https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/125-a-critical-look-at-the-cubs-batting-order-re24-and-other-musings/Hello Cubs World,  Dr. Robert Conan Ryan here - your resident management/entrepreneurship professor and economist.  I've been having tons of fun playing with simulations of batting orders, including revisitations of classic ones like the 1927 Yankees; similarly, I've looked at modern rost...125Tue, 07 Apr 2026 16:56:07 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/123-speculations-on-the-cubs-bench/Hello Cubs World,  let's spend a bit of time analyzing the bench.  Before we get started, let's recall that the Cubs have had a below average hitting bench for years now. Jed Hoyer has spent most of the past five years collecting glove-only (not even glove-first) players for those roles....123Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:12:55 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/122-hows-the-bullpen-swiss-army-knife-coming-along/Hello Cubs World, in this blog entry I'll quickly review the "locked in" members of the 2026 13-man pitching roster, plus the top  minors/injury arms on standby. Taking a hybrid approach, we will look at both the role each pitcher will play and the "swiss army knife" value of the player - whic...122Sat, 10 Jan 2026 09:07:19 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/120-re-doing-the-cubs-2026-pitching-staff-the-swiss-army-knife-approach/Hello Cubs World, My first news article will be dropping in a few days. Keep your eye out for it! In the meantime, I'm raising an issue here: What would be the BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE bullpens, if Hoyer focused solely on that issue this offseason? It is incorrect to only add WAR and chase st...120Sun, 23 Nov 2025 03:38:13 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/119-the-simplest-off-season-plan-for-cubbies/Hello Cubs World,  we all know there's many unknowns in an early off-season - surprise trade block activity, market values, player attitudes about joining certain clubs, and various subtle factors that fans simply cannot access. That being said.... Let's take the simplest approach to revi...119Wed, 12 Nov 2025 15:17:32 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/118-been-a-long-time-but-i-am-back/hey Cubs World, Its been a while but I am back. Woo! and I got a shoutout as runnerup for best community post. Nice.... Anyhoo/// let's check how we did in teh regular season predictions... Zips predicted 90.6 wins for the cubs. So basically 91.  I predicted 92.5 - it would have...118Fri, 31 Oct 2025 10:30:59 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/101-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 prom...101Wed, 11 Jun 2025 08:02:51 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/100-hows-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 righti...100Thu, 29 May 2025 14:25:28 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/99-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...99Mon, 26 May 2025 18:12:00 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/98-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...98Wed, 21 May 2025 09:14:20 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/97-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 marke...97Sun, 18 May 2025 07:16:20 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/96-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...96Fri, 16 May 2025 05:21:09 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/94-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 appea...94Sat, 03 May 2025 18:41:09 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/93-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"...93Mon, 28 Apr 2025 11:40:54 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/92-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...92Wed, 23 Apr 2025 23:05:35 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/91-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 d...91Sun, 20 Apr 2025 12:05:05 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/90-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...90Wed, 16 Apr 2025 09:33:19 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/89-so-hows-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 healt...89Sat, 12 Apr 2025 10:11:57 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/88-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...88Mon, 24 Mar 2025 23:00:08 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/85-lets-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...85Mon, 24 Feb 2025 20:59:20 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/84-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 sc...84Sat, 22 Feb 2025 20:03:47 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/83-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...83Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:25:50 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/82-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...82Sat, 15 Feb 2025 22:37:37 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/81-assads-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 In...81Wed, 12 Feb 2025 06:02:19 +0000https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs/entry/79-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...79Wed, 05 Feb 2025 07:47:38 +0000