In a gloomy season on the North Side of Chicago, many point to rookie second baseman Darwin Barney (in addition to Starlin Castro and Matt Garza) as a bright spot.Barney's ability to hit for average near the top of the order (not that he belongs there, Mike Quade) and adequately field second base have drawn praise, and the consensus among fans and analysts seems to be that Barney fits into the Cubs' future puzzle. He may even be a key piece.I rise in objection.Let's deconstruct the things for which Barney has garnered so much attention:
He ranks among the top ...
Chicago Cubs shortstop Starlin Castro has 110 hits this season, having played 84 of the team's 86 games. Of those 110 hits, 31 have come in the leadoff role, 34 during contests in which Castro batted second and 39 while the first-time All-Star was batting third.That may seem a fair distribution. It is not. Castro has batted third some 41 times as of Monday, and after an 0-for-5 performance on Independence Day, he needs to be liberated from the pressure cooker of that spot at the heart of the Cubs' batting order. His hits in that slot have come in ...
New York Mets shortstop Jose Reyes is the hottest item on the trade market this season, and the prevailing sentiment seems to be that he will be dealt to one or another contender before the trade deadline.Wherever he may go, though, or even if he remains with the Mets all season, Reyes figures to test the free-agent market this winter and should find a rich reward for that freedom. He currently leads the National League in batting average, has remained healthy and may be emerging as an elite offensive player as well as an above-average defender at the most important ...
The Chicago Cubs dropped their sixth straight game Sunday, when St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols launched his second walk-off, extra-inning home run in as many days.For Pujols, the Cardinals' weekend sweep of the Cubs seems to augur a turning point in what has been a disappointing season.For the Cubs, it marks a low-water mark in team morale and in the standings.For Carlos Zambrano, who watched a second consecutive sparkling outing lose its luster after his departure, it marks the boiling point.Speaking to reporters after the game Sunday, Zambrano bashed closer Carlos Marmol, who blew a ninth-inning lead on ...
Albert Pujols and Jim Hendry looked very friendly during batting practice prior to the first game between the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals this season, according to multiple reports. Naturally, that news has given a kick-start to dormant rumors about the possibility of the Cubs being actively interested when Pujols hits free agency this November.On the surface, the possibility of Pujols and the Cubs having mutual interest looks more like an inevitability. Cubs first baseman Carlos Pena is under contract only through season's end. The Cubs have Kosuke Fukudome, Carlos Silva, John Grabow, Jeff Samardzija, Pena and either Ryan ...
The Cubs' 2010 season was so depressing that manager Lou Piniella retired six weeks early. No one pooped in the dugout this time around, but in all other ways the final chapter of Piniella's tenure mirrored that of Dusty Baker before him: Both men oversaw great teams their first season, equally great ones the second year, a mediocre squad for which much went wrong in their third year and a budget-saving fire sale in July of their final year after the team fell far from contention.Hoping to break that cycle, GM Jim Hendry hired a non-celebrity manager for 2011, Mike ...
Boston Red Sox GM Theo Epstein made a remark late last week that likely drew less attention than it deserved, especially as the world gears up for Albert Pujols to hit free agency after the 2011 season. In discussing the tactics that helped Boston sign free-agent Carl Crawford in December—despite rumors that Crawford would go to the Angels—Epstein mentioned that Boston scouted Crawford exhaustively throughout "the last three, four months of the season at the ballpark, away from the ballpark."That is a significant thing to admit, and although I confess to a lack of intimate knowledge about the behind-the-scenes world of ...
A majority of MLB position players will be at the site of their teams' Spring Training camps by the end of the day Wednesday, and that certainly includes Albert Pujols. The St. Louis Cardinals and Pujols remain far apart on a potential contract extension, meaning a Jamesean (LeBronian?) season of media hoopla lies ahead.In the meantime, though, there will be real live baseball, with bats and balls and gloves and (hopefully) other things to talk and think about than Albert Pujols' contract. Read on for some fun and fascinating tidbits from around baseball.Begin Slideshow
The Chicago Cubs have already traded for starting pitcher Matt Garza and traded away starting pitcher Tom Gorzelanny this winter, and it seems very possible that that will be enough for GM Jim Hendry. There is relatively little else Chicago could do at this point, with the key free agents off the market and the team unlikely to leapfrog the Brewers and Reds into the top spot in a rational prognosticator's picture of the 2011 NL Central division.
Of course, miracles happen every day (see Wells, Vernon), so perhaps the Cubs can find a diamond somewhere in the January rough and make ...
While Joe Mauer and Brian McCann rate as the best-known offensive catchers in baseball, Geovany Soto was the best hitter in the league at that position in 2010.Though he got only 387 plate appearances due to a mixture of injuries and managerial stupidity, Soto logged a career-best .890 OPS and socked 17 home runs. He did all that despite batting mostly seventh and eighth for the Cubs. National League hitters performed nine percent worse than their overall numbers when batting in those slots in 2010, so if Soto had been batting fourth (where he belonged in a beleaguered Cubs lineup, ...
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