Rob G.'s Archives
Cubs to Non-Tender Two
According to Wittenmyer, the Cubs will non-tender 2 of their 5 arbitration eligible players.
Hoyer says Cubs expect to non-tender two arb guys by tonight's deadline with hope of retaining them. Stewart and ...
One-Year Wonders
The Cubs add to their stable of pitchers today, by signing RHP Scott Feldman to a one year deal for $6M, plus $1M in incentives according to various sources. Feldman seemed to be a popular target among Cubs armchair GM's this offseason for reasons unbenknownst to me, but TheJedi seemed to concur.
Cubs Make Roster Moves and a Trade
Today was the deadline to add players to the 40-man so they wouldn't be eligible to be selected in the Rule 5 draft. The winners were: RHP Trey McNutt, RHP Robert Whitenack, 3B Christian Villanueva and INF Logan Watkins. Nick Struck seems to be the only surprise name left off the 40-man additions...enjoy the Astros! To make room for the additions, Bryan LaHair was desginated for assignment and RHP Carlos Gutierrez was waived and assigned to Iowa after clearing waivers (I swear I don't even know who that is). LaHair is apparently going to sign to play in Japan.
The Cubs also traded RHP Jake Brigham (acquired in the trade for Geovany Soto) right back to the Texas Rangers for RHP Barret Loux and a player to be named later. Brigham allegedly has an elbow injury according to Bruce Miles, so that would explain why the Cubs are getting such high upside with Loux as it must be a reworking of the Soto deal (mighty nice of the Rangers). Loux was a former first round pick of the Diamondbacks (6th overall in 2010) out of Texas A&M. After agreeing on a $2M deal with the D'Backs, the club backed out citing an issue with his elbow and shoulder and the Rangers signed him for $312K later that year as a free agent. 2 years later, he put up a 14-1 mark in AA for the Rangers on a 3.47 ERA (7.1 K/9, 2.9 BB/9, 0.7 HR/9) and Texas League pitcher of the year honors.
Speed Round
Some quick takes on recent baseball news...
Half-Baked
The Cubs have signed RHP Scott Baker for $5.5M, plus $1.5M in incentives. He became a free agent after the Twins declined his $9.5M option for 2013.
Toldja!!! Marmol for Haren
UPDATE #2: Just kidding. November Fools!!! Anyway, Marmol apparently was asked to waive his no-trade clause, that leaked before the Cubs and Angels officially had a deal. Then allegedly the Cubs nixed the deal...some say it was over the medicals but who knows. At the end, Haren's option was bought out and he's a free agent now. Twitter Rumors 2, Cubs 0.
Cubs Hire New Minor League Pitching Coordinator
The Cubs hired Derek Johnson as their minor league pitching coordinator. Apparently this is a bit of a coup, but it might as well have been Bugs Bunny for all I know about amateur pitching coaches. But I'm supposed to pretend that I'm some sort of authority on these subjects, so here's what I uncovered on the man, the myth, the legend.
Cranking Up the Rumor Mill
First off, Darwin Barney is a "finalist" for a Gold Glove at second base...as if they dont' already know the winner. But they've decided to drum up interest by naming the top 3 or 4 at each position and then announcing the winner in a televised event on ESPN2 tomorrow. Holy overkill Batman!
Royals Continue to Confound
The Cubs were obviously going to non-tender Chris Volstad, so they wisely outrighted him to give them some 40-man flexibility. He still may have resigned with the team, but at a much lower price, but it's pretty clear the Cubs were rather bearish on Volstad after the disastrous 2012 season. The Royals, for whatever reason, decided to clog up their 40-man by picking Volstad off waivers. While it does give them first rights to negotiate with him until the non-tender deadline, I can't possibly imagine why the rush.
Cubs Continue Use of 40-Man Roster as Lotto Scratch-Off Ticket
Today the Cubs claimed former Twins first round pick (27th pick in 2008 draft) Carlos Gutierrez off waivers after he was outrighted.The 6-3" righty will be 26 next year and was in the midst of his third year at Triple A Rochester. Then his shoulder gave out, which led to arthriscopic surgery for a cleanup by Dr. Yocum in June. Claims are he will be ready for spring training and I'm sure our own Dr.
Cubs Fill Out Coaching Staff
The Cubs made it official and removed the interim tag from hitting coach James Rowson, who took over for one of the last remaining Hendry scapegoats, Rudy Jamarillo. A bit surprising to me that they didn't end up hiring Dave Magadan, the Red Sox hitting coach during some of the Theo years, but Magadan must have decided that watching Texas Rangers baseball over the Cubs was a more bearable proposition.
Kane County Cubs Are A-Coming
The Twitterverse says the Cubs have finalized plans with Kane County to move their Class A player development contract a little closer to home. With guys like Almora, Vogelbach, Amaya, Candelario, Dunston Jr. and so on possibly playing there next season, there should be some good crowds. The dirty, rotten Cardinals have already taken up the void left by the Cubs in Peoria.
Disqus Upgrade for TCR
First off, I got a new MacBook Air this weekend. I'm hoping this helps with keeping the blog up-to-date better as my old laptop was on its last legs and seriously annoying me so much that I didn't even want to surf the net much.
As for the site, Disqus has been a bit of a disappointment. Not quite what I thought was advertised. While there are features I like, my biggest disappointments so far are:
- lack of new comment notifications when re-visiting site
- lack of real-time updating
- odd thread structure when putting in new comments
I think the "Latest Comments" sidebar helps with the lack of new comment notifications. I just go there and see what I missed, but it doesn't seem to update too quickly and I feel like I'm missing comments. Granted, things are slow right now and interest is at pathetically low levels this time of year, but when the news starts coming again in the offseason, I think it will get even more annoying.
So, I'm going to try upgrading to what they call Disqus 2012. We'll see if it's any better. This requires nothing on any of your parts, but by tomorrow morning, the comments will look a little different. We'll see how we like that after a few weeks. If I/we are still unhappy with the comments, I'll see about getting the native Drupal comment system working again.
Cubs 2013 Schedule Released
It's the most exciting thing to happen in Cubdom all month...the 2013 schedule release!!! They actually have the entire thing up at cubs.com already, but here are some of the highlights.
Baez Tops End of Season Prospect List
MILB.com gets the gold star for getting their homework done first and has put out a Top 20 Cubs prospect list based off the end of the 2012 season. It's actually a fairly in-depth look at the system so I encourage folks to check it out. But as for the names, check after the jump...
Recent comments
crunch (view)
he's a low-level cubs star in the modern history of the cubs (c.zambrano, k.wood, r.dempster, etc), but that star has dimmed...and has been dimming since 2021.
2024 has been ugly the whole way and we're only in mid-april. homers aside (even though there's been 7 in 17ip) he gave up 29 hits in 20 spring innings and 31 in 17 regular season innings.
he's pretty much only got 2 pitches at this point in his career and the mix isn't fooling anyone. he threw a noticable amount more curves in his last start to add to the mix and it didn't help his issues. he don't have many moves left to break out.
Eric S (view)
Definitely needs a 10 day stint for the hangnail - have to nip those things in the bud or suffer the consequences (ie, more opponent home run derby, etc)
Eric S (view)
Thanks for checking and yeah, that’s a double ouch
Sonicwind75 (view)
Believe you are correct, checked and appears Cubs have a $2.51 million obligation to Barnhart this season per Cot's Contracts. Also paying Trey Mancini $7mil this season. Ouch.
crunch (view)
m.busch had 0hr and 2 doubles when he was last at wrigley.
we'll probably see a few more of his jerseys in the seats when they return tomorrow.
wonder who will go down for taillon. hey hendricks, you got a hangnail or something?
Eric S (view)
Nice work by Wesneski with some solid defense behind him and the late tack on runs were welcome. Gladly take a 5-4 West Coast swing, particularly down two key starting pitchers … Now just don’t get swept by the Marlins for Pete’s sake.
crunch (view)
dansby takes the team lead in SB today after a SB with 2 SB total. the team has 3. madrigal has the other one.
cubs also have 7 triples, 7 players each.
crunch (view)
sure am ready for p.wisdom and m.masterboney to swap roster spots.
Eric S (view)
The fifth inning has not been kind to Wicks this season. Giving up leadoff doubles to Tucker Barnhart is also not good for business. IIRC, the Cubs are on the hook for the majority of Barnhart’s salary this season to add insult to injury (could definitely be wrong here).
Cubster (view)
Kris Bryant to IL with low back strain. He’s keeping the Rockies docs busy.