Jump to content
North Side Baseball

champaignchris

Old-Timey Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,671

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

 Content Type 

Profiles

Joomla Posts 1

Chicago Cubs Videos

Chicago Cubs Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits

2026 Chicago Cubs Top Prospects Ranking

News

2023 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

Guides & Resources

2024 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

The Chicago Cubs Players Project

2025 Chicago Cubs Draft Pick Tracker

2026 Chicago Cubs Draft Pick Tracker

Blogs

Events

Forums

Store

Gallery

Everything posted by champaignchris

  1. champaignchris
    Sometimes it makes sense to go on short rest. Like last year when the Dodgers pitched Kershaw on short rest because all of their other pitchers were dead. But Cleveland? With their starting pitching depth? They could have used Tomlin, Clevenger or Salazar. All of whom are going to pitch this game anyway. This made no sense.
  2. champaignchris
    As nerve-racking as this must be to the D-Backs and Rocks fans, I can’t imagine any neutral observer complaining about the format while watching tonight’s game. Just some fantastic baseball going on tonight.
  3. champaignchris
    Someone might be able to convince me that the divisional series should be 7 games instead of 5. Otherwise, I think the playoff format as it exists now is perfect.
  4. champaignchris
    Cardinal’s GM kept his job after one of his employees hacked into a competing team’s scouting database. What could be so much worse than that, that the Brave’s GM resigned?
  5. champaignchris
    Donaldson has 5 WAR in only 111 games. yeah he's really good. But they will likely have to pay a hefty sum for 1 year and then feel obligated to sign him to a long term deal into his late 30's I would far rather they do one year of Donaldson than multiple years of Moustakas or Machado.
  6. champaignchris
    Hosmer and Moustakas are only 27 and 28 years old. That sucks for Royals fans.
  7. champaignchris
    The Cardinals should sign/trade for as many 32+ year old sluggers as they can find. Over-the-hill power bats are clearly the new market inefficiency.
  8. champaignchris
    Cubs MLB rank since the ASB (pre ASB rank in parenthesis) #1 in runs (20) #3 in hits (28) #3 in total bases (23) #1 in batting average (28) #1 in on base percentage (18) #1 in slugging (19) #2 in walks (3)
  9. champaignchris
    '04 was similar. The Astros went 36-10 to pass the Cubs who went a perfectly respectable 26-20 over the same period. Of course, the Giants also passed the Cubs going 28-16 over the same period. But what the Astros did, making up 10 games in the standings over a 46 game stretch when the team they were chasing was posting a .565 winning percentage... That sucked.
  10. champaignchris
    I don’t feel like the Cubs are going to make any trades in the offseason that will substantially change the make up of their core position players. Maybe heading into 2019 and that monster free agent class, but I feel this year they’ll keep the position core intact and use free agency to fill in the holes in the pitching staff. I feel like they’ll buy a starter on the Lance Lynn/Alex Cobb/Tyler Chatwood level. Not sexy but with the potential to be effective for a number of years. I think they’ll bring Wade Davis back. They aren’t riding him the way they did Chapman. Makes me think they want to consider bringing him back. And I think they’ll get a prominent lefty reliever like Abad or McGee so that they can feel Confident in moving Monty into the rotation. Bring in a cheap Jon Jay replacement (Austin Jackson? Or maybe just bring Jay back? Or maybe Martin is already their Jay replacement?) and sign a Rene Rivera-ish backup catcher on a minor league contract for insurance and call it an off season.
  11. champaignchris
    It amazes me the number of people who want to focus on a 35-ish game stretch in April and May while ignoring the entire rest of his career when evaluating Schwarber's bat.
  12. champaignchris
    There aren't any Sox fans, just Chicagoans (suburbanites, really) That hate the Cubs. Heh. Your namesake, Larry Biiitttner was on those late 70s teams. Had a negative WAR over a 13 year career because he hit .270, Billy Beane was in high school, and no one had ever heard of Bill James yet.
  13. champaignchris
    I dimly remember my dad yelling at those Bruce Sutter, Rick Reuschel, Dave Kingman teams from the late 70s. I think "June swoon" may have been my first words. I grew up in central Illinois. The White Sox weren't on tv or the radio where I grew up. They may as well have been playing on the moon. I saw the scores of their games in he morning paper the same way I saw the Mets or Padres scores. That didn't change until the early 90s. I think I met my first Sox fans in college. I couldn't understand why they was so mad at me for being a Cubs fan.
  14. champaignchris
    Man, if it's 1969 all over again, forget this baseball thing and let's go catch Led Zeppelin at the arena. I hear James Gang is opening for them.
  15. champaignchris
    Weren't they trying to adjust his delivery to alleviate the back problems that had plagued him his whole career? Is that what he's complaining about?
  16. champaignchris
    I believe he has a NTC through 2018. No NTC for the final year of his contract in 2019. I assume at some point they are going to pay someone to take him off their hands. I also assume that will be after the 2018 season.
  17. champaignchris
    Cardinals are very deep in SP options in the upper minors. Weaver, Reyes and Flaherty could all be studs, but none have ever pitched more than 150 professional innings in a season and Reyes is coming off TJS and will undoubtedly be on an innings limit. Wainright can't be counted on for anything and they shouldn't have too much confidence in Wacha being anything more than ok. Even if the kids pitch well and neither Wacha nor Martinez gets hurt, they still look like they need someone to pick up 150-ish innings. Maybe they think whomever they pick up (plus the $ they send to Seattle) will be cheaper or better than Leake. I can see them getting someone cheaper or someone better, but not both.
  18. champaignchris
    A weird trade. Even if Weaver and Reyes are lights out next year, they'll still probably have to sign a Leake-ish player to fill out their starting rotation.
  19. champaignchris
    Rank the free agent starters: 1. Arrieta 2. Darvish 3. Tanaka 4. Lynn 5. Cobb 6. Cashner 7. Vargas 8. Chatwood 9. Tillman 10. Estrada I'm probably undervaluing Vargas' good year, but he's going to be 35 next year. Anyway, when you combine health, age and recent performance, Jake is pretty much head and shoulders above the rest of the class.
  20. champaignchris
    There's going to be some fascinating qualifying offer calls made after the season. Hosmer, Moustakas and Cain at KC. Cozart in Cincy. Cashner in Texas. Chacin in SD. Cobb in TB. Maybe the Cubs with Wade Davis, too, considering the recent price of FA closers. More than a couple cases where the team is going to make the offer and hope the player doesn't take it. Cozart maybe the prime example.
  21. champaignchris
    How awful must his life be? A baseball announcer who apparently hates baseball.
  22. champaignchris
    Puerto Ricans are a pretty specific mix of Spanish, African and Taino Indians.
  23. champaignchris
    I hope no one is holding up hockey's end of game solution as any sort of example as to how it should be done. Unless someone thinks deciding the winner of about 20% of the season with an end-of-game home run derby is a good idea. That's about 7%. I think it's reasonable to still hate the idea, but the number is nowhere near 20%. In hockey it's about 12-15% games go to shootout. I was overstating with 20%. My point was that radically changing the rules on how games end for a huge chunk of the schedule the way hockey does is not a good idea. Not that baseball is even considering such a thing, but that no one should be holding hockey up as a good example.
  24. champaignchris
    I hope no one is holding up hockey's end of game solution as any sort of example as to how it should be done. Unless someone thinks deciding the winner of about 20% of the season with an end-of-game home run derby is a good idea.
  25. champaignchris
    Baylor is kind of forgettable as the manager of he Cubs because Sammy Sosa was so much the most dominant personality on that team. By far. Those were completely Sosa's teams. Amazingly, Sosa posted a .312/.415/.655 slash over those three years. A 175 OPS+ and a total of 165 home runs. And the team still finished 11th, 7th and 11th in the NL in runs scored those three years. Sosa basically had no help at all. The pitching staffs were brutal, too, except in 2001 when the starters stayed healthy and the bullpen didn't suck. I think his firing had more to do with MacPhail out and Hendry in than with his actual managing.
×
×
  • Create New...