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Blogs from our Community

Robert Conan Ryan

Who Should Replace Vidal Brujan?

Hello Cubs World, you know it. I know it. We all know that Vidal Brujan is a placeholder - a disposable glove guy.  Brujan hasn't done anything to force himself onto the field - he's just burning lowest leverage innings.  So let's get to it. Hoyer has the usual two choices: acquire or promote a bench player.  Team Needs  There's a few ways a bench player could improve the team.  1) Another power hitter   2) Righty killer platoon LHB at 2B, 3B, or LF - Matt Shaw hits only .658
Robert Conan Ryan

How's Genesis Cabrera?

Hello Cubs World, looks like we scooped up a lefty. I'm thrilled that the Cubs are pushing for 3 lefties in the pen- it is the next critical step towards fielding a top 10 bullpen. Most elite bullpens have 3 or 4 lefties, and the Cubs have been running with 1-2, while leaning heavily on righties that play well against both handed hitters. Well, as clever as that moneyball solution has been for saving a buck, it has a hard ceiling- for the Hoyer Cubs, Cubs struggle hard to crack a top 10 bul
Robert Conan Ryan

Early Season Checkup: The Q1 Performance of Cubs B-Ball (Part 4, STARTING PITCHING ANALYSIS)

Hello Cubs World,  I dragged my feet on this one because the starting rotation is, like most other teams, a work in progress with injury issues.... that's just pitching in modern baseball. But its time to get to the point: how have they done, and what can we do about it? (Note: I'm also going to do an analysis soon of all the offseason misses - the guys the fans and media wanted us to pursue, and those we didn't, and where we'd be if we had made better choices).  How They've Done, Thro
Robert Conan Ryan

Early Season Checkup: The Q1 Performance of Cubs B-Ball (Part 3, PLAYER ANALYSIS)

Hello Cubs World, let's skip right to it shall we? The Stats keep fluctuating. Cubs keep putting up monster numbers of runs, efficiently. Their bullpen keeps cracking. But lets go head and finish a quick analysis to see the likelihood of sustained success for each player.  General stats worth discussing (fundamentals that drive beyond WAR, OBP, SLG, OPS): I provided Fangraphs rankings, minimum 90 plate appearances, for each players' xwOBA, Home Runs, and Defensive WAR contributi
Robert Conan Ryan

Early Season Checkup: The Q1 Performance of Cubs B-Ball (Part 2, the POSITION PLAYERS)

Hello Cubs World,  I've been thoroughly enjoying the North Side Baseball articles. As usual, they provide the best information NOT behind a paywall. Lucky fans. Seriously, everyone should try to promote the site and expand the readership. And I encourage site donors to push for more site marketing somehow! Thanks.    Back to our regularly scheduled programming. (For you kids younger than 40, this was a thing that was said when a radio or tv channel was interrupted by an emergency techn
ryanrc

ryanrc in Management Topics

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Robert Conan Ryan

Early Season Checkup: The Q1 Performance of Cubs B-Ball (Part 1)

Hello Cubs World,  I'm just thrilled to provide another blog entry regarding the Cubs. I'm less thrilled by the bullpen antics. But before I get into player details, let's just stop and appreciate a few basic predictions I made at the team level and how they have panned out. My Off-Season Expectations: Team Position Player Rankings The Cubs are performing up to expectations in the field, at bat, and baserunning. The most important overall offensive statistic for the regular season is
Battle Your Tail Off

Show Some Cubbies Pride, Baby Blue Style, with FOCO’s New Cubs Bobblehead Launch

FOCO is a partner with North Side Baseball and support of their products helps support this site; 100% of the funds/materials received from these promotions go directly to our users in the form of prizes and gifts. What a phenomenal start it has been for our Cubbie Blues as they lead the National League Central in which has turned out to be a non-competitive division thus far.  As the Chicago Cubs continue to show off their skills offensively leading all of Major League Baseball in run
Robert Conan Ryan

New Uniform?: A Smart Compromise

Hello Cubs World, I had to jump into this conversation.  As a Business Professor, I'm always looking for the bottom-line opportunities.  Here's my suggestions, based on all the news I've read on this matter: 1) Pinstripes is the Late Season Look The new home uniform has visual appeal on television, but is a bit less popular with merchandising, for a few reasons. First, when we think of the Fall Classic, we can only ever picture our teams in their most "formal looking" attire. Pin
Robert Conan Ryan

Interlude: How Good was the Bears Draft?

Hello Cubs World,  I know this is a baseball site. You know this is a baseball site. K.  But I'd venture to guess at least half of the people around here support the Bears, too.  And coming off two early-season losses to the Phillies, and several bullpen changes, I'm in a "wait and see" mode to analyze the Cubbies. We have every reason to love our lineup, and our starting rotation is holding up fairly well ....except Ben Brown. I've been criticizing him since the offseason as a mere
Robert Conan Ryan

Why Nicky Lopez?

Hello Cubs World, I'm sure you were rooting for Gage Workman. I know I was. He looked good at the plate. He hits lefty. He plays key positions for which we need solutions. But Gage's errors were even worse than Shaw's. Shaw had several errors in a small sample, even worse than we expected from the failed campaigns of Chris Morel and Patrick Wisdom in 2023 and 2024. Workman managed to outdo him by committing two errors vs the Dodgers in a single game that cost us a hefty lead - that gam
Robert Conan Ryan

Too-Early 2025 Hitting Projections

Hello Cubs World, It's about time to make some revised projections! First, I will review my early guesses for the first 20 games and see how close I was. Then, I'll give a revised "injury free" guess at the rest of the season. I'll keep it simple since we have a long way to go. I will give a deeper analysis around game 40ish.  I Always say that you need 40 games before you know your club identity- especially pitching. But let's give it a shot. I didn't give exact numbers for each playe
Robert Conan Ryan

My Northside Community Award Speech

Hello Cubs World, So happy and proud to have won a Seiya Suzuki Bobblehead doll for my little slice of this website.  Before I get into future baseball insights, let me give my gratitude to this community. It's a cool corner of the net that should be expanded. I gave it a trial run and I am glad we found each other eye-to-eye. This is a voluntary dues paying club waiting to happen.  Let me walk you through my interpretation of my community blog award as a random human being you do
Robert Conan Ryan

So, how's the pitching NOW?

Hey Cubs World, Ill get back to evaluating the position roster performance after game 20 of the season. This is a short piece about the state of the pitching.    Here's a list of insights so far: The starters 1) No worries about Steele. Sure, Steele has struggled with health, but those struggles are minor. He's looked consistently like a top starter when healthy, and he will come back to 100 percent by Mid-May. He'll still give us 25 starts this year and earn his keep. 
Robert Conan Ryan

Goodbye Spring: Hitting Expectations for the First 20 Games

Hello Cubs world,  on this blog I'll be laying out revised expectations for the Cubs 2025 Season. Hopefully I'll routinely update those expectations as the season progresses. It is a bit early to say too much about pitching -there's not much correlation between March and season performance. As usual, my goal here is not to predict what Craig Counsell will do, but rather what he OUGHT to do, if he wants to take advantage of the current hot/cold patters of Spring player performances. It is a
ryanrc

ryanrc in Management Topics

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Random Musings

Wanna See How a Baseball is Made?

I was reminded from a side conversation that baseballs are a mostly manual manufacturing process. There is some automation in the making of the pill in the middle, and the twirling of the layers of string and yarn and stuff, but the 108 stitches are done by hand and it looks tedious. Anyway, just an excuse to share this very cathartic video.  
Rice Cube

Rice Cube in Baseball Nerdism

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Battle Your Tail Off

Take Your Favorite Peanuts Character Out to the Ball Game with FOCO’s New Snoopy Cubs Bobblehead

FOCO is a partner with North Side Baseball and support of their products helps support this site; 100% of the funds/materials received from these promotions go directly to our users in the form of prizes and gifts. As opening day is creeping right around the corner, we as baseball fans have been itching to get back into the season since that exciting World Series finish between the Dodgers and Yankees ended back in November.  But let’s focus on what matters most and that’s Chicago Cubs
Brock Beauchamp

Brock Beauchamp in Promotions

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Robert Conan Ryan

Let's Get Pumped to Win the Division

Hello Cubs World,  After dissecting Hoyer's strategy for the past three months, I came to the conclusion we are the clear division favorite this year; moreover, even if missing on the division, we are a practical lock for a wild card. So, let's high five about that.  In today's blog piece, I'll go over reasons to really be pumped about this team. Top 12 Reasons to be Excited. 1) Fangraphs and Zips predict Cubs as third-best overall record in MLB.  Enough said- that's a strong
ryanrc

ryanrc in Management Topics

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Robert Conan Ryan

Justin Turner: Why am I "meh"? Part Two

Hello Cubs World,  I'm sending off an academic publication this weekend! Its always a big landmark moment. Academic studies can take months or years, with the average turnaround time dramatically varying by field. I'm a business professor, and our publication rates are much slower than hard scientists. Its normal for research faculty to produce 1 "b" quality journal paper every 12-24 months, and in addition to that research, producing 1 "a" quality paper every 3 years. However, only about 1
Robert Conan Ryan

Justin Turner: Why am I "meh"? Part One

hey Cubs world,  I just got finished a rousing game of Company of Heroes and saw Justin Turner was scooped up by the Cubs. Nobody's mad at the deal, but some people are surprisingly PUMPED, as if this move was the "big difference". Also, I hear a lot of "good price"!  Sorry guys, but for me, this is the equivalent of being pumped about Caleb Thielbar after missing on Tanner Scott. Sure, I like Theilbar as an interesting option. His only down year happened to be last year, however, and
Robert Conan Ryan

Competitive Tiers: The Landscape in 2025

Hello Cubs World,       I was in the middle of prepping my slow cooker for chili, and an interesting thought exercise popped into my head.  Every once in a while, seismic shifts occur in a sport's competitive landscape: expansion teams, relocations, ownership change, and the like. Pretty soon, the collective bargaining agreement will expire. In 2 years, we could see a shuffling of many rules, especially related to player salary tax/cap/veterancy structures. However, teams are already p
ryanrc

ryanrc in Management Topics

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Robert Conan Ryan

Assad's Camp Injury: A Blessing in Disguise?

Hello Cubs world,  like everyone else, I'm curious how this final roster shapes up. Given the short amount of time remaining to make deals before the season starts, I'll just wait and react rather than make any more predictions or analysis of the roster composition.  Assad and Birdsell Injury News Fans were a bit surprised to hear about these two injuries at this exact moment, given that the action is pretty light in early February. Javier Assad is facing an oblique injury and Bir
ryanrc

ryanrc in Management Topics

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Random Musings

A Cubs Parody, Recorded

Hey everyone, so I recently wrote a parody which probably could use some improvement, but I also wanted to see if I could do some fun stuff in Audacity to record it. Please forgive my terrible singing voice (it hasn't been the same since I had a bad cold a decade or so ago, but before then I rocked karaoke), but enjoy!  
Rice Cube

Rice Cube in Parody

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Robert Conan Ryan

Cubs Land Ryan Brasier: Why I love this move

Hello Cubs World, WELL ISNT THIS CONVENIENT!!! Jed's Dead with Delight Man, did this play right into Jed Hoyer's hand. You couldn't author a better situation for his brand of dealmaking = more importantly, it is a great fit for our swiss army knife approach to the bullpen. He wasn't even the worst 26th man on the Dodgers roster, just the odd man out for Kirby Yates by a small margin. Three lesser pitchers have Dodger jobs simply for role reasons, and the rest are projected to vie
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