Cubnut's Archives

At The Biz of Baseball, Maury Brown reports that a full post-season share for the 2008 WS Champion Phillies amounted to $351.504.48, and full shares for the AL champion Rays were good for $223,390.05 apiece.

The Cubs' share of the total players' pool came to a little over $1.5MM. The team awarded 50 full shares of $25,032.89, with 11.03 partial shares and five cash awards also being distributed.

In a special, Thanksgiving edition of his Stat of the Week, John Dewan chronicles the Cubs' aversion to taking walks from 2003 through '07.

Here is how the Cubs hitters ranked among NL clubs in BB:

2003 14th of 16 teams
2004 14th of 16 teams
2005 16th of 16 teams
2006 16th of 16 teams
2007 15th of 16 teams

Last year  was a different story.

As several readers have noted in the Comments, Mark Cuban has been charged with insider trading by the SEC "over his sale of shares in Internet company Mamma.com after he learned it was raising money through a private financing."

If any of the clowns who were already resolved to vote against Cuban's quest to buy the Cubs were looking for a pre-emptory "I told you so," I guess they have it.

Former Peoria Chiefs pitcher Julio Castillo pleaded not guily to two charges of felonious assault Wednesday morning in an Ohio courtroom. Castillo was part of that huge on-field brawl between the Chiefs and the Dayton Dragons this past July 24th, at one point firing a ball toward the Dayton dugout, only to have it sail over his target and hit a fan in the head.

Two developments on the ownership front:

As reported by Chris de Luca in the Sun-Times and noted by a reader under the previous post, there is z-e-r-o chance that MLB owners will approve beer-drinkin' regular guy/billionaire Mark Cuban as the next owner of the Cubs. According to de Luca, this seems to place "the group headed by John Canning, Jr.—(Commissioner Bud) Selig's personal favorite—back as the frontrunner."

Cubs color man Bob Brenly interviewed for the Brewers' managerial job on Thursday, leading Paul Sullivan to wonder if former Cub and onetime Chicago playboy Mark Grace would replace Brenly in the Cubs' booth, assuming BB lands the Milwaukee job.

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Brewers GM Doug Melvin will probably limit the number of candidates to three, with Brenly competing for the slot against former Mets manager Willie Randolph and former A's manager Ken Macha. Brenly's appeal vis a vis the other two options includes his having won a World Series with the Diamondbacks and his deep knowledge of the Cubs personnel. Melvin expects to make his selection next week.

Former Cub pitcher Kevin Foster died over the weekend after losing a six-month battle with cancer. He was 39.

With a career ERA in the upper 4's and a middling won-loss record, Foster hardly stands out from the many forgettable Cub pitchers who populated the roster between 1994 and '98. ('"Jim Bullinger,'" anyone? Do I hear a "Willie Banks" or a "Rodney Myers"?)

Foster was different in at least one respect from the others, however. He was a local kid, who attended Evanston High School and grew up a Cubs fan.

Our very own Rob G. will be in the stands at tonight's game. Be sure to look for him on the broadcast.

Thoughts on Hiroki Kuroda from "Blue Notes," the L.A. Times blog about the Dodgers:

...when the Japanese import is on, dude typically gets into a serious, sometimes unhittable groove. But he's often the Bizarro-version of that pitcher after the first bit of trouble, more often than not tossing himself further into trouble than figuring a way out of it.

In two starts against the Cubs this year, Kuroda has pitched 15 1/3 innings and allowed one earned run. In other words, we really haven't come across that "first bit of trouble" part.