The prospects we hear the most about these days have little relevance to a season-ticket holder at Wrigley this season, unless that fan also plans to take in games at Fifth Third Stadium in Geneva, IL, where the Kane County Cougars, the Cubs’ new Midwest League affiliate, will play their home games. Almora and Vogelbach [...]
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Posted 18 February 2013
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Also tagged: austin kirk, brooks raley, chris rusin, dae-eun rhee, dave sappelt, frank batista, garrett jones, geovany soto, jae-hoon ha, jay jackson, jeffrey antigua, josh vitters, junior lake, logan watkins, nick struck, rob whitenack, trey mcnutt, ty'relle harris
Cub fans, take heart! The days of a Mather or a Vitters hitting in the 1- or 2-hole may soon be over. Notable in the Top Ten list of 2012 hitting prospects are the players who made it based on their walks and steals more than on their total bases. Here is a quick ranking [...]
These are the final regular-season numbers for Cub hitting prospects in 2012. Rizzo is the starting 1B on the major-league team for the foreseeable future, and is kept on this list for historical purposes. (He did spend half the season at Iowa.) I exclude him from the top-ten list of hitting prospects, which, based on [...]
We hear a lot lately about the Cub minor leagues being barren of talent except at the lower levels. This note is struck mainly in the blogosphere but it really started in Boston when the Red Sox and Cubs were negotiating compensation for Theo Epstein. This was Nick Cafardo in the Boston Globe last October: [...]
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Posted 22 August 2012
† Phil
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Also tagged: andrew cashner, chris carpenter, chris rusin, dj lemahieu, hayden simpson, javier baez, jeff samardzifa, john stockstill, josh donaldson, josh vitters, ryan flaherty, tim wilken, tyler colvin
Players in the organization are ranked according to steals per game times success rate. Everyone with six or more steals as of the close of business on June 25 is shown here. Lake may not have been 100% after a month on the DL with a back injury. This would account for his lower-than-usual success [...]
Below is a table listing the eight top position prospects for the Cubs in 2012, along with a similar table from a year ago. The data in both tables is taken directly from the prospect tables in the right margin of this webpage, except that I have removed the rows for players who are too [...]
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Posted 30 January 2012
† Phil
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Also tagged: anthony rizzo, brandon guyer, dave sappelt, justin bour, matt szczur, michael burgess, richard jones, robinson chirinos, ronald torreyes, russ canzler, starlin castro, tony campana, tony thomas, welington castillo
In a two-team baseball town like Chicago, there are always going to be sports columnists who are fifth columnists with respect to one or the other team. Last week, Phil Rogers sided with Boston on the question of how much compensation the Cubs owe the Red Sox. There would be howls all around if Jackson [...]
If fans were expecting a shakeup after Tom Ricketts took over as chairman of the Cubs late in 2009, they had to wait until the third week of August 2011 to learn that general manager Jim Hendry had been terminated a month earlier. (Hendry was held over for a month to attend to unfinished business, [...]
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Posted 26 September 2011
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prospect § Ricketts
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Also tagged: andrew friedman, darwin barney, gary hughes, hak-ju lee, jae-hoon ha, jim hendry, josh vitters, oneri fleita, starlin castro, tim wilken, tom ricketts, tony campana, tyler colvin
After consulting, apparently, the Mayan calendar, baseball’s cognoscenti determined that Sunday, July 31st, would be the end of the world for the Chicago Cubs, coinciding with the major-league trading deadline; or, less metaphorically, that the Cubs’ GM would dispose of every remotely tradeable player on the team just before being disposed of himself. Management would [...]
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Posted 07 August 2011
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Hendry § prospect § Quade § soriano § trade
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Also tagged: alfonso soriano, aramis ramirez, brandon guyer, carlos pena, darwin barney, geovany soto, jeff beliveau, jim hendry, marlon byrd, mike quade, ryan flaherty, starlin castro, tim wilken, tyler colvin
On-base percentage is fine, but after you walk you still have to get around the bases. A walk seldom drives in a run, and it is relevant, I think, how often a walk scores a run. If a hitter’s production is measured in runs scored and driven in, then Fukudome is the least productive hitter [...]