby Ellsbury – .362/.423/.447 (152 …
Cubs 4, Pirates 5 (4/11/14)
Did the Cubs Win? OSS: James Russell marches onwards towards his ignominious release. Three Up 1. Starlin Castro continues his hot start to the season with a 3 single day. He scored a run and hand an RBI. 2. Travis Wood deserved the win here, but we’ll get to that later. He allowed 1 run (that Schlitter inherited), walked 3, …
Winter Meetings Roundup
The annual Winter Meetings took place this week and we had you covered here on Obstructed View we were lazy bastards and kept you uninformed. I'd apologize for this. It is the first of the meetings that I have not covered thoroughly in 10 years. I'm just tired of apologizing so let's just get to it. The biggest news is that …
Cubs sign George Kotarras and other notes
The Cubs have signed backup catcher George Kottaras. George Kottaras settles with #cubs. $1.075M plus incentives. — Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) December 3, 2013 The Cubs acquired Kottaras the other day and Myles wrote about him shortly thereafter. When you combine a poor batting average with an a noodle at backstop, you can make the case that Kottaras should linger in …
2014 Cubs: A Bat Away From Normal
Any baseball fan likely realizes that the game is fundamentally different in 2013 than it was in, say, 1999 (the height of the "We Care About Steroids" era). In 1999, the league wOBA was .341; in 2013, it's .313. That's a titanic difference. Walks are at a 20-year low, and strikeouts this year are only lower than last year (and …
2014 Cubs: Can They Compete?
dmick89 has finally been cured! Not of his back problems, but of his boundless optimism for all things Cubs. That article is more-or-less required reading for this article, but I'll very quickly sum it up and say that there isn't a whole lot of hope that the Cubs are going to be actual contenders next year or the year after. …
Profiles In Rebuilding- The Cleveland Indians
After Theo and Co. were hired at the end of last season, Cubdom was collectively filled with a sense of manifest destiny. A majority of us, I think, breathed a sigh of relief and started channeling our inner Alvin. Finally, a front office on the vanguard, saying all the right things about performance evaluation, rebuilding the organization from the ground …