As of this writing, today marks the final official Cactus League game for the Cubs. They’ll do a two-game exhibition against the Cardinals, who are traveling west to face the Dodgers amidst all their drama, before the Cubs themselves head a tad east to deal with the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers. Opening Day is just a few days …
Pondering Pitching
To preface this, and for those of you who listened to the latest Dreamcast, we sort of remarked on it too: Now it’s easy to blame David Ross for a lot, but I imagine a lot of the directives to use guys in certain spots of the lineup probably aren’t his decision, although he does use substitutions (pinch-hitting, pitching changes) …
Taking Stock of the Roster (So Far)
The Cubs have been riding a win streak since we last blogged that would be impressive if these games actually mattered. They don’t get an official off day until next week, but so far it seems everyone is just taking it easy, and a few have already left camp to participate in WBC play so that will give a few …
A Winning Pitch (We Hope)
We’ve reached the phase right before Spring Training where it’s mostly claims and minor league contracts while the residue of the free agent barrel lingers until teams and agents finally settle on something. For all intents and purposes, the roster is set (very similar to what we did last time, minus some DFAs and outrights and what not) and the …
Daily Facepalm 4.2.2 – Almost there edition
Was there a Cubs game yesterday? Hola amigos. It's been a long time since I rapped at ya. The Cubs pounded the LAAoLAoAoDLoBA yesterday 8-1. Jared Weaver shut the Cubs down for five innning and fell apart in the sixth. Jeff Baker and Reed Johnson treated him like a lefty, hitting a monster HR off the batters eye and not …
Daily Facepalm 3.12.12 – Garza struggles
Garza has a rough outing While the Cubs starters have been impressive in their short outings for far this spring, Matt Garza ran into trouble in the second and had to be pulled after walking in a run or two. He's mostly just working on his fastball and changeup, and batters were sitting on it. He told Muskat: I’ve been …
Cubs Officially Won’t Lose Them All
What have we learned so far in the two games the Cubs have played? Not a ton, but there are some things about how the games have gone so far that stuck out to me. 1) Scoring runs is going to be an ordeal more often than we’d like. The Cubs have scored four earned runs in two games and …