With the Winter Meetings underway, it appears to finally be time to turn the page on the greatest night of our baseball lives and focus instead on the coming season ahe— You know what? Screw that. The thing about the greatest night of our baseball lives is that there’s no such thing as spending too […]
Tag: joe maddon
Second City November: No-Save November
Few managerial moves unite fans from the disparate allegiances of the baseball internet, but you’d face a tall task finding someone who was pleased with how Joe Maddon handled the latter innings of the Cubs’ blowout Game Six victory on Tuesday night. Jake Arrieta had pitched well for 5 ⅔ innings and 102 pitches, and […]
Playoff Prospectus: Assessing the Managers’ Moves in Game 6
This piece, written by Baseball Prospectus’s Jarrett Seidler, forms part of the main site’s comprehensive coverage of the postseason, “Playoff Prospectus”. Cubs manager Joe Maddon only made one truly impactful move in the larger story of the series in Game 6. With a 7-2 lead and two on with two outs in the seventh inning—a […]
Second City October: Maddon’s Conservatism
Marvel at Terry Francona and Andrew Miller, at Dave Roberts and Kenley Jansen, for they are bold and innovative and damn good at what they do. Francona and Miller, in particular, have been coming in for particular praise, these days, for their unwavering commitment to using the best relief pitcher in baseball in the highest […]
Second City October: A Manager’s Choices Make The Difference
The Cubs’ marathon loss to the Giants Monday night hurts, but only if we first remove context. From my fellow Wrigleyvillers, you’ll hear exceedingly reasonable takes focused on the fact that the Cubs anticipated a tough matchup with Madison Bumgarner, that Game Three was always the one they expected to be the most difficult, that […]
Playing the Long Game: Joe Maddon and Jason Heyward
Baseball’s 162-game season can sometimes make individual games feel weightier than they actually are, and the struggles of a single player look greater and feel more frustrating than they probably should. Baseball should be as much about stepping back and seeing the forest as a whole as it is picking through the minutiae of splits […]
Maddon’s Bullpen Promises and the Limits of our Knowledge
It’s an accepted fact that Joe Maddon is a progressive manager. We don’t know anything about managing, not really; we don’t know how much control they have over what they’re doing, and we mostly see the very small part of the job that manifests itself as in-game strategy. But what we do know has given […]
Powell, Maddon Have Cubs Running Wild Through National League
In a season that, by the day, whispers ever-more insistently about the glories in its future, the Cubs’ thrilling, walk-off sweep of a top NL contender last week seems a fitting conclusion to Chapter 1. Having logged thirty games of insane .800 ball, the hot start is turning historic and gaining significance by the win. Though […]
Why Aren’t the Cubs Following Their Preseason Plan for Pitchers?
The Chicago Cubs’ starting pitching has been phenomenal over the first two weeks of the 2016 season. There’s really nothing but good news. Entering Monday, no team had matched the Cubs’ 11 Quality Starts, and only the Nationals rotation had a higher average Game Score. By a narrow margin, the club led the league in […]
Let it Flow: The Psychology of Joe Maddon’s Cubs
“I think we’re too young to even realize what we just did,” Kris Bryant said last October after the Cubs clinched their spot in the NLCS. Instinctive and honest, the statement was emblematic of that 2015 team, which excelled in such an unselfconscious, fearless way. But that fearlessness wasn’t just a product of youth and talent; essential to the effort was […]