The Cubs Won’t Make Honor Roll and Other Bullets

So very jealous of the fan bases whose teams are playing these days …

  • The Reds and Tigers fan bases, in particular, are probably happy, with their clubs up 2-0 in the divisional series, needing just one more win to clinch an LCS berth. The Yankees beat the O’s last night to go up 1-0 there, and the Nats beat the Cardinals late (eeeh!) for their own 1-0 lead. The latter two series play again today, with Nats/Cards going at 3:30pm CT, and Yanks/O’s going at 7pm CT.
  • Doug Padilla grades the Cubs (allllll of them) on the 2012 season, and gives you a spot to grade them, too. The only A’s go to Jeff Samardzija, Alfonso Soriano and Anthony Rizzo, while Darwin Barney, Starlin Castro, David DeJesus and Shawn Camp get a B+. Somehow Matt Garza and Ryan Dempster get C’s, worse than the B- given to Tony Campana. There must’ve been some kind of curve.
  • Manager Dale Sveum got a B, which seems about right to me, given the roster. Speaking of the roster, Jed Hoyer got a B-, which also seems fair, given the crappiness, but also the rebuild.
  • Ian Stewart dropped some thoughts recently on Twitter, as he does (a part of me wishes the Cubs would find a way to keep him around because he’s the most candid Twitter user you’ll find), including a suggestion that teams find a way to communicate with a player they want even when they’re not yet technically allowed to talk to the player, his disagreement with the Pat Listach firing, his belief that the Cubs are on the fence about bringing him back, and his explanation on why he didn’t rehab with the team. The gist of the latter, which features BN’er Spencer asking the question, was that he hated being around the team when he couldn’t help, and his wife is approaching her due date and he wanted to be at home with her (where he could rehab at the same time).
  • Paul Sullivan looks at the catching position for the Cubs in 2012, with a heavy focus on the presumptive starting catcher in 2013, Welington Castillo. Once the trade deadline passed, and Castillo started getting regular starts, he hit .279/.353/.434. I’d take that over a full season.
  • The MLBullets at BCB look, obviously, at the playoffs and also drop some thoughts on self-antonym words like “sanction.”
  • written by

    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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