Surgically reconstructed knee and all, Kyle Schwarber can still do a lot of things really well. His hitting in 2017 is not yet cause for celebration, and while at times his defense in left field can dazzle us, at others we might be forgiven for wanting to look away. There is one aspect of Schwarber’s […]
Tag: Baserunning
Kris Bryant’s Playoff Retrospective: Power And Baserunning
It’s a testament to how entertaining and excellent Javy Baez and Jon Lester were during the 2016 NLDS and NLCS that they not only were able to overcome the initial sluggish postseason starts by Anthony Rizzo and Addison Russell, but were also able to nearly completely overshadow Kris Bryant’s solid postseason performance up to that […]
Tales of a Baserunning Ballclub: Cubs Running Wild
Late in Sunday’s 13-inning affair, overshadowed by Javy Baez’s walk-off fireworks, the Nationals’ defense succeeded in throwing out Jason Heyward at home plate. Michael Taylor corralled the ball perfectly on one hop in right-center field and fired a throw to the cutoff man; the cutoff man, Danny Espinosa, flung the ball to catcher Wilson Ramos, […]
Weird in 2015, Cubs Expected to Stay That Way in 2016
Last year, at another site, I noted that the Cubs were, by one measure, extremely weird. In that article, I looked at eight team measures—strikeout rate, walk rate, home run rate (for pitchers and for batters), baserunning ability, and defensive ability—which are roughly united in that they all can be defining characteristics of a given team. […]
Kyle Schwarber: Baserunner Extraordinaire
Do you ever have those surreal moments when you find yourself somewhere strange, and the series of events it took to get you to that place seem unfathomable? My day job involves extensive international travel that takes me to some of the farthest regions of the earth, so this happens to me regularly: Where am I? How […]