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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.
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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.
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Baseball Prospectus, Condensed For Your At-Work Reading
What the latest Baseball Prospectus annual has to say about the Cubs, minus all those pesky numbers and the obscure historical and literary allusions:
Ronny Cedeno
"...Cedeno's is a tried and true skill set–the same one that's earning Orlando Cabrera millions of dollars every season..."
Ryan Dempster
"...has experienced a steady decline in his groundball rates over the past three seasons...coupled with command that was never very good to begin with..."
Mark DeRosa
"If the Cubs bring in a Brian Roberts-type...the gains will be less than they might appear at first glance."
Kosuke Fukudome
"An inspired acquisition...a J.D. Drew/Bobby Abreu type of player..."
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.