“Regarding our starting pitching, the topic sentence is: we would like to add more quality pitching.” —Theo Epstein (October 22, 2015) There are four guarantees in life: death, taxes, people overusing “death and taxes” to make their points, and the need for starting pitching depth. No matter the era, teams—especially contending teams—crave starting pitching. In the […]
Tag: Offseason Themes
Cubs Look for Runs in the Outfield, Try Not to Lose Any
Imagine you’re in charge of a health intervention, and you have the choice of two programs to implement over a population of 600 people. If you implement Program A, there’s a 100 percent chance that you’ll save 200 lives, but a zero percent chance that you’ll save the other 400. If you implement Program B, on […]
Contact Probably Not Key to World Peace, Might Help the Cubs Win Anyway
How do you greet a friend? With a hug? A handshake? A kiss? Whatever it is, in all likelihood it involves contact. Oftentimes, this greeting, however it’s made, can be very telling; it’s a small but crucial bit of information. That’s item one. Item two? Studies show that newborns thrive on skin-to-skin contact with both mother and […]
Upgrading the Run Defense: A Team Effort
A few years ago, I decided to prank my wife for her birthday. She’d been complaining about how bad her camera was (a previous gift from yours truly—and most definitely not a prank) and she wanted something that took better pictures. Which meant—hint, hint—a new camera. So her birthday rolled around and she opens her card […]
Theo Epstein, Language, and the Shape of the Cubs’ Offseason
For a long time, I thought I’d be a lawyer. I liked the lifestyle—or, at least, my adolescent vision of it—and I reveled in the verbal back-and-forth I saw practiced by the profession’s televised representatives. But most of all, I liked the command of language the law seemed to require. To learn to say exactly what needed to be said, […]