Gonfalon Cubs: Roster Construction

I tend to be quite forgiving of most moves that Maddon or the Cubs make these days.  I mean, in some sense they’ve earned that benefit of the doubt, and it’s nice feeling comfortable that there appears to be an underlying reason for everything they do even if it doesn’t appear obvious or isn’t fully explained publicly.  However, the Cubs appear to be doing a less-than-perfect job of maximizing their 25 man roster.

The most obvious culprit is currently rostering 3 catchers.  I partially ...

Sox Therapy: The Quiet Star

It’s probably not accurate to say that Xander Bogaerts is flying under the radar but…well he seems to be flying a bit below radar detection levels.  When talk turns to this team people gush (rightly) about David Ortiz and Mookie Betts and the contributions from guys like Travis Shaw and Brock Holt seem to get the lion’s share of the attention.  The one time uber-prospect is blossoming into a star in front of our eyes.

He had a rough rookie year that I have always believed was caused by being ...

Gonfalon Cubs: This and That

Some assorted thoughts about the last week, in no particular order.

Addison Russell

Wow, does he look good right now.  His season line is up to .263/.375/.447, and his K% is down from over 28% last year to just under 20%.  His walk rate has jumped from 8% to 14%.  He’s really been driving the ball lately, and driving it to RF.  He actually had a bad April (.214/.341/.343) but has really been on fire in May (.341/.431/.614).  During his spring training power surge, I predicted 20HRs for him ...

Sox Therapy: How Fun Is That?

Sox Therapy: The List

God I love this man…

7/26/03 - Armando Benitez - 5-4 - single scored Jeremy Giambi (10th) - listening on the radio
9/23/03 - Kurt Ainsworth - 6-5 - solo home run - on an airplane
4/11/04 - Aquilino Lopez - 6-4 - home run scored Bill Mueller (12th) - at Easter dinner
6/11/04 - Tom Martin - 2-1 - single scored Johnny Damon - I was there
10/8/04 - Jarrod Washburn - 8-6 - home run scored Pokey Reese - I was there
10/17/04 - Paul Quantrill - 6-4 - home run scored Manny Ramirez (12th) - I was there ...Read More...

Sox Therapy: How Do You Change the Lineup?

With Jackie Bradley channeling Babe Ruth the Red Sox lineup the question of how long (if at all) JBJ should be batting ninth.  Obviously Jackie isn’t THIS good (who is?) but he is answering the question of whether the bat will play pretty conclusively.  The rest of the lineup is generally going pretty well.  Let’s start with the question of what will these guys do the rest of the year.  There are any number of ways but for simplicity sake I’m going with FanGraphs wOBA calculation (based on ...

Sox Therapy: In Praise of the Coaching Staff

The Red Sox made it 14 out of 19 with a third straight vaporizing of the Athletics.  In that stretch they are averaging 6.4 runs/game and on the season only the Cubs are averaging more than the Sox’ 5.8 runs/game.  On the mound the Sox are not quite as effective but it seems that there are good performances more than bad with just a couple of weak links ($45 million worth of weak links in Buchholz and Price) dragging the outcomes down.

What strikes me looking at this team is that I feel like I ...

Gonfalon Cubs: Screw the Closer

I’ve seen a couple of joking references to this on Twitter during various games, so I found it pretty amusing the Cubs actively talk about it:

Chicago Cubs hitters really mean no offense to their closer, Hector Rondon. They simply want to add on runs and win baseball games without a nail-biting ninth inning. In that vein, they play a game catcher David Ross brought to the team.

“When you’re on the bench and you’re up three runs, two runs, whatever, we have a game we call Screw the Closer,” ...

Sox Therapy: It Ain’t Never Dull in the Bronx

The Sox had a frustrating weekend finished off with a terrific victory on the back of an absolute gem from Steven Wright.  It was not a weekend without talking points and to get us rolling to start the week I thought I’d address a few things;

- Friday was as frustrating a loss as the Sox have had in an awfully long time.  They left 13 men on base and to say they were frustrated with the strike zone is an understatement.  On the whole I think Kulpa was consistent though not particularly good ...

Gonfalon Cubs: Jake

There’s a million different ways to talk about how dominant Arrieta has been recently:

Christopher Kamka ‏@ckamka May 3
Jake Arrieta’s last 26 regular season starts:
0 Runs allowed: 14
1 Run allowed:    6
2+ Runs allowed: 6

Christopher Kamka ‏@ckamka May 3
Jake Arrieta ERA (regular season):
1.62 in 2015-16
0.85 in last 26 starts
0.55 in last 18 starts
1.46 on road in 2015-16
0.84 in 2016

Most of them usually include some sort of “since X”, with X being sometime last year.  That ...