Dave Allen has a good piece up on Fangraphs looking at the races in the AL and NL since 1995 and how different they’d have been if it was instead two 15-team leagues as suggested recently. I wanted to look at this in a slightly different, but also less thorough way than Allen did. I wanted to see how many …
Series Preview: Milwaukee Brewers (38-28) at Iowa Cubs of Chicago (25-39)
I blinked, and suddenly the Brewers are on top of the NL Central. They’ve won eight of their last ten games and should win a few more in this series. Team Overviews As always, team stats with NL ranks in parentheses Brewers Cubs wOBA .327 (4th) .311 (7th) UBR -0.4 (8th) -7.9 (16th) UZR 2.9 (6th) -15.5 (15th) SP FIP …
Those Six Pack Plans Apparently Didn’t Sell Very Well
One of my buddies who also gave up his season tickets in Aisle 424 this offseason sent me a message the other day: “The Cubs still have tickets for the Friday game against the Yankees. Good seats. Interested in playing hooky from work and going?” I thought it was interesting that there were tickets available for a series that Wally …
Improving stats shown prior to at-bats
Tango brings up an interesting point. Why show the number of RBI when a player comes to bat when there’s nobody on base? I’ve always wondered why they show the same damn thing each time the batter comes up, but he makes a better point. The stats they show when the batter comes to bat can be much improved. Here …
Davis vs. Goliath
I have a sneaky suspicion Davis doesn’t have the equivalent of a slingshot and smooth stones to fell the Philliestines, but that’s why they play the game. Amiright? Mostly, we just needed a new thread.
Was Zambrano Being Punished?
The Cubs lost to the Phillies and Roy Halladay on Friday evening, which wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise, and what has most people talking/tweeting/cursing/throwing things was that Carlos Zambrano was left in the game to face Placido Polanco with the bases loaded in the seventh inning after he had thrown 125 pitches on the evening. What the hell …
Trade Value: Kosuke Fukudome
In Soto’s trade value piece I mentioned how inconsistent he has been in his career, but that’s nothing compared to Fukudome. Below is an image of his AVG/OBP/SLG/wOBA by month in his Cubs career. If you’d rather see the numbers, here they are. Month AVG OBP SLG wOBA 4/1/08 .327 .436 .480 .399 5/1/08 .293 .388 .404 .351 6/1/08 .264 …
Even Phil Rogers is sometimes right
Phil Rogers wonders how much longer Jim Hendry and Crane Kenney will be employed by the Cubs in his most recent article. In baseball, you usually can see the end coming, whether it’s for a player, manager or executive. It was a relief for almost everyone, not a surprise, when Lou Piniella opted to resign last August. His team was …
Series Preview: Iowa Cubs (24-36) at Philadelphia Phillies (37-25)
It’s too bad the Cubs didn’t lose last night, because this series could have easily pushed the losing streak to thirteen. Of course, despite that we’ll probably see the Cubs win the series by beating both Halladay and Lee and suddenly think they’re contenders, trading Brett Jackson and Trey Mcnutt in a three-team deal to acquire Veterans Who Know How …
Phil Rogers is Still Wrong – Because He HAS TO
MB, you ignorant slut. As someone who has been around the Cubs blogosphere for as long as you have, you should know damn well that Phil Rogers is never right about anything. I’m fairly certain he needs a couple of tries to get his own name right in the byline. It was disturbing to realize that I was coming down …