What You Need To Know: What you need to know is that this Cubs team—a team that has gotten barely 1/2 a season out of its former MVP and an injured other half from him, lost its closer halfway through the year and is down another while their third most important reliever turned into a basket […]
Author: Sam Fels
Actually, You Don’t Need To Panic About Lefties In The Postseason
Let me be clear up top. I like the guys at BleacherNation.com. They’re smart, good-looking, generally a good smell. They know a lot, aren’t pushy about it. So you shouldn’t disregard anything they have to say. And they care. So when they say something is to worry about, it’s because they’re worrying about it. Tuesday, […]
Game 155: Cubs 6, White Sox 1
What You Need To Know: This is what Cubs fans have been waiting for, or pining for, for a good portion of the season. An early pantsing of a starter who didn’t have it, everyone in the lineup looks dangerous, and then a cruise for seven-to-eight innings as you rack up yet another win. This is […]
Game 154 Recap: Cubs 8, White Sox 3
What You Need To Know: If this game took place in July, you’d have probably left in the 6th or 7th to hang out on someone’s porch. Though the gap was technically close for most of the game, once the Cubs went up 5-2 in the 5th it never really felt in doubt. It just took […]
Cubs Hope It Blows Over, It Doesn’t
For an organization that, at least on the surface, has so many smart people running it, and in a time where everyone has had an ample sampling of other organizations trying to do so with balloon hands, it’s kind of amazing/startling/wholly disappointing that today’s presser was the best the Cubs could come up with today in […]
Willson Contreras: Iron Man, but at What Cost?
As you may have noticed over the past few weeks, Joe Maddon is trying to conserve whatever little is left in Willson Contreras’s gas tank. Victor Caratini has received a few more starts, though it hasn’t hurt that Caratini has hit pretty well and from the left side of late. Well, pretty well is relative: a 83 […]
Game 149 Recap: Reds 2, Cubs 1
What You Need To Know: There’s a reason people call it a game of inches, and it’s not totally lack of creativity. Jose Quintana made two mistakes, and Willson Contreras’s drive in the 5th missed tying the game by no more than a couple feet. Add it up along with Luis Castillo’s damn fine Kyle-Hendricks-Hopped-Up-Goofballs impression, […]
Game 146 Recap: Cubs 4, Nationals 3
What You Need To Know: In a make-up game that neither team wanted to play and no one wanted to watch, the Cubs easily cruised to a one-run win that was never all that tense and got out of D.C. and back to Chicago about as cleanly as could be asked in this piss-poor situation. What’re […]
The Bullpen And September, A Rough Nexus
With the NL Central race having gone the opposite way we’d hoped (and thought, really), there are rising blood pressures and clenching… well, you know what’s clenching, around the Northside and Greater Cubdom. And it goes beyond just gaining a third-straight division crown. The concerns extend into October, because after all, it’s that upon which the Cubs’ success […]
Something’s Up With Your Daily Cishek, It Just Might Not Be What You Think
From basically May on, a lot of us have watched the appearances pile up for Steve “Your Daily” Cishek and worried that by the time September came around and he unfurled his right arm in his sidewinding delivery, his fingers would end up somewhere around Section 210. As he has been designated Joe Maddon’s “fireman” out […]