Over at The Cub Contrarian, Kyle used an estimated WAR for players to get a team win total. I thought I'd do the same thing, but I'm going to do it two ways: projections and my wild ass guesses. Wild Ass Guess Catchers: Welington Castillo (1.0), Dioner Navarro (negative infinity) I could easily see Castillo being a 2 WAR player, …
Winter Meetings Facepalm ***UPDATED***
The Winter Meetings are underway and even though the Cubs won't be that active, I wanted to keep up with what's going on with them. Kyuji Fujikawa It still appears as though the Cubs have signed Fujikawa to a 2-year deal worth $9.5 million plus an option. However, the Cubs have not yet confirmed this. Early arriving scouts at the …
Venezuelan league team was worse with Josh Vitters so they released him
Josh Vitters had a decent season in AAA and then was ridiculously bad at the MLB level. He was playing the Venezuelan Winter League until yesterday when Leones del Caracas released him. Vitters will almost certainly go back to AAA Iowa next year and may at some point get a chance to show he can at least play well enough …
Fangraphs Top 15 Cubs Prospects
It's that time of the year, so Fangraphs released their version of the top Cubs prospects list right behind Baseball Prospectus' list from a few days ago. In case you are wondering, I'm sure OV will have our own top Cubs prospects list just as soon as the search teams find DJ and we can chain him back up to …
The worst Cubs of 2012
In a season that has mostly sucked it seems appropriate to pay tribute to those who helped them suck even more than they would have otherwise. I haven't looked this over so I'm doing the work as I write along. We'll start with the position players and if I feel like I'll do one for the pitchers tomorrow. Joe Mather …
Hoyer: we will have financial flexibility
“We will have financial flexibility,” Hoyer said. “We’ve been diligent to make sure we do have flexibility and we’re efficient going forward. We’ll obviously be active in the free agent market. That’s a big part of our research and work now is evaluating free agents. We have some money to spend and we’ll focus on it heavily.” – Jed Hoyer …
Season in review: Ian Stewart
During the Winter Meetings the Cubs traded Tyler Colvin and DJ LeMahieu to the Rockies for Ian Stewart and Casey Weathers. Stewart would replace the departed Aramis Ramirez at 3rd base and would instantly be an upgrade defensively. That much we were sure of. Whether or not he would hit the ball much was something we'd learn throughout the season. …
Cubs “shifting gears” because we have to
According to Paul Sullivan, the Cubs are going to shift gears with regards to what they're doing at 3rd base. You're not alone if that doesn't make any sense. Sveum says they are "shifting gears" on playing time for Vitters. Valbuena to get bulk of starts down stretch. — Paul Sullivan (@PWSullivan) August 30, 2012 About 10 days ago this …
The Cubs probably won’t be taking many walks for some time
The Cubs 6.5% walk rate prior to last night's games was the lowest in baseball (league average 8.1%). The following Cubs with 150 PA or more are or were above league average: Geovany Soto (9.6%), Luis Valbuena (9.8%), Ian Stewart (10.4%), David DeJesus (10.6%) and Bryan LaHair (11.2%). One of those players is now with the Texas Rangers. Another is …
Cubs call up Jackson and Vitters
Per MICubs. Both Brett Jackson and Josh Vitters are in uniform in LA for todays game. Go nuts.