Tony Campana Has Winter Work to Do and Other Bullets

Sep 25, 2012

Well, the Rockies indeed (finally) won last night, leaving them tied with the Cubs coming into the series that starts today. Yay! Meaningful September baseball!

Tony Campana is headed to the Venezuelan Winter League, where he can pick up some of the at bats he didn’t get this year. In fact, he’s received only about 350 plate appearances all year, so it would be nice to see him get another 150 or so down in Venezuela. It would also be nice to see him work on his bunting, and groundball approach. Interesting side note: FanGraphs had Campana worth 1.5 WAR last year in just over half a season of work, almost exclusively from defensive value. Not sure I saw it that way.

David DeJesus is impressively realistic about the prospects for Cubs competitiveness next year, and the direction of the organization, given that he’s a 32-year-old who’s essentially never played on a team with a winning record. You could understand if he felt a little more urgent. DeJesus told Gordon Wittenmyer that he feels like this Cubs team has more talent than some of his Royals teams, but not enough pitching to win in the NL Central. ‘‘It’s one of those situations where, do you go out and spend money on free-agent pitchers when you’re rebuilding? That’s the hardest part about it,’’ DeJesus said.

Bruce Miles writes about Tyler Colvin’s time in Colorado, and wonders whether that’s the trade the new front office wishes they had back. Miles acknowledges that Colvin’s .853 OPS this year is built strongly on his 1.030 OPS at Coors Field, but, even for Coors, that’s good. Given that DJ LeMahieu hasn’t been terrible (.278/.310/.369), and the fact that the Cubs got nothing out of Ian Stewart and Casey Weathers, I’d say that, yes, they probably wouldn’t hate having that trade back. (Not that Colvin would have played, mind you – the Cubs would have simply worked out some other trade, which may have proved more fruitful.)

Dave van Dyck compiles where various Cubs players stand in certain stats, which is an interesting read if you merely want to see where the Cubs stand, and aren’t actually trying to learn anything about advanced stats.

A tough, but good, read on a friend of Brett Jackson’s who helped push him to succeed while she was dying from lung cancer.

An update on the article from yesterday, wherein Alfonso Soriano said he hadn’t really received outfield coaching until this season – Brad on Twitter passes along an old Scout.com article in which Lou Piniella discusses Soriano in the outfield, and notes that then-coach Mike Quade “works with him every day.” Now, Soriano’s comment that he hadn’t received outfield coaching until this year was always probably a slight exaggeration, but, at the same time, what he considers to be “coaching,” and whatever Quade was doing with him, might not be the same thing. Heck, the proof is in the pudding, right? Look at Soriano defensively back in 2010, when Quade was “working with him every day,” and in 2012. Night and day. In other words, Soriano likely believes he never received meaningful coaching, even if, obviously, there was some coaching going on.

written by

Brett Taylor

Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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