The Cubs made a series of moves today, the net result being the acquisition of a few marginal players and some additional pool space to sign international free agents. Trade Roundup Trade 1: Cubs give up Scott Feldman and Steve Clevenger for Jake Arrieta, Pedro Strop, and pool space Feldman had been good this year, but unfortunately his track record …
Cubs Sign SS Gleyber Torres and RHP Jefferson Mejia, a Complete IFA Roundup
The Cubs have signed international top prospects Gleyber Torres (SS) and Jefferson Mejia. Additional signings may have to wait on a trade to acquire more cap space.
Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (26-38) at New York Mets (24-37)
The Cubs have had a crappy year, but it's been just about as bad for the Mets. I'm sure Ron Santo is smiling somewhere that at least if the Cubs are going to be bad, the Mets are just as awful. They've gone 2-8 in their last ten games, and there's been a roster shakeup or two. Manager Terry Collins's …
Sweeney up, Sappelt down
From cubs.com: The Cubs are expected to call up outfielder Ryan Sweeney from Triple-A Iowa and option Dave Sappelt to the Minor Leagues on Monday. This is an interesting move. On one hand, Sweeney is almost certainly the better baseball player at this point. Sappelt just hasn't really made an impact at the major league level, for one reason or …
Daily Facepalm 3.3.13 – Shark named opening day starter, Garza probably to miss a month
Matt Garza shut down, likely to miss first month of the season Per Carrie Muskat, Garza experienced more pain related to his strained lat muscle during a throwing session today. He's been shut down a week by the trainers, and it's "likely" that he'll miss the first month of the season. Carlos Villanueva is probably the happiest guy in the clubhouse …
2013 PECOTA Projections
The 2013 PECOTA projections are out and I thought I'd post some of the Cubs below. Since you have to be a subscriber in order to download the spreadsheet, I'm only going to include PA and wOBA, which I calculated using the basic formula. For pitchers I'll only show IP and FIP (I calculated this too). 2013 PECOTA Projections for …
2013 Cubs projections: Dioner Navarro and Steve Clevenger
Neither of these players are very good so I'm not going to discuss them. Here are the 2013 Cubs projections for Steve Clevenger and Dioner Navarro. Clevenger PA H 2B 3B HR SB avg obp slg wOBA CAIRO 385 92 21 2 5 2 .260 .323 .376 .312 ZiPS 357 86 20 2 3 1 .261 .309 .361 .291 Average …
2013 Cubs Projections: Welington Castillo
I know I said I probably wasn't going to do these this year, but I am going to change the format a little bit. I won't be combining 5, 6 or 7 projections to create an average. I will just stick to two: CAIRO and ZiPS. I doubt the average between these two will be that much different than they'd …
It’s time to get excited about the 2013 Cubs
Spring training is just around the corner and the 2013 Cubs are set to kick off their Cactus League schedule on February 23rd. It's a split squad game and the game against the Angels will even be televised on WGN. It's not until April 1st that non-practice games will be played, but it's time to get excited. They might be …
2012 Cubs Catching Defense
One of the things I noticed this season with Welington Castillo was that about any time he had an opportunity to make an error, he did. I'm not being serious of course, but it was pretty bad. Only 6 catchers made more errors than Castillo and he only caught 413.2 innings. It also seemed he allowed a lot of passed …