Well, everyone, we’ve made it to the very first game of the Cubs (pre)season as your favorite squadron will host the Giants at Sloan Park on what I presume will be a lovely Saturday afternoon in Arizona, before it gets insufferably hot and the bulk of the attendees will get badly sunburned. Per the official Cubs schedule, the game will …
Cohen You Crazy Bastard
I’m sure you know by now, but just in case you just woke up, the New York Mets swooped in to sign Carlos Correa because why the fuck not: In a shocking development, Carlos Correa has agreed to join the Mets for a 12-year, $315MM contract, Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports. Correa had previously agreed to a 13-year, $350MM deal with …
Correa to the Giants
We didn’t need a banging garbage can to see this coming. Carlos Correa and the San Francisco Giants have agreed to a 13-year, $350 million deal with a full no-trade clause giving the free-agent shortstop and admitted baseball cheater an $8 million/year pay-cut from last season with the small-market Minnesota Twins. Sucks getting old, doesn’t it? Plenty of teams, including …
Mets, Red Sox, Others Interested in Cuban Defector Ernesto Molinet
Ernesto Molinet is a 29 year-old first baseman who defected at some point after the 2013 Cuban National Series. Like Daniel Carbonell, Molinet's defection has mainly gone unnoticed in the press. Even Spanish-language accounts are difficult to find. Someone needs to direct his agent to Jesse Sanchez's twitter account. It's possible that Molinet "retired" early in Cuba and received permission to travel …
Series Preview (and game thread): Giants (6-3) at Cubs (3-5)
The Cubs will get a whiff of success this weekend, and it will probably be coming from the other dugout. (Blatantly plagarized from Brett's preview blurb at Bleacher Nation, because it's too funny. Take that, Paul Sullivan. Or something.) The Cubs are on a roll, not having lost for two straight days. The Giants, meanwhile, have crushed all before them and are coming …
World Series Preview: San Francisco Giants (94-68) vs Detroit Tigers (88-74)
The Giants have home field advantage in this series thanks to All-Star Game MVP Melky Cabrera, who was suspended for PED violations and was left off the Giants playoff roster (his 50 game suspension just ended). The Tigers have the advantage of having swept the Yankees in the previous round, which already feels like was a month ago. The Giants …
Series preview: San Francisco Giants (94-68) vs Cincinnati Reds (97-65)
The Reds jockeyed with several other NL Central teams (including the Pirates!) for the divisional lead for the first half of the season, but after July 19 they moved into first place and never looked back. The closest they got to losing the lead was on August 9th, after NL MVP Shawn Camp exerted his powers and defeated the Reds …
Series Preview: Reigning Champs (44-34) vs Iowa Cubs of Chicago (32-46)
I knew that today’s first game is a makeup game, but I was wondering how that worked out. The “typical” schedule, at least as I have always assumed it, was more or less that each team played a home and away series against the teams not in their division over the course of the season. The rest are filled in …
Series preview: World Champions (21-16) at Chicago Cubs (16-20)
Team Overview Team stats (and NL ranks) wOBA: .297 (15th)UZR: -8.1 (12th)DRS: -6 (6th)SP FIP: 3.22 (3rd)SP xFIP: 3.47 (4th)RP FIP: 2.79 (3rd)RP xFIP: 3.14 (2nd) Batters Player wOBA ZiPS wOBA CF Andres Torres .390 .337 2B Freddy Sanchez .301 .313 1B Aubrey Huff .283 .344 C Buster Posey .319 .365 RF Nate Schierholtz .334 .327 LF Pat Burrell .354 …