Regarding the state of the Cubs entering the December 2017 Winter Meetings, one should probably start with the elephant in the room. Given his monthly paycheck, Jason Heyward will play every day or at least the days that can’t be justified as “rest,” and so the question becomes, where do you play your weakest hitter? […]
Cubs fire Mallee! Good: he deserves it. He had one job, to straighten out Heyward. Heyward’s swing is a little slow. To fix that he could swing faster–which Mallee had him working on all last winter–or he could swing sooner. Heyward doesn’t like to swing sooner, because he’s a thoughtful, patient man who doesn’t like […]
This is our ranking of pitching prospects going into 2018. Prospects are ranked according to the formula K9-(H9+BB9). That’s strikeouts per nine innings minus the sum of hits-per-nine and walks-per-nine. Thus we only look at four numbers–innings, hits, walks, strikeouts. What else is there? Well, age is a factor. The lower the age, the higher […]
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Posted 24 September 2017
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Tagged: Adbert Alzolay, Alec Mills, brad markey, Chad Hockin, Craig Brooks, Dakota Mekkes, Daury Torrez, dillon maples, Duncan Robinson, dylan cease, Elvis Diaz, felix pena, jack leathersich, jake stinnett, Jen-Ho Tseng, Jhon Rhomero, Manuel Rodriguez, Matt Swarmer, Michael Rucker, pedro araujo, pierce johnson, Seth Frankoff, Steve Perakslis, Thomas Hatch, Yapson Gomez
A big Cub advantage and value-add (although it’s never mentioned) is that in the late innings, everybody out there can catch. Other teams are not so scrupulous about defense. Maybe the Brewers win the game Thursday if Broxton makes a fairly routine catch at the wall on Jay’s fly ball leading off the tenth. It […]
Russell, Baez and Happ are one middle infielder too many, and it will be interesting to see which one will be considered expendable, perhaps in the next offseason (or the one following) or perhaps much sooner if we consider Theo’s urge in the heat of July to push his chips toward the middle of the […]
I knew they would trade Eloy, because that’s their MO, as long as they have a chance at the playoffs. The minor-league pitcher surprised me, because he’s supposed to be a stud and they need pitching, but Epstein tries not to rely on pitching prospects. So it was all inevitable once you appreciate Epstein’s boldness. […]
With the Cubs’ minor-league teams approaching the halfway mark (around seventy games), here are two predictions: Tell me who the Cubs’ two best prospects are and I will tell you that they will be traded before the deadline. I’m referring to position prospects only. The Cubs certainly won’t be trading Dylan Cease. It’s arms like […]
Lester, Hendricks, Davis, maybe Edwards. You see any other good pitchers on this team? Any on the way? The Cub brass needs a deal like the ones that once netted them Schilling and Beckett. I think that’s going to be their MO just like is was in Boston, because McLeod can draft hitters all day […]
At the time, I thought Maddon was overmanaging, but there’s something I might have been overlooking, something that was made vivid in the recorded conversation between Rizzo and Ross: the bad case of nerves that was afflicting the younger players like Rizzo but maybe not the more experienced ones like Ross. Maddon had to be […]
John Smoltz did a pretty good job of analyzing what everybody could see last night during game five of the World Series–everybody, that is, who wasn’t occupying a spot in the Cub dugout. What Smoltz diagnosed was Cleveland’s strategy with Baez at the plate. Throw him a first-pitch strike, Smoltz said, and then throw him […]