As Tom Petty once said, the waiting is the hardest part. As the Cubs have capped off their successful 2016 season with lineups that include Javier Baez at first base, Tim Federowicz catching, and the likes of Rob Zastryzny/Jake Buchanan starting, fans have cast about for reasons to continue to pay attention, all the while constantly glancing down at their […]
Author: Matt Petitt
Chicken or the Egg: Why It’s Hard to Separate the Cubs’ Pitching from Its Defense
Growing up in the Chicagoland area in the mid 1990’s, it was impossible to escape the shadow of the Chicago Bulls. Each summer seemingly brought a new championship to the city complete with a parade that usually culminated with someone like Steve Kerr making wise cracks at Grant Park. Since Space Jam holds a special place in […]
Game 149 Recap: Brewers 3 Cubs 1
While it’s easy for myself and other and other BP Wrigleyville writers to fault Jason Hammel for his lack of recent success, the reality is that Hammel for the vast majority of the season was one of the top fifth starters in baseball. While this sounds like a back handed compliment it’s not; over time a strong fifth starter […]
Statcast Fun with the 2016 Cubs
What is Statcast? Loyal readers of Baseball Prospectus have at least a rudimentary understanding of it, while major league baseball’s casual viewers probably think it’s the name of Outkast’s new album. In other words, it’s old enough that you won’t think twice when you see it on your Twitter feed, but it’s new enough that […]
Jason Hammel: A Recency Bias Test Case
Recency bias, or the tendency to give disproportionate weight to something that just happened, seems to hit baseball fans and analysts especially hard. People who follow baseball (despite everything we know about sample sizes) unfortunately still fall all too often into the “what have you done for me lately” trap instead of accounting for a player’s […]
Jorge Soler and Willson Contreras: The Curse of Kris Bryant’s Unreasonable Standards
When you’re 41 games over .500 and have such a commanding division lead that your fans are already debating the merits of having either Tommy La Stella or Chris Coghlan as a left-handed pinch hitting option off the bench in the playoffs, it’s easy to forget the journey that led the Cubs to this point. Some fans probably just want […]
Game 136 Recap: Cubs 3 Giants 2
For better and for worse (but mostly for better) Jason Heyward’s play today was unlike any game he has played this season. After uncharacteristically dropping a fly ball (which of course was hit by Hunter Pence) in the second inning that led to an unearned run, Heyward collected three hits and drove in all three […]
Jon Lester and the Evolution of DIPS
It’s been thirteen years since Moneyball was published and the term “sabermetrics” was added to the public vernacular. While Moneyball itself was not the cause of the modern baseball analytical revolution that began in the late 1990’s and continues today, it’s undeniable that it’s popularity and platform allowed for the ideas of the sabermetric community […]
Dexter Fowler Keeps Rolling Along
When this era of success at Wrigley Field comes to an end, and sportswriters are writing their farewell pieces and reminiscing about the memorable moments, there’s a good chance that player development and the pipeline of young talent that Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer, Jason McLeod have built will be central to the overall storyline. And […]
Ben Zobrist: A Tale of Three Seasons
The Chicago Cubs entered the 2016 season as the consensus favorite to win the World Series, with no shortage of intriguing options on the mound and in the field. For me, the area that stood out above the rest was the growth and development of the offense. After the always dependable (but still only 26-year-old!) Anthony […]