Baseball Prospectus
The Cubs Over/Under on Wins is Set at 71
The pre-season ritual of BP releasing their preliminary PECOTA numbers is upon us and as expected the Cubs are in the bottom 5 of the league. They've got them tabbed at 71 wins at the moment, 3rd worse in the league with only the Astros and Marlins being worse.
- Read more about The Cubs Over/Under on Wins is Set at 71
- 28 comments
- Log in or register to post comments
Running a Yellow Light
Will Carroll, BP's staff writer focusing on team health had this very interesting recent quote, from his "Cubs Team Health Report":
Age is a poor predictor of injuries. Younger players get hurt more, but they heal more quickly. Older players get hurt less, a variant of the survivor effect, but heal more slowly.
The media that follows baseball does it's best to understand and decipher sports injuries. It's a tough job for them and much gets lost in translation of medical terminology. Injured athletes often don't understand what they are being told about an injury or they are just afraid to fess up that their ache might be a significant problem until it goes on for weeks or longer. Trainers and medical staff are often reluctant to discuss information on the grounds of patient-physician confidentiality and some teams are just less open to giving what information they have to the media. The information is important to us fans, since key players dealing with even minor injuries and not performing to their best ability can drastically affect how a team plays. In 2009, Alphonso Soriano apparently had a knee injury that he tried to work through until it was so obvious that he couldn't run, leading to his arthroscopic knee surgery in September. An injury that flies under the radar screen of the medical staff, as in Soriano's case was costly and not in a way you can put the usual "days lost" analysis to.
- Read more about Running a Yellow Light
- 73 comments
- Log in or register to post comments
Recent comments
Dolorous Jon Lester (view)
I think if you had ranked players by how much the team could ill afford to have them miss significant time, Steele would be right at the top of the list.
crunch (view)
steele MRI on friday. counsell expects an IL stint.
no current plans for his rotation replacement.
hellfrozeover (view)
I would say also in the bright side column is Busch looked pretty good overall at the plate. Alzolay…man, that hurts but most of the time he’s not giving up a homer to that guy. To me the worst was almonte hanging that pitch to Garcia. He hung another one to the next hitter too and got away with it on an 0-1.
crunch (view)
amaya blocked like 6-8 of smyly's pitches in the dirt very cleanly...not even an exaggeration, smyly threw a ton of pitches bouncing in tonight.
neris looking like his old self was a relief (no pun), too.
TarzanJoeWallis (view)
In looking for bright spots the defense was outstanding tonight. The “stars” are going to need to shine quite a bit brighter than they did tonight offensively though for this to be a successful season.
Eric S (view)
Good baseball game. Hopefully Steele is pitching again in April (but I’m not counting on it).
crunch (view)
boo.
crunch (view)
smyly to face the 2/3/4 hitters with a man on 2nd in extras.
this doesn't seem like a 8 million dollar managerial decision.
crunch (view)
i 100% agree with you, but i dunno how jed wants to run things. the default is delay. i would choose brown.
like hellfrozeover says, could be smyly since he's technically fresh and stretched.
anyway, on a pure talent basis....brown is the best option.
Childersb3 (view)
Use pitchers when you believe they're good. Don't plan their clock.
I'm sorry. I'm simply anti-clock/contract management. Play guys when they show real MLB potential talent.
If Brown hadn't been hurt with the Lat Strain he would've gotten the call, and not Wick.
Give him a chance.
But Wesneski probably gets it