Practice Game Recap
Paul Maholm had a good outing, striking out six over five innings and allowing no runs. Carlos Marmol also pitched a scoreless inning in his first outing since having an MRI on his neck for a hand problem. Castro drew his first walk of the spring.
Is there a Cubs game today?
The Cubs travel to the Reds at 3 pm CT. Len and Mick have the call, and Matt Garza will take the mound for the Cubs.
Is there baseball that counts tomorrow?
Indeed, the Mariners and the A's kick off the season in Japan tomorrow morning,
Will I be able to watch it?
Sure, if you feel like getting up at 5 AM (3 AM on the west coast, where these teams are from). And only if you live in the Seattle area, or bought MLB.TV. From what I've seen no one is airing the game in the Bay Area. It's nice for MLB to work on its relationship with Japan, but based on the marketing of the games here it's like it wants everyone else to forget about it. I've seen plenty of ads for the Cardinals-Marlins game next wednesday on ESPN which are being trumpeted as the season opener.
Burn of the day
It only took you guys a week to notice I wasn’t out there. You guys are right on top of it.
Former Cub Brandon Guyer is mixed up in this Matt Bush mess
The car that Matt Bush was driving in his drunken hit-and-run belonged to Brandon Guyer. If the police can determine if Guyer knew Bush's license was suspended, he may also face criminal charges. The 72-year old motorcyclist that Bush hit (and ran over his head) has become unresponsive. Andrew Friedman has stated that Bush will never play for the Rays again. Hopefully he'll be playing in the Florida Penal League for a long time.
It's all sunshine and rainbows for Dale Sveum
Multiple players are lauding Dale Sveum for his spring, saying that he managed to stress fundamentals without making it boring.
Media beating the trade Marlon Byrd drum, bullpen news
As far as I can tell, after Buster Olney made an offhand remark about a comment on someone else's blog about Marlon Byrd being a good fit for the Braves, suddenly Marlon Byrd is being "shopped around". According to Gordo the Cubs have talked to the Nationals and Braves about a Byrd trade, and alluded to the vague "we could have a trade" before opening day quote that Hoyer gave last week. Trading Byrd would clear the way for top prospect Brett Jackson, who Sveum thinks is more than ready for the big leagues. They'll trade Byrd for the right package but I think these trade offers are being instigated by other teams.
Gordo also said that Shawn Camp is expected to make the pen, and it looks like he canceled out Sveum's endoresment of Coleman late last week. Right now it looks like it will be Marmol, Wood, Dolis, Russell, Camp, Wells, and one of Coleman, Castillo, Maine, and less likely Parker or de la Cruz.
Pic of the day
An appropriate response to Tim's excellent post yesterday about ESPN punching bag Steve Bartman. Leave him alone, assholes.
DirectTV might lose WGN
TribCo and DirectTV are still hammering out their tv contract, with a deadline at the end of the month. If they can't reach an agreement WGN would be pulled from the lineup, as well as proramming from a few other Trib-owned stations (Mets, Phillies). Even more importantly you local Chicagoites would lose access to The Vampire Diaries via DirecTV. Won't TribCo think of the children?
Florida Penis League, eh?
Post updated with a new bit of news
Seems like a bad thing for WGN if they get dumped by any carrier…and by extension, not so good for Los Cubs.
@ Mobile Rice:
Agreed. Especially considering that DirectTV is the biggest carrier.
I get WGN here but only in SD through Time Warner. I’m going to watch most games on mlb.tv, since you also don’t get any commercials (at least on the ps3 version).
I believe my parents watch WGN on DirectTV out in the boonies (Nebraska).
Terrible about that old guy Matt Bush hit. According to the article I scanned they put him in a medically induced coma. That’s never a good sign.
The Marlins new HR monstrosity set to music, including Star Wars Cantina music and the Game of Thrones theme:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=16307
Today’s Groupon is 64% off a Cubs rooftop.
Mish wrote:
I can’t believe the rooftops are screwing over their best customers like that.
Mish wrote:
I hope they’re selling supports for that roof too. It would look pretty boring sitting flat on the ground in my backyard.
Download | Convert YouTube to MP3
Updated youtube plugin so I wanted to check to see if it still works right.
Colin Wyers wrote:
I would contribute money to this
@ Mish:
OV outing? I’ll make the shirts.
@ GBTS:
ccd is bringing the cole slaw.
I think the next time I go to Wrigley Field I’m going to take a bunch of cole slaw with me and find Alvin so I can sit next to him and eat it in front of him.
@ mb21:
Make sure you get it/use a recipe from Trotter’s. I bet he makes fucking amazing slaw, which I generally loathe (dying laughing)
What’s the dealio with spoilers? I don’t see no spoiler button.
I was going to plan an OV outing for August when I’m in Chicago. Even if no one else comes, I’ll be there.
@ Mish:
Let me know when they do one for the rooftop inside the park.
@ Berselius:
I know he makes or did make some kick ass Asian slaw. I can’t stand the basic slaw you get in a store or some restaurants. Nasty stuff. I’ve tasted some that are really good though.
@ Suburban kid:
[spoiler]You haven’t been reading every word.[/spoiler]
@ Suburban kid:
We don’t make things easy around here. (dying laughing)
*spoiler*WHATEVER TEXT YOU WANT*/spoiler*
Replace the * with brackets.
@ Suburban kid:
[spoiler]You have to make your own spoiler[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Food can become spoiled by not canning, refrigerating, or freezing[/spoiler]
If a tree falls in the forest and the Chicago media was looking right at it, will they report the story by September?
Free live webcast of today’s game on cubs.com.
mb21 wrote:
I tried that, didn’t work.
[spoiler] unless you meant this square kind of bracket [/spoiler]
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
[spoiler] Correct [/spoiler]
@ WaLi:
[spoiler]
FoodLizard dicks can become spoiled by notcanning, refrigerating, orfreezing and storing in bags [/spoiler]Nothing to see here.
mb21 wrote:
Replace * with
?? Not sure how that will help.
[spoiler title="for Karate Kid fans"]
[/spoiler]
Given the paucity if power in this lineup and their complete ineptitude on the basepaths, they might be better off bunting. Maybe Sveum is on to something.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/2012-organizational-rankings-26-san-diego/
Fangraphs (and Brad from Cubs Stats) are pretty down on the organization that Jed Hoyer left in his rear-view mirror
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/2012-organizational-rankings-26-san-diego/
BPro staff predictions
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/a/16245
Good news for Samardzija? http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/index.php/spring-training-stats-that-matter
@ ACT:
I still don’t understand why we should regard the spikes in any 14-inning sample as predictive in any way. Yes, there’s a correlative increase; that still doesn’t mitigate the sample size issues.
Latest Simmons:
Stopped reading there. (dying laughing)
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Exactly. Kerry Wood struckout 33 batters over a 16 inning stretch in 1998. We already knew Wood struckout a shitload of batters. We also knew that 16 inning sample was next to useless. The difference between Wood’s 16 inning sample and Samardzija’s 14 innings are this: Wood was 7 years younger and he did this at the MLB level (not spring training). We knew Wood would strike a lot of guys out based on his 11+ K/9 rate over 350+ minor league innings in 1996, 1997 and 1998. Not to mention he did that while being 18, 19 and 20 years old.
FWIW, I do think F7 has increased his true talent level when it comes to strikeouts. You need about 250 or 300 batters to have correlation of .5 or higher and he faced just over that last year. However, that’s in the bullpen so we can expect 17% less as a starter. And we still have to regress last year’s total quite a bit.
http://www.bleachernation.com/2012/03/27/rumor-marlon-byrds-name-popping-up-in-cubs-trade-talks-and-hes-not-alone/
@ GBTS:
Alvin could totally write that sentence.
@ ACT:
Colin was drunkenly tearing apart that article on twitter last night
@ Berselius:
Did he? I was thinking of doing the same, but then I realized that I’ve always hated their organizational rankings. I don’t even know why they bother except to get search engine hits. I suppose that’s a big enough reason to do it, but every one I’ve read is usually pretty bad.
http://holycoleslaw.tumblr.com/post/20009819287
Oh, you’re talking about a different article on Fangraphs.
I thought the gist of spring training was to see how guys reacted in certain situations and not so much to put an emphasis on their statistics. Like, checking to make sure they had good mechanics and fundamentals and stuff.
mb21 wrote:
Why does it feel – in my brain that’s in my head – that our last World Series was over 40 years ago, by that I mean 1972, when our last World Series was actually just 4 short, amazing years ago — 2008?
/Yellon’d
new shit: http://www.obstructedview.net/other-topics/this-is-a-year.html