Cubs Out on Webb

MLB Trade Rumors reports that the Cubs and Nationals are apparently out on the Brandon Webb sweepstakes, leaving the Rangers and a mystery NL Central team that is not the Reds or the Brewers. Cubs fans shouldn't lose much sleep over this development.

Webb was a terrific pitcher before he his shoulder injury and he has a big upside should he completely recover, but he has pitched all of four innings in the last two seasons and by most reports was throwing only in the mid-eighties when he worked out last fall. Also, pitchers don't seem to come back from serious shoulder problems as well as they do from elbows. The Cubs should know this from their experience with Mark Prior.

It is generally thought the Cubs need another veteran starter this year and really I have no problem with Matt Garza if he is really available and the cost is not too high, but you can also argue they don't actually need one given the depth of their prospects who include Archer, Coleman, and Carpenter who are close to being ready as well as Cashner.

Contrary to the opinions of many who should know better, including probably Jim Hendry, young pitchers can have instant success and often make a big impact right away. In addition, the Cubs have Gorzelanny, an adequate fifth starter they ought to trade, and Silva, who is a big question mark and might be better off in long relief, especially if some of these kids can make a mark.

Cubs Sign Kerry Wood

And cheap too. Some people are wondering why he gave such a hometown discount to the Cubs, and, honestly, I'm not so sure either. But even though people were talking about a two-year $12 million deal with the Yankees or another money bags team, I'm not at all certain that was ever in the cards. Wood is 33 and he gets hurt a lot, though he has not had arm or shoulder problems since 2007. Apparently the White Sox offer was more than double the Cubs for the same one-year term, but Wood has always said he could never switch teams in the city. From his own point-of-view, Wood lives in Chicago and his kids go to school here, so he probably just feels more comfortable here.

I think this is a good signing providing the Cubs use him much the way Girardi did at the tail end of last season in New York. He still throws very hard and strikes guys out, but I don't think that he has the stamina to close anymore except on a spot basis and maybe he realizes that as well. The Sox job likely involved the closer role.

The addition of Wood gives the Cubs three solid pitchers at the back end of the game in Wood, Marshall, and Marmol. It also frees up Cashner to compete for a starting spot, something he was being groomed for before all the panicky Piniella/Rothschild moves last year. It leaves three more bullpen spots to fill, but the Cubs have plenty of choices there, both among veterans and youngsters. The rest of the bullpen almost seems to boil down to who you do not want there, and, of course, you would not have a Cubs roster were there not an abundance of candidates, led by my personal favorite John Grabow.

In some ways, I would suppose that because the Cubs have so many questionable starters and youngsters vying for the fourth and fifth starter roles, this signing might, somewhat ironically, rather lessen the Cubs desire to add a veteran starter like Brandon Webb. Webb sure was a good pitcher before his injuries, but even though he is a relatively low risk addition from a salary perspective, he represents rather a higher risk with respect to who else is competing for the remaining spots and what the Cubs may likely do with the guys who do not make the rotation. I guess what I mean here is what are you going to do with Webb if he just stinks, but is not still hurt, at least not badly enough to go on the DL. He just takes up a roster spot, much like Silva and Gorzelanny and Grabow and Samardzija, who genuinely stinks and is out of options and has a no-trade clause to boot. Guys like this can lose a lot of games early on, so it is clear decisions need to be made by Mr. Hendry.

Cubs Sign Carlos Pena

The Cubs have signed Carlos Pena to a one-year $10 million deal. I've commented before at some length on Pena's abilities and his career to date. I still don't like this deal. For one thing, it is obviously a stop-gap deal, but for the type of player you get and the amount you've invested, you get a message the Cubs think they can contend now. So it is really a mixed message at best. This guy will strike out, take the occasional walk, hit home runs, field his position, and otherwise do pretty much nothing else. The other question I have is where he will bat. Presumably third, between Castro and Ramirez, but with all those strikeouts, he looks like as much of a rally killer as Lee was last season.

Actually, it seems the Cubs and Hendry were all over the place today if one is to believe MLB Trade Rumors, which at one point or another had them trading for Chris Davis of the Rangers, signing Adam LaRoche, talking to the Dodgers about James Loney (probably the best alternative after Gonzalez went to Boston unless you wanted to take a chance on Colvin at 1B).

MLB Trade Rumors also had the Cubs shopping Tom Gorzelanny for unnamed talent. That's not a bad idea, but now that Pena is in the fold, you've got to wonder who they can get to fill their needs. Gorzelanny is not going to bring big talent unless additional prospects are on the table. Darrin O'Day and someone else from Texas? Who knows what these guys are up to now? Most of the best talent for 7th and 8th inning relievers, Wood and Crain, for example, are free agents anyway.

Well, lets hope for the best for next season or at least something interesting to watch on the field, all the while expecting the worst.

Cubs Miss the Boat on Gonzalez

The Red Sox have pulled off what looks like a great deal to land Adrian Gonzalez for four rather low level minor league prospects. Gonzalez is one of two franchise players believed to be available this off-season, the other being the free agent Cliff Lee.

The Padres GM worked in the Red Sox system, so you have to believe he knows their prospects, but on paper, you also have to think the Cubs might have matched or bettered this offer. So you have to figure the Cubs just cheaped out on the deal, which, of course, was only worth doing if you were committed to renegotiating the Gonzalez contract and offering in the neighborhood of $20 million per year and at least four years.

It is hard to believe a team that has a virtual license to print money and has the totally worthless Alfonso Soriano drawing down $18 million for the next four seasons couldn't pull the trigger on a real asset like Gonzalez. I rather suppose this gives us a clue to the future, at least as long as Jim Hendry is around.

The Cubs are supposedly still in on the Cliff Lee hunt, but given their failure to land Gonzalez, don't hold your breath on this one. I suppose the best you can hope for on the pitching front is Brandon Webb, who was a really good starting pitcher, and so has a great upside, but who is also damaged goods. That and Carlos Pena? Well, I've already said I'd pass on that one.

Either that or they actually think that the last six weeks of last year were real and they can pretty much stand pat. That's the worst case scenario, given the fact their offense in particular was really bad even during that stretch and they really won a third of those games based on Zambrano pitching a near shutout nearly every start.

Cubs Tender Contracts to Everyone

I was rather surprised to see the Cubs tender contracts to all the arbitration-eligible players on the roster. It was rather expected they would retain Marmol, Marshall, Soto, and Gorzelanny, but holding on to Koyie Hill and Jeff Baker makes very little sense. Hill is a decent enough backup catcher, but he worthless offensively and the Cubs have both Wellington Castillo and Robinson Chirinos making their way through the system, either one of whom would be an adequate backup.

Baker, in particular, indicates a substantial misjudgment on the Cubs part. He is a mediocre backup infielder with limited range and he just absolutely, positively, cannot hit right-handed pitching. Although he hit .350 against left-handers, he batted .106 against righties, collecting just 7 hits all season in roughly half the number of ABs. This is just ridiculous, and what it means is that he is worthless even as a platoon player because he is an automatic out should he have to face a right-handed pitcher, meaning the Cubs would have to remove him from the game whenever there was a pitching change.

I expect this means the Cubs infield, with the exception of first base, is set, as I would assume Darwin Barney would be the other reserve infielder, especially given the fact that he is the only other player who could be used at shortstop to rest Castro. They would have been better off looking for a left-handed bat as the other sub. Not an especially encouraging move on Hendry's part, is it?

Carlos Pena?

MLB Trade Rumors and a number of other sources report the Cubs are interested in signing free agent Carlos Pena to play first base. I sure hope this isn't true. I mean, how can you even think Pena improves this team. Pena is 32 years old. He moped around the league for six or seven years before he signed with Tampa and had a break out season in 2007. Since then his production has steadily declined, reaching its nadir last season when he batted .196 and struck out once in every three ABs. Sure he's good for 30 HRs and plays well defensively, but this is just the sort of signing that is likely to drive Cubs fans crazy, myself included. These numbers over the past several seasons indicate a player who had a couple of good years but whose bat is slowing down or a player who had a good run but whose weaknesses have been exposed.

In contrast, the Cubs, should they be unable to unearth a suitable candidate, might just discover that they already have Carlos Pena in the person of Tyler Colvin. Colvin hit 8 fewer HRs in 2010 than Pena in roughly 100 fewer ABs. He stuck out around once in every four ABs. He didn't walk as often as Pena, but then his OBP was about the same because his BA was nearly 60 points higher.

So playing every day, assuming he can learn the new position, Colvin brings comparable production at a fraction of the cost. After all, this will be his second big league season, so he is working for the minimum wage. Pena costs you $5 million. Colvin is 24 years old, so there is way more upside to this player.

Go figure. But then again the Cubs brain trust is led by Jim Hendry. So go figure again. Everyone seems to think the free agent market for first basemen in heavy this year, and it is until you look at the quality. Adam Dunn is the only legitimate star among the lot and he has serious limitations as a player, besides being expensive. Everybody else is washed up. Next year's crop is the big one, potentially including Fielder, Pujols, and Gonzalez. The Cubs have no chance to grab the first two, but they might just be able to match up with the Padres to get Gonzalez in a trade before free agency. He should be their goal, and if they can't land him, well, that's that. They can do a lot better than Pena, that's for sure.

Free Agents

The Cubs are rapidly seeing some of their presumed free agent targets slip away. I thought Victor Martinez was a possible fit for 1B, but he has signed with the Tigers for probably more than he is worth. Aubrey Huff - not one of my favorite candidates - has predictably re-signed with the Giants.

That leaves Adam Dunn still on the market. Dunn is expensive and not a good fit for the Cubs. Also Carlos Pena, a cheaper alternative who gives you just as many if not more strikeouts, solid defense, home run power, and a batting average last year just south of the Mendoza line.

You really wonder what if any plan the Cubs and Hendry have devised. It certainly is a big secret so far. As for 1B, they are left with the acceptable options of trying Tyler Colvin there or trading for Adrian Gonzalez if he is really on the market. Gonzalez would likely cost them Colvin, Gorzelanny, and one or two lesser prospects. Plus a commitment of four more years at $15 million plus to wrap him up.

The Cubs have also been thought to be looking for a free agent pitcher. In earlier entries, I've made the case for going big and trying to land Cliff Lee. This would take a five or six year contract at $20 million plus. I don't think the Cubs are in this game, though pitchers like this do not come around very often and if you can get one, well, you should pull the trigger.

Putting Lee on the side, there isn't much around. Jon Garland, who might have been a decent fit, has signed with the Dodgers. That leaves a bunch of guys who were once good, but are coming off injuries or bad years. Chris Toman, in the Miami Herald, talks about five of these, namely, Brandon Webb, Eric Bedard, Jeff Francis, Chris Young, and Jeremy Bonderman. Any of the five would come cheap with an incentive-driven one-year plus option deal. I could see taking a chance on Webb, Bedard, or Bonderman, but they are not exactly guys you can count on big time.

Actually, I'm not entirely sure the Cubs need to take a chance on anyone who is not demonstrably better than the arms they have now. They finished the season with good pitching even though Silva and Gorzelanny were on the shelf. Zambrano and Dempster would have to return to their old form, but they pretty much did so last year. Wells slumped last year, but I still think he can be a reliable starter for them. Coleman also showed some ability as a starter. Coleman would likely fight it out with Gorzelanny and Silva for the remaining spots in the rotation if the roster were to remain unchanged.

Not the best situation to be sure. I've got no use for Gorzelanny at all and Silva is a major question mark. The Cubs might do well to sign Kerry Wood to share the setup role with Marshall, which would free up Cashner to possibly move into the rotation, a role he was being groomed for anyway until he was called upon for emergency duty last year.

Lets not forget that the Cubs have a wealth of pitching talent coming through the farm system, some of whom, like Chris Archer, for example, look to be special and not that far away from the big leagues. So unless you are going to go big for a Cliff Lee or trade young players or prospects for a pitcher like Zack Greinke, you might be better advised to play a waiting game.

The Ricketts Play

When the Cubs ownership changed hands, some friends of mine with maybe more insight and inside dope than me suggested that we would long for the days of the Tribune's corporate ownership sooner than we ever imagined. Well, maybe not the current batch of bankrupt blockheads who managed to sell off the only really profitable division of their empire, but it makes you wonder in a way about the crisis of American capitalism in a nutshell.

Anyway, needless to say everybody is weighing in on the great plan, and so far the verdict is not so good for the Ricketts team. You wonder, for one thing, who is doing their PR and whether they ought to think about at a minimum hiring competent hucksters for a change. The Tribune guys at least paid their own way even though they used their brand ownership and muscle to push around everyone who got in their way. Here is a good selection of articles and opinion, pro, objective, and con. Mostly con. There is even a rather sensible tongue in cheek suggestion from Ed Sherman at Crain's Chicago Business that they might seek state aid in financing the remainder of Alfonso Soriano's contract, about $72 million.

In brief, this is the deal. The Cubs get to welch on their original agreement to develop the triangle of land between Waveland, Clark, and the stadium in return for the City letting them expand the bleachers. In a novel legal argument, they claim that that agreement was negotiated by the previous ownership, and even though they have continued to exist as a corporate entity, well, hey, that was the other guy's business, not theirs. This kind of ploy usually doesn't sit well even with politicians. Even a shill like Tom Tunney seems to have his doubts.

The Ricketts proposal amounts to a kind of confusing financial shell game. In essence, though, it a pretty much a scam, though a somewhat more inventive one that, say, the White Sox play for a new stadium where they just threatened to move to Florida. The Cubs want public financing to make all the necessary renovations to the Wrigley Field infrastructure, new clubhouses, kitchens, batting cages, weight rooms, whatever structural interventions are necessary.

Now all this stuff is stuff that should be done, but the problem is that as far as Wrigley Field itself goes, the structure itself has run up against a situation of diminishing returns. All the deferred maintenance mentioned above doesn't add much to the bottom line unless you double ticket prices or something like that because attendance, the basis of the Cubs cash machine, has maxed out. So no doubt the fans experience and the players experience is enhanced, but there's nothing in it for the owners, is there?

So their first thought, of course, is to have somebody else pay for it, or, better yet, in a flurry of mumbo-jumbo economics that would put Milo Minderbinder from Catch 22 to shame, nobody pays for it really because we just use the tax that would be paid anyway when it increases over twenty years and just the part the Cubs ticket buyers would pay anyway that would probably be used for useless junk like schools or stoplights or something, and, see, we get a new Wrigley Field that will last for generations until some mutant ivy eats away the bricks in the outfield wall.

Meanwhile, the Ricketts can use their own money or money they raise privately to develop the new Wrigleyville. This part is a little vague. It seems to consist of the famous Triangle Building and some sort of mall that runs along Clifton Avenue west of the fire station that is populated by happy, suburban, white families munching hot dogs and buying lots of Cubs paraphernalia.

It looks a lot like Wrigleyville West, which the Cubs have managed to con the citizens of Mesa and Arizona into building in order to keep their spring training facilities in Arizona. Or kind of like The Glen, all ersatz gimcrackery that is supposed to give you the genuine Wrigleyville experience without the concomitant urban grit.

I've lived within a mile or so of Wrigley Field in various rentals and condos for most of my adult life. I've seen the environs develop from seedy to gritty to gentrified to the current state of something like fratified if that can be a word. But the thing is that that growth and development, though it is centered around the ballpark, has been organic and basically real whether you like it or not or whether you feel comfortable there or not. You're in a city, a big city, and cities are messy places. You don't have to live here and you don't have to visit. Neither do you have to have those environs developed at a considerable public subsidy to make money for people who are already rich enough to pay for it on their own.

Sandberg Moves On

The Phillies hired Ryne Sandberg to manage their AAA farm team. This is a good deal for Ryno and a sad day for the Cubs in most respects. You have to believe there is an understanding here between the former Cub and the Phillies organization. The Phils manager Charlie Manuel is 66 years old, so you have to figure Sandberg is next in line and that there will be very little controversy about it when the time comes for Manuel to retire, which looks to happen next year.

I rather hope for Ryno's sake the Phillies, unlike the Cubs, keep up their end of the implicit bargain. I remarked in an earlier post, when I was evaluating Jim Hendry, that the Cubs and the Phillies have been operating in pretty much the same arena for most of the past decade. They have a similar budget and so on. But the Phillies have made so many more superior decisions and they have met with so much greater success than the Cubs. I hate to say so, but, sentiment aside, Sandberg will be inheriting a much better team in a much more stable organization if things work out for him in the end.

Cubs Interested in Cliff Lee, Maybe

According to MLB Trade Rumors, the Cubs are among seven or eight teams that have inquired about Cliff Lee. Hard to read too much into this at such an early stage, but it is an intriguing possibility. Signing Lee is an expensive proposition, but he is one of the best pitchers in all of baseball. For the Cubs, it would instantly give them a pretty formidable rotation and also serve as a signal that they have finally recognized that the strength of their team and their minor league system is pitching, that pitching and defense matter a lot, and that these are the things you build a team around.

The Cubs freed up more than enough cash to sign a guy like Lee when they dumped Lilly, Lee, Theriot, and Fontenot late last season and they will add to those savings when they let Nady walk, so even without freeing up salary by trading their own talent, they could afford one big splash. Probably that is all they are willing to make anyway.

As I say, there may not be much in it, but it indicates they are at least evaluating the possibility, which is a start.

Adrian Gonzalez Trade, A Low-Cost Option?

Bruce Levine writes on ESPN that given the Cubs flat payroll, they may be more likely to trade for a top-tier first baseman in the off-season. He thinks Adrian Gonzalez of the San Diego Padres is a likely target.

In yesterday's blog, I considered this possibility and talked about some of the issues connected with this approach. Gonzalez is a premier player. At his position, he is in a class with Texeira and Pujols. In short, he is a real difference maker, an instant franchise upgrade, and certainly a player that a major market team that the Cubs aspire to be should be going after.

Having said that, however, I just don't see this happening, at least not in the off-season. Nor do I see how this is a low-cost option. Nor do I really see how the Cubs match up with the Padres needs in terms of the personnel they have to offer.

First off, how does this save the Cubs money? Gonzalez makes $6 million now and is worth $15-$20 million per year in a four-year deal on the free agent market. He's certainly worth it. He is 29, so he likely has at least four good years left to whoever signs him. But that doesn't make him a bargain, does it? I mean, you are going to have to pay that money and to guarantee your investment, you are going to have to do it now, this year, in terms of an extension, and you are going to have to be sure you can negotiate that extension before you pull the trigger on the deal. The Cubs should be willing to spend this money and they actually could do so from the savings they accrued from trading Lilly and Lee and letting Nady walk. But lets not pretend this is a savings.

Also, even Levine mentions that the price in terms of players is three or four good prospects. I'd assume that at least one and probably more need to be major league ready. The Padres real need is hitting, and they are trading their best hitter, so you have to figure all or nearly all are going to have to be position players.

Do the Cubs have this kind of material to spare? The Cubs have a bunch of veteran bats who may or may not be an improvement over what the Padres have. I'm talking about Soriano and Byrd and Fukudome, but how do these guys appeal to the Padres? Each one of them earns twice as much as Gonzalez does now. And lets face it, hitting isn't exactly the Cubs long suit anyway.

Of course, half the Padres lineup filed for free agency, so their needs are many. The Cubs could offer Colvin in return and maybe one of their two catching prospects, Chirinos or Castillo. However, the Padres are easing Nick Hundley into a full-time starting role, so they are likely to be looking for a veteran backup.

After that, it is slim pickings, at least among players the Cubs consider top prospects or young players who have already made their mark. They are not likely to want to move Castro or Brett Jackson or even Brandan Guyer, nor should they consider it, and they probably shouldn't think about moving Chris Archer either. Maybe they could throw in Josh Vitters, although one of the few other positions where the Padres seem set is third base.

Cudos to Hendry if he can pull this off even if it costs him Colvin and one of the catchers, but I've got my doubts it can be done.

Nick Johnson?

Everyone pretty much agrees the Cubs need a left-handed hitting first baseman if they are to contend in 2011, or even if they are going to play decent baseball for a change. The Cubs don't have a minor league prospect waiting in the wings. Xavier Nady, who finished out the season more or less as the last man standing, showed he could not hit for the kind of average or power you expect from this position and is likely headed out the door as a free agent. So it's not surprising the papers and blogs are full of speculation about who the Cubs might show interest in signing.

One rumor, from the Sun-Times has it that Jim Hendry is looking for a low-ball option like Nick Johnson. Johnson was never what you would call a bad player, but neither would he be considered a star. He is one of the most patient hitters in the major leagues, something the Cubs could surely use, but he has only doubles power and he is an indifferent fielder at best. Plus he is coming off two seasons where serious injuries drastically limited his playing time, and, like Nady before him, there are legitimate doubts that he has fully recovered.

Of course, Hendry loves this kind of player. He's a cheap acquisition and you might just get lucky. More likely you will wind up with the second coming of Cliff Floyd or Xavier Nady. Were the Cubs to settle on a guy like Johnson, it would tell you two things about the their plans. One is they don't think they are serious contenders next season. That judgment, in itself, is wrong-headed. The Cubs play in a weak division and there is every reason to believe they can be contenders next year if they make the right off-season moves. Arguably, they fielded worse teams in 2002 and 2006 and went on to win divisions the following years. For a GM of a major market team to think this way is always a bad thing.

Anyway, the second thing it tells you is that the team is treading water for no apparent reason. Signing a stopgap is OK if you are waiting for a major prospect to mature, but, as we noted above, there is no apparent prospect to await. Unless you intend to bypass the 2011 free agent market in favor of 2012 when Prince Fielder and Adrian Gonzalez become available.

The problem here is that moving either of these players is basically a budget cutting decision for their current teams. Neither the Brewers nor the Padres think they can afford to sign them to extensions or new contracts when they hit free agency, so they are likely going to want to get something in return before that happens.

The Brewers can't be under any illusions that they are genuine contenders next year or are likely to be contenders before the trade deadline, so theoretically they might be looking for the best deal they can get now, especially if it involves good pitching. But I seriously doubt that either the Cubs or the Brewers are likely to swing a major deal in their own division, so I would have to assume the Cubs likely target would be Gonzalez.

Gonzalez would be a terrific acquisition, one of the best position players to hit the market in years. There is no real reason for the Padres to deal him now because they were serious contenders last year and he is a bargain for them at the $6 million or so he currently earns. They'd have to fill several holes to trade him now and they need cheap hitters. The Cubs have expensive "hitters" to trade and cheap young hitters they need time to evaluate. It's also possible the Padres will contend again next season as they did last, in which case they might choose not to market Gonzalez at the trade deadline.

So the bottom line on these strategies is they are rather iffy propositions and expensive ones as well, both in terms of the quality of personnel you'd need to give in exchange and the kind of money you would need to commit to renegotiate their contracts before free agency to keep them around and make your investment worthwhile. If the Cubs are playing this game, they had better have a pretty fair idea of what it would cost them in both respects and whether they are prepared to pay the price, or they had better be certain these guys will be available on the free agent market this time next year.

So if you think the Johnson strategy is too timid or unsound, you are left with two other options. One is the free agent route this year. The main candidates on the rumor mill here, at least according to Paul Sullivan of the Tribune, are Adam Dunn, Aubrey Huff, and Victor Martinez. Of course, Adam Dunn is the celebrity candidate, but I have to confess that I don't like Dunn as a Cub at all. He either hits a home run, walk, or strikes out, and he is an embarrassment at any position he plays. The Cubs have too many one-dimensional players who are really not ballplayers at all, Soriano for a start, and a team can only carry so many of these slugs, namely less than one.

You can get away with a platoon player like this, maybe a role player, but that's about it in the NL. Dunn is also expensive and wants a four year deal, having already turned down a pretty good three year offer from the Nationals. Some free advice here: we already have enough long-term deals weighing this club down. Dunn is 31 years old, which means you are getting him three years into his most productive years, so you can realistically project him to have one or maybe two stellar seasons, stellar seasons in terms of what he has generally produced in the big leagues, which is home runs, walks, strikeouts and errors. And then he will begin to slack off. I'd pass on this guy.

Huff has always been a Jim Hendry favorite. This is an obvious danger for Cubs fans. Huff will be 34 before the start of the season and he is coming off a career year. He'll probably re-sign with the Giants anyway. Lets hope so.

That leaves Victor Martinez, who is actually the most interesting notion if the Cubs want to take the free agent route. Martinez will be 32 next year and has primarily been a catcher in his career with the Indians and Red Sox. But he has played first base quite a bit and has not done badly. He is a pretty patient switch-hitter with home run power who hits for average as well. On the whole, I could live with this resolution and it might be the most affordable option in the long run.

The other possible strategy would be to fill the position in house. The likely candidate would have to be Tyler Colvin. It's not so bad an option as might appear at first glance. Right now the Cubs are loaded with relatively unproductive or marginal free agent outfielders who are expensive and not readily moved. It also looks as if they have two legitimate outfield prospects in Brett Jackson and Brandon Guyer. Both are fast, solid defensively, hit for average, and show some plate discipline. So you've got yourself a bit of a log-jam out there and players like Colvin will have to fight for playing time at best. Of course, you could recognize that Soriano and Byrd and, to a certain extent, Fukudome are basically platoon players and you could work out some interesting outfield rotations based on this recognition. But that really isn't the Cubs way, is it?

I'd have to take the distinctly minority view and say that - much as I would dearly love to see the Cubs dump Soriano - the guy in the outfield who could be moved to clear salary is not Fukudome, but Byrd. This would free up center field for Colvin, but if they don't do this or use Colvin as a chip to land a guy like Gonzalez or a first-rate pitcher, first base might be the answer for this kid. Right now his stats closely resemble Soriano's, but there is room for loads of improvement if he can learn some plate discipline. Since he can catch and generally play baseball, you can carry a pure slugger at first base for a while provided he improves and you can always unload him for something better if he does not.

Evaluating Jim Hendry

If you want to classify the tenure of Jim Hendry as a Cubs executive, well, he definitely joins the ranks of nothing special or worse. When we stop to think about the Hendry era, we sometimes don't realize how far back it goes, all the way back to 1995 when he headed up the farm system, and to 2002 when he officially took over as GM. That's a long time with very little tangible achievement. Sure, they won three division titles, but they have not built a perennial contender.

If I had to sum things up in a single thought, it would be OK at small scale incremental changes, bad at big trades, big changes, worse at overall strategy and building a winning team. In other words, this guy is a tolerable small market leader and a failure at big market moves. To the extent the Cubs are a major market team - and you have to say that with their payroll and profitability they cannot be considered anything else - Hendry is the wrong guy for the job.

Hendry was the major player in the minor league and scouting areas from 1995 until he became GM. So as far as first round picks go, you've got Kerry Wood in '95, Jon Garland in '97, Corey Patterson in '98, Mark Prior in '01 and pretty much dreck until you get to Tyler Colvin in '06. Colvin is the first product of the Oneri Flieta/Tim Wilken era anyway, where player development efforts seem to have picked up. Garland was traded away for garbage. Throw in Dontrelle Willis, also traded away basically for the journeyman Matt Clement, and Carlos Zambrano and that's pretty much it for the Hendry era. Maybe throw in Ricky Nolasco who was drafted in '01 as well and similarly traded away for nothing. Outside of the pitchers there's nothing much to write home about, and half of them were discarded. The system's inability to produce position players with any consistency has been a notable failure. Lately, the Cubs have been able to promote a major league catcher in Soto and a good shortstop in Starlin Castro, but their much heralded prospects, guys like Felix Pie, for example, have fizzled.

I suppose on the strength of this performance, Hendry was promoted to GM in the middle of 2002, having pretty much served in that capacity for a little while before the formal announcement. The first move he made was to fire Don Baylor, a good move. He promptly hired the first of two celebrity managers, Dusty Baker in '03 followed by Lou Piniella in '07, both of whom enjoyed initial success and both of whom were run out of town at the end of their generous contracts.

Hendry made his best moves at the start of his GM career and has lost the magic as time passed. He has always been pretty good at dumping toxic contracts, and one of his first moves was to somehow convince the Dodgers to take Todd Hundley off his hands in return for Mark Grudzielanek and Eric Karros, both of whom were on the downside of their careers, but both of whom played well for the Cubs in 2003 and helped a lot in what was, arguably, their best run in modern times. Most of the rest of the '03 team was in place when Hendry took the reins, i.e. Alou, Patterson, and Sosa in the outfield, etc. The arrival of Prior and Zambrano as dominant starting pitchers carried the Cubs into early contention.

Hendry then pulled off the most spectacular trade of his life, and actually probably the only major trade he ever made that worked to the teams benefit when he managed to pick up Aramis Ramirez, Kenny Lofton, and Randall Simon from the Pirates more or less for nothing.

The following year, he picked up Derrick Lee in the off-season, also pretty much for nothing, probably his second best trade. He also let Lofton walk after the season, counting on Patterson returning to the level of play he displayed before his injury in 2003. This was a big mistake. After that I think it is fair to suggest that Hendry had seen his best days as GM recede behind him. The blockbuster deal at the 2004 trade deadline for Nomar Garciaparra was a bust. Nomar was hurt and his career had already hit the skids.

After the Cubs fell apart at the end of 2004 and after the injuries to Wood and Prior, the remainder of Baker's tenure as manager was a death march and Hendry was unable to do anything significant to stop it, other than holding on to Baker for the remainder of his contract even though it was obviously time to pull the plug.

Things changed radically beginning in 2007 when the Cubs dipped heavily into the high-end free agent market, mostly in a fairly successful attempt to inflate the resale value of the franchise while diminishing its value on the field. They picked up Ted Lilly and Jason Marquis to bolster their pitching, the Lilly signing being overall the only beneficial one.

Anyway, the real puzzler was signing Alfonso Soriano, a guy who really has no idea how to play baseball and never has, to an eight-year deal. There are still four years left on this deal at about $18 million per year. This alone would be cause for any respectable team to just fire their GM on the spot.

The team played pretty well though in 2007 and Piniella managed to cobble together a pretty decent run, dumping several useless cogs that Hendry had accumulated like Cesar Izturis and half-a-dozen second basemen in favor of home grown talents like Ryan Theriot. The signing of Mark De Rosa, a relatively minor acquisition at the time, helped immensely.

The following season, the Cubs went out and got Kosuke Fukudome for big bucks. I've never been one to fault Hendry for this signing. Everybody wanted Fukudome and projected him as a solid player. The Cubs are paying him too much money, but he is, at least in my view, rather an undervalued performer considered just on the basis of his skills and their value to a team that is consistently weak defensively and in terms of fundamentals.

The real plus moves that pushed the Cubs into contention, though, again were small, and arguably lucky, choices, mainly the signing of Jim Edmonds and Reed Johnson who turned out to be a surprisingly potent tandem in center field. That, and a career year for De Rosa.

During this same stretch the Cubs gave lucrative extensions to Carlos Zambrano, Ryan Dempster, Derrick Lee, and Aramis Ramirez. In all honesty, it is hard to argue with these decisions, however much in retrospect they may now seem excessively generous. I'd probably have made the same moves under the same circumstances.

The really stupid signing came in '09 when Hendry went out to get Milton Bradley as a left-handed bat even though he was always better as a right-handed hitter and he was a known nutcase. Everybody knows that story, but again Hendry did demonstrate a remarkable ability to exchange bad contracts and come up with something in return when he dealt Bradley to the Mariners for Carlos Silva.

What emerges from all this is the portrait of a GM who really does not have solid judgment most of the time and who seems to spend money foolishly and to no set purpose. The Cubs don't really seem to have a plan in mind on the kind of team they want to create, nor any idea how good, consistent teams are built.

Just for comparison, look at the Phillies development through this same period when they had about the same or even slightly lower budgets and competed for pretty much the same pool of talent, especially in the free agent market. The Phillies were more fortunate or more skillful in developing home-grown position players, bringing up Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, and Chase Utley through their own farm system and trading for young players like Jason Werth and Shawn Victorino. Their biggest weaknesses were 3B, LF, and starting pitching. They managed to cycle through free agents in LF and 3B and get the kind of production they needed. A good case in point was LF, when the Phils gave up on Pat Burrell and decided they needed a left-handed bat there. They signed Raul Ibanez. The Cubs, in the same position signed the abominable Milton Bradley even though Ibanez was available at the time.

The Phillies decided to construct a balanced power-hitting team built around their ballpark. They also knew they would need exceptional pitching to overcome the inherent problems of playing in a stadium where cheap home runs were the norm, so they concentrated their efforts on acquiring really, really good pitchers, guys like Lee, Halladay, and Oswalt, even if it meant giving up prospects to get them.

Now contrast that same era with the Cubs who seem to have had no obvious plan, who cannot seem to build a lineup that is balanced and makes sense, starting with the leadoff man, who do not seem to understand the strengths of their team or minor league system or the kind of team they need to build.

Strong arguments for change at the top, which, of course, is not forthcoming. One may only hope, but without much confidence, that some lessons have been learned. Maybe Hendry can pull off a hat trick and dump Soriano in the same way he unloaded Hundley and Bradley. (Incidentally, I would take the rumored Soriano for Zito trade in a minute). Maybe Hendry will look at the Giants as a model for rebuilding, which would not be a bad start. Maybe pigs can fly. Well, whatever, there is always next year.

Playing Tom Ricketts

The Cubs have chosen Mike Quade over Ryne Sandberg as their new manager. Let me be clear that I have nothing in particular against Mike Quade other than that, as I have noted in an earlier piece, he is Jim Hendry's guy. In fact, the team did well for the six weeks he managed them, and I do wish him well. We need to be clear, however, about what just happened and what it probably bodes for the future.

Actually, you have to hand it to Hendry. He may not be much of a GM. In fact, you can argue that he is a pretty bad one, and I will make that argument in a subsequent post. But the guy is one hell of a bureaucrat, quite the consummate inside player, and his playing of Ricketts, and Cubs fans in general, since the ownership change has been Machiavellian in its subtlety and success. In the process, I think Ricketts has lost a real chance to exert control over the franchise.

That's a pity, because Ricketts really had a chance to change things from the relative laughing-stock of baseball organizations the Cubs have become. To do so, he had to take charge immediately, minimally finding himself a trusted baseball adviser, but ideally cleaning house right from the start. Retaining Hendry and Piniella was the big mistake.

So instead of asserting himself from the beginning, Ricketts chose to evaluate matters for a year, concentrating on raising ticket prices, repairing the washrooms, commissioning statues of macaroni, and selling bison that he just happens to produce on one of his ranches, and, aw, shucks, just trying to be the best fan he can be and hoping for the best.

I'm afraid this guy is small-time running a major market team. In this respect he has found his ideal consigliere in the overstuffed person of Jim Hendry. Hendry has never been comfortable running a big time operation and even his forays into the free agent market have been in the main half-hearted efforts to prove he is doing something big when everyone knows it is just pretend, that he is overpaying for leftovers. Hendry has always been most attuned to bottom-feeding and bargain hunting. Sometimes you strike gold there, most often not.

For Hendry though, it is all about control and who he feels comfortable being around. I'm not sure he ever felt comfortable with Baker or Piniella, but they kind of got him off the hook and shifted attention from his own feeble efforts to build a winning team. You want a manager, OK, take these mopes. Sandberg, or for that matter Girardi or Brenly, would have meant a change of course and a shifting of attention to people on the upsides of their careers, rising stars whose success or failure would shift the attention from the GM and who might just create a power base independent of his own.

Think about it, how many GMs can most serious baseball fans name straight off? I know I can't think of half-a-dozen, but, like most fans, I can rattle off twenty or so managers. That's as it should be. But it is not the world where Hendry thrives.

So, in this case, what Ricketts provided was time for Hendry to consolidate his position. Ricketts clearly doesn't know much about baseball other than that he likes it and it is always nice to be king. Giving Hendry a year to work things out was kind of like giving Dracula a second chance to straighten up.

In retrospect, everyone should have seen this coming even though it was a shrewd play by Hendry and really a no-lose situation. I mean, who names a new manager to fill out the term of a prematurely retired manager who didn't get fired, but just decided to quit twice in one month for family reasons and calls him a replacement for the remainder of the season not an interim or an acting choice? And what team doesn't fill out the term with the bench coach, though maybe the first audition was Trammell and he just flubbed it so bad they had to move on?

Chump that he is, Ricketts bought the idea. Hendry had nothing to lose here and made a pretty shrewd bet that, first off, Piniella had a lot to do with the team's execrable performance, and, secondly, teams usually experience a bounce when a skipper is bounced, particularly one so obviously at wit's end as Sweet Lou. Now if you do well, hey, the team you assembled was never that bad after all and this unknown character is some kind of low-key genius who has earned the right to labor through the two seasons you have left on your own contract. If not, if Quade is a flop, well, what do you expect from this guy anyway, he's only a stopgap, some genial mope who has been bouncing around from Pawtucket to Toledo to Pocatello for nearly twenty years? We move on to Plan B, which might have been Eric Wedge, I guess, although some people think Wedge might have been Plan A all along until Quade surprised everyone by winning games.

What's most disappointing is that we are apparently headed for more of the same, no big changes, no accountability, small market moves from a big market team. Carry on, Brownie, you're doing a hell of a job. Anyway, we are stuck with the situation, and, as I say, you could do worse. But we ought to recognize what went on here and who came out the big winner. Not the fans. Not the owner. Not the new manager either.

As for Sandberg, well I almost never agree with Phil Rogers, but he got played here as well, big time.

The Championship Series

I picked the Yankees to beat the Rays and advance to the World Series. I have to stick with the Yanks to top the Rangers. I haven't followed the AL West much this season, but I have to say the Rangers have a surprisingly strong and balanced team. That being said, their bullpen will be their undoing.

Another way to pick these series - and I am sure I will offend some of my loyal followers in doing so - is the Red State/Blue State theory. When in doubt, always plump for the Blue State team. In the case of the AL series, of course, there is a clear choice. And honestly, just one look at the grinning face of W. in the stands, and all these Texans wearing antler t-shirts made up my mind.

I picked the Phillies to beat the Giants and advance. I haven't changed my mind as to which is the better team, but I am rooting for the Giants just so the Phillies do not advance to the World Series for a third consecutive year. The Red State/Blue State theory provides no guidance here, but the Phillies fans are a genuinely obnoxious bunch and this sways my sentiments in terms of a rooting interest even though the Phils are probably the stronger team.

Evaluating Larry Rothschild

Larry Rothschild has exercised his option to remain as the Cubs pitching coach for another season. Apparently this means that if it is OK with the new manager, he gets to stay. One of the odd things about Jim Hendry's tenure as GM is the number of no-trade contracts and player's and coach's options he has handed out. Generally speaking, I would suppose that these are not a good thing, especially with respect to coaches. One would suppose that team management would not want to tie the field manager's hands by saddling him with holdover coaches, but Rothschild has just completed his ninth season with the Cubs and, if retained, will be working on his fourth manager in 2011. So it goes in Cubland.

It is always difficult to evaluate a coach's influence. There are so many variables and so much of pitching is dependent on factors outside the coach's control, as well as the material he has to work with. Still, nine years is a long time, and I think we can reach some conclusions, or at least some intuitions.

I would argue that there are two key factors to consider in evaluating any pitching coach, and these are the potential of the players he has to work with and whether they improve or regress under his tutelage. Judged on these criteria, one would have to put Rothschild somewhere in the middle of the pack, nothing special and certainly not incompetent, but not an invariably positive influence either. In other words, not a game changer by any means.

On the talent level, you would have to say that throughout Rothschild's tenure, Cubs pitching has been above average, sometimes dominant, sometimes just pretty good, but even in off years, such as the last two, not at all bad and probably not the reason the team disappointed.

So what has Rothschild been able to do with these guys? In 2002 the Cubs had a pretty bad team. Their top starters were Kerry Wood and Matt Clement. Mark Prior was a rookie, as was Carlos Zambrano. Nobody had a standout year, but whoever was responsible for moving Zambrano into the rotation deserves some credit here.

The following season, 2003, the Cubs had one of the best rotations in all of baseball in Wood, Prior, Zambrano, and Clement. Over the course of the next few years, Wood and Prior broke down, Wood for the second time and Clement returned to mediocrity before being dumped off to the Red Sox before he too broke down. Zambrano was the only one of the four to perform consistently well over the entire span and his performance, though tolerable even at its lowest points, declined each year under Rothschild until his dramatic upswing at the end of this season.

Cubs pitching after 2004 was pretty much indifferent for the next few years with the exception of Zambrano. The big news focused on the struggles of Wood and Prior to regain their health.. The Cubs farm system produced little of note. Nothing to brag about here, though eventually the Cubs were able to revive Wood's career for a second time. They also managed to turn Dempster back into a starting pitcher, so some credit is due on that score.

In 2007, the Cubs went out into the free agent market and acquired Jason Marquis and Ted Lilly, neither of whom were coming off career years. Lilly had several good seasons. Marquis was mediocre to pretty awful. Beginning around the time Piniella was hired, the farm system started to produce some prospects, nothing of the caliber of the early 2000s when they brought up Prior and Zambrano, but some decent kids.

So what is Rothschild's record with this material? Fair to middling. Sean Marshall came up in 2006. The Cubs never seemed to be able to figure out what to do with him, trying him first as a starter on a fairly limited basis. He has finally realized his potential as a setup man in 2010. Rich Hill showed up in 2005 and had a breakout year in 2007 when he won 11 games. After that, he lost his command. Maybe not Rothschild's fault, but not a feather in his cap either.

Carlos Marmol broke in in 2006 as a starter, but moving him to the bullpen where he has been a dominant force since 2007 has to be a plus for Cubs management. Jeff Samardzija was rushed up in 2008, rather as Andrew Cashner was this season. He has been awful ever since and probably has no future.

The Cubs cycled through a number of middling prospects during the Piniella era, among them Sean Gallagher and Kevin Hart. They also brought in Rich Harden as a free agent, and his career was mediocre as well. I'm not saying that all these guys had more in them than they showed on the field, just that it is at least more probable than not that a really great coach would have achieved better results, especially with the veterans, that you would expect more from a guy to whom you had committed nine years.

As for the current crop of youth, the jury is still out on Coleman and Cashner. They have potential, and Coleman in particular could blossom into a back of the rotation starter. The discovery of Wells was a big plus, though he suffered through a sophomore season that does not argue in Rothschild's favor.

The relief pitchers were a major disappointment in 2010 after showing promise in the minors and the previous year. Caridad, like Guzman, was hurt. Berg, Russell, and a host of others regressed. Gorzelanny, I would argue, stayed about the same, a middling fifth starter. People forget that he won 14 games for the Pirates several years ago. The one real credit on Rothschild's blotter in recent years has to be the revival of Carlos Silva's career, something no one expected.

According to Paul Sullivan, Rothschild has some sort of special bond with Carlos Zambrano. You sure would not know it to look at the results, and if he had anything to do with demoting him to the bullpen, well, with friends like that, you don't need any enemies, do you? Also, I thought his remarks in the Sullivan article about Zambrano were ungracious, especially for a guy who has an allegedly special relationship. Maybe he has seen these streaks before, but mentoring is all about instilling confidence. You can think it, but you don't say it.

Rothschild has spent most of the past two seasons serving as an ancient-looking bookend to the worn-out Lou Piniella. He's only in his fifties, but he looks like he is a hundred. Nine years is a long time with this organization, especially if you have little to show for it and lots of regrets. You cannot say the Cubs will be worse-off if the new manager keeps Larry around, but, like most fans, I would really like to see a new face and new ideas. Dumping him would not be the end of the world and might signal a change of tone.

The Managerial Sweepstakes

If we are to believe Bruce Levine, the search comes down to three front-runners, Eric Wedge, Mike Quade, and Ryne Sandberg, with the possible inclusion of Joe Girardi if the team is willing to await the outcome of the playoffs and has some kind of signal he will make himself available.

I favored hiring Girardi four years ago when the Cubs put their money on Lou Piniella even though it was clear Girardi was being groomed for the Yankees job. Now I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure he would be interested for one thing. Who would even think about leaving a perennial World Series team for the Cubs in the midst of what will undoubtedly become a rebuilding or retooling season? Girardi is also the favorite among all the know-nothing sportswriters and commentators, so right there you rather lose my interest. These guys, the Phil Rogers and Dave Kaplans of the world are almost always wrong. Kaplan has recently suggested trading Carlos Marmol, the second best closer in all of baseball who works now for the equivalent of the minimum wage in baseball terms, because you could really get some great prospects in exchange. Duh!

Anyway, Girardi strikes me as a bit of a tight-ass and that might be another strike against him. This team is a pretty fragile mix and I don't think they need that right now. I mean, they need to play tighter baseball and concentrate, but I'm not sure a looser version would not be a better choice. I wouldn't think he was doomed to failure, nor would I actively dislike the guy, but - and maybe my reasoning is a little idiosyncratic - I have more than a few doubts. The other problem, of course, is you could wait around until mid-November and lose out altogether on your secondary choice.

I can't figure out what the deal is with Eric Wedge. You have to certainly consider some sort of history with the team and their fans as a plus, but Wedge has nothing to relate to here. He seems to be a buddy of Jim Hendry, a black mark already, and his career with Cleveland was undistinguished. He inherited a team packed with stars of the caliber of C.C. Sabathia and Cliff Lee and Grady Sizemore among others and he won, I guess, a division title before the front office started dumping salaries again and eventually dumped him.

Mike Quade is the wild card. Nobody would have thought him a serious contender prior to his stopgap appointment to fill out the season after Piniella's desertion. He did very well, or the team did. That has to count in his favor. Against him are these considerations. First off, he is a Hendry guy, which, to my mind, creates doubts straight off. Hendry is nearly always wrong. He had a great run, but the team as a whole played better in only one clear respect, viz., their pitching was exceptional. His lineups were pretty predicable and not well thought out even allowing for the limited chips he had to play, especially after injuries closed the book on Colvin, Soto, and Silva.

Actually, I don't know why the Cubs don't give the job to Sandberg and call it a day. Given the direction Ricketts seems to be signaling, that is a renewed emphasis on player development, Sandberg is the one guy who really knows the minor league system, having manged his way up the ladder from A ball to AAA and having had a hand in the development of most of their current prospects. Sandberg is also the only guy who has said anything sensible about his philosophy of building a team when he praised the Twins approach that emphasized a consistent style of play throughout their system and consistent expectations of the prospects they develop. This is a dose of medicine the Cubs genuinely need.

The other plus is that he is not a guy who is entirely a creature of Jim Hendry. I like the idea that he has in a sense called Hendry's bluff. Apparently he came to Hendry four years ago and asked for consideration for the manager's job. Hendry supposedly suggested he had no experience and he should go down to the minors and work his way up, perhaps little thinking he would take him up on the idea. Sandberg did what Hendry suggested, and he was successful at it. Maybe I am sentimental, but I do think there is a kind of implicit obligation created there, and that it would really be dishonest for the organization to move in any other direction.

I also really think having a certain amount of tension between the field manager and the general manager is not a bad thing. I also think Ricketts is nuts if he trusts Hendry to make the final selection given his prior track record. Actually I think he is nuts to even let Hendry conduct the preliminary interviews.

Playoff Preview

One of my followers asked for a playoff preview and predictions, so here goes. If a little belated, I'll try to go with my honest sentiments before they started even though we are in the second day of play.

AL: The winner of the Yankees/Twins series will win the championship and I will pick the Yankees. This series on paper looks as if it matches the two best teams, but, frankly, the Yanks own the Twins, and yesterday's game did nothing to contradict that impression. I have to respect the Rays even though I think they are a flawed team. I mean you have to be doing something right to win the AL East. Having said that, however, it looks like they are getting their clock cleaned again by the Rangers. The Rangers have Cliff Lee, but if they advance, I think the Yankees will be too much for them. Sentimentally, I like the Yankees as well because Girardi is their manager (the Cubs should have hired him in 2007, but they shouldn't do so in 2011 and a victory in the Series will pretty much block that move) and also because they picked up Kerry Wood to pitch late relief (the Cubs should think about signing him for 2011).

NL: The Phillies will beat the Reds. I was thinking the Reds would give them a run for their money, but after the Halladay no-hitter, I'm not so sure. The Reds also have Dusty in the dugout, which effectively means he will find a way to lose somewhere along the line. The Giants/Braves series definitely matches the two worst teams in the playoffs. The Giants will advance and probably lose to the Phillies, although if you are looking for a dark horse (and frankly I would like to see an upset here) the Giants pitching can take them a long way.

The Yankees will beat the Phillies in seven games.

The Astros Series

The Cubs took two of three from the Astros to finish the season. Once again it was pitching that dominated, even though they scored 8 runs to give Zambrano his 8th consecutive win on Saturday night. Coleman pitched well on Friday night, probably his best outing of the year. He may just have earned himself a place in the rotation next season. Dempster was a little shaky on Sunday, not awful, but not dominating either. The Cub defense broke down a bit early in the game and their hitting, as usual, was absent.

It is hard to know what to make of the turnaround initiated by Piniella's departure. How much of it was Quade's doing and how much of it just being rid of Lou? Quade certainly shined, but the team will need more than that over a long haul next year. One thing they will need is consistent hitting and an everyday lineup that makes sense from the point-of-view of scoring runs and playing defense. Obviously, Quade's options were limited, especially after Soto's and Colvin's seasons ended prematurely, but still I didn't see much offense, nor much of a coherent philosophy in crafting these lineups. I guess the jury is still out here.

You might say the Cubs rode out the season on the coattails of some of their more maligned players, namely Zambrano, Ramirez, and Fukudome. Anyway, I was pleased to see that Hendry officially took Zambrano off the trading block. Maybe this will end the constant drone of now's the time to get rid of this guy and pay half his salary so he can win someone else a pennant.

The Padres Series

The Cubs/Padres series was a delight to watch for fans who enjoy well-pitched, closely contested games that hinge more or less on one or two special efforts or just plain luck. In this series, whether it was because the Padres were pressing with their backs to the wall after a dreadful September, or because it is just about impossible to score runs against good pitching in their ballpark, or because the Cubs pitching right now is just a little bit better or a combination of all these things, it was the Cubs who looked like the contenders, not vice-versa.

Zambrano set the tone on Monday night, and Dempster continued the dominance the following evening. The Cubs managed only six runs in those two games, but they looked to be in complete control. On Wednesday, Wells pitched a really good game. He allowed two earned runs in the loss, and the game might have been closer were it not for the great defense the Padres displayed. Venable actually pulled back home runs by Soriano and Ramirez on spectacular plays.

Wells has not had the greatest sophomore year, but I think he is underrated. He had some awful starts, but so did Dempster. He finished the year with 18 quality starts in 32 tries, which is not half-bad. It is the same number he had in his rookie season in five fewer attempts. He also pitched almost 200 innings. Dempster, the only other pitcher on the staff with a comparable number of starts, 33, had 22 quality outings.

Gorzelanny, I think, and people are free to disagree, is rather overrated. He pitched well-enough in the final game of the series, but he seemed to be just teetering on the brink of disaster most of the way, mainly because he walks too many people and pitches behind in the count. In any case, he pitched well enough to beat the Padres, although he did not pick up the win as the Cubs were forced to dip into the bullpen after six innings of a scoreless tie.

The Cubs bullpen was dominant throughout the series and I cannot recall them allowing a single run. Which brings up an interesting point, and probably one of the keys to Quade's success as contrasted with Piniella's failure. I would argue the Cubs had consistently good starting pitching through most of the year, certainly good enough to win more games than they did. But what Quade has done, whether because some of the kids have improved, or because he has managed to evaluate their particular skills better, or whatever intangibles he brings, he has proved that it is possible to manage a young and relatively weak bullpen successfully, something I have argued for a long while is definitely a thing that can be done. It is a thing that baffled Lou Piniella through most of the year even though he had arguably one of the best finishing tandems in the entire league in the person of Marshall and Marmol.

The Cardinals Series

Well, just when I had pronounced the Cubs pitching the principal reason for their recent success, they proceed to go out and lose three of the next four, all the result of really bad pitching. I suppose in a back-handed way, it demonstrates my point.

Anyway, Dempster had nothing in the final game against the Giants, and Gorzelanny had pretty much the same luck against the Cardinals on Friday. Dempster, who has been a consistent starter through most of the season has thrown up three or four atrocious outings toward the end of the year. Maybe he is just running out of gas. Along with Zambrano and Wells, I would have to regard him as a lock in the starting rotation unless the Cubs do something really stupid in the off-season.

Gorzelanny, I'm not so sure about. To me he is and always will be a #5 kind of guy. He throws too many balls and, as a consequence, he will rarely get you into the seventh inning. Granted he was coming off a long layoff, and he will probably get another start before the season ends, but I could easily see him failing to make the rotation next year, and I could easily see the Cubs dealing him in the off-season as well.

Coleman pitched the only decent game in this stretch. The more I see of Coleman, the more I think he may have a future. He is not a flashy pitcher, more a professional type in the style of Wells, but he has good stuff, he pitches, and he throws strikes.

Samardzija's outing on Sunday proves in my book that this guy has no future. I actually went out to the park to honor the last home game of the year and frankly I wish I had not. I sat right behind home plate, and believe me, Samardzija had nothing and except for the pitch he grooved to Pujols in the first inning, he showed once again his aversion to throwing strikes of any kind. The game was agony, not only because it was maybe 50 degrees in the stands with the wind blowing constantly in your face, but also because just watching this guy pitch was unbearable. He was lucky to make it into the fifth inning, when he completely lost it, leaving with the score 8-0. It might as easily have been 12 or 13-0.

The Cubs did make it interesting, surprisingly so based on their complete lack of attention through the first five innings whilst they were being no-hit by Jeff Westbrook of all people. Perhaps roused from their slumbers by the belated departure of their starting pitcher, they made a game of it, ultimately falling 8-7. They had a chance to tie or go ahead in the bottom of the eighth against the Cards closer Ryan Franklin, but, for reasons known only to him, Xavier Nady chose to pop up harmlessly on the first pitch after Franklin had walked two of the three previous batters. So it goes.

I think the picture above shows Brad Snyder hitting a single to drive in a run, though I'm not entirely sure about the snapshot.

Series Recaps: Marlins, Giants

Well, there isn't much to say. The Cubs continue to dominate teams, at least teams that have relatively weak offenses. Through the Wednesday game, the Cubs are 18-8 under Mike Quade. Since the start of the road trip on which they went 8-1, Cubs starting pitching has been completely dominant. Wells, Zambrano, and Dempster have been lights out, and they have even gotten respectable performances from Coleman and Samardzija.

The pitching really has been the story. With starters going long, Quade has been able to spot some of the youngsters in the bullpen into positions where they can get outs without a lot of pressure. Scott Maine, in particular, has looked good, and Cashner seems much more consistent. This has taken some pressure off Marshall and Marmol and they have responded in kind.

Lots of folks keep saying that Quade has been successful by playing the youngsters, but I don't know what games they are watching because, with the exception of the Sunday game against the Marlins, they have not used young players unless they had to do so and they have not brought up their best prospects anyway. These guys are at AA. Barney is the only real exception to this statement, and he got most of his ABs when Ramirez was hurt. Nor has Quade been especially experimental with the youth. The much heralded experiment of playing Colvin at 1B never materialized, and his batting orders are pretty conventional as well. Not that he has a lot of choices, but it should be obvious the Marlon Byrd is not a #3 hitter, nor is Blake DeWitt a leadoff man.

The only area where Quade has been relatively imaginative has been in his management of the bullpen and his employment of the young players there. I give him full credit for this turnaround and for the patience he has shown.

As for the hitting, well, during the 9 out of 11 streak, the team is hitting something like .230 though they have a better average with runner on base. I've been watching baseball for a long time, and I don't remember a team turning around like this with a change of manager based on just one aspect of the game. Seems a mystery and I'd be happy to see someone come up with a theory to explain it. It must have something to do with Piniella, though, either the way he managed his pitchers or his relationship with Rothschild. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I recollect reading that Piniella hated pitchers. Possibly they sensed this disaffection. Who knows?

Soriano Speaks (Again)

Alfonso Soriano has once again shared his thoughts about this season and his hopes for the next. Maybe his agent should just tell him to keep his thoughts to himself. Anyway, he has met his modest goals for the season, which, apparently, consisted only in staying off the DL and had nothing to do with performing well or winning ball games. Who knew?

One hopes no one in Cubs management pays any attention to this blather. Or maybe they should. If they did, they would be looking to dump this hopeless mope on some unsuspecting AL team that needs a DH. Otherwise we are stuck with not only his miserable performance, but his "thoughts" as well for four more years at $18 million per. Four more years!

For what it is worth, you have to wonder whether Alfonso is actually paying any attention to the games he is playing in right now. According to him, the Cubs offense is OK and they can build around him, Ramirez, and Byrd. They need to go out and get some pitchers. Now I guess the observation that the Cubs starters had allowed only three earned runs on the road trip until tonight (and only six including tonight) was lost on him like a flyball in the twilight.

The Cubs are 7-1 on the trip, largely due to the pitching. They are not exactly blasting the ball all over the field, but maybe they are learning that you don't need to do this to win consistently. It's nice, sure, but if you get a few guys on base every now and again and get a few hits and actually catch the ball more often than not, well, you start to win more games than you lose.

As old Lou would say, look in the mirror. Not only is Soriano a genuinely wretched outfielder, but since the glory days of spring, his monthly numbers for BA, OBP, and SLG are .234/.310/.268, .225/.271/.450, .245/.273/.457, and .205/.311/.333 respectively. These numbers also do not take into account that a great many of his hits that are not home runs are weakly hit bloopers or the result of misplays by the opposition. So, honestly, if we are relying on Alfonso for next year, God help us.

Soriano confides that we can also count on Ramirez and Byrd to carry the load along with him. I won't say anything against Ramirez, who, since recovering from his thumb injury and whatever other funk he was in, has returned to form. Ramirez is a consistent and exceptional hitter who is and has been the foundation of the Cubs offense since he was acquired in 2003.

Byrd is actually another story. He has had a pretty good year for sure, better than I expected, but he is starting to show signs of returning to his career form, which is a pretty solid .280 hitter who doesn't walk a lot and doesn't work the count, hustles on the bases, and plays above his natural talents in center field. His numbers this season are so skewed in his favor against lefties that they almost suggest his role as he plays out his contract may become more that of a platoon player. A nice guy to have around, but compare his numbers to the numbers put up by the platoon of Edmunds and Johnson in 2008, and you will see what I mean.

Baseball players aren't always the brightest bulbs, so it is not surprising that they don't always know why it is they win or lose. Even if Soriano were right in supposing the Cubs could rely on these three bats next season, the problem is that these guys are all aggressive, really overly aggressive, right-handed hitters who attack the ball early in the count and share some of the same weaknesses. Coupled with Lee before he was traded they usually batted in tandem. That was and is really the problem. Forget about pitching unless you are going to make a play for Cliff Lee. This team will never produce a solid consistent offense until they get more left-handed.

Actually, I am beginning to think they will never become a really good team until they either dump Soriano or just make him a platoon player. He does kill mediocre left-handed pitching.

Cubs Sweep Cards

I've got to say the Cubs looked good again, sweeping the Cardinals in St. Louis and pretty much eliminating them from the NL Central Division race even though the Reds managed only a split in their four game series with the Diamondbacks. One question you have to ask is whether this is just a late season, pressure off illusion, or whether the deceptive part was their performance before Piniella quit.

Granted the Cubs have nothing to lose and can play the enviable role of spoiler against arch-rivals like the Cardinals, but the Cards had everything to gain and they played like the mopes the Cubs were earlier on. Also, as noted before, the Cubs are not playing rookies, but pretty much their regular veteran lineup.

Anyway, they swept the team that was supposed to be their major rival at the start of the year and they looked good doing so. They are 5-1 on the road trip, mainly on the strength of their starting pitching. I think the starters have yielded only three or four runs in the whole stretch. Against the Cardinals, Samardzija pitched surprisingly well, Wells pitched back to his 2009 form, and Zambrano continued to impress. Z did not have his best stuff, but he still gave up only one earned run and pitched out of trouble all night long.

Should we be waiting for next year? More on this in a later post, but at least they are an interesting team to watch lately.

Astros and Brewers Series

Things have come down a little to Earth for Mike Quade. His team has played .500 ball for the last week, losing two of three to the Astros and taking two of three from the Brewers. The slight letdown has not been due to the pitching, which has been pretty decent, especially against the Brewers where it was outstanding.

The problem really has been the offense, which has been in a pretty steady funk since Ramirez was hurt. I read where Ramirez was undecided about exercising his player option for 2011. The Cubs are in deep trouble if he doesn't come back, but then again so is he because nobody is going to pay him $14.5 million after the last two seasons. Ramirez has become over time something of a fragile player. Assuming he comes back next year, and there is no reason to suppose he will not, the Cubs would do well to find a backup 3B. that backup isn't, by the way, the totally one-dimensional Jeff Baker, no matter how well he hits left-handers.

But back to the recap, Coleman was very good in his Sunday start and OK in his previous start, a game the Cubs were lucky to win on the Soto homer in a sloppily played game. Actually, play was sloppy for both sides throughout the series. Silva was pretty shaky in his start, but he had not pitched in a while. Wells was mediocre.

The Cubs continued their offensive funk throughout the Brewers series. They had the game in hand Friday night mainly due to Zambrano's dominance, but they were the beneficiaries of some really dreadful defense by Milwaukee, as well as some solid clutch hitting by Zambrano who had three hits as well.

The best news was the Zambrano and Dempster starts. Both pitched very well, and Zambrano was absolutely dominant on Friday night. I thought that Ken Macha, the Brewers manager, rather confirmed an earlier observation in this blog that Z has changed his style, becoming more of a pitcher, since his return to the rotation.

"You know what? I thought earlier in the year, [Zambrano] threw harder," said Milwaukee manager Ken Macha. "Tonight, I thought he had more movement and he didn't throw the ball as hard. He threw 90-91 [mph], but he was cutting the ball, he was sinking it. He threw several curveballs 70 mph. I talk a lot about having that slowness, being able to control the bat speed, and he did that."

I recall that when Sweet Lou banished the guy to the bullpen it was so that he could recover his velocity. Could he have been wrong again? No way, fans. Piniella was always right. Well, if only they had fired him when they should have, there might have been a more interesting and promising finish to the season than there is now.

People are still mumbling about trading Z, but, to my mind, the guy for all his faults is just capable of being so good, you cannot give that away. Arguably, Zambrano has been the best pitcher in the NL since his return. Maybe they should send the whole team to a shrink.

More Statues and Some Modest Proposals

I see where Crane Kenney is quoted as saying we are to expect more statues of Cubs greats to surround Wrigley Field. It is easy to be flippant about this, but I, for one, think that once again Kenney has hit the nail on the head. He has found a genuine, low-cost, low-maintenance solution to some of the Cubs woes.

Who doesn't remember the famous Billy Williams catch in the Holtzman no-hitter of days gone by? The image of the savvy Hall-of-Famer waiting for Hank Aaron's drive to blow back into the well is soldered in our brains. And who doesn't think we have a bit of a problem in left field? Well, lets do something about it. We don't need another pricey free agent. Lets just put up a statue of Billy in the same spot, over there in the well. This is a cheap and permanent solution. The statue would have about the same range as our current regular and at a fraction of the cost.

While we are at it, don't we have a problem at first base? What's wrong with a statue of Ernie over there? Or better yet, lets move Aramis Ramirez to first and erect a statue of Ron Santo at third. Again, about the same range and maybe the better solution because Castro has tons of range and could probably handle both positions himself.

Now what's the other hole we have? Manager, of course, and the solution here is again obvious: Lou Piniella. Not the real one, but another statue, probably in one of his natural poses, stoically slumped in the corner of the dugout with a permanent scowl, or else just taking a nap. And how about Lee Elia, permanently seated at the interview dais, screaming obscenities at those lazy fans?

This idea has legs! Maybe wings! If only Cubs fans would get behind genuine innovations instead of carping about big contracts and high ticket prices and what not, wouldn't we all be better off? Think about the money this could free up to finance Ricketts' quest to buy up the rest of Wrigleyville? Maybe if he is successful, we could soon see a statue of Hack Wilson staggering out the door of the Cubbie Bear, arm in arm with Babe Ruth. We can dream, can't we?

Quade's Macho Moment

For some reason or other, Chicago sports columnists love the macho moment, the time when the boss stomps out of the dugout and just virtually bops an under-performing player or takes him out like in the famous Bobby Cox incident with Andruw Jones that commentators are always gushing over. Anyway, Quade benched Starlin Castro for two days and according to Paul Sullivan, this is sure to win him points with Jim Hendry as a stand-up guy.

Now I have no idea what transpires in a major league dugout in the way of mentoring or instruction, especially having watched the Cubs most closely for so many years. In the case of Piniella, it seemed almost everyone was asleep or smashing up the Gatorade dispenser until Carlos got pissed off and then all hell would break loose. I would, however, imagine that when a player messed up, someone would have occasion to mention it, but maybe in Cubdom this is considered bad form.

I've got nothing against giving Castro a breather to slow things down and get his bearings. Maybe it will work. The kid has a lot of talent, but in the field he plays out of control. Forgetting how many outs there were was rather an uncharacteristic blunder on his part, but maybe Quade saw it as an indicator of a deeper lapse of concentration. It should certainly not require two entire ballgames to learn to count to three, though, and one wonders if this kind of public humiliation is always the right action.

I suppose it depends on the player. One thing you do not want to do to a young player is destroy his confidence. Castro went 1 for 4 in his return to the lineup, made an error in the first inning when he hurried a play, but otherwise he made several excellent plays in the field. Not a whole lot of difference. Castro's problem is that he plays out of control and probably needs to relax more and to figure out who is running and so on. These things will come in time. He might benefit from spending some time in winter ball with a really good infield coach.

Some other interviewers talked about whether the same sort of treatment might be usefully employed with veteran players, but it was hard to figure out what Quade's answer to them really meant. One would like to think they had in mind some of the more obvious candidates on the roster known for their casual lack of hustle or baseball intelligence or both. Alfonso Soriano comes to mind as an example on both counts, but whenever he sees the lineup card, his name is still there. In the Mets series he hit a three run homer, but he botched up a flyball to the warning track that he played into a two-run double that ultimately resulted in three runs scoring in the inning and he let a perfectly routine single bounce through his legs in the Dempster game, opening the floodgates for three more runs. And these were just the most obvious misplays. None of them mattered to the outcome, but the accumulation of bad play takes its toll. I'll be impressed with Quade's macho when he takes on a bigger fish.

Actually, Quade had the opportunity to do so very early in his managerial stint, when Alfonso watched a couple of balls fail to reach the seats and in the infamous case in Washington when he watched the RF miss a popup and knock his own breath out. Anyone else would have had an inside the park home run. Steve Stone and some of the other commentators called Quade out on not taking any action in this case. I hate to harp on Soriano all the time, but I just watch this guy and even on TV, you can see that he rarely makes the right decision in the outfield both in his route to the ball, his handling of the ball, the base he chooses to throw to, the accuracy of his throw, etc. And this criticism does not even take into account his atrocious situational hitting.

The Mets Series

All in all, another good series. Any series is good if you take two of three or three of four. At the All-Star break, I and maybe a hundred other commentators noted the Cubs would have to win two out of three of their remaining games to get back into contention. So far Quade has done just that, 8-4, so you have to wonder what might have happened had the Cubs dumped Piniella then.

As for the Mets series, a nice win on Friday. Soriano finally hit a home run, although in all fairness, this simply made up for his botching up a catchable flyball by Wright that cost two runs. I wonder if the Cubs noticed something in DeWitt's swing that they thought they could work with. He has shown a lot more power since joining the team, four HRs in about 100 ABs since joining the team, as opposed to one in around 250 ABs with the Dodgers.

Zambrano was again dominant on Saturday. It is good to see that more people are coming around to the view that if he continues to pitch well he should be retained. Getting a comparable pitcher in exchange would certainly be difficult and pricey. I also liked the fact that he managed to keep his emotions under control when Castro made a really rookie play that allowed a Mets run to score early in the game.

Sunday's game was a reversion to early season form. Lets hope it is not a sign of the return of Cubs' complacency. Dempster was bad again. He has logged a lot of innings and might benefit from an extra day's rest at this stage of the year. Colvin made a costly and unnecessary error and Castro made a mental mistake by forgetting how many outs there were on a groundout. These are rookie mistakes, I suppose, but you really wonder what sort of preparation any of the Cubs players are getting at the minor league level. Judging by Castro's performance as a hitter, he has not been rushed by any means, nor, it would appear, has Colvin.

The same cannot be said for the young pitchers. These guys, like Russell and Diamond and Berg, are maybe just not very good. I'd say the jury is still out on Coleman and Cashner.

It will be interesting to evaluate Quade's performance in maybe a couple of weeks. How much of his success is do to a post-Piniella bump and how much to his skill? It is apparent that Quade is not playing young players or doing much experimentation to see where all the pieces might fit. He is playing veterans and established youngsters in the main with the exception of some bullpen assignments where he has very little choice. I think there are two reasons for this, one being Quade's desire to win and to impress management with his skills, the other being some desire on the Cubs part to determine whether they actually have something in the basic lineup that will be under their control next year upon which to build. Neither one of these goals is wrong in and of itself, but you have to wonder if it has not become time to be a little more innovative and whether testing some other alternatives might not be best for the team in the long run.

Another Series Win for Quade

It never ceases to amaze me how any team could consistently lose to the Pirates, possibly one of he worst teams of the past decade in most facets of the game. But there it is, the Cubs accomplished this ten times in fifteen tries this season. But at least they took this series, and there were some good things to note sandwiched around the terrible thumping they took in the middle game.

One such grace note is that at least one of the younger bullpen guys seem to be coming around again, namely Cashner, who looks to be regaining his confidence. Another seems to be the resurgence of Carlos Zambrano, who is 3-0 since returning to the rotation and has looked very good in most of these outings. He was throwing a lot harder on Monday night, but since he had something like a fourteen run cushion, he may just have been relying more on his fastball to set up his other pitches. Gorzelanny's injury looked very scary. One hopes it is not a broken bone and that he can come back and pitch before the season is over. I can't recall a pitcher getting hit more often in a single year than Gorzelanny. He should be careful crossing streets.

Among the hitters, Starlin Castro continues to impress and to improve every day. This kid is going to be a super star if he continues to mature and I rather think he will hit for more power when he learns what pitches he can turn on. His fielding will come around in time as well. I wish I could say the same thing about Colvin. He continues to hit for power and now that he has been dropped down in the order by Quade, he gets significant hits. He still strikes out too much, and he still needs to develop more plate discipline. I would be remiss not to mention that Fukudome is pretty much carrying this team every day he plays and that he is really in a groove right now. Somebody on the coaching staff should figure out what he is doing right on these streaks and made sure he sticks with this approach.

Today, like many of these games late in the season when nothing really counts, was an amusing game to watch. Quade seemed determined to set some sort of record for double-switches. Perhaps this was an effort to demonstrate to management that he could both execute the manoeuvre successfully - a feat that often eluded Lou's grasp in the past - and that the moves made some tactical sense.

Today also saw the re-dedication of the truly gruesome Harry Caray statue, this time parked on the corner of Waveland and Sheffield near the entrance to the bleachers. Something about this statue gives me the creeps. He seems like some sort of strange hulk rising from who knows what subterranean region to exhort us to well, I don't know what. Maybe it is just me, but it is a weird piece of art. At least it is no longer exposed at Addison and Sheffield.

A Pretty Good Series

The Cubs had a pretty good series against the Reds this weekend. It would have been a great series had they not completely imploded, especially on defense, in the last two innings of Sunday's game. I can see why, if Alan Trammell is responsible for coaching the infield, he is not being considered for the managerial job. Soto and Fukudome got charged with throwing errors, but in Soto's case, Castro made a mistake in not just conceding the stolen base and catching the throw and Baker should have been backing up the play; in Fukudome's case, Ramirez made virtually no effort to stop the ball which was just a little off line.

Castro is a work in progress defensively, but the Cubs need to do something to inspire Ramirez to actually try to play a decent third base. They are stuck with him for at least another season - and really they have no replacement - and he is a key offensively when he is healthy, but he seems to have gone the wrong way since his shoulder injury. When he was a Pirate, he was considered a defensive liability, but in his years with the Cubs he had made himself a serviceable infielder. But, as I noted above, things have gone south since his injury last year. Needless to say, Baker should never ever play 2B, just as he should never ever bat against a right-handed pitcher.

Friday's game was a joke because Gorzelanny just did not have it. Lots of people like Gorzelanny, but to me the jury is still out. He has pitched some good games, but in all honesty he is a 5th starter despite his achievements this season. He throws too many balls and, as a consequence, he puts men on base too often and usually can't get past the 6th inning. Good enough for a #5 on a dominant staff, but I could see him going in the off-season if the Cubs think they have a younger gun to replace him.

Wells pitched very well on Saturday night in the best played game of the series. Wells has had a bit of a sophomore slump, but I see him as a pretty good #3 or #4 starter who should rebound next year closer to his freshman form.

Coleman pitched a gutsy game to keep them in it. He throws strikes, but he doesn't seem to have really dominant stuff. Maybe he can become another guy like Wells in time, but I wonder if he is up here too soon and would not benefit from more seasoning, especially if he is thought to be a potential starter. I can see him doing OK in long relief as well.

I have been criticized for harping on the good qualities of Kosuke Fukudome, among others, but I have to call it as I see it. Fukudome hit a two-run homer on Saturday night that gave the Cubs the win, and he hit a two-run homer Sunday (against a lefty, perish the thought) to tie the game and give the Cubs a chance to win. He is very hot these days and maybe his work with Jaramillo is paying off or maybe he has finally made the adjustments to American baseball that he has needed to make.

Several sports guys have read into the comments of some players the idea that whatever his skills Quade seems more involved in the game and the team seems looser. Cashner and Russell have both been quoted as saying Quade has helped them just by sitting down and talking about game situations and restoring their confidence.

The implication in all of these observations is that Piniella did just the opposite, and I have to say I have always thought that to be the case, and that the demeanor of the club under Lou was very tight and dour. The Cubs are thought not to be looking for a celebrity manager and I think they are right in this respect. One mistake they should not make, whether their choice is Quade or Sandberg or whoever, is to go with a four year deal. Two years is enough. You can always extend. Baker and Piniella were both successful in their first and second seasons and poison thereafter.