During the offseason, Jason Heyward, John Lackey, and Ben Zobrist have dominated the discussion among fans and writers about the Cubs’ best moves. There isn’t much to dislike about any of the deals, really. Heyward and Lackey were the best position player and pitcher, respectively, on the St. Louis Cardinals. Getting both of them to […]
Category: Articles
They Would Have Gotten a Real Star
A mere seven years after his major league debut, Monte Irvin was without a job in the major leagues. Despite posting an impressive .296/.389/.477 batting line over his Giants career, socking 84 home runs, and garnering a third-place MVP finish in 1951, the New York Giants did not renew the left fielder’s contract for the […]
Cubs Convention 2016: The Promise of Resurgence and the Cult of Fandom
In the darkest depths of winter, once the excitement and distraction of the holidays has worn off, long after we’ve begun to forget the smell of ballpark franks, and when we (Chicagoans) remember mournfully the days when we’d mutter that “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity,” Fan Fests come along. Last month, over at […]
Coghlan in the Machine: Is Chris Cross?
I need to tell you something, but first, here’s your grain of salt: I was in the Cubs’ clubhouse just once during the 2015 season. My sample size, as a reporter and as an observer of the team’s clubhouse culture, is entirely contained in one road game in June, and that’s a woefully insufficient sample […]
High Performance Forces Theo’s Hand
After the end of the 2014 season, Theo Epstein made clear that the front office would seek to add impact pitching from outside the organization that offseason, while also acknowledging that two nine-figure commitments in one offseason were not going to happen. Epstein stayed true to his word, adding Jon Lester on a major contract but […]
How Far Can You Actually Take That Pesky Washington Nationals Comparison?
Good news, Cub fans! After a breakout 2015, in which the team won 97 games, hired a new, exciting manager and called up most of their top prospects (all of whom, of course, excelled once in the big leagues), Chicago has just gone and had the best offseason of any major league team! They signed Ben Zobrist […]
Another Turning Point, a Little More Clarity
It was my senior year of high school, and like many teenagers, I thought I had it all figured out. My father had scheduled a meeting with some of my teachers in hopes of getting some updates on my progress that year. It ended up being a rather harmless chat, but after most everyone had […]
The Consequences of Clarity
On the final day of March, 2015, I got an email that changed my life. I was a grad student then, living in London and only periodically achieving a level of wealth which allowed me to rub two pennies together. About three weeks earlier, I’d sent a guy I’d barely heard of—Sahadev Sharma—an email out of the blue, asking for a job […]
The Cubs Won’t Have a Traditional Rotation in 2016 (And That’s a Good Thing)
In June of 2012, the struggling Colorado Rockies tried something new: a four-man rotation. This experiment was exciting and interesting at the time, but it is now largely forgotten outside of Colorado and the small circle of baseball aficionados who care about things like rotation optimization. The Rockies planned to pitch their starters every four games and […]
Heyward, Wainwright, and Being “The Man”
It’s been a banner offseason for the Cubs, who have improved significantly both at primary positions and at the margins, all the while keeping a tight grip on their top prospects. The biggest coup of the offseason was clearly signing three top free agents—Jason Heyward, Ben Zobrist, and John Lackey—to contracts that were reportedly less lucrative […]