The Cubs roster is mostly set with a few exceptions. Welington Castillo and Steve Clevenger are battling it out for the back-up catcher spot. There's been this invented competition for the rotation, which I think is mostly nonsense. You've got Matt Garza, Ryan Dempster and Paul Maholm who are guaranteed spots in the rotation. Certainly deserving of a spot is …
Daily Facepalm 3.14.12
Practice Game recap Chris Volstad pitched three strong inninngs yesterday, extending his spring training scoreless streak to six innings. As with Samardzija and the other starter candidates, small sample size abounds, but I think he's got a good shot making the rotation. Tom Ricketts seemed to think so too during his brief time in the booth with Len and Mick. …
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 …
Daily Facepalm 3.9.12 – Volstad Good, Soriano Good, Marmol Bad
Rotation battle news Chris Volstad followed up Jeff Samardzija's strong outing with three solid innings of his own yesterday. Volstad struck out three, walked none, and allowed one hit. Spring training stats don't mean much (especially just three innings for each guy), but as far as we can tell things are very up in the air for the last two …
What’s all this Jeff Samardzija starting crap?
I paid so little attention to Cubs baseball after the first few weeks that it's hard for me to believe that Jeff Samardzija threw 88 innings a year ago. I did know that however many innings he threw that they weren't the typically bad Jeff Samardzija innings. I also knew he got lucky. I probably paid no attention to Samardzija's …
Carroll’s Team Health Reports
For several years now Will Carroll has published Team Health Reports. He previously did so at Baseball Prospectus and now does so at SI. I've never been the biggest fan. It seems far too random. Let's take a look at this year's. 2B Darwin Barney Darwin Barney doesn't sound like a 2B, but he sure played like one last year. …
Another shitty Cubs season in review: Casey Coleman, Ramon Ortiz, Doug Davis, Rodrigo Lopez, James Russell
When Wells and Cashner hit the DL on the same day in late April, the Cubs slim chances at grabbing a playoff spot disappeared. What we did not expect was the massive pile of fail that came in its wake…which doesn't even take into account the fact that Randy Wells probably came back too soon from his injury because the …
Daily Facepalm 2.22.12
We just have the point-after-try to kick, or something Several months ago, we were on the "five yard line" in the Theo compensation situation. Since then we've crossed the blue line, stepped into the paint, crossed the box, and veered right at the fireworks factory exit, and now it's finally been decided that Cubs prospect Chris Carpenter would be the …
Daily Facepalm 2.20.2012 – They’re back.
Player Recently in the Best Shape of His Life: Carlos Marmol Carlos Marmol dropped 515 pounds in the offseason. He dropped 15 of his own pounds and he dropped the 500-lb gorilla in his pitching arsenal: his mystifying cutter – not mystifying the way his slider can be (Where did that thing go?), but mystifying like the remake of Footloose (. . . …
Pitch F/X Player Cards
Brooks Baseball, with help from The Hardball Times, has created pitch f/x player cards. If you play around with Matt Garza's card you'll see that in his career he's thrown 4-seam fastballs 41% of the time. He threw the same amount in 2011 (40%), but the big difference was in sinker frequency. It's 26% in his career, but only 15% …