Wander along the canals, headphones on, Martin’s Amsterdam on Crimson windows float by; shame quietly covered with glittering lights Your drunken patrons stumble through the night These words were originally penned for the beautifully aged cobblestone streets of Amsterdam, a striking disparity from the trifling theme-park nature of the Opryland hotel. The similarity of feelings came unexpectedly as […]
Category: Articles
Cubs Player Profile: Tommy La Stella
Position: 2B/3B 2015 Stats: 33 G, 75 PA, .269/.324/.403, .269 TAv, 0.2 WARP 2015 in Review: Acquired last winter from the Braves as middle-infield depth with a shot to compete for the starting second base job, Tommy La Stella quickly found himself ensconced in the team’s 60-day disabled list due to a strained oblique. Jonathan […]
Cubs Player Profile: Justin Grimm
Position: Relief Pitcher 2015 Stats: 49 2/3 IP, 3.53 DRA, 1.99 ERA, 32.8 K%, 12.8 BB%, 0.7 WARP Year In Review: This past summer was Justin Grimm’s second full year pitching out of the Cubs’ bullpen, and he played a vital part in solidifying what was the eighth-best bullpen in baseball by ERA. Grimm, 27, started 2015 on the […]
On Eve of 2016, Weakness Is a Relative Term for Cubs
A few days after the 2015 season ended—while I could still smell beer and peanuts on my jacket—Sahadev Sharma and I collaborated on a series of articles for this site. You can find them here and here. In those articles, we laid out the weaknesses of the 2015 club as we saw them, and identified […]
Maintaining Financial Flexibility: A New Market Inefficiency? – Part One
As the fallout of Jason Heyward and Ben Zobrist signing with the Cubs settles around us, the idea of creating a team spilling over with flexibility on the field has been crystallized in our minds. My late-night lineup doodling revealed a dizzying array of possibilities, with as many as six players having the ability to provide excellent […]
Cubs Player Profile: Pedro Strop
Position: Relief Pitcher 2015 Stats: 68 IP, 2.67 DRA, 2.91 ERA, 30.0 K%, 10.7 BB%, 1.6 WARP Year In Review: Nobody seems to take it too seriously, but the Cubs actually had an excellent bullpen in 2015—their 3.38 ‘pen ERA was fourth in the National League, behind the Cardinals, Pirates, and Giants—and Strop was a major contributor to […]
Cubs Player Profile: Chris Coghlan
Position: OF/2B 2015 Stats: 148 G, 503 PA, .250/.341/.443, .279 TAv, 2.3 WARP What Happened in 2015: Chris Coghlan has qualified for the batting title twice in his seven-year career. The first time, in 2009, he won the Rookie of the Year award. The second time, in 2015, he was probably a better hitter and […]
Remembering the Ryan Dempster Trades that Never Were
July 31st, 2012 was an interesting day on Cubs Twitter. It was trade deadline day for the first time in Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer’s Cubs tenure and Ryan Dempster was an obvious trade target for multiple contenders. Dempster, 35 at the time, had an outstanding first half of the season, compiling 104 innings of […]
Cubs Player Profile: Anthony Rizzo
Position: First Base 2015 Stats: 160 G, 701 PA, .278/.387/.512, .328 TAv, 5.2 WARP Year in Review: This February, Rizzo came into spring training hoping to build upon a breakout 2014 season in which he slashed .286/.386/.527 over 616 brilliant plate appearances, slugging 32 home runs to go alongside a .335 TAv and 5.5 WARP, good for the 15th-best WARP […]
Sammy Sosa: The Hall of Fame Debate
Sammy Sosa will not be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2016. In fact, for myriad reasons, he will likely never receive serious consideration. In three years on the Ballot, Sosa has received 12.5 percent, 7.2 percent, and 6.6 percent, respectively. As of December 15th this year, according to Ryan Thibs’s invaluable ballot […]