Did The Cubs Win? OSS: Hammel outduels Tanaka, and Lou Goodvalue gives Masahiro fits. Three Up 1. Luis Valbuena doubled twice and singled once. On the season, he’s .261/.384/.434. Last year, he was .218/.331/.378 on a .233 BABIP, so we should have seen this coming. It’s insane to me that Valbuena isn’t considered a long-term solution at 2B or 3B; …
Cardinals 5, Cubs 4 (5/5/14)
Did The Cubs Win? OSS: Yadier Molina owned the Cubs again off of a fluky single in the 9th, and Rizzo was the zero, not the hero. Three Up 1. The Valbuena/Olt battle is just about wrapped up at this point. Luis Luis walked, doubled and tripled. If the battle is between a guy who plays good defense and can …
Journeymen of Tomorrow: 4/3/14
Did the Cubs Win? Cubes 3 @ Pirates 4 (16 innings) OSS: Cubs tie it up in 9th, blow it in 12th, and kiss it goodbye in 16th. Three Up 1. Luis Valbuena‘s single in the top of the 9th tied the game, part of a 3-6, 2 BB day. Even if Olt doesn’t seize 3B, we should really start …
Better Know a Cub: Mike Olt
Mike Olt is a strong man. He's a patient man. He's a man with a good glove. And he is a man almost wholly written off in some parts. He's a man with undeniable warts and undeniable talents; this is a quality he shares with everyone in baseball not named Mike Trout. Most importantly to me, he's a man who …
Mike Olt says his vision is OK now
The Cubs are hoping Mike Olt can, at some point, take over 3rd base and put up some of the impressive numbers he did prior to 2013. He had a horrible season in the minor leagues last year and it's been blamed on a vision problem that he had after a concussion last winter. He says he's fine now. “I …
Quiet Optimism
So, we've got the team. My best guess at the 25-man roster (Wins Above Replacement – Myles): Position Player WARM C Castillo 1.5 1B Rizzo 3.0 2B Valbuena 1.0 SS Castro 2.5 3B Olt 1.0 LF Lake 1.0 CF Sweeney 1.5 RF Schierholtz 1.0 4OF Ruggiano 1.0 5OF Vitters 0.5 UTIL Barney 1.0 UTIL Roberts 0.75 2C Kottaras 0.5 #1 …
Mike Olt wants to win the 3rd base job
Mike Olt was acquired in July, along with CJ Edwards, Justin Grimm and a player to be named later (Neil Ramirez), for Matt Garza. Olt was having a horrible season and there were vision concerns at the time of the trade. I seem to recall it being better or even all fixed at the time of the trade, but then …
2014 Contending Cubs, Part 2: Depth
We've taken a look at the 2014 Cubs Payroll as part of this series and we learned that it's unlikely the Cubs are going to have enough money to buy themselves a championship. They'll have about $25-35 million to spend this offseason, which is a considerable amount, but not large enough to sign multiple big-name free agents. In order to …
If you had Luis Valbuena in the office pool, raise your hand
It’s June 19th and the Cubs are 69 games into their season. You and I probably picked Anthony Rizzo as the most productive position player on the team through this many games, assuming he remained healthy. I think most everybody would have taken Rizzo and almost no one would have taken Luis Valbuena. Well, Valbuena has had a surprisingly good …
Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (28-39) at St. Louis Cardinals (44-25)
I had to stop and ask myself if the Cubs had even played the Cardinals yet this year. Two and a half months into the season, the Cubs and Cardinals have only played a two game series back in May that they split. This is probably a good thing for the Cubs win-loss record (or a bad thing, depending on …