Jackson, Villanueva Push Cubs Closer To 80 Wins

So, big news on Thursday: The Chicago Cubs added a pair of starting pitchers, Carlos Villanueva and Edwin Jackson. Like many around the sabersphere, I applaud these acquisitions. I think Dave Cameron's writeup on FanGraphs captures the heft the wisdom:

But we should note that Edwin Jackson makes them better, and this price for Edwin Jackson is still completely reasonable based on his established performance level. That the Cubs aren’t yet obvious contenders shouldn’t cause us to tell them to stop trying to improve. By bringing in Jackson and Carlos Villanueva today, while already adding Scott Baker and Scott Feldman, the Cubs have now acquired four interesting starting pitchers this winter. They’ve rebuilt their entire rotation, essentially, and have set themselves up to be able to trade Matt Garza...

The only key item Cameron (full disclosure: my boss) leaves out of his analysis is the 2014 free agent pitcher market, which is bare in comparison to how the 2013 shook out.

So where does this put the Cubs at in 2013, though? According to my, shall we say, napkin predictions, they are approaching 79 wins.

Cubs 2013 Projection: Another Sub-.500 Season On The Horizon

For fun, I threw together a napkin projection for the 2013 Cubs. I'm probably wrong here and there about the playing time -- for instance, I don't think Luis Valbuena will be a super sub, even though that's the bench MLB Depth Charts suggests -- but as a whole, I think the results are in the ballpark.

Which is a bit of bummer, because I'm forecasting 77 wins:

Hitter BABIP, Explained

This morning, around 12:30 a.m. Chicago time, I finished the final luck video in the Saber Primer Series.



I'm not quite decided what I want to make a video for next, but I'm leaning towards wRC+. I have been toying with a wOBA video for over a year, but I can't get the musical element just right, so I may keep it tabled. Also, I use wRC+ way more than wOBA these days.