The Cubs had a very good 2015, and many experts are saying they’ve had an even better offseason so far (if that’s even possible). When people who know baseball agree that a 97-win team has “won” the offseason, you have to feel pretty good about the state of said team going forward. That is, until […]
Tag: Ben Zobrist
Creating Depth and Versatility, Cubs Build on Strong Present
The question of how to improve a youthful, 97-win, NLCS-reaching baseball team has been the driving force behind our work here at BP Wrigleyville this offseason, and we’ve generally tackled it in terms of identifiable weaknesses of the 2015 Cubs: contact hitting, outfield defense, and starting pitching beyond their two aces. But the 2015 Cubs […]
From BP: Cubs Implement Flextime
Over at our main site, Wrigleyville’s Editor-in-Chief Sahadev Sharma wrote up the Cubs’ acquisition of Ben Zobrist, Adam Warren, and Brendan Ryan. The full story is available only to paying subscribers, but we thought you’d enjoy this preview here. Barely an hour before news broke Tuesday night that the Cubs had made multiple moves, Theo Epstein […]
Ben Zobrist: Potential Offseason Target
Ben Zobrist Position: 2B/SS/RF, occasionally LF/CF/3B/1B. Essentially, every position except catcher or pitcher. 2015 Stats: .276/.359/.450, 13 HR, 11.6 BB%, 10.5 K%, .295 TAv, 3.0 WARP How He Fits: It’s good to be great. That statement seems axiomatic enough that I’ll leave it here without further justification, and move on to a second—and perhaps more controversial—claim: that it might be just […]
Market Matters: Checking in on Potential Trade Deadline Targets
This week’s call-up of Kyle Schwarber is only the latest in a series of indications that, for the first time in recent memory, the Chicago Cubs figure to be buyers at the July 31st trade deadline. With a record of 35-28 entering play on June 18th (that’s the fourth-best record in the National League), BP […]