A Visual Depiction of a 6,000 Square Foot JumboTron at Wrigley and Other Bullets

Tomorrow night, the Season Three finale of ‘The Walking Dead’ airs opposite the Season Three premiere of ‘Game of Thrones.’ What is a nerd to do?! I guess I’ll opt for TWD, since it’s a finale, which would suffer more from incidental Twitter spoilers than a premiere. Which means I probably won’t get to GOT until the next day, which means I’ll have to be vigilant to avoid any mention …

  • The Cubs tied the Astros 6-6 last night in Houston, with Cubs regulars surprisingly going the whole way (and the Astros digging deeply into their bench much earlier – although, on the Houston roster, it can be hard to tell who’s a “starter” and who’s a “holy crap that guy is seriously on a big league roster?” bench guy. Not that I’m in a position to throw stones …). Edwin Jackson struck out nine in just four innings, which is incredible. He also gave up five earned runs in those four innings, which is incredible. Dioner Navarro homered for the fifth time this “Spring,” which I’m setting as the over/under for his homers all season. I’ll take the under.
  • The Red Sox are letting 28-year-old outfielder Ryan Sweeney go, and I wonder if he might be an interesting pick-up for the Cubs on a minor league deal, if that’s the best he can find. Right now, the Cubs’ AAA outfield depth consists of Brian Bogusevic (if he sticks with the Cubs), Darnell McDonald (if he sticks with the Cubs), Jae-Hoon Ha (a very young player who isn’t ready for the bigs), and, of course, Brett Jackson, whom the Cubs would prefer not to call up until he’s ready, rather than in a pinch. Seems like there’s a pretty wide opening and need for Sweeney as depth. He really struggled in Boston after being dealt by the A’s last year, but, hey, depth-ers can’t be choosers. He’s good defensively, can play all over the outfield, bats lefty, doesn’t strike out, sees a lot of pitches … I’d like him in the organization. Smart money says the Cubs are feeling him out.
  • An anonymous veteran scout offers his take on the Cubs, and it’s mostly what you would expect (if you can ignore that “Darwin Barney is clutch at the plate” thing – the scout is definitely dating himself). Many of the Cubs’ starters would be bench players on a good team.
  • Keith Law has the Cubs winning 77 games this year, which would be an impressive 16-game improvement from last year (how depressing is that?). Law wisely caveats his prediction on the Cubs not having a sell-off midseason, which, if they’re on a mid-70s win pace by midseason, they’re going to have a sell-off. That’s the primary reason I have a hard time predicting the Cubs to win more than 70 games this year.
  • (Apropos of little more than certain conversations that take place in the comments from time to time: Tyler Colvin did not make the Rockies, and has been sent to AAA.)
  • With all the JumboTron talk, I wanted to see just how large a 6,000 square foot video board – the minimum size the Cubs reportedly want – would look in left field at Wrigley, located in such a way as to not block any rooftop views. Here’s a rough mockup, to scale, of how big a 6,000 square foot board would look (and, yes, that is Mark DeRosa!):
  • It definitely looks very big, but I’m not sure it’s too big. I’ve been of the “bigger is better” mindset when it comes to the video board, but this might be just about as big as is reasonably possible. Any bigger, and it would really look out of place.
  • (Because one thing that Facebook actually does well is pictures, I shared that on Facebook as soon as I’d made it yesterday. In other words: you should “like” BN on Facebook so that you can catch things like this immediately. The Facebook version of the picture is also much larger, which would not fit here.)
  • 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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