Over the course of the offseason we've published the various projections for players and have been calculating an average with them. One thing we like to talk about is whether or not a player is going to beat his projections, or underperform them. Over the course of the season we tend to say we thought whatever was happening at the …
How good is the Cubs rotation?
Player IP Matt Garza 193 Ryan Dempster 188 Paul Maholm 165 Chris Volstad 155 Jeff Samardzija 122 The Cubs opening day rotation is set with news that Randy Wells and Travis Wood have been optioned to AAA. That left Jeff Samardzija and Chris Volstad to join Ryan Dempster, Matt Garza and Paul Maholm. Using our playing time projections and the …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs – Carlos Marmol
Marmol followed up his stellar 3 WAR 2010 season a much more heart-attacky 2011 season. Marmol's ten blown saves led all of baseball last year (tied with LAAoLAoDoQEoA's Jordan Walden). Marmol walks (and hits) a ton of batters, and continued that trend in 2011. However, his K/9 dropped to a "mere" 12 batters per nine, down from the record-breaking 15.99 …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs: Backups
We've already published the projections for some of the backups along the way. Jeff Baker's was posted with the infield backups and the two possible back-up catchers were published in another article. Without commentary, the others are below. Projection Name PA H HR BB SO avg obp slg wOBA Guru Blake DeWitt 351 82 5 26 55 .256 .313 .376 …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs – Randy Wells
Somehow Jeff Samardzija has more upside than Randy Wells, despite the fact that Wells posted back to back 3 WAR seasons in 2009-2010 before last year's injury rattled season. Wells hit the DL the same day as Andrew Cashner last April, and when he came back in June he clearly wasn't the same pitcher. The Cubs had great need of …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs: Chris Volstad
It looks like Chris Volstad has the last rotation spot locked up. If you looked up "serviceable" in a dictionary there would probably be a picture of Volstad next to it. He's been in the bigs for most of four seasons, and made 87 starts in his last three years with the Marlins. Perhaps one of the reasons that Thoyer …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs: Right Field
The Cubs signed DeJesus on November 30th to a 2-year guaranteed contract with a 3rd year option. He's guaranteed $10.5 million over the contract. I think a couple of the reasons the Cubs chose DeJesus is quite simple and I mentioned them in that article. DeJesus played RF for 116 games last season and played 8 games in CF. He’s …
OV’s Projected Playing Time for the 2012 Cubs
On Saturday I published this year's playing time survey and more than 50 of you took the time to fill it out. Thanks for taking the time. I'm going to go ahead and publish the results here. I didn't make any adjustments to the batters because you guys pretty much nailed it as far as position and team totals go. …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs: Jeff Samardzija
Since Jeff Samardzija is now a "near-lock" to make the rotation, per Dale Sveum. Let's take a look at his projections for 2012. Just about everyone projected him as a reliever, though a few of them had him making 1-3 starts. It's enough that I'm not going to worry about trying to split all of those numbers out. Here's his …
2012 Cubs Playing Time Projections
Many of you who have been reading this blog or ACB before it are familiar with the playing time projections we've set up each year. Back in 2008 and 2009 we had a lot of people filling the surveys out. There was a lot of excitement among Cubs fans before each of those seasons and it led to many more …