Cubs Salvage One from Cards

The Cubs managed to salvage one game from the Cardinals Sunday, bringing their record on the current road trip to 1-5. Everyone on the team seems to be happy they are still there mired in one of the more miserable seasons in recent memory, which by the way includes the miserable seasons of 2009 and 2010. They all rest tonight comfortable in the thought that their GM Jim Hendry stands behind them affirming their indispensable necessity and just plain old irreplaceable status. The same goes without saying for the wonderful manager Mike Quade. No one more suitable could be found anywhere in baseball and you can look that up if you like.

The last two games with St. Louis were notable for the fact that for the first time in recent memory the Cubs put together innings in which eight or more hitters came to the plate and they scored runs that were not the result of a home run by Aramis Ramirez or a run scoring on a double play. This happened in the first inning of Saturday's game when, of all things, two players actually walked in consecutive at-bats. Of course, Marlon Byrd immediately hit the first pitch for an easy out, but then Soto doubled, and, miraculously, Alfonso Soriano worked himself into a favorable count and hit a three-run homer.

These heroics were, unfortunately, all for naught, as the team completely self-destructed after a bad call at second base on an inning-ending double play ball tied the game. After that it was all over. No one respects the Cubs, which is why teams get away with the kind of tactics Matt Holliday employed on his slide. Holliday batted several times after that play and many times in Sunday's game, but nary one pitch even came close to brushing him back. Nor was the poise of any Cardinal disturbed by a Cub pitcher, despite the assurances of the Cubs broadcasters that the team would remember that play for a long time to come.

The Cubs played well on Sunday, in fact they put together another inning in which they actually played baseball, stringing together hits and walks and all kinds of things you would never expect, really hard things like not swinging at pitches two feet out of the strike zone and going from first to third on an outfield hit, you know, the kinds of things that just seem beyond the norm. Of course, when you are all safe and sound and assured of your future with the franchise and you are twenty games or so under .500, this sort of effort seems a little easier.

Mike Quade tried his best to mess it up. After the Cubs broke through for a four-run 6th, Quade left Dempster in to struggle through a three-run Cardinal response in the bottom of the inning even though Demp had showed signs of coming apart in the previous frame. He even let the pitcher bat for himself in the top of the seventh and come out to start the inning and allow two hits before he summoned Marshall from the pen to put out the fire because, gosh, you had to let the big guy out there. Otherwise, he would presumably get all bothered and disturb the delicate chemistry of the team that is so essential to finishing out the year and getting ready for next year.

Fortunately, the trio of Marshall, Wood, and Marmol kept things under control and the Cubs managed to add two insurance runs on a Soriano homer to win the day. Even in victory, though, this is a hard team to watch, especially in the knowledge that improvement or just plain change recedes ever farther beyond the horizon.

Another Dismal Loss

The Cubs continued their quest for futility again today by losing to the Brewers in lackluster fashion 4-2. No hitting, no patience, no brains, etc. Middling start for Wells who continues to feel his way back to being a useful fourth or fifth starter.

The Cubs traded Kosuke Fukudome to the Cleveland Indians for a useless relief pitcher and an outfielder, Abner Abreu, who, although he has shown signs of progress very recently, has already struck out 102 times in A+ ball and sports an OBP under .300. He has been compared physically to a young Alfonso Soriano. Great! We need another Alfonso Soriano?

Another astonishingly strange Hendry deal. He got nothing in return, agreed to pay like 90% of his salary and, should the Indians offer Kosuke arbitration after the season, they will get a supplemental draft pick as well.

I'll miss watching Fukudome even though he never lived up entirely to the Cubs expectations of him and he was clearly overpaid. I liked his style of hitting in contrast to his teammates. He seemed to be an intelligent and competent player within his limitations and obviously the sort of player the Cubs almost always undervalue.

Brenly remarked during the telecast that Fukudome accounted for 19% of the Cubs reaching base and they would have to find a way to replace that number. Tyler Colvin was hitting around .250 at Iowa and although he was hitting for power, he had struck out 55 times in a little over 200 ABs and had walked 5 times. Clearly the replacement is not going to come from this source. What it means for the Cubs is essentially a 20% reduction in the number of runs they are likely to score. Already they are lucky to score two runs any given day, so the remainder of the season is going to be pretty ugly.

I published a more exhaustive analysis of this deal on Bleacher Report right after it went down.

In other news, Ramirez seems to have softened his stance on being traded. He is the only Cub player who is potentially a difference maker for a contender, but if you think Hendry is going to get value in return, think again. Another illustration of the danger of allowing a blockhead like this to remold the team.

Two Quality Starts, Two Losses in Milwaukee

So during the most recent home stand and now two games into a tough road trip, the Cubs starting pitching has really turned around. Of course, this has made little difference to the results of this stretch, 5-7, I think, at last count.

Dempster pitched well on Tuesday night after the first inning, and Zambrano pitched well all around, surrendering a two run home run to Prince Fielder and surviving some really horrendous fielding throughout the game.

What these two games underscore is the same contention I have been advancing since spring training. This team doesn't score runs, it is not built to score runs, and the idiotic lineups especially against left-handed pitching do not do anything to remedy the situation. The fault lies in the fact that the team is overloaded with right-handed hitting and that their approach at the plate in almost any situation is fundamentally flawed.

OK, the bullpen blew a couple or three games on the home stand. So? The bullpen failures would not have been so catastrophic if this team scored more than two runs a game. The Cubs have scored two runs in this series, all in the first inning of the first game on a home run by Aramis Ramirez.

The Cubs have a decent enough lineup 1-4, after which it is all crap with the possible exception of Barney who is an OK #8 hitter. Tonight, the lineup 5-9 went 1 for 13, that one being a hit by the pitcher Zambrano, who sports a batting average better than anyone on the team except for Reed Johnson, an OBP better than anyone but Kosuke Fukudome and Reed Johnson, and an OPS better than anyone but Reed Johnson and Aramis Ramirez. Something is surely wrong here.

This problem antedates even the arrival of the celebrated hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo. It goes back to 2009. Actually, 2008 was a brief exception to this history of futility which goes back even further. That team knew how to work the count and play baseball. But it has not been helped by Jaramillo's aggressive style. Quite simply, Byrd, Soto, and Soriano, despite their deceptively attractive stats, have to change their style or go, preferably go.

I simply do not understand how the Cubs can consistently build their teams around exclusively right-handed bats and expect to win games. Tonight, Blake DeWitt played left-field instead of Alfonso Soriano. Blake DeWitt? The left-handed pinch-hitter off the bench was Tony Campana. Tony Campana?

The Cubs answer to this comedy is to actively peddle their best pitcher Carlos Zambrano. If any team needed change, it is this one. Zambrano is quoted as wanting to remain a Cub but only if there is change. I wonder what sort of change he has in mind.

Cubs Sweep Astros! Winning Streak 3 in a Row!!

Well, excuse the satirical bent, but the excitement is palpable, isn't it? It has taken nearly four months for this team to finally win three games in a row. Who would have thought this even remotely possible at the beginning of the season?

Anyway, they did play good ball and they did sweep the Astros even though their opponents just flat out stink. The Cubs won the three games primarily on the basis of their starting pitching, getting solid efforts from Zambrano, Wells, and Garza.

In the process, they also managed to overcome significant brain malfunctions on the part of their intrepid manager Mike Quade, notably in his handling of the bullpen, but also in some of the in-game strategy. I guess I have a real problem with consistently trying to bunt Soto over to third with nobody out. Soto is just plain slow or he isn't paying attention, but in both cases over the weekend, he was out by plenty on relatively decent bunt attempts.

On Sunday, Quade was evidently asleep because he might have replaced Soto with Campana before the sacrifice attempt. As it is, he inserted Campana to run for Soriano one pitch into the Barney at-bat anyway, so who knows what is going on there, if anything.

Two disturbing trends. The first is that even though Castro has been moved up from the third spot to relieve the pressure of batting in an RBI position, he continues to swing at everything and virtually every first pitch no matter what the situation. He is hitting over .300 but his OBP is like only 20 points better than this BA. Somebody needs to work with this kid who has a world of potential but no discipline at the plate or in the field.

The other disturbing trend is the use or non-use of Kerry Wood. Sunday's eighth inning was an obvious spot for the well-rested Wood, but he was not even warming up. He has made only three appearances since the All-Star break and hasn't pitched since July 20. I was beginning to think he had been traded and they were just waiting until the end of the game to make an announcement, but that turned out not to be true. One can only think that he is hurt and the Cubs are staying mum about it for some reason.

The Phillies Series

And why the Cubs should fire Mike Quade right now. I mean, the Cubs were drubbed 9-1, Ryan Dempster pitched a crappy game to add to his long list of crappy games, the Cubs go up and swing at everything, looking anxious to hop into their SUVs and head to the links on their day off, and Quade blames it all on Castro and Barney combining to let a popup fall in the first inning.

Really, I have to agree with Hollandsworth on this one. And plenty of guys made mistakes all through the game, but you single out the two youngest players because, why? I guess because you want to destroy their confidence and build up hopeless mopes like Alfonso Soriano who either strikes out or hits into a double play every time he bats and who cannot catch and who doesn't even know he has a no-trade clause in his contract.

So the Cubs lost two out of three to the Phillies when they should have won two out of three. They played a nice game Monday and got an unexpectedly fine performance from Lopez. After that, they played one half of one good inning against Cliff Lee before they packed it in. Quade completely mismanaged the end game with Garza and Marshall, and anyway, Marshall has never matched up well against the Phillies, which was compounded by the fact that he, like the other workhorses of the bullpen, is slumping badly in July.

The real reason the Cubs wasted the Garza effort was not, however, all Marshall's fault. They had Lee on the ropes three or four times early in the game and they managed to let him off the hook. The Cubs lose close games all the time because they don't score runs. They don't score runs because they have an unbalanced lineup of primarily right-handed hitters who are overly aggressive, don't work the count, and, especially when there are men on base, consistently make stupid outs. On Tuesday night, the combination of Baker, Byrd, Soriano, and Soto was 1 for 14 against a left-hander. Pena, who was sandwiched in between them in another stellar Quade move, buried in the seventh spot, had three hits and a walk, which amounted to nothing, of course.

Today, the Cubs were determined to continue their string of quick, ineffectual hitting right from the start. They did not disappoint. A really awful game, which was topped off by Quade's pathetic, irrelevant post-game interview.

Hey, guys, lets take a day off and come back fresh so we can get swept by the Astros and move closer to last place.

The Marlins Series

What can you say? The Cubs probably should have won the first two games against the Marlins and easily could have won the fourth on Sunday. The Saturday game was a bust just because Carlos Zambrano, coming off a couple of weeks on the DL, just had no command.

As for Thursday's game, Marmol, for whatever reason just could not throw strikes. So although Garza pitched seven shutout innings and Marshall an eighth, the whole thing blew up. Even though everybody in the park knew Marmol had nothing, Mike Quade stuck with him and didn't even have anyone warming up until the game had been blown.

The following day, having announced that Marmol would be relieved of closing duties until he straightened himself out, Quade reached back for the old hair of the dog after Dempster had pitched eight shutout innings. Same thing from Marmol, no command. They were lucky that Ramirez tried to stretch his hit into a double and got thrown out at second. Fortunately, this time Quade had Marshall ready to put out the fire.

On Sunday, it was Wood's turn to blow the game. Wells turned in a pretty gutsy performance after a rocky first inning. Wood came in to pitch the eighth inning and after two were retired, he proceeded to hit a batter and walk the next guy. Then he actually picked off the runner at second base by at least a foot. However, the umpire botched the call. Wood and the Cubs then lost their composure. The next guy got an infield hit on a play that Ramirez should have made. It was Wood's turn then to self-destruct, walking in the go-ahead run and allowing a single to put the game out of reach.

Wood and Marmol are not the same pitchers they were at the start of the year, whether it is from overuse or injuries or lack of concentration. Not that there is any hope left for this season, but it is going to be an even longer and more painful finish if these guys continue to fail day in and day out.

As an aside, I was glad to hear that Quade spoke out about the bad call and the generally appalling quality of umpiring this season. I have watched so many games that have turned on umpire's rulings that have been just plain wrong all season long, and not just for the Cubs. It may simply be an impression, but going back a couple of years, the umpires seem to be getting worse and worse and more and more arrogant about it.

Trade Talk: Garza, Baker Not for Sale

The Boston Red Sox have reportedly inquired about the availability of Matt Garza and Jeff Baker, at least according to posts at MLBTradeRumors.com. They are certainly attractive trade deadline properties. Garza is under team control for several more years, he’s pretty cheap as far as front line starters go, and he is relatively young. The Red Sox need pitching, so who would not take a shot here.

From the Cubs viewpoint, though, a trade like that makes relatively little sense. The Cubs just traded away three or four of their Top Ten prospects for Garza during the off-season in the mistaken belief they were serious contenders. They are hardly going to go for a deal where Boston ships them a couple of prospects. This would amount to simply trading our prospects for yours, and, since the Red Sox shipped off arguably their best prospects to obtain Adrian Gonzalez, you don’t have to be a genius to determine which team would obtain the best value here.

Nobody has ever described Jim Hendry as a genius, though, but the best guess here is he will not bite, and that it the wisest strategy is to hold on to Garza. On the subject of Hendry not being a genius, though, the Cubs apparent reaction to the Baker rumors are a real head-scratcher. FoxSports reports he is close to untouchable.

Baker at best is a useful role-player for a contending team that needs a little right-handed pop. Historically, he has killed left-handed pitching and has been middling to just plain awful against righties. He plays a lot of positions not very well. So he’s a good fit for a predominantly left-handed hitting team that needs a quick, cheap fix from the right side for the stretch run. A team, as a matter of fact, like the Red Sox.

For the Cubs, he is a bit of a luxury. First off, the Cubs are a predominantly right-handed hitting team. They are also fairly rich in infielders at AA and AAA level, all of whom are effectively blocked from major league experience in a losing season by the presence of a player like Baker

The Red Sox reportedly have a pretty good farm system despite having traded top prospects for Gonzalez, so you would think the two teams matched up pretty well since, unlike Garza, Baker is probably worth just B or C type prospects. The fact that the Cubs evidently think Jeff Baker is an integral part of their 2012 plans tells you more about their stubborn mind set than fans probably care to know.

It tells me management isn’t thinking straight when they want to hold on to a player whose principal value is as a platoon replacement for left-handed hitters. In case Hendry is not aware, the Cubs only have two left-handed starters and that lack of balance is one of the major reasons they stink.

A version of this post is also posted at Bleacher Report.

Winning and Losing Ugly

The last two games before the break at Pittsburgh provided examples of both. On Saturday, the Cubs put together a nice game, timely hitting, good defense by and large, and good relief pitching. Ryan Dempster made his first start since his mystery illness/injury/whatever. He pitched badly for five innings. He was throwing batting practice pitches in the first inning and was bailed out by some good defense in the form of Fukudome's throw home to prevent a second run.

After that he settled down a little in terms of throwing major league pitches, but he was wild and in trouble the whole day. Only the Pirates lack of patience saved him. After the 5th inning Quade had seen enough and pulled him for a pinch hitter, prompting a juvenile temper tantrum by the alleged ace.

Everybody just laughed the whole thing off, of course, because for some reason it is thought that Dempster is a fiery gamer and Zambrano is a nut. It would be interesting to see if the roles had been reversed and Carlos was the guilty party. Marlon Byrd, in his blog, hints at the same thought expressed here and rather hints at other dissatisfaction among the players while toeing the party line.

If it had been Zambrano, it would’ve been blown up and blown out of proportion. The camera stays on Carlos. They’re waiting for him to have his next blow up. Dempster’s had blow ups, but you just haven’t seen them or hear about them. I’ve had my blow ups and you never hear about them. It happens to everybody. I guess it’s a Catch-22. If it’s Dempster, he gets a pass. If it’s Carlos Zambrano, it gets talked about more because he’s Big Z.

Anyway, I was disheartened to see Mike Quade, whom I don't think much of as a manager, taken to task in the press and on the bulletin boards for making one of the few sensible decisions handling his starters that he has made all season.

As for Sunday, well, it was the same old thing with the fifth starter syndrome. Obviously, Ramon Ortiz is not the answer. Expect him to be released or sent down when Zambrano is activated.

On a minor note, it was good to see the Cubs promote Flaherty and Jackson to AAA, as they seem to be the best prospects as far as position players go in the system right now. Perhaps some moves are afoot that will lead to their being called up. One can only hope.

More Frustration

Since my last post, the Cubs have come from behind 8-0 to post an incredible 10-9 victory over the Nationals, and then just completely blow a game they had in hand to the Pirates. Hard to figure this team out.

I guess the real issue is that as the team gets a little bit healthier, they are starting to play tight games they have a chance to win. Part of the improvement is that they are finally starting to get power and production from the corner infielders. Of course, the contrary thought is that as they get that power, they only seem to score runs on home runs, generally from either Pena or Ramirez, and they do not build innings and score in bunches unless it is by the homer run.

Usually they wind up losing more often than they win, either as a result of careless, sloppy play, bad situational hitting with men on base, managerial error, or some combination of two or three of the above.

Last night it was careless, sloppy play on the part of Starlin Castro. Now Castro is a rare talent, but he is also a hard case. They are right to move him up to second in the lineup. Third is too much pressure for an already overly aggressive hitter. I rather think he will eventually learn the strike zone with two strikes (assuming he ever allows himself to get to two strikes), but his fielding lapses are not getting any better.

It is always a challenge to teach a player to play within himself. I hope the Cubs coaching staff is up to the challenge. So far they have few tangible results to show for their efforts. Last night's relay throw to complete an easy double play and escape the 8th inning with a 4-3 lead cost them the game.

Quade doesn't help much with his bullpen management. He cannot use Marshall every single day, nor can he keep going to Marmol to deliver two inning saves every day. Last night Marmol's slider was flat. Somebody might have noticed this when he was warming up, but if they did they failed to tell Soto about it. End result: what amounts to a humiliating defeat.

Are the Cubs close to being a competitive team, then? Or are they just kidding themselves? I'll consider that topic in my next longish post, probably during the All-Star break.

The Approaching Trade Deadline

It’s that time of year again in Cubland when fans, hopelessly disenchanted with the teams dwindling prospects, turn their thoughts to next year. They also turn their thoughts to getting rid of their most overpaid and under-performing athletes in the forlorn hope of rebuilding.

I’ve actually read a bunch of these rants and analyses, and so far I haven’t seen many that make a lot of sense. The Cubs management is supposed to be planning their annual pre-trade deadline summit this week, or maybe they have already had it.

Given their performance up to now, one may be permitted doubts as to whether they will achieve anything resembling a more rational assessment than the pundits, professional or amateur, have done. There is no doubt the team is in need of a serious makeover, but one wonders if Hendry, Quade, and company are the ones to do it.

The first thing you need to do in terms of this analysis is to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the team and its farm system. The second thing you need to do is to figure out which of the current players has value in the deadline market.

Readers will probably find reason to disagree with a number of my assessments, but at least they will serve as a catalyst for some more constructive initiatives than trade everybody but Castro and start all over.

At the start of the season, I wrote that the Cubs looked to me like a seriously flawed team that could nevertheless contend in a weak division if a couple of breaks went their way. I haven’t changed that opinion, at least insofar as the division is concerned. Obviously, the breaks have not gone their way and they have not played well enough to hang around long enough to be a serious factor in the race so far.

Most everyone thinks the Cubs pitching stinks, but I want to stake out a minority position and say that it is really impossible to assess the staff so far and that it is not nearly so bad as the stats make it look.

The reason for this is an obvious one. They lost their fourth and fifth starters in the first week of the season. They were not able to bring up young pitchers well enough along in their development to fill in, nor were they able to acquire veteran arms to tide them over. This put a lot of pressure on the bullpen, especially middle relief, so they were never able to compete in the so-called bullpen games.

The three veteran starters were also compromised, as Quade found it necessary to stretch them out early in the season even when it was obvious they didn’t have their best stuff on a given night.

Personally, I would not give up on this staff, at least not in mid-season when you are really not going to get good value. The Cubs, like any seller, are going to be looking for top notch, can’t miss prospects in return, the kind of players they traded for Garza, maybe even better. They are not going to get them.

The nucleus of this staff is not that bad, so why give away starters who on any kind of decent team would have much better records? The only possible justification is salary dumping, but that’s just not something the Cubs can afford to do. The Cubs, like it or not, are a major market team. Major market teams don’t dump salary, at least not for the sake of dumping salary.

Besides the buyers of the baseball world, the contenders, are all looking for rentals right now and they are determined not to overpay. Thanks to the largesse of Jim Hendry, the Cubs don’t have any rentals, at least among their pitchers. Maybe Garza fits this bill, but they just traded away half their farm system to get him, and they are not likely to trade him to get back to square one, are they?

Maybe Kerry Wood among the relievers, but I do not look for Hendry to actively market Wood given the circumstances of his signing, among other things. Like nearly everyone else, Wood also appears to have a no-trade clause in his contact.

Of the rest, the one I would consider trading is Ryan Dempster. Dempster is showing signs of an aging arm, and just from observing the trajectory of his career, I would not put my money on him being a top of the line starter next season. Unfortunately, Dempster has a player’s option for $14M or so that vests if he is traded, so good luck with that.

None of what I have said above means the Cubs don’t need pitching. I think the Cubs themselves thought they had a bunch of arms at AA and AAA before the season began, but this has proved to be an illusion.

So many of their prospects, Chris Carpenter, for example, and Jeff Samardzija before him, have turned out to be middle relievers or set-up men. Besides Coleman, who may yet turn out to be a useful back of the rotation starter or swing man, the Cubs look like they have only two pitching prospects at AA or above: Whitenack, who is hurt and has had Tommy John surgery, and McNutt.

That’s slim pickings, so one of their needs has to be starters who are legitimate prospects at AA or better. Assuming Cashner comes back strong, they are still going to have to replace Dempster in the rotation, and probably sooner than they are counting on doing. Even if Cashner has completely recovered, they may have to dip into the free agent market in the off-season.

As for the rest of the farm system, to my mind, the Cubs have three legitimate prospects one year or less away from the majors: Ryan Flaherty (3B), Brett Jackson (OF), and Wellington Castillo (C). In addition, the Cubs have a potentially great player in Starlin Castro and a pretty good middle-infielder in Darwin Barney.

These are the guys they are likely to build around for the future. I had once thought that Tyler Colvin showed enough promise to play left field and hit home runs even if he struck out too much and lacked plate discipline. Now I don’t think you can count on him, which means another need is going to be young outfielders, preferably left-handed hitting outfielders who can catch and throw and get on base.

For many years, the Cubs offense has been built in large measure around Aramis Ramirez. Ramirez hit for power, showed adequate patience, drove in runs, etc.

Ramirez is clearly not the player he once was, although he is only 33. He seems to have changed his style of hitting completely, whether the result of age or accumulated injuries. He is just not cutting it, whatever the reason, and this is hurting the Cubs more than anything else on offense, especially as the three batters in front of him, Fukudome, Barney, and Castro are having good years.

Ramirez is in the last year of his contract and the Cubs have a team option for next year. Even though Ramirez has picked it up lately, one doubts the Cubs will pick up his option. This makes him a prime candidate for a trade, and he would help a good team down the stretch. The Cubs are unlikely to want his services next year and they are right to let him go. Ramirez, however, has let it be known he will not waive his no-trade option, so this effectively ties their hands.

The other expensive free agents in their contract years, Kosuke Fukudome and Carlos Pena, have little value on the trade market. They are also having pretty good years, especially Fukudome.

Fukudome is overpaid, but he is a pretty good player, and given the Cubs' outfield situation, I would not be surprised if the Cubs tried to sign him for another two years at a reduced cost, nor would I disapprove of that move. The Cubs don’t have a lot of complete and intelligent players, and they are not in a position to give players like that away.

Pena counts as another player in the same category. He’s not a great player, but he fills a need that on a good team is worth having filled. I’m not one of those who support the idea of signing Albert Pujols for eight years. Prince Fielder is a better proposition, but even there, though you can count on more good years from Fielder, you also have to consider his body type as a factor in offering a long-term deal.

I would not be surprised if the Cubs backed off on both these guys and went after a first base prospect in a trade if they do not re-sign Pena. Neither Fielder or Pujols by themselves are going to make this team an instant contender. Pena is likely to want a multi-year deal if he continues to perform reasonably well, so that is going to count heavily in assessing the Cubs options.

So who is left that can bring help? Obviously, Alfonso Soriano is trade bait, though nobody wants him. On general principle, the Cubs should get rid of him to anyone who wants him. They are on the hook for three more years at $18M.

Nobody wants that, especially when you get a one-dimensional player who cannot catch, can no longer run, etc. Wishful thinking is some AL team would pick him up for the stretch, and if someone bites, Hendry should not worry about the details.

On a serious level, though, to my mind the only guys the Cubs have who might bring something in return are Marlon Byrd, Jeff Baker, and Geovanny Soto. The Cubs and a lot of other teams overvalue each of these players, and each is a pretty cheap short-term solution for someone.

John Grabow is another guy they might want to move, not that he will bring a big return, but left-handed relievers are always overvalued at the trade deadline, even overpaid ones who are not especially effective against left-handed hitters. But given his performance lately and really all through his career with the Cubs, he might just be a candidate for unconditional release if they cannot find a taker. Right now, he is the guy you use to mop up when you are behind 8-0 in the fourth inning.

For the top three, here’s my reasoning. Marlon Byrd is a pretty expensive contract for a guy who never takes a pitch, drives in runs, or hits for power. I know he hustles and all that, but he had 11 RBI in two months regular play batting behind Fukudome and Castro and Barney. He is not going to be the center-fielder on the team you are building toward anyway.

If the Cubs are confident in the abilities of Brett Jackson, then they should move Byrd now, save next year’s salary, and move on. Assuming he has recovered from his horrific injury, he’s worth more now than he ever will be to a team that is looking for a right-handed bat.

Jeff Baker falls into somewhat the same category as Byrd, though he is more a utility type and so will not bring the same return. Baker is having a good year. He is hitting righties better than he has in the past. However, his major value is as a right-handed hitter against left-handed pitching. He is slow and a defensive liability in most all of the positions he plays. Besides, the Cubs are loaded with infield talent in the minors.

Soto is a more difficult case. I was once willing to throw out his awful 2009 season, especially when he had quite a good year in 2010 after he came back from injuries that limited his play early that year. This year, though, he seems, like Ramirez, to have totally changed his approach. Soto used to walk a lot and have a high OBP. This year he is not taking pitches, nor is he hitting for power or average. You’d like to think he will snap out of his funk, but it makes you wonder.

Wellington Castillo, the Cubs principal catching prospect, is putting up good numbers at Iowa after injuries slowed his start at the beginning of the season. He tore up the Cactus League this spring, though he showed very little in limited major league play when Soto was on the DL. What you do with Soto depends a lot on the team’s judgment of Castillo’s potential and his readiness to step in to the starting job.

If the Cubs think they have a winner in Castillo, trading Soto is the kind of move they could make that would bring bigger returns.

A version of this article has also been posted at Bleacher Report.

This is Getting Old

Another one run loss. Ortiz pitched better than anyone might have expected. He had a rocky start, but were it not for a terrible error by Baker on a double play ball and a misplay by Ramirez on what should have been a routine play, he might have escaped the first inning behind only 1-0. After that he was pretty good, and the bullpen was solid as well except for the mercifully short stint by Grabow (5 pitches, one base-on-balls).

Ramirez continued his current hot streak with a two run home run, but that was all the Cubs could muster against the previously erratic left-hander Detwiler. Detwiler had walked almost 50 batters in around 100 innings coming into the game, but the Cubs drew no walks and saw only 78 pitches into the sixth inning when Detwiler was removed. Not impressive, but par for the course for a team that just plays sloppy, thoughtless baseball day in and day out but still comes close to winning. Go figure.

Another Tough Loss

This was a tough loss. And doubly so, as just when they were getting some productive outings from Mateo, he seems to have gone down with what sounds like a serious injury.

I have to chalk up at least part if not most of the blame for this one again to Quade, who is managing in the sort of desperate overwrought style of a guy whose job is on the line. Coleman gave the Cubs a nice solid outing. When he got in a little jam in the sixth inning, Quade immediately pulled him in favor of Samardzija who worked out of the trouble with relatively minimal damage.

Here's the problem, when he inserted Samardzija, he made a double switch, putting Johnson in LF replacing Soriano. I've got no real problem with this except that to start the next inning, Quade inserted Marshall into the game. If he intended to replace Samardzija to start the seventh, what was the point of the double switch?

So Marshall gives up a single to the leadoff man, followed by a sacrifice, strikes out the next batter and get pulled in favor of Wood. Now I know Zimmerman is a right-handed hitter, but the Nationals seem to have a boatload of left-handed hitters coming up next, so you might have intentionally walked Zimmerman or pitched around him or just gone straight at him. After all, Marshall is a pretty good pitcher. But Wood simply cannot throw a strike. He walks Zimmerman, hits the next guy, and then walks Nix to tie the score.

The next inning, Wood seems to have settled down, but he walks a guy, so Quade goes to Russell in another double switch, removing Fukudome in favor of Tony Campana. So in the ninth inning, Campana is unable to sacrifice a runner to second and hits into a double play when the Cubs take off the bunt sign on 3-2. Byrd, who was going with the pitch, somehow fails to disrupt the play even though he is nearly on top of the Nationals shortstop when he gets the throw.

Russell sails through the bottom of the ninth, but he has to be taken out in favor of a pinch hitter to lead off the tenth. The rest is history, Mateo walks the leadoff man, surrenders a sacrifice and hurts his arm. Marmol is summoned in, forgets there is a runner on second, allowing him to steal third, then throws a wild pitch to lose the game.

Bad luck, sure, but some pretty strange decisions as well.

A Good Win

Sunday to salvage at least one game from the White Sox. A surprisingly good start from Lopez and one in which Quade was able to use his bullpen judiciously coming off the complete game loss for Garza the day before. He'll need a rested bullpen with Dempster having to miss a start tomorrow and Coleman and Ortiz on the horizon to pick up the slack.

This game and most of the others on the homestand if you throw out the DH losses to the Giants on Tuesday were hard-fought, well-pitched, low-scoring games, the kind of games I expected more often than not for this club to play given how it is constructed. What I mean is that this lineup is not built to score runs in Wrigley Field. There are only two left-handed hitting regulars, Fukudome and Pena. These are the only guys who take pitches and work the count and take bases-on-balls.

When they are hot - and these guys are very streaky - Barney, Castro, and Ramirez are capable of quality at-bats. After that, you have three right-handed hitters who rarely take quality at-bats, seldom walk, and present the opposing pitcher with essentially the same profile. So against a quality right-hander, the Cubs have a minimal chance of scoring every other inning or every third inning if the opposing pitcher is very good.

Until that changes, either through trades or promoting players from the farm system, the Cubs need to rely upon quality starts from the rotation and the strength of their bullpen, as well as good defense. Unfortunately, the Cubs don't play good defense most of the time, and their starting pitching has been decimated by injuries. Which explains why they are 15 games under .500 right now.

Another Frustrating Game

Matt Garza is developing into quite a good pitcher as opposed to a thrower. He may over the course of a few years justify the big price the Cubs paid for him this winter. In any case his full repertoire was on display Saturday afternoon at Wrigley Field.

More the pity then that his teammates could not back up his sharp complete game performance with one timely hit. The Cubs left six of the nine runners who reached on base; the other three were erased in double plays. They went 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position. The tone was set in the first inning. Kosuke Fukudome worked through eight or ten pitches before he finally slapped a high slider into right field for a single. Darwin Barney walked on four pitches. Starlin Castro promptly reached for the first pitch in his at-bat and hit into an easy double play.

That's the way it went all afternoon. Soriano and Castro repeated the program in the next two innings. Now this team has talent, but to call it a team is to stretch the meaning of the team. It has not been built as a team, merely an assemblage of spare parts put together in no particular order each day. The one consistent aspect of its play is a lack of patience and discipline, both at bat and in the field.

Mike Quade came along after the game and started talking about how you just cannot tell players to take the first pitch and so on and so on. That just begs the point. The Cubs need to understand that they will see at least three pitches in every at bat and that even a good pitcher who is on his game can make a mistake if he is under pressure. Garza showed that in the one inning he got in trouble when he lost his composure and gave Pierre a pitch he could dink over the infield for the only run. Now you are not going to get players like Soriano or Byrd to take pitches in tough situations - which is why the Cubs should get rid of them - but young guys like Castro need to learn these lessons and they need to slow the game down, especially when they are in a slump. The Cubs say they are determined to develop players, but I just don't see any signs of that process under the current regime.

Three is Not the Charm

One of the reasons the Cubs cannot manage to win three games in a row has got to be Mike Quade. At least Quade has admitted that he lost this game because he left his starter Randy Wells in the game too long.

However, he hasn't admitted the tendency he has shown all season long to manage in a very stubborn way, especially in his use of his pitching staff. Today he went in with the idea of getting seven innings from his starter and he was going to get it no matter what was happening on the field. So when Wells, who was sailing along through six innings with a 4-2 lead, lost it in the seventh, Quade could not seem to look at what was happening on the field. He might have taken Wells out after the home run or after the subsequent base hit or certainly after the walk to Dunn, but he chose to do nothing. So he lost the game.

Now personally I kind of like Mike Quade, but he is just in over his head here. It used to be thought that a manager maybe won half-a-dozen games and lost half-a-dozen games over the course of the season based on his in-game decisions, but Quade is on a pace to cost the team way more than that. I can think of only a handful of games that his decisions have won and quite a few his decisions have lost. And that is not counting the really weird lineups and batting orders that just plain make no sense most of the time.