Transaction season, like winter, is coming. We are less than a day away from the start of the first-year player draft, less than four weeks away from the beginning of the international free agency (IFA) signing period, and just under two months from the July 31st non-waiver trade deadline. Before the calendar moves too much farther forward, […]
Author: Rian Watt
Game 52 Recap: Cubs 2 Nationals 1
Top Play (WPA): Among players with 450 plate appearances or fewer over the last calendar year, who has the highest fWAR? The answer, as you were wondering for all of 0.2 seconds (depends on your reading speed, YMMV) is Anthony Rendon, who’s put up a total of 4.8 since June 5 of last year, despite missing […]
Another Way Kris Bryant is Really Good at Baseball
Photo courtesy of David Banks-USA TODAY Sports If you read my recap of the Cubs’ top performers in May, you’ll know a few things going into this post. First, of course, you’ll know that yesterday was President’s Day in Palau. (Interested in reading that post yet?) But second, you’ll know that Kris Bryant was not […]
That’s So Cub: A Look at the Top May Contributors and Moments
Photo courtesy of Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports Yesterday was June 1. This means, I am semi-reliably informed, that it was President’s Day in Palau, and also that it’s time for me to take a look back at the month that was—in this case, May—and provide for you, dear readers, a summary of the top Cubs’ contributors […]
Game 48 Recap: Cubs 2 Royals 1
Photo courtesy of Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports Top Play (WPA): You might think the top play of a game that included a walkoff hit would be that self-same walkoff, but if you did, you’d be wrong. By the time David Ross came to the plate in the 11th, the Cubs already had a pretty good shot at […]
Checking in on the Cubs, the Cardinals, and Their Records
Photo courtesy of David Banks-USA TODAY Sports Looking at winning records in a vacuum can be perilous. Win the first game of a series, lose the first and last games of the previous three game set, and lose just the last game of the series before that, and suddenly, all of the following are true: (1) The team has lost […]
Game 44 Recap: Nationals 2 Cubs 1
Photo courtesy of Caylor Arnold-USA TODAY Sports Top Play (WPA): It’s always a shame when you have to start a recap by noting the performance of an opposing player, but the cold hard numbers here leave us no choice. When Wilson Ramos came to the plate against Justin Grimm in the sixth inning, the game was tied […]
Six Hypotheses About a Bullpen
Photo courtesy of Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports The Cubs’ bullpen is, incontrovertibly, not very good this year. Joe Maddon, usually cagey to a fault about criticizing his team in public, recently labeled the ‘pen’s inability to perform the team’s “Number One Problem” (capital letters added for emphasis). The numbers back him up. Here’s the bullpen’s […]
What’s Up With: Yoervis Medina
Photo courtesy of Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports Well, it happened. Nobody expected the Cubs to carry three catchers all season—including me, when I examined the history of teams doing just that, back in April—and about an hour ago the Cubs made it official. Welington Castillo is leaving the Chicago Cubs, en route to the Pacific Northwest: […]
What’s Up With: Tsuyoshi Wada
Photo courtesy of David Banks-USA TODAY Sports For reasons that I cannot fully comprehend—and of whose nature little, in fact, is known to modern science—I have carved out something of a niche for myself on this site in profiling the more anonymous members of the Cubs’ pitching corps, shortly before their fortunes decline. See, for […]