It’s the beginning of September, which not only means that kids head back to school and beer gardens become a lot less fun, but also that I, as I have since the beginning of time the beginning of the season, will sit down and write about the top Cubs’ contributors and moments from the previous month. If you want […]
Tag: Kris Bryant
Surging Kris Bryant Making the Most of His Opportunities
When I last wrote about Kris Bryant, he was coming off the worst month of his short career (a July in which he posted an OPS of .639) and was adjusting to many things about his new environment, including the low strike (which he told me about for that most-recent piece). However, things have shifted quickly, […]
Hot Hot Heat: Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, and Pitchers Who Throw Fire
It’s easy to look back and laugh now, but there was a time when people genuinely worried that Anthony Rizzo would never hit a good fastball. He was struggling to hit anything harder than 90 miles per hour, and if that had remained true, it would have been a very real death knell for him. […]
An Exercise in Hopeful Caution: The Young Cubs and PECOTA 10-Year Projections
There are lots of exciting things about the Chicago Cubs this season, and in my opinion the most exciting among them is this: Despite their sizable and ever-increasing odds of making the playoffs (86.3 percent, as of this writing), fans have every reason to believe that the 2015 major-league baseball season will be the Cubs’ worst in […]
When a Young Man Walks By
As of Monday, the Cubs had given 2,345 plate appearances to players in their age-25 season or younger. In those trips to the plate, that subset of the team drew 207 walks. Both figures are the highest in the league for that age group, which should surprise no one at this point. The Cubs are […]
Kris Bryant’s Latest Challenge: Adjusting to the Low Strike
There are plenty of buzzwords in baseball. We’ve all heard them, and in all likelihood, we all use some of them. One that I hear more than almost any other when talking to players and coaches in the clubhouse is ‘adjustments.’ Whether it’s a guy like Andrew McCutchen weathering an early season slump, Jason Kipnis […]
Day and Night: The Cubs’ Odd Home and Away Splits
Through Monday, the Cubs are 27-24 at home and 30-23 on the road. I try not to get too carried away over split data, but while this portrays a positive development, there are intriguing undertones. This table shows the difference in OPS for the Cubs since 2000 for home and away games (hOPS and aOPS), […]
What History Says When You Start Four Rookies
I was listening to 670 The Score on Monday afternoon when Dan Bernstein asked whether a team that started four rookies had ever made the playoffs. I enjoy researching these types of questions, and Dan did leave quite a bit to the imagination. I chose to define “rookie” using the filter in the Baseball-Reference Play […]
What (If Anything) Is Wrong with Kris Bryant?
From the start of the series in which the White Sox visited the Cubs leading into the All-Star break through the end of this weekend’s trio of frustrating losses to the Phillies, Kris Bryant hit .120/.224/.260. In 58 plate appearances, he drew six walks and notched four extra-base hits (including a home run, Friday), but […]
No-Hitter Is of No Matter, It’s the No Offense That’s Concerning
Everyone okay? Did you get a chance to breathe, punch a wall, or drown your sorrows in a fine beverage? Good deal, it was probably time for some of that anyway; we all need to blow off a little steam every now and then. But here’s the thing: the fact that the Cubs got no […]