Anything interesting happen over the weekend? Eh. Dempster was knocked around in a minor league game yesterday, but who knows if he was working on something. I missed yesterday's game, but apparently Joe Mather had a Johnsonian/Fuldian incredible catch in CF. Is there a Cubs game today? It's going on right now, apparently. The Cubs are playing the Padres. Len …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs: Backups
We've already published the projections for some of the backups along the way. Jeff Baker's was posted with the infield backups and the two possible back-up catchers were published in another article. Without commentary, the others are below. Projection Name PA H HR BB SO avg obp slg wOBA Guru Blake DeWitt 351 82 5 26 55 .256 .313 .376 …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs – Randy Wells
Somehow Jeff Samardzija has more upside than Randy Wells, despite the fact that Wells posted back to back 3 WAR seasons in 2009-2010 before last year's injury rattled season. Wells hit the DL the same day as Andrew Cashner last April, and when he came back in June he clearly wasn't the same pitcher. The Cubs had great need of …
Some thoughts on opening day starter and Brett Jackson
Dale Sveum decided to go with Ryan Dempster on opening day. There's little doubt that Matt Garza is the superior pitcher, but Dempster is still pretty good himself and it's not like Garza is awesome unless we look only at last season. Even if we do that, he only looks awesome when we look at his defense independent pitching stats. …
Ask OV: Cubs Fans Anxiously Waiting to Watch [Insert Name] in Centerfield vs. Red Sox
The questions have been rolling in ever since our debut of Ask OV last week so we are definitely going to have to hire an intern or something. I mean, first I had to do the Facepalm yesterday and now this. It's gotten to the point where I'm thinking of bringing MB back on board (at half-pay, naturally). But for …
Cherry Picking
In the final 14 appearances one season, he threw 74 innings, allowed only 50 hits and posted a sparkling ERA under 2. After the season fans were excited about what this pitcher could do the following year. Ignored in those 74 innings was 1) he walked a lot of guys, 2) was considerably lucky in that his BABIP and HR/FB …
Daily Facepalm 3.23.12 – Too many DUIs edition
Practice game recap The Cubs pounded the rangers 11-4. Soriano, Mather, Jackson, and Ian Stewart all homered. Matt Garza threw 81 pitches in five innings, but could have gone deeper had Darwin Barney not committed two errors in the fourth inning. Marcos Mateo left the game with an injury and there's no word on how serious it could be. They …
Daily Facepalm 3.22.12
Practice Game Recap Not applicable. But Paul Maholm didn't get rocked by the Giants' A ball team. So there's that. It's Gordo's World and We're Just Living In It Today Gordo speculates that whoever loses out in the Great Cubs Rotation Chase of 2012 will somehow be a valuable trade commodity. To be clear, he thinks that a pitcher that …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs: Chris Volstad
It looks like Chris Volstad has the last rotation spot locked up. If you looked up "serviceable" in a dictionary there would probably be a picture of Volstad next to it. He's been in the bigs for most of four seasons, and made 87 starts in his last three years with the Marlins. Perhaps one of the reasons that Thoyer …
Discredited Draft Review
Last night was our second annual Discredited Fantasy Baseball draft. I'm posting the results here for people to vote on who drafted the best. I'm particularly interested because of the twelve teams, six were drafted by robots. We'll see if teams drafted with the heart and grit only possessed by humans are better than ones drafted by cold and heartless …