I’ve seen a lot of comments lately from Cubs fans upset that the Cubs are still playing the veterans (on other sites). Of course they are. What young player has pushed a veteran out of a job? Bryan LaHair isn’t young so let’s stop with that. Yes, I think he’d be as good as Pena, perhaps a bit worse, but …
What are the 2011 Cubs good at?
I wanted to look over various statistics to see what the Cubs were good at. It’s a bad team, but even bad teams excel at something. Right? Batting average is a useless statistic, but I figured if there was one thing the Cubs were good at it would be this. The Cubs .258 team average beats the NL average of …
Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (64-82) at Cincinnati Reds (71-75)
The Cubs played the Reds just last week, and five of the six starters from that series are pitching this series. I’m just going to make a few minor tweaks to the last preview (laughing). Team overview As always, these are team stats with NL ranks in parentheses. Reds Cubs wOBA .322 (4th) .315 (8th) UBR 14.2 (1st) -11.4 (16th) …
Why extending Oneri Fleita and possibly Tim Wilken's contract doesn't matter
A part of me does wonder whether these kind of moves aren’t as bold or suggestive as I think. Consider this: we fully expect the Cubs to dump Alfonso Soriano and Carlos Zambrano this Winter, eating tens of millions of dollars in the process. Would it really be so shocking for Ricketts to be willing to eat these personnel extensions, …
What the hell are the Cubs going to do this offseason?
I started blogging about the Cubs after the 2003 season. Myself and a couple others eventually started our own blog, but even after the 2003 season the direction the Cubs were heading was obvious. They had just come within 5 outs of reaching the World Series and they returned what was arguably the best rotation in baseball. They had acquired …
Some more thoughts on the Matt Garza trade
Even though the Cubs are more known for their failures, mistakes and screw-ups, every once in awhile you have to give them credit. We probably should do so more than we have, but the acquisition of Matt Garza is one we definitely have to view differently than we did at the time. That doesn’t necessarily mean it was a good …
Aramis Ramirez caused the US debt downgrade (also, mini Cubs-Braves preview)
Cubs Legend Todd Hollandsworth shot his mouth off on the radio today (recap at HBT). Then you bring into question effort and that’s one thing in the game of baseball that really is inexcusable. One hundred percent effort all the time, there’s really no reason for you not to have 100 percent effort. He’s got impressionable kids around him right …
2012 NL Central Champion Cubs, part 4
Our current 2012 roster has a payroll of roughly $100 million and this year’s payroll was $135 million. Our team is roughly a 73 win team so we need to add a lot of wins with $35-40 million. We have a couple holes so let’s start there and look at the available free agents. Actually, let’s start with either Albert …
2012 NL Central Champion Cubs, part 3
Wreckard took a look at how the 2007 Cubs improved compared to the 2006 team and what kind of improvements this current team would need to make for next year. In the first part of this series. we took a look at payroll and named several players the Cubs should keep if they plan to contend next season. The second part …
2012 NL Central Champion Cubs, part 2
In part 1 we found that there were currently 13 players on the Cubs roster that the Cubs want to keep assuming they try to contend next year, which they will. We left off talking briefly about Aramis Ramirez and the club option the Cubs hold for $16 million (or a $2 million buyout). Using Ramirez’s .354 rest of season …