When I was 10 years old, I remember sitting in the TV room on Saturday mornings throwing a tennis ball against the wall and catching it with my catcher’s mitt. I would do this for hours while whatever early-morning TV (European soccer, mostly) played in the background. I was never a catcher growing up—I just thought […]
Category: Articles
And Leading Off For the Chicago Cubs Is…
Leading off to hit in a baseball game is an under-appreciated art form. There’s many nuances about it that even your standard formulas might not catch. With the additions of Ben Zobrist and Jason Heyward to the Cubs’ roster, picking a leadoff man just got complicated on the North Side. What the Cubs need from their leadoff […]
Why I Still Think About Rick Renteria
In 2015, 29.3 percent of players on Opening Day rosters were Latino and 8.3 percent of players were black or African-American. Of their 30 managers, however, exactly one was Latino (Fredi González) and one was black (Lloyd McClendon). This means that only 6.7 percent of all managers were black or Latino, despite over a third […]
Nietzsche and A New Hope
To say I’m thrilled to contribute to BP Wrigleyville this season is a massive understatement. And in honor of my new position and to establish my sabermetric bona fides, I’d like to share with you the chart I pitched to Rian that got me the job… KRIS BRYANT, 2015 WRC+ Is This Good? 136 Yes […]
How Does David Ross Fit on the 2016 Chicago Cubs?
David Ross batted .176/.267/.252 for the 2015 Chicago Cubs. He’d only batted .184/.260/.368 for the 2014 Boston Red Sox, but the difference in the last figures in those two slash lines is everything. His .203 True Average in 2015 was the 10th-worst among players who went to bat at least 150 times, not quite Christhian […]
Avoiding a Sophomore Slump for Kris Bryant
It’s quietly one of the greater fears fans have: that a standout rookie will be unable to maintain performance in the years after their debut season, and will instead falter, and fade slowly off the radar. Or, worse yet, crash mightily into oblivion. The dreaded tales of the Sophomore Slump are both plentiful and terrifying. Those stories are generally built around the notion that, once players have […]
Torres and Jimenez Ascend Together Through Ascendant System
Halfway through the summer of 2013, the big-league Cubs were in full-blown rebuild mode, stumbling through a summer schedule that contributed mightily to the team’s 96 losses that season. It wasn’t a pretty time in Chicago, and it was stuck smack dab in the middle of a series of seasons that, at least at Wrigley, featured little to get excited […]
A Little More Clarity: BP Wrigleyville’s New Staff
Two weeks ago, I put out a call for applications on behalf of BP Wrigleyville. I said that I was looking for “smart people who can write.” In response, over 170 people took time out of their lives to send me a note, sharing in the process their love of this beautiful game, their dreams […]
The Still-Exciting BP 101: Cubs Place Six
On the last day of the 2014 season, the Cubs won a meaningless game against the Brewers in Milwaukee, and all of Cubsdom quickly turned its thoughts to free agency and the waves of top prospects that were sure to finally grace the friendly confines come spring. The 2015 BP Top 101 Prospects list, then, was a […]
The Still-Exciting BP 101: Exploiting Loopholes… Again?
Pierce Johnson is, by all accounts, a pretty good pitcher. Last year, Baseball Prospectus ranked him as the 83rd best prospect in baseball. He was also the only pitcher the Cubs placed on that list (they had a total of seven players make the list in 2015). And while that certainly means something (and I’m […]