The Cubs wasted a decent start by Randy Wells and lost their sixth game in seven tries to the miserable Pirates, who had previously dropped five in a row and who are 15-30 (.333) against everyone else. It is hard to quarrel with most of Lou's pitching moves on paper, but it is a fair question to ask whether you need five pitchers to lose a 2-1 game and whether you really need to reevaluate the notion that Garrett Jones, the left-handed hitting Pirates' right-fielder, is at any sort of disadvantage facing the Cubs' left-handers. He has so far hit more than half-a-dozen homers, triples, and doubles against them after all.
The Cubs continue to struggle offensively and the performance of Lee and Ramirez and Theriot are the principal causes. Piniella rested Theriot on Sunday, but did manage to get him a key AB to end the game. I'm not sure what they can actually do here. Clearly they need to break up that succession of right-handed hitters, but unless Piniella commits to playing Fontenot and Colvin pretty regularly and they bring up Tracy, that is not a likely event.
I think sometimes you reach a point with a team where everything you do is wrong and that that point has been reached with Piniella so whether it is just or unjust something has to give and really he needs to go to shake things up. I also think, though there is no objective evidence for this, that it is probably the case that the core of a team has one shot for the brass ring and when they fail, as the Cubs did in 2008 (and earlier in 2003 with a different set of chips) they just lose confidence or karma or whatever and they are never going to get it back without the addition or subtraction of significant players.
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