(Click here for the photo gallery of Friday's Astros - Cubs game.)
What a difference a season makes. At the end of last season, Carlos Silva was an injured, terribly ineffective pitcher, headed out of Seattle on a rail. He further continued down that road this year, coming to Spring Training overweight, and at the tail end of a competition for a rotation spot with the Cubs. But, given a second chance, he's founded health, a rejuvenated sinker, and perhaps a permanent home after leading the Chicago Cubs to a 7-2 victory over the Houston Astros. Silva, who ...
Filed:April 5th, 2010
What were you expecting exactly? Consider me fairly non non-plussed about the Cubs 2010 opener, a 16-5 shellacking by the Atlanta Braves down at Turner Field, for a couple of different reasons actually.
Carlos Zambrano, although the 1 1/3 innings was by far his worst Opening Day start, tends to come out of the box with these sorts of appearances. Personally, I always thought he's a bit too amped, and his high fastballs yesterday didn't do anything to change that opinion. Here's to hoping that sinker—consistently about six inches too high on Monday, as were all his other pitches—gets ...
2009 ended with a loss. And this season? (Cubbie Nation/file)
I really wasn’t going to do this.
Defining in advance the success or failure of 30 major league teams over a 162 game season is probably something of a fool’s errand. But after receiving yet another e-mail from an editor asking for predictions and prognostications on the upcoming 2010 season, I’m going to take my shot.
Let me say a few things specifically about the Cubs first. I like this team. Some of my readers might disagree with that statement, but there are some good things happening here, in my opinion. If the ...
The Cubs made big moves Friday, releasing seven players, while setting both their rotation and bullpen in the process. Tom Gorzelanny and Carlos Silva round out the rotation, with James Russell becoming—as of now—the last man in the 'pen to start the season.
What, 10 more days til Opening Day? Let's just say that I'm in extra great anticipation of the upcoming season, as I've begun marking days off, and checking scores on an almost daily basis already. W hy, you ask? Well aside from my general love of baseball, the 2010 Cubs are turning themselves into something of a ...
I guess today is just going to be the day that black men make me weep.
That's my first thought after running through the morning news, and finding these delightfully insane, and completely narcissistic interviews with Milton Bradley and Torii Hunter.
First, we have ESPN sitting down with Milton Bradley to discuss at length, his time in Chicago. Bless ESPN, who never resists an opportunity to facilitate flinging in the name of ratings, but this piece may have been the worst thing I've seen since Bonds on Bonds.
Asked about his manager, Lou Piniella:
"The next day, he called me into his office and ...
Filed:February 25th, 2010
Lost amongst the news of Carlos Zambrano's secret handshake with Kevin Millar, Angel Guzman being shut down, Ted Lilly being flu-ridden, and the existential question of should Lou Piniella tweet or not tweet, came a small snippet out of Arizona expanding on the Cubs competition for spots on the pitching staff.
According to Piniella, he regards it as a race between Jeff Samardzija, Carlos Silva, Tom Gorzelanny, and, wait for it...Sean Marshall.
With that statement comes something of a drastic change in position, as the organization has long maintained that Marshall lacks the stamina to start, vacillating instead between using ...
What? They're still looking?
With less than a week before the official start of spring training, the Chicago Cubs are still looking to fill arguably their greatest offseason need: a reliable right-handed setup man for their new closer Carlos Marmol.
After "kicking the tires" on a host of potential candidates such as Frasor, Park, and Gregerson, Chicago is left with no better solution than they had at the end of the '09 season.
For the Cubs, the internal options are not terrible. John Grabow may have found his stride, as indicated by his 3.24 ERA and 1.24 WHIP in his stint with the ...
Stopping to read the Jim Hendry outfield foibles over the last few seasons reads like the tale of a man who just doesn't get it. Corey Patterson, Jacque Jones, Jeromy Burnitz, Matt Lawton, Cliff Floyd, Juan Pierre, Alfonso Soriano, Kosuke Fukudome, and Milton Bradley, just to name a few. In pretty much every case, the Cubs have either failed to get the production that they hoped for, and/or wildly overpaid for it. I'll let you figure out which is which.
Couple that with the players that have passed by them; guys like Carlos Betran, Curtis Granderson, Nick Swisher, and ...
Stopping to read the Jim Hendry outfield foibles over the last few seasons reads like the tale of a man who just doesn't get it. Corey Patterson, Jacque Jones, Jeromy Burnitz, Matt Lawton, Cliff Floyd, Juan Pierre, Alfonso Soriano, Kosuke Fukudome, and Milton Bradley, just to name a few. In pretty much every case, the Cubs have either failed to get the production that they hoped for, and/or wildly overpaid for it. I'll let you figure out which is which.
Couple that with the players that have passed by them; guys like Carlos Betran, Curtis Granderson, Nick Swisher, and ...
Last year, I ran what I hoped to become a tradition here at Cubbie Nation, the current team captured in pictures.
The premise is pretty simple. Teams and seasons come and go, and for as much time as we give to being with them, there's something wrong about the notion that many of these guys are gone, if not altogether forgotten, by the time the playoffs have ended.
You know the guys. The Jose Ascanios, Kevin Harts, and Andres Blancos of the game. Maybe we'll see them again; maybe not. But you wore the uniform, and we cheered for you, so consider ...
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