By Dan O’Shea

What if Major League Baseball set a July 31 trade deadline and nobody cared?
If you’ve been reading or watching or listening to or clicking through a lot of baseball coverage the last few days, the actual 2013 MLB trade deadline may seem a bit like an anti-climactic event.
If you are a Cubs fan, two of the biggest names on the team – Matt Garza and Alfonso Soriano – have already been traded.
And for White Sox fans, it already seems a given that Jake Peavy and/or Alex Rios will be dealt before 3 p.m. Wednesday. And if not, oh well.
Maybe it’s just not nearly as much fun selling pieces as getting them.
Even from a league-wide perspective, things are kind of boring this year – though this isn’t unexpected. This was supposed to be the rare year when no truly big names would change hands – and it’s turning out exactly that way. (Indeed, Garza may end up being the biggest name traded, and he’s not even viewed as a No. 1 starter.)
So there’s not much to assess – yet, at least; we can still hope – in terms of fantasy impact. But here’s my quick fantasy take of the few deals we have had:

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Posted on July 30, 2013

By Steve Rhodes

Did you know . . .
* The Cubs are 30-12 when Len Kasper doesn’t make the most obvious pun available during a broadcast.
* English is Dale Sveum’s second language.
* The distance from home plate to the right field wall is the same as the height of the new Jumbotron.
* Only 14% of Wrigley Field is now free of advertising or sponsorship.
* Tom Ricketts still lives at home with his father and works part-time at Baskin-Robbins.

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Posted on July 29, 2013

By Jim Coffman

How many wins does it take?
How many Cubs wins before the sports commentariat in our town acknowledges that the thousands of stories about the Cubs absolutely not playing competitive baseball until 2015 were a wee bit off?
The Cubs knocked off the Giants 2-1 Sunday to complete a sweep in San Francisco and a 6-4 post-All Star Game road trip through Colorado, Arizona and the town that is home to the truly spectacular AT&T Park. I took in the game on Sunday on ‘GN and amazing shots of gargantuan ocean-going vessels and soaring suspension bridges in San Francisco Bay were just routine between-innings fodder on a perfect sun-drenched day.
The win left the Cubs seven games below .500. That has to be the answer doesn’t it? If the Cubs could somehow find their way all the way back to break even, then a whole bunch of people would have to re-calibrate.

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Posted on July 29, 2013

By Roger Wallenstein

While tailgating a few years ago in Seattle prior to a Bears-Seahawks game with my older son, who lives in the Emerald City, I discovered what a sheltered life I had been leading.
“What the hell are you doing,” was my reflex reaction when a kid – I had no idea who he was – jabbed his car keys into a full can of beer.
“You old geezers don’t even know about shotgunning a beer,” the kid sneered as his key punctured the middle of the can thoroughly soaking him before he could get his mouth around the hole. He was lucky if half the beer reached the intended destination.
My approach was and remains, See Beer, Open Beer, Drink Beer. If that’s being an “Old Geezer,” so be it.

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Posted on July 29, 2013

By Dan O’Shea

If you have been reading my Fantasy Fix column lately, you already know I was surprised Major League Baseball had the balls to suspend recent MVP Ryan Braun during the season over his connection to performance-enhancing drugs.
I guessed that MLB would table this whole Biogenesis issue until the off-season, when it wouldn’t be able to tarnish the regular season and the league’s hallowed October session. I’m also surprised Braun was suspended for more than 50 games, considering he never has been officially proven to be a drug cheat before.

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Posted on July 24, 2013

By Steve Rhodes

Sometimes you don’t know how something will feel until it happens.
I didn’t expect to feel much about Matt Garza getting traded except more bitterness at the Cubs plight amidst Theo’s Plan, which I could agree with if it didn’t come with an insistence that building an organization from the ground up was mutually exclusive with building a team at the major-league level, especially given the dirty little secret of the Ricketts family running a tightwad, greedy ship that has resulted in reduced payrolls for the league’s most profitable team.
But, even amidst questions about the 25-year-old Mike Olt and his ex-Rangers compadres, the Garza trade feels like it finally unlocked the door to the Cubs’ future.
Surely Junior Lake’s concurrent spark and even seeing the hustle (if ill-advised) of Cole freakin’ Gillespie last night have something to do with it too, but this finally is starting to look like it was supposed to look a year ago.

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Posted on July 23, 2013

By Jim Coffman

Now we’ll find out whether Dale Sveum has any Dusty Baker in him.
There were several ways Baker drove fans crazy. (One was his insistence on batting one of his fastest players in the No. 2 spot in the lineup no matter what. If he had a veteran who could move and put down a bunt every once in a while he was batting second no matter how bad his on-base percentage. Neifi Perez forever!)
The part of the Baker managerial manifesto we are addressing today has to do with playing time for veterans. During his tenure with the Cubs, Baker was well-known for his unwillingness to put experienced players on the bench when it was time for younger players to step up to bigger roles.
And the question now is, how will Sveum handle similar circumstances?

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Posted on July 22, 2013

By Roger Wallenstein

The season stretches for 162 games over six long months, one of which is even called “the dog days.” Preparing to play every day of the week presents a constant mental challenge. Half the games require living out of a suitcase. The bone-chilling cold temperatures of April and May give way to the oppressive heat and humidity like that which hung over the Cell on Friday night.
However, who among us believes that any of these and other extenuating factors excuse the athletes – the individuals who are paid handsomely to play a game they ostensibly love – from giving a maximum effort? Who would argue that it’s OK not to make every attempt to catch a pop fly? Or dive for a grounder headed for the outfield? Or run out every ground ball?
Because of the All-Star break, Alex Rios hadn’t played in four days, and as far as anyone knew he was superbly-conditioned when he jogged out to right field for the opener of the three-game series with Atlanta on Friday evening. In some weird way, this could have been a fresh start in an otherwise miserable season for the Sox, at least a chance to gain some respectability between now and the beginning of October.

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Posted on July 22, 2013

By Dan O’Shea

As the second half of the baseball season begins later this week, I’m on the hunt for some waiver-wire sleepers to change my luck. Whenever I go shopping, I start with the 30-day filter on available players, and it turns out there have been some surprisingly good performers in the last month who, for whatever reason, remain available.
Here are just a few of the bargains I noticed:

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Posted on July 17, 2013

By Jim Coffman

That was just perfect. Watching Yoenis Cespedes absolutely dominate the Home Run Derby, what could have been better than that?
Baseball always twists the knife in Cubs fans.
Cespedes is the young power hitter from Cuba who was there for the taking for the Cubs last year. There was a bidding, well, it wasn’t really a bidding war, but there was competitive bidding for the then 26-year-old free agent who was making the transition to professional baseball in America. And cheapskate Tom Ricketts lost.

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Posted on July 16, 2013