This is a fantastic Q&A with Mark Shapiro who was the Indians GM for 9 years and is now their team president. Go read it all. Great stuff. I think more people will come. But the challenge is 2.2 million instead of 1.6 million doesn’t change the way we operate. Even that extra 500,000, 600,000 people, even if that’s $10-to-15 …
Arbitration salary projections for the Cubs
MLBTR has posted their salary projections for the Cubs arbittation eligible players. The projections are done by Matt Swartz who did a bunch of math and came up with a system to estimate the value that each arbitration eligible player would receieve. First time: Luis Valbuena ($900K), Jeff Samardzija ($2.9MM), James Russell ($900K) Second time: Chris Volstad ($3MM) Third time: …
Cubs prospect all-stars
Milb.com is doing a series that lists the best prospect at each position. The Cubs were up yesterday. It's a pretty good list, but this was a head-scratcher. Utility — Anthony Rizzo, Iowa (70 games), Chicago (87 games): Despite playing only 70 games for the Triple-A Cubs, Rizzo led the organization with 23 homers and drove in 62 runs while …
Muskat: Top prospect Baez develops in Arizona Fall League
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — At 19, Javier Baez is the second-youngest player in the Arizona Fall League, and he is making a huge jump, competing against players who have been in Double-A or Triple-A. "He's a guy who, mentally, we felt was ready for the Fall League, ready to be pushed like that, ready to be challenged like that," said Jason …
WAR conversion
Bryan Crosnick calculated the exact way in which we'd put each version of WAR (fWAR, rWAR and WARP) on the same scale. These all use different replacement levels so thanks to his work we can now compare these players using the same replacement level. 2012 fWAR to rWAR Conversion: -0.00094 fWAR/PA 2012 WARP to rWAR Conversion: 0.00046 WARP/PA
Another new forum
When the site switched to a responsive theme one of the unintended consequences was that the forum we'd been using most of 2012 was not going to work without significant modifications. While moving to an all new forum was not ideal, it was by far the easiest and it made the most sense. However, this site relies on ad revenue …
DBacks Looking for SS, Veteran SP, 3B
Awhile back we were kicking around trade ideas for Justin Upton from the Diamondbacks. GM Kevin Towers' postseason press conference confirms much of our speculation: Towers identified shortstop (no surprise), a veteran starter (mild surprise), third baseman (mild surprise) and bullpen help (no surprise) as his off-season wish list. I’m not sure if that’s in order of priority, but shortstop …
Cubs tickets are not selling for peanuts
The Slanch Report suggests that Cubs tickets are selling for peanuts. Julie posted the other day you can get tickets for 9 cents. I wondered how accurate it would be to say they were selling for peanuts so I went over to Google Shopping to find out. Turns out the cheapest Planters Peanuts you can buy cost a dollar. If …
Wrigley Talk Friday: We Barely Mention the Cubs and It’s Glorious – 9-28-12
Today on Wrigley Talk Friday, AC and I discuss a lot of stuff that really only tangentially had anything to do with the Cubs. And then my call got dropped as I made a really insightful comment about Kevin Youkilis. We run a tight ship at WTF. Listen to internet radio with Wrigley Talk Friday on Blog Talk Radio
Road to 100 losses
The Cubs currently have 95 losses with 8 games to play. PECOTA projects them to go 3-5 over the final week of the season giving them a final record of 62-100. Only the 1962 and 1966 Cubs have lost more than 98 games (each team lost 103). The Cubs would have to go 5-3 just to match 98 wins and …