The Cubs trimmed their roster by two more today, releasing Gabor Bako and LHP Mike Stanton. Congrats to Koyie Hill and his bionic hand. The roster now stands at 28 and the position players and bench are set for Opening Day. The spring roster with just a week left in camp.
CATCHERS - Soto, Hill
INFIELDERS - Lee, Theriot, Miles, Fontenot, Ramirez, Hoffpauir
OUTFIELDERS - Soriano, Fukudome, Johnson, Bradley, Gathright
STARTING PITCHING: Zambrano, Dempster, Lilly, Harden, Marshall
RELIEF PITCHING: Gregg, Marmol, Heilman, Vizcaino, Cotts, Gaudin, Patton, Guzman, Fox, Samardzija
I think the first 5 bullpen spots are locked down, leaving Gaudin, Patton, Guzman, Fox and Samardzija for the final two spots and I don't see why they'd keep Samardzija in the majors with the relatively poor spring he has had and the fact that he has options left. And it's quite possible that Rich Harden will see the disabled list to start the season and the Cubs will then just have to move one of the four left - Gaudin, Patton, Guzman or Fox (Large cartoon blinking arrow pointing at Chad Gaudin's name).
Also seems to be a lot of dead air time -- he and Len don't tseem to be in sync yet.
Almora goes 4-7 in yesterday's 14-inning Kane County loss, dropping his average to .636.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-2013-cubs-bette...
FG article from yesterday about the overwhelming underperformance of the 2013 Cubs. If I understand their 'Clutch' stat correctly, then the Cubs this year are 40% less clutch than the 29th-most clutch team in baseball.
I still love TCR, please don't hate me.
---
Garbage song, I Hate Love.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOcVhBu0YjE
scrubbies lose...18-28
as an aside...though jim d. hasn't been awful in the booth, it's a bit disappointing he didn't/doesn't do the amount of "homework" getting to know the team or critiquing things being done like bob did.
so far, when i hear jim d. calling a game it feels like he's a national "game of the week" generic type announcer that doesn't know the team well.
he's a full-on 100% replacement for "bad joke bob" type humor, though.
link is fine
MLB.com's error page
http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2013/5/23/4359426/mlb-error-page-gifs
Now pitching for the Pirates --- Jose Contreras?!
welly gets his 2nd walk of the season in his 141st PA.
I imagine that things will pick up a bit with the draft, promotions, and trades. It seems that most of the remaining posters are on board with the rebuilding process so the discussions have been slim.
all kidding aside, this team really has been running on a single bright spot (the starting rotation) and rizzo pounding the ball hard when he's not slumping (and his extension)
welly's doing as expected (though a few more homers/doubles would be nice)...valbuena is helping people forget about i.stewart, though he's not doing anything extraordinary...kevin gregg has been a nice surprise as the new closer...castro is being castro, though a few more walks or hits would be nice since he's performing slightly below expectations...
It's definitely hard to get excited about this team. When they suck like this it feels like a huge part of my summer is just completely missing, so I want to come here and get a little bit of a Cubs fix, but lately it's 100% split squad games at Fitch Park. I can't stand any of the major newspapers' coverage, and I really don't like BCB or any of the other Cubs blogs. I guess I just miss the good old days with 200+ comment threads, even if 90% of it was just The Real Neal arguing with himself.
The people demand more free entertainment, Rob G!
broken link...probably cuz MLB protects their rights on the innerweb on a scale music + film industries should be jealous of.
click this... http://mlb.com/ajkls
refresh for different lulz.
official Cubs MLB squad post for april/may - everyone sucks except for the starting pitching (sans e.jackson) and when a.rizzo isn't on a no-hit, major-K streak
save to cut/paste for june-september
So I haven't commented much lately, and I don't want to be that guy, but is this site now exclusively dedicated to Extended Spring Training? I absolutely love everything AZ Phil brings to the table, but could we maybe get a few posts about the big league squad?
I still love TCR, please don't hate me.
Nice start for Almora -- 3-4 with a double for Kane County.
Baez has picked it up lately, hits in 13 of his last 14 games..something like 19/56 with 3 BB and 9 K over that span.