By Dan O’Shea

The No. 2 player in standard format Yahoo! fantasy baseball leagues is someone who not a lot of people heard of before this season, let alone had listed on their preseason draft rankings: Brewers shortstop Jean Segura. Ranked at No. 264 overall in Yahoo! leagues before the year began, Segura has six home runs, 13 stolen bases and an OPS of 1.000 through the first month-and-a-half of the season.
He has all the markings of a highly valuable fantasy baseball player (power, speed, plate patience) and if he keeps up his current pace, he could be considered a top 10 fantasy player going into 2014. He is also only 23 years old. In short, he is the player Cubs fans would like Starlin Castro to be.

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Posted on May 15, 2013

By Jim Coffman

In 2008, I had the chance to attend Game 1 of the National League Division Series between the Chicago Cubs and the Los Angeles Dodgers at Wrigley Field. I arrived late (I know, I know, I’m a bad fan – all I can say is I’ll try to do better), and found that Mark DeRosa had launched an opposite field home run in the second inning and the Cubs led 2-0 in the third.
The place was lousy with optimism. It was palpable. The Cubs had won 97 games that season, we were clearly better than the team from Southern California, and we were led by master strategist Lou Piniella. It was only a matter of time before the team recorded the three necessary victories over the Dodgers and moved on to what we were sure would be better things in the National League Championship Series and then maybe even the World Series.
One problem, though: Cubs starting pitcher Ryan Dempster wasn’t particularly sharp. He had already handed out several bases on balls and, then in the fifth, he walked the bases loaded. Up stepped young Dodger first baseman James Loney and just like that, the walks came a cropper. Loney launched a grand slam and in an instant a two-run lead became a two-run deficit.
And in another instant, tens of thousands of Cubs fans shut it down. Again, it was palpable. How could we have been so stupid as to have believed in this team?

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Posted on May 14, 2013

By Steve Rhodes

Did you know the Cubs are looking at the success of the Nationals as a blueprint for their own rebuilding?
Also, the Orioles and the A’s.
And the Cardinals, the Reds and the Red Sox.
Oh, don’t forget the Rays and the Pirates.
Why not throw in the Braves, the Giants and the Tigers?
Guess what: It’s not really useful to look at other franchises for winning formulas.
Why?
Because every franchise (and every market) is governed by a unique set of circumstances.
And that’s why their formulas are all different.

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Posted on May 13, 2013

By Roger Wallenstein

Compared to the thousands of people who use the Red Line to get to work every day, Sox fans really have little to complain about.
Starting Sunday, the CTA will close its nine southernmost stations on the Red Line, including 35th-Sox, which lets fans off just a half-block from the Cell. Five months from now, the CTA promises that the new tracks will make travel “faster, smoother, better.”
We’ll see about that, but in the meantime, fans going to U.S. Cellular on the “L” can use the Green Line – after transferring at Roosevelt – which lets them off two blocks further east. Judging from comments to a Sun-Times article posted on Friday, this will be a minor inconvenience. Sox vice-president of communications Scott Reifert went so far to say, “We really don’t think it will have a huge impact on us.”
The way the team has been playing, you wonder if Reifert was saying, “Impact? What impact? Why would anyone travel – on the ‘L’ or otherwise – to see this miserable team?”

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Posted on May 13, 2013

By i9 Sports

When our children head out to play sports this spring, the pressure to win is so intense; a troubling new survey reveals 59% of young athletes say they expect to get hurt as part of the game. What’s even more surprising – kids polled say coaches, teammates and in some cases even their own parents have tried to make them play injured and even suggested they hurt another player. 69% of young athletes who were hurt say they continued to play hurt and half of them say they hid their injuries so they could play.
The just released survey of 210 boys and 138 girls (ages 8 – 14) who play sports reveals:
* 63% say they have been hurt playing sports. 59% say it’s part of the game and they expect it.
* 64% say they’re afraid someone will hurt them while playing sports.
* 11% say they were offered gifts or money to hurt another player.
The survey was commissioned by the non-profit arm of i9 Sports. The survey also reveals:

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Posted on May 8, 2013

Another Beachwood Thought Experiment

* Alfonso Soriano would be crumpled up and crying behind a vending machine in the bowels of Wrigley Field.
* Nate Robinson would be playing a very nice center field.
* That goat would be so worn out that the only thing left it could curse would be the urinals.
* Giving up unearned runs would be a concept with which he would be unfamiliar.
* Baseball’s first man-to-man defense.

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Posted on May 7, 2013

By Steve Rhodes

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Cubs are well on their way to matching last season’s 101 losses. After all, it’s essentially the same team.
Think about it: Eight of nine starters among position players were starters last year. The only difference is that Tony Campana (and Reed Johnson before him) is out and Nate Schierholtz is in. That’s an improvement insofar as Schierholtz is hitting .302 with a .355 OBP, but that’s easily cancelled out by the poorer play of everyone else except Welington Castillo if you ignore his defense and only consider his relatively hot bat.
The bullpen is essentially the same, too: Marmol, Russell, Camp and the return of Kevin Gregg to fill out Kerry Wood’s role in some weird way.
And while the rotation has exceeded expectations, thanks largely to Carlos Villanueva and Travis Wood, Edwin Jackson looks like the Alfonso Soriano of the Theo era.
It ain’t getting better, folks. And if you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse.

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Posted on May 6, 2013

By Roger Wallenstein

The discussion focused on Pete Reiser and Tony Conigliaro, two talented ballplayers of bygone eras, whose careers were cut short by injury.
I was privy to this conversation last winter as an old Dodger fan talked about Reiser, who broke in with Brooklyn in 1941 as an outfielder at the age of 21. The next season he led the National League with a .343 batting average while legging out 17 triples, 39 doubles, and scoring 117 runs.
In 1942 he was sailing along at a .388 clip when he had his first encounter with an outfield wall. Reiser, you see, gave chase to deep flies the way Joakim Noah approaches loose balls. And in those days there was no padding on the bricks.

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Posted on May 6, 2013

We’re going to trust the Hawks to take care of business against the Wild. There was a little setback Sunday, but the No. 1 seed is still in control. And as Joe Gilmartin of the Phoenix Gazette first said in 1987 (and Laker coach at the time Pat Riley immediately parroted), “No playoff series truly begins until a home team loses.”
So if the perpetually home-ice advantaged Hawks can just keep all their series’ from even starting this year, we should be good. Then again, it would be fine if they wanted to record a road win in Game 4 tomorrow night starting at 8:30 p.m..
The point of all this is that despite plenty of Blackhawk playoff drama around here, the big spotlight still shines on the amazing Bulls, who open their series with the Heat this evening at 6 p.m.
The indomitable Joakim Noah continues to lead this team on what can only be described as a ridiculous journey.

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Posted on May 6, 2013

By Roger Wallenstein

Forty years working with kids and their families has taught me a number of things, one of which is that rational people occasionally react irrationally when confronted with issues concerning their children. Furthermore, parents who may be somewhat unhinged to begin with become more so when their kids face adversity.
The accounts of the Walter Payton College Prep’s baseball team’s sticky situation concerning its forfeit of a game against Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep reminded me once again of this kind of parental reaction.

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Posted on May 6, 2013