Cubs for Breakfast

Cumann Daorchluiche Cubs na Chicago

Friday, May 27, 2005

Maybe....

  • Maybe, Moises Alou was a good clubhouse leader (despite his whining with umpires and broadcasters)

Subtraction by subtraction?

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Fantasies Don't Come True

Which Cubs are on your fantasy team? Are you sorry you picked them? I was out of town when my league had its in-person draft in March. I had to have a friend pick my team (don’t ever let that happen to you), and I only had time to tell him to put a couple of Cub players on it. So, what does he do? He goes and picks seven Cubs for my 21-man roster!

Could you name seven Cubs you’d want on your fantasy team, given the team’s performance so far?

Well, I’ve had Nomar, Walker and Wood all sitting on the bench for ages, and wasn’t allowed to replace them until six weeks into the season. Prior has been great for ERA, WHIP and Ks, but I’ve got four other pitchers with as many or more wins than him. I’m very happy with Jeromy Burnitz’s performance in real life, but in a 12-team fantasy league with a pool of all MLB players, you expect a little more from your corner outfielders. Michael Barrett dragged me down in April, but I knew I’d be happy with him by the end of May. Most disappointing, of course, has been Aramis Ramirez. He has fewer RBIs than anyone on my team except for Barrett and Scott Hatteberg (and of course Nomar and Walker). Johnny Damon, who last I checked was a leadoff hitter, has four more RBIs than A-Ram.

My team, the Frank Chances, is currently languishing in 10th place. Although I picked up potential rookie phenom Clint Barmes to replace Nomar, his awesome April has turned into a decidedly average May. Which Cub players are you happy or unhappy with on your fantasy team? And did you find any “lightning in a bottle” from the later rounds of your draft?

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Infield Help to Arrive Today

The Sun-Times reports that Carlos should be fine to pitch this week-end, and that the Cubs will add a back-up infielder "without giving up any players in return".

http://www.suntimes.com/output/cubs/cst-spt-cside17.html

Ronnie Cedeno will get sent down, and this year's version of Rey Ordonez will have a spot on the bench. Yep, that'll fix things!

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Rehashing an Old Hope

It has been a long time, nearly a year, since I’ve seen any reference made to Derrek Lee’s home/road splits for home runs established with the Marlins. Remember, in 2003 Lee hit 20 home runs on the road but only 11 at home in the cavernous Pro Player stadium. In 2002, he had put up the same 2:1 ratio. Much speculation was spouted when Lee was traded that his HR totals could potentially increase by one-third after his move to the Cubs. Of course, it didn’t turn out that way in 2004. Lee increased his home totals by seven, but his road totals decreased by six, leaving him with 32 jacks for the season as opposed to 31. That is a 3% increase in longball production, not 33%.

Maybe it just took a year to warm up for the slow-starting giant, at least that’s what we hope. Lee has six homers in 17 games at home and four homers in 16 road contests. At this pace, he will hit 29 at home and 20 on the road in 2005. While it would be foolish to expect his output to date to hold up over the course of the whole season, expecting last year’s hoped for 33% increase—about 40 total jacks—seems more than reasonable.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Now Those are the Cubs I Remember

I was going to post this after the six or seventh loss of The Streak, but then I thought I’d wait for when they lost their 8th of 9, which seemed inevitable what with the tenuousness of Z’s victory the other day.

These are the Cubs I remember. It’s like the 1970s all over again. Raise expectations with a great, but ultimately futile, season. Check. Produce back-to-back-winning seasons with contention through September. Check. Right about now, it’s time to dash all hope as the realization sets in that our team is just not that good. In the early ‘70s, our hopes were raised and dashed, raised and dashed, and then the slow, unending decline set in that beat fans down with cruelty and no pity.

Last week I tried to look at the Flip Side of things, trying to find reasons to be cheerful, or at least not despairing. Today, I don’t have a good feeling about the rest of the season, and I’m starting to think the Cubs’ record will be 23-31 when I finally get home to Chicago to see the Cubs on June 7th and 8th next month.

Why? I can’t rehash the litany you all know so well. (The one that goes: “Corey/leadoff/Bullpen/Closer/Hawkins/Hollandsworth/Dubois/Injuries/Dusty/Blah/Bloody/Blah”)

I don’t like it, but I am jumping on the bandwagon of pessimists among us. It seems the familiar thing to do.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Life on the Flipside

Look at the standings in MLB. Anyone else find it hard to take that perennial Cub rivals the Cardinals and the White Sox, and Sammy Sosa’s new team the Orioles, are the hottest teams in baseball?

That just makes the hurt even worse, no? Maybe, but for every action there is a reaction, and every 45 rpm single has a flip side. (huh?)

Cub-deniers the Marlins are in first in the NL East.
(But the insufferable Yankees are fighting for last place in the AL East.)

Arizona, Milwaukee, and the ex-Expos are all doing better than the Cubs.
(But the Astros are doing worse, and Carlos Beltran’s new squad is barely doing any better.)

Aramis Ramirez seems to be channeling 2004 Moises Alou on the basepaths, and in terms of general hustle.
(He also seems to have found Moises’s bat from last year sometime this week.)

The bullpen.
(Joe Borowski is apparently looking good in Iowa.)

Milwaukee has a 6-game winning streak.
(Greg Maddux goes today. And it’s a day game.)

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Tuesday, May 03, 2005

The Cubs Blog Army is going all out on this Neifi! For All-Star campaign and I think it is great. But there is no way I’m clicking through 50 votes every day until June 30!

At least with the Virtual Waiting Room, all you had to do was refresh, and not go through a tedious list of repetitive tasks like some 1970s data entry operator.

For Augie Ojeda, maybe, but Neifi!?

From One Start to Six Weeks in Two Days

First it was one start he would miss, then two starts. Today's diagnosis is three to six WEEKS, depending on which story you believe.

Trib story from last night (Reg. Req.)
Cubs website story