‘Breaking Bad’ at Wrigley Field and Other Bullets

Dec 03, 2012

When The Wife, who is a teacher and uses her Twitter account for academic pursuits, tweets about the Winter Meetings, you know it’s serious business in the Taylor household.

Over the weekend, I shared some photos from BN’er Dave, who’d taken a couple shots while at a season ticket holder event at Wrigley. One of those shots showed a tent in the bleachers, presumably shielding a work area. But then another BN’er, Steven, took that picture, and transformed it into something else entirely. Vamonos Wrigley … it’s ‘Breaking Bad’ at Wrigley Field:

I really love this community. (Also, “Where’s Mike?”)

An appropriate quote on Theo Epstein from rival GM Kevin Towers, given the above picture: “He’s got zero fear,” Towers said of Epstein, per Patrick Mooney. “He’s a great friend, but he would step on my neck, slice my throat to win. That’s just who he is.”

Danny Knobler reports that the failed Dan Haren/Carlos Marmol swap went down like this: the sides agree, the Cubs get Haren’s medicals, the medicals scare them enough that they ask for more money in the deal to ease their concerns, the Angels refuse, the two sides try to play with the money until the final hour, the deal falls through. As I said at the time, things are rarely as black and white as you want to make them. (Also, that scenario is exactly what I said probably happened. Hooray for deductive skills.)

FanGraphs looks at a number of lesser-known prospects that should get a look at “add-on”/”throw-in” types at the Winter Meetings, should a deal accommodate it. One of the names is Dae-Eun Rhee, the righty the Cubs sent to the AFL this year. He’s long been loved by scouts, but hasn’t put up the numbers to match. From FanGraphs, a portion on Rhee: “If you look solely at Rhee’s professional statistics you’d probably think me mad for including him on this report. But after watching him pitch on a number of occasions, he continues to fascinate me as a prospect that should be much more successful than he’s been – and I can’t help but think that there’s a pitching coach out there that could help unlock his potential. Rhee, 23, is tall and lanky. He shows good balance over the rubber and has a high 3/4 arm slot with smooth mechanics. He also works quickly – perhaps too quickly at times. The downfall for the pitcher, though, is his lack of command. When I watched him pitch he was struggling to command both his fastball and his curveball, which was slow and loopy. He had good movement on his fastball, which can touch 93 mph, and it was cutting down and in on right-handed hitters. His best pitch was a tumbling splitter that helps him induce an above-average number of ground balls. He lacks swing-and-miss stuff and gets into a lot of trouble when he elevates the ball due to inconsistent mechanics.”

The MLBullets at BCB, obviously, are a primer for the Winter Meetings, among other things.

A video – an awesome video – of soon-to-be-officially-signed reliever Kyuji Fujikawa has been making the rounds, and it’s worth a look (spoiler alert? stay tuned for the splitters):

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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