Presented without comment, we just got the customary after-season letter from the Cubs chairman, Tom Ricketts, and we can analyze this later but the gist is that they’re going to do stuff to compete again, I suppose. Cubs Fans, This wasn’t the way we wanted the season to end and every year we miss the playoffs is a difficult one. …
All Purpose All-Star Break Rundown
Since the last time I looked at the odds (extreme Han Solo voice), the Cubs have slipped a bit in the standings but remain in third place, now six games back of the Brewers and seven behind the Reds. While it’s possible the Reds or the Brewers can win the division, I don’t think Cincinnati is as good as their …
Trying to Read Through All 440 Pages of the CBA
While attempting to work on this Cubs off day after having recorded our frustrations but shrug emojis on the latest Dreamcast, I also noted that the current MLB-MLBPA Collective Bargaining Agreement has been released, so I’m trying to go through it. For the most part the language is pretty straightforward which sometimes isn’t the case with legalese, but my biggest …
More Off Day Thoughts
This represents the final scheduled off day for the Cubs in the Cactus League until the one right before Opening day, and by this time we’re expecting the starting rotation guys to be able to comfortably go five innings, and hoping that the hitters have better performances for the most part, small sample size be damned. There’s also the World …
Welcome to March
The Cubs are winless since their spring training opener, but since this is all practice, the scores don’t so much matter as the part where most everyone we care about stay healthy…ah nuts, but we’ll cover that later. Anyway, we are heading into March with less than a month to go until Opening Day when the games actually do matter, …
What Springs to Mind?
In an effort to put stuff on this website semi-regularly and not be complete white noise, I’ve been racking my brain over the past several days trying to figure out a good topic, but it’s like AC says, they need to just start playing games already. As it turns out, we are not that far from the start of the …
Ate at Arby’s, On to the Next
Previously, we talked about the remaining arbitration-eligible Cubs and the impending deadline: That deadline has since passed, and you can see every arbitration case has been settled before they have to bring in the agents and front office bad-mouthers: Checking the Cots Contracts tracker, it would appear the Cubs are about $22MM below the first luxury tax threshold, and as …
Dansby Swanson Rumors?
Just an FYI, sometimes Kaplan knows things… Update: Passan confirms Update, with numbers
2022 MLB Winter Meetings Reset
The Winter Meetings go from Sunday to Wednesday this week and I’m guessing plenty of texts and conversations have been conducted even before everyone arrives in San Diego. Ken Rosenthal on his Athletic mailbag podcast suggested that the new CBA seemed to give teams more confidence to spend, which accounts for the higher-than-usual price tags we’ve seen for the relievers, …
The Still-Too-Early Cubs Free Agency Pitch
The postseason thus far has brought us plenty of fun and exciting moments and equally intense discourse, but generally, even if the best team doesn’t always win the World Series, getting a shot into the postseason field is the goal. So it makes sense to discuss how the 2023 Chicago Cubs will be constructed to pull off a purported upset …