Well… maybe not better, but we’re back.

We discuss all sorts of issues including Matt Garza‘s return, how you can wasted at the movies, Carlos Villanueva‘s eventual trip to the bullpen, Jeimer Candelario‘s shocking batting stats in Kane County, Dustin Geiger‘s current successes, and how wine is worse than beer for doing a podcast.

Kick back, listen and enjoy!

Winning a baseball game doesn’t require a magic potion or intense superstition. It comes down to 9 players coordinating their efforts and skills on the playing field and working towards the one principle goal of scoring runs. How they go about that is another story, but the Cubs have been effective in this department as of late.

May 15, 2013; Chicago, IL, USA; Chicago Cubs second baseman Darwin Barney (15) doubles to deep left during the second inning against the Colorado Rockies at Wrigley Field. Mandatory Credit: Reid Compton-USA TODAY Sports

It really is that simple when you boil it down. The funny thing is, it’s the subtle things they’re doing differently that are having the biggest effect.

The Cubs have been enjoying solid starting pitching while winning 4 of their last 5 games, except for one lousy start from Carlos Villanueva, but that’s bound to happen sometimes. Statistically, they’re still one of the better starting rotations in baseball with a 3.76 team ERA and only 35 total HR scored against them. Not a sparkling clean record but certainly good enough to win ballgames.

Solid pitching is nice but runs win games, and the Cubs have been going to work with the bats.

Support from the middle of the order has been outstanding. For example, Darwin Barney has put up a .333 AVG/1.058 OPS in the last 7 games which includes 5 runs and 2 RBI. Same story for Luis Valbuena, who’s .286 AVG/.714 OPS aren’t quite as impressive as Barney’s numbers, but has found success hitting in clutch situations for the team.

David DeJesus has been tearing it up as of late as well, boasting a meaty .389/.486/.611 triple slash line. For a player who is not known for any sort of power hitting, that SLG line looks delicious. The value of having your leadoff man sporting a hot bat can’t be emphasized enough as it allows you to strike early and (hopefully) often.

Even the pitchers are doing their part, with Jeff Samardzija hitting a HR in yesterdays game and both Edwin Jackson and Travis Wood posting up an RBI or two. Shark even executed a SAC bunt! Not too shabby. I’d attribute this to luck more than anything, but hey, a rotation that can hit every once in a while is welcome in any NL lineup.

This goes without any mention of Kevin Gregg, who has blown pretty much everyone’s socks off in the closer role. He looks confident and is executing extremely well.

Hitting with RISP has also come to fruition for the team, who’s woes with men in scoring position earlier this season were dire. This is largely flukey and shouldn’t be given a ton of weight, as any team’s OPS with or without RISP during a season usually works itself out evenly. Chance and luck have a lot to do with it and the Cubs seem to be on the right side of the inch for now. Good contact and a little bit of power at the plate certainly don’t hurt your odds though…

The small fundamentals are what’s helping this team get back to winning, and it’s nice to see the Cubs doing the little things correctly. Smart pitch selection, quality baserunning (aka no TOOTBLANs), good defense and a little more emphasis on hitting for OBP have got the Cubs back on the right track.

At least for now.

This post in particular is an interesting read and comes from a good man named Jason Ling who is an active member on twitter. With the draft fast approaching, this piece stood out above a lot of others. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did and dont be shy to contact me on twitter if you ever want to have your pieces featured as a guest post. -Denny

The Major League Baseball Draft is coming up soon in a couple of weeks and it got me wondering about a few things. There are so many players drafted and only so many make it to the big leagues. Teams spend so much time and money on the draft. How good have teams got at choosing players? My real question: How many successful careers come from team’s first round draft picks?

I will be looking at the first round draft picks from every team from 1980 to 2002. Then I will find the players who played 8 or more years in the league and had a batting average of .250 or more. The pitchers will need to have a sub 5.00 era. Those are the stats I will be using to decide if the player’s career was successful or not. Obviously whether a not a player’s career is successful is highly debatable and that is why I will be determining if they were successful by just these stats

Feb 24, 2013; Dunedin, FL, USA; A detail of a MLB logo on the batters circle during a spring training game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Baltimore Orioles at Florida Auto Exchange Park. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

Since I am a huge Cubs fan here is what I found out about the Cubs. From 1980 to 2002 the Chicago Cubs had 27 first round picks. 16 of those picks made an appearance in the majors. According to the brief stats I stated earlier, only 7 of the 27 players drafted had successful careers. The biggest names of that group were Joe Carter, Shawon Dunston, Rafael Palmeiro, and Kerry Wood. Joe Carter was with the Cubs for only 51 at bats in 1983. He spent the rest of his 16 year career with the Indians, Blue Jays, and brief stints with the Padres, Orioles, and Giants. He slugged 396 homeruns in his career. Four years later, in 1985, the Cubs selected Rafael Palmeiro with their first round pick. He spent 3 seasons with the Cubs from 1986-1988 then split time between the Rangers and Orioles for the remainder of his 20 year career. Palmeiro is arguably the best first round draft pick the Cubs ever made. He ended his career with 3,020 hits, 569 homeruns, and a .288 batting average. In total, the Cubs had 27 first round picks from 1980-2002 with 7 of those picks having successful careers. This comes out to a 25.9% success rate of the Cubs first round picks.

.After looking through each team’s first round picks I found that the Mariners had the highest success rate of all the teams with 60.9%. They had a total of 23 draft picks during the time period with 14 of those draft picks having successful careers. The Mariners drafted 2 of the best homerun hitters of all time in Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez. Ken Griffey Jr. had one of the most beautiful left handed swings of all time. Below is a chart of each team’s number of picks, successful careers, and percentage of successful careers.

The average success rate is 32.3% for all the teams. This means 1 pick out of every 3 years will have a successful career in the Majors. This is not completely accurate because of stray numbers. Teams like the Mariners had a 60% success rate whereas the Nationals success rate was only 17%. This is very basic research and there are lots of variables contributing to a player having a successful career. The front office of a team changing will have an impact on the success rate of a team and also injuries ruin player’s careers. If you take a look at the Cubs success rate to the league average you can see they are below average.

The draft is a big part of Major League Baseball. Smaller market teams use the draft to stock up on picks whereas large market teams like the Yankees don’t need to use the draft as much. This is easily seen by comparing the Astros to the Yankees. The Astros had a total of 30 picks whereas the Yankees had 13 picks over the 22 years. It will be interesting 20 years from now to see if all the technology and money that’s put into scouting will raise the success rates of the teams now.

All information about stats and drafts were found on Baseball Reference and ESPN.

Follow me on twitter @BadNewzCubs

-Jason Ling