Part four of our annual preview series. This year, we present for each team a 60-word-or-so takeaway from 2020, a 162-word-or-so preview for the 2021 season, a win prediction, and a song to represent the… Read more »
Posts Tagged: Chicago Cubs
AMERICAN LEAGUE CENTRAL There are good teams in Minnesota and Cleveland. There are bad teams in Detroit and Kansas City. The White Sox are the one in the middle. A “wild card” both in terms… Read more »
Boston Red Sox – by Jamieson Weiss
Chicago Cubs – by Ben Bailey
Chicago White Sox – by James Cardis
[Ed. note: This preview was split three ways with John LaLoggia handling the fungoes, while Brandon Lee sought some answers on projection systems from Darius Austin] A song to play while reading about the Cubs:… Read more »
Even with a comparatively down free agent market this last winter, Tyler Chatwood exceeded many contract predictions when he signed for $38 million over three years with the Chicago Cubs. Despite a fairly average career… Read more »
I present to you an audience-participation season preview, featuring the reigning World Champion (the entire city of Chicago entered a World Series hangover on November 3, 2016 and has not admitted that 2017 even happened)… Read more »
This is the third season of BttP’s prediction and projection tracking, and once again we’re bringing you our All-Star Break check-up on the teams that have most confounded the preseason expectations. Below are three teams… Read more »
Inspired by FiveThirtyEight’s regular Slack chats, Brandon Lee, Nick Strangis, Ross Bukouricz and Darius Austin got together to do a different kind of 2017 Cubs preview through the medium of Facebook.
We’re officially less than a week away from pitchers and catchers reporting, which means this will be the final installment in this series that has hopefully given readers some distractions in the malaise leading up… Read more »
Stoicism is defined as the quality or behavior of a person who accepts what happens without complaining or showing emotion. By that definition I was the epitome of the word on the night of November… Read more »
Two years ago I devised a plan to better evaluate front offices besides the typical wins and losses used by many casual fans. I perform this evaluation by creating specific metrics using preseason projected statistics and… Read more »
The Chicago Cubs’ decision to decline Jason Hammel’s 2017 club option is about many things. It’s about what the Cubs want to do with the starting rotation moving forward. By declining Hammel’s option the Cubs… Read more »
You may have heard Jon Lester doesn’t have a great pickoff move. Francisco Lindor exploited this fact in the first inning of Game 1 of the World Series, stealing second base and eventually scoring the… Read more »
Here is an explanation of this weekly feature. This entry lists the best and worst for the past 30 days of the 2016 regular season, through games of Sunday, July 10. Programming note: Due to… Read more »
In the first episode of An NL Central Podcast, Alex Crisafulli, Eric Roseberry, and Brandon Lee discuss the virtues of a divisional podcast in 2016, your current WAR leaderboards, how this year’s Reds aren’t at all like the 1996 Bulls, why Cardinals fans should consider booing Jason Heyward, and “Christian EDM.”
There are dozens of Cubs previews out there, but as far as I can google, none that are set to a soundtrack of Mountain Goats songs. John Darnielle was on Effectively Wild’s Cubs preview this… Read more »
Once the New York Yankees were eliminated in the American League wild card game, it was clear that one of the themes of this postseason was going to be redemption. Of the eight teams in… Read more »
On Tuesday afternoon I was sitting in my office and I had a thought. “I should go to Pittsburgh for the NL wild card game.” I’m not a Pirates or Cubs fan, but I just… Read more »
Schedule: Game 1 – Friday, 10/9 6:30 PM EDT at St. Louis Game 2 – Saturday, 10/10 5:30 PM EDT at St. Louis Game 3 – Monday, 10/12 at Chicago Game 4 – Tuesday, 10/13 at Chicago (if necessary)… Read more »
In this series, Banished to the Pen turns the clock back to a particular year in baseball from the ’80s and ’90s. Our first entry starts with 1988, the year of one of the most… Read more »
Site editors Brandon Lee, Darius Austin, and Ken Maeda convene for a random fandom banter episode. After summing up the Cubs and Giants’ seasons, the trio discuss Webb-Albers, consuming baseball, ballpark tours, triple-short-of-cycle leaders, and BRef player sponsor rates.
Writers Alec “AD” Denton and Stephen Shaw join guest host Brandon Lee to talk about Statcast, the Cubs, the Tigers, the rough & tumble AL Central, Joe Nathan, and the DH.
The First Ever BttP Community Predictions
Fairy Tales seem to end in a similar fashion–conflict resolved, happiness acquired, vague conclusion indicating permanence of victory. Real life is rarely this way. Take for instance the parallel misery of the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs. Decades of failure stacked upon each other, lined with mishaps and blunders that hold more to their franchise legends than the players themselves.
Ken Burns’ documentary series Baseball rubs some the wrong way. Hearing an endless loop of George Will and Doris Kearns Goodwin droning on about the perfect art and symmetry of baseball or God-knows-what can be… Read more »
On Friday night, we lost another of baseball’s historical and personal giants. Ernie Banks died not far short of his 84th birthday, and perhaps, only a little further short of seeing the Chicago Cubs team… Read more »
In 2014, Dexter Fowler was 20 runs worse than an average defensive center fielder, according to Defensive Runs Saved (DRS). It was the worst figure posted by any center fielder in Major League Baseball. Fowler… Read more »
The Chicago Cubs traded third baseman Luis Valbuena and right-handed pitcher Dan Straily to the Houston Astros Monday, for outfielder Dexter Fowler. It’s a win-now move on both sides, as Valbuena will move offensively helpless… Read more »
We’ve passed the halfway point between the last out of the World Series and the first pitch of Spring Training. This is always a dreary time in the calendar for baseball fans. Many of the… Read more »
As soon as Chicago Cubs prospect Javier Baez was called up in August, he was a must-watch, for one very specific reason: he swung a bat just about as hard as you can imagine anyone swinging…. Read more »
