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.