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The Critical Stretch

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube15 Comments

Well well, folks, another set of series that were not lost! At 69-61 (nice), I believe this is the first time all season the Cubs have been eight games over the mythical .500 mark. I’m looking at the breakdown and it would seem that other than that abysmal month of May, which somewhat coincidentally was when Cody Bellinger went on …

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The Season Does Not End Today

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube53 Comments

The Cubs enter this week having won a hard-fought series against the literal best team in baseball. They also did, once upon a time, win another series against the current best team in the American League as well. They also lost a bunch of winnable series but at this point, if you look at the breakdown, the only bad month …

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Fun Cubs Facts After the Reds Series

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube141 Comments

That was a fun series. Here’s some silly facts after the Cubs significantly improved their run differential. Somehow, those 150 runs represents the most in the National League or maybe even the majors, I forgot which, but it’s a lot. Beating the hell out of the team that used to lead the division up until you beat the snot out …

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The Final Countdown (UPDATES)

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube143 Comments

I think we would all have liked the Cubs to sweep the Cardinals, but sweeps are hard no matter the team, and winning the season series while basically forcing the other guys to sell off all their good players is fun too. But it hasn’t been just the bad teams that the Cubs have done well against, as I remarked …

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Tales of Triumph and Regret

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube229 Comments

I started thinking about this even before the Cubs laid a goose egg against the Cleveland Baseball Club the other night. I don’t actually recall the last time a club with a losing record, including the Cubs, had multiple All-Stars, but even though I’m not sharing tweets in case Elon Musk forgot to pay his server bill again, we heard …

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Division or Bust

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube99 Comments

Given the lull between games as the Cubs traveled to London and have to do their whole tour and marketing thing before the weekend games, there isn’t much in the way of Cubs news especially since they aren’t getting any players in the next round of All-Star voting anyway. We talked a wee bit about London and All-Star stuff on …

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The Plan, Revisited

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube35 Comments

I recall, nearly six months ago when the Cubs basically passed over every impact free agent save for Dansby Swanson (who was a consensus Plan B), we tried to figure out what the plan was even as the sound bytes were flying: The fear then was that this team would be hard pressed to go .500, but I guess most …

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Arbitrary 24-Games-In Cubs Assessment

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube14 Comments

Once upon a time in the ancient days of January 2023, I made some quasi-predictions of how the Cubs would fare throughout this season since they’d be playing against all 29 other MLB clubs. Suffice it to say that these Cubs have banked a few extra wins than I anticipated en route to their (as of this writing) 14-10 record …

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Maybe It’s Time For Some New Blood

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube20 Comments

Perhaps this is premature, and with the caveat that this is why the Cubs pay Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins and David Ross to think about this stuff while I’m just another keyboard warrior, but I think the Cubs have some, shall we say, roster inefficiencies that need to be taken care of. For the most part, the bullpen is …

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The Off Day After Opening Day React Post

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube112 Comments

Because the Cubs play at Wrigley Field, which historically does not have a roof despite being in the Midwest where it can get a) cold and b) wet, this necessitates a scheduled off day right after the official Opening Day, in case they have to make up the home opener later. I guess if Friday had gotten weathered out, they …