In the last stretch of the off-season—for me, the part that stretches from the Cubs Convention in mid-January until pitchers and catchers report a month later—there’s a lot of nervous chatter, inane conversation, and debate over the most minor of details involving baseball players and teams. While it would be nice to have real baseball […]
Tag: Roster Construction
The 25th Man: Assessing the Race for the Roster
It’s January, a month that lacks any modicum of decency in Illinois. It’s currently -2 degrees as I write. Our football team is eliminated, and our basketball teams are stuck in the same purgatorial existence they’ve been mired in for the past decade. Free agency is generally wrapping up, with the most exciting names already collected by new teams. The […]
How Many Roster Spots are Actually Open?
I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the last few weeks pondering various moves the Cubs might make this offseason—here, here, and here, for example—but realized today that (a) I haven’t yet taken a look at the Cubs’ roster composition, and (b) that that might be a worthwhile endeavor, and give me another way […]
Taking the Zone by Force: The Most Important Area of Improvement for the 2015 Cubs
Theo Epstein was on AM 670 The Score on Tuesday, in the hours leading up to the Cubs’ Game Four win over the Cardinals. Though Epstein was careful to note (more than once) how much work remains to be done, the interview was at least partially a victory lap for the Cubs’ chief architect. Epstein […]
Cubs Embracing New Expectations Even as October Thrills
Look to your left. Now look to your right. One of you failed to predict that the Chicago Cubs would win 97 games in 2015. Reasonable expectations had the club right around .500, with 90 wins a possibility if the kids held up down the stretch. Nobody predicted this—the Cubs on the doorstep of the […]
Breaking down the NLDS Roster Decisions
Now that the we know that the Cubs are headed to the NLDS to face the Cardinals, we asked some of our BP Wrigleyville writers to put together their ideal roster for that series. There was quite a bit of consensus with regards to the lineups, with Chris Denorfia and Quintin Berry battling for the last […]
They Built It, and the Cubs Are Coming
I love a lot of things about baseball, but the thing I love most—at least off the field—is roster construction. There’s something beautifully technical and delicate about putting together a group of 25 guys that, while limited by certain constraints (age, positional ability, money), will produce the most wins possible for your ballclub. It’s a really, really hard […]
Them Wild-Eyed Boys That Have Been Away: How the Full-Strength Cubs Should Look
On Wednesday night, as the Cubs fought in vain to keep their winning streak alive in Pittsburgh, Miguel Montero and Tommy La Stella toiled in Tennessee. Their situations are very different. Montero is trying to hurry back from a sprained thumb that appeared it would steal most of his second half; La Stella is trying […]