Guest Column
A Hawk Sighting
by Darrel Rade
According to a number of reliable and trusted sources, the Chicago Cubs will be seeing a familiar face back in uniform. It appears that Andre Dawson will be back on the Cubs payroll for the upcoming season, which is thrilling news for fans. The Hall of Famer has been working with the Marlins for the past few seasons as a special assistant. Dawson was fired from the Marlins and that decision was quickly rescinded. However, Dawson has made bigger and better plans and will be coming back to join the Cubs.
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Extending Mr. Hendricks
by Moshe W.
Kyle Hendricks will be aggressively targeted by the Cubs for an extension this offseason.
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Salary Cap and Free Agent Money
by Moshe W.
Hi readers. This is the first of (hopefully) many regular contributions to the Cub Reporter.
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The Top 10 Vintage Cubs Baseball Cards of All-time
by Ross Uitts
If you’re like a lot of baseball fans, then you’re also a fan of vintage baseball cards. Some of us collected as kids and have a nostalgic soft spot for them. Others just like the way they look and the history they represent. Whatever the reason, there’s no question they have their place in the game.
I thought it would be fun to put together a list of the best vintage Cubs baseball cards of all-time. And it was fun, but man it was much tougher than I thought it would be.
Soler vs. the Cubans
by CubsfaninCA
There have been a lot of opinions on the floor and ceiling for Jorge Soler since he started his career. Most agreed that he had a solid floor, but opinions on the ceiling varied and he was even described as “possibly the best in the organization, might be better than Bryant.” I think it’s safe to say that’s not going to be the case. (If it is, he’s got some catching up to do this year already.) With most players you could easily pull up some players for comparison, but Cuban players generally have different developmental paths than most major leaguers do.
Soler has passed the 300 PA mark, so it’s typically safe to say a lot of his numbers are stabilizing to some point. He’s been heating up lately so maybe he’d fare better if I waited a couple more weeks, 300 is a nice round number. We can thus take some similar Cuban players over their first 300 PA--I actually used their first 72 games, in most cases about the same--and see how they worked out. Obviously there are some apples to oranges, especially considering the advanced age of players like Jose Abreu, but these are the 12 other significant Cuban players still in the league compared against Soler. The left side of the chart is their career numbers (thus far) and the right side is how they fared after their first 72 games, ranked by their OPS after those 72 games.
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Do the Cardinals Really Know How to Draft Pitchers Better?
by CubsfaninCA
Much has been made over the Cardinals “voodoo” that suddenly takes no-name pitchers and makes them stars. They seem to do the same with some hitters on occasion, but it’s mostly the pitchers that seem to come out of nowhere.
I wondered if it’s luck or voodoo, or do they really just know how to draft and/or develop pitchers better than other teams. So I went through the last 10 drafts and pulled out the pitchers drafted by 4 teams—the Cards, our Cubs, the Braves (who also seem to have an abundance of young pitching) and the Phillies (who lately as an organization don’t seem to be doing anything well). I listed the pitchers who got to the majors and to eliminate the cup of coffee guys, used 20 Ks as a minimum threshold.
There were a few interesting anomalies: the Cards drafted Michael Stutes but he didn’t sign and later signed with the Phillies, the Cubs originally signed Sonny Gray but he also didn’t sign, and it was fun seeing our own Brian Schlitter’s name in another team’s column.
Best Cubs Drafts
I was intrigued by the recent ESPN article that proclaimed the 1968 Los Angeles Dodgers draft to be the best ever. The Dodgers picks that year were exceptional. All told across the various January and June drafts, the Dodgers drafted and signed EIGHT players that would go on to have successful major league careers. They are listed below with their career WAR according to Baseball Reference:
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Guest Column: A Look at How the 2012 Cubs Draft is Going
It seemed a lot of you liked it when WISCGRAD did a brief rundown of the 2013 draft and how the draftees are doing so far, so WISCGRAD just went ahead and did the 2012 draft as well. What a guy...
Who’s On First in 2012?
Sweet Lou brings us a guest column on what the Cubs may do at first base in 2012
It will be interesting to see who will be playing first base for the Cubs in 2012. There was talk in recent weeks that the Cubs had an interest in Albert Pujols, but that obviously didn’t materialize. Now that Pujols is headed to California, who might the Cubs turn to to fill the void at first base?
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The Lee-Ramirez-Zambrano Cubs
Reader dcf (he of the Ron Santo for the Hall pieces from a few years back) stops by with a guest column on the Lee-Ramirez-Zambrano years
The August 18th trade of Derrek Lee to the Braves for three minor league pitching prospects represents not only the end of an era, but also the end (and to some extent the failure) of a long term strategy. For some time, the Cubs have built their team around three core players, Lee, Zambranoand Ramirez, allocating a large percentage of their available salary dollars to these players in long term contracts. This strategy has not yielded the results anyone would have hoped for.
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Recent comments
Dolorous Jon Lester (view)
I think it’s a bit of a chicken or egg scenario. Did they make these trades because they saw what was coming and weren’t impressed and knew to keep up with the demand for constant winning thru had to acquire impact players? Or did those additions cause a failure of resource allocation elsewhere.
In addition, the whole they traded to acquire a star, that’s precisely what organizations should do if they feel they’re a piece away. Keep developing talent, but sometimes you need to supplement that talent. It’s what the best run organizations do. Atlanta does it. Houston in their prime run did it. Nationals during their prime run did it. Of course dodgers did it. Boston and Philadelphia too. Hell, the Cubs did it when they won. There’s no team that has had sustained success that has solely relied on their own internal development. It just doesn’t happen. I wouldn’t fault St Louis for that. What I suspect happened is in that 2020 season, in an effort to save money, they cut budget from developing and scouting. Or maybe the wrong guys got poached by other orgs. Regardless, blaming the acquisition of two of the best players of their generation for peanuts, seems off base to me.
I do agree that we’ve more or less come to the same conclusion, but our paths to that conclusion contain almost no crossover. I think we can also agree that seeing the cardinals struggle brings a warmth to our hearts.
CubbyBlue (view)
(LAUGH EMOJI)
Arizona Phil (view)
azbobbop: Yes.
Mike Wellman (view)
I’ve got Tim’s The Last Out too, along with some other prints of his work.
TarzanJoeWallis (view)
Very well played game all around tonight.
crunch (view)
best starter and 2 top hitters from the team gone...and they keep on winning.
little ahead of myself here, but the RSox got 9 outs to find 6+ runs.
TarzanJoeWallis (view)
Richard Gallardo just left the Smokies game with an arm injury after going to the ground following a pitch. Doesn’t sound good at all.
azbobbop (view)
Phil, do you think Wiggins will start out in ACL?
azbobbop (view)
The level of conversation on this site is intelligent, reasoned and informative. Miles ahead of other Cub sites.
Arizona Phil (view)
This was Jaxon Wiggins previous "live" BP on 4/5:
JAXON WIGGINS:
ONE INNING (20 pitches - 10 strikes)
one batted ball in play (F-9 by Stevens)
one walk (B. Davis)
one HBP (B. Davis)
two strikeouts (Peralta & Escobar - both looking)
three swing & miss
two fouls
four called strikes
nine called balls