Good old Ben Zobrist. You always know exactly what you’re getting from him: great patience, solid average and power, and the kind of positional flexibility that helps Joe Maddon sleep at night. His TAv has been over .280 for six straight years; his wRC+ has never been below average since he became a major league […]
Author: Darius Austin
A Recent History of Defending Champs
In case you missed it, the Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series. While few Cubs fans have tired of seeing Kris Bryant throw to Anthony Rizzo to break the drought, the start of the 2017 season draws ever closer, and soon the Cubs will have to get on with the business of defending their […]
Cactus Catchup: The Rotation Returns and Baez Departs
The World Baseball Classic began on Monday, which means that a few players will be absent from Cubs camp going forwards, most notably Javier Baez. The versatile infielder will suit up for Puerto Rico in the tournament as part of perhaps the most exciting double-play partnership of the competition with Cleveland’s star shortstop Francisco Lindor. […]
Projecting John Lackey at 38 and Beyond
John Lackey enters 2017 at 38, after 14 years and almost 2700 innings in the major leagues. The sample of starters who have been pitching at that age, let alone having success, is relatively small. Lackey’s made it there; what then should—or could—we expect from him? The projections naturally give us a starting point. PECOTA […]
The 90th Percentile Cubs
Last week, the PECOTA projections were released and while few would have expected another hundred-win season projected for the Cubs, the 91 wins they’re currently sitting at on the BP projected standings page is underwhelming to say the least. To make it appear even more like PECOTA has something specifically against the Cubs, the Dodgers […]
The NRI Watch List
Everyone’s thinking it when they look at the Cubs roster: This is a team that could sure use a surprise contribution from a non-roster invitee. There’s so little depth, and plenty of room on the roster to fit in one of the 24 NRIs that were announced at the end of January. Anyone buying it? […]
Jon Lester and Pitch Tunnels
Last week, Baseball Prospectus introduced some exciting new ways to evaluate pitching, one of which focuses on the notion of pitch tunnels. As that piece explains, this is essentially an attempt to quantify what Greg Maddux called the ‘column of milk'; the concept that an arsenal is extremely effective when the pitches are virtually indistinguishable […]
BP Annual Retrospective: A Decade with Rich Hill and Jeff Samardzija
“There’s no limit to how .480 this team could be.” This might sound like a sneak preview of the Marlins or Diamondbacks chapter in the upcoming Baseball Prospectus 2017 annual, but in fact was the first line of the team comment on the 2007 Cubs. Yes, the team outlook was just a little different a […]