My long personal nightmare is over. It ended a week or so ago, actually; I just didn’t have time to tell you so until now. For the first five and a half months of this season, Anthony Rizzo had a better OPS against left-handed pitchers than against right-handed ones. In 2014, that was true even […]
Category: Articles
Been There Before: Playoff Experience on the 2015 Cubs, Part I
Part II will focus solely on Jon Lester’s postseason resume. Below, Part I will break down the rest of the roster. Youth has served the Cubs well in 2015. Behind the play of Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Kyle Schwarber, Hector Rondon, Addison Russell, and hell, even Starlin Castro, the team is playoff bound for the […]
Game 158 Recap: Cubs 10, Reds 3
Top Play (WPA): The Cubs continued to cement their World Series contender status while racking up their win number 93—their fourth straight victory—a satisfying blowout of the lowly Reds. Interestingly, it took a few innings for the Cubs’ offense to get going, despite the lopsided final score. The Reds actually had the edge in win expectancy […]
Game 157 Recap: Cubs 4 Reds 1
Top Play (WPA): This game got out of hand for the Reds early, as the Cubs scored four runs in the first inning and never really looked back. The big blow in that inning came from Miguel Montero, who doubled to right-center (+0.174) off of Reds’ starter and Most-Boring-Name-Of-All-Time contender Josh Smith, scoring Kyle Schwarber and Anthony Rizzo and […]
The Beer List: Playoff Essentials Edition
This is The Beer List. It’s an opportunity, once every two weeks, for the staff here at BP Wrigleyville to get together (virtually, of course) and respond briefly to one small, usually quite open-ended, question. Despite the strenuous efforts of certain members of the writing crew to make it so, it has nothing to do […]
Game 156 Recap: Cubs 1 Royals 0
It doesn’t feel like the end is here, or even near. The 2015 Cubs have been magic (or, as I still prefer, magick), and it doesn’t feel like this season has any right to end anytime soon. Jarringly, though, Monday marked the end of the regular-season home schedule. If the Cubs don’t win the Wild […]
The 2015 Ballad of Jon Lester – Start No. 31
Date: September 25, 2015 Opponent: Pittsburgh Pirates Location: Wrigley Field Introduction “If I didn’t have bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.” -Michael Gary Scott Oh, how sweet it would have been. Jon Lester was very good on Friday afternoon, just like he has been for the majority of 2015. It would have been so […]
The Great Rebuild(s)
In the pantheon of sports history, there has perhaps never been a more daunting reclamation project. This storied franchise touted a rabid but increasingly disenchanted fan base. A franchise with pride and historical consequence, but fraught with bloated contracts, cheap owners and draft-day disasters. What was the summation of the discord? A championship drought that […]
Game 155 Recap: Cubs 4 Pirates 0
Top Play (WPA): A small side-effect of using WPA to determine top play, a dominant starting pitching performance almost never allows the starter to collect the hardware. Tonight is the exception, as Jake Arrieta took matters into his own hands. In the fourth inning with the Cubs leading 1-0, Pirate starter A.J. Burnett left a 91-mph sinker up and […]
How Chris Coghlan Updated to Version 2.0
When Chris Coghlan won the NL Rookie of the Year award for the Marlins in 2009, he was a high-contact singles hitter for whom a home run was a special occasion. Six years later, after a career crisis and unlikely revitalization, Coghlan is again a productive outfielder, this time with a skillset bearing little resemblance […]