The Goat Head Because I Have to and Other Bullets

April 11, 2013, by Brett Taylor Chicago Cubs

You’ve got just a touch over a day left to sign up for the BN fantasy contest and start putting your team together. The contest – which is free, and includes $300 in cash prizes – starts with the Cubs game tomorrow, so get on it. (Full details here.)

So, some yahoo delivered a package addressed to Tom Ricketts to Wrigley Field, the contents of which included a severed goat head. This story is everywhere. I don’t find it particularly funny or compelling, and neither do I find joking about it to be particularly funny or compelling. I barely even wanted to include the story in a Bullet, because I don’t think someone who does this kind of thing deserves the attention he’s so desperately seeking. But, it happened, it’s sick, and now I’ve done my duty.
I keep losing the opportunity to write about this separately, so, rather than keep the tab open on my computer for another week, I’ll just include it here: Baseball Prospectus did its organizational rankings a little while ago, and, in agreement with some of the more recent rankings, they had the Cubs’ system 12th. It now looks like Keith Law’s number five ranking is no longer the high end of reasonable, and rather is the outlier in the rankings. Every other service has the Cubs in the 10 to 12 range, so that’s where I’d say the consensus believes they fall. Obviously, because of their youth and good draft position (as well as anticipated deadline deals), the Cubs are probably better poised to rapidly rise than most other systems, and could easily be in the top 5 next year.
Here’s video of that Theo Epstein interview with Dave Kaplan, which we discussed yesterday. I didn’t like the part where he casually seemed to lump next year in with this year when it comes to the crappiness of the big league performance. I think most of us are ready and willing to throw out 2013, but can we at least wait until next Spring before we judge 2014 too harshly?
Patrick Mooney on the future for Starlin Castro, and for Anthony Rizzo.
BN’er Justin passed on a very cool story about a fan with leukemia taking in every Brewers game last year, which was apropos of a conversation Sahadev and I had on the newest episode of the BN Podcast. It sounds like our estimates were pretty good, but the Brewers fan’s story is much better.
Michael Romano had a little fun with fans at Wrigley this week, gauging their thoughts on a solution to the rooftop problem: move the rooftops to Wrigley’s roof.
Dale Sveum decided not to shake up his rotation in light of last night’s postponement. Scott Feldman was set to start last night, so he’ll start today instead, and everyone else just gets pushed back a day.