Wait Until Next Year, Part I

The Cubs were 13-7 in a mini-revival when I started this analysis, which is probably worse for the team than a sustained losing streak simply because, just as last season, it provides false hope and prevents the team getting a look at top prospects in August when the games for them are not just glorified AAA contests. However, they finished the home stand by losing four of five games, which is more like it, then losing the first two games of the Brewers series.

They have finally parted company with GM Jim Hendry, but they are in lame duck mode with caretaker GM Hendry-protégé Randy Bush, dilettante owner Tom Ricketts, meddlesome business guru Crane Kenney, and dead duck manager Mike Quade running the show. Not a good situation for a deeply flawed team.

Now is as good a time as any to take a look at next year, starting with a look at the team’s current players and prospects, beginning with pitching.

The Starters:

Carlos Zambrano, now suspended or on the disqualified list or something. The whole Zambrano history is virtually a lesson in how not to manage a baseball franchise. The latest episode is a case study in over-reaction mediated by the desire to dump a contract.

Worst case, Carlos Zambrano is now a #3 or #4 starter who can eat innings even if he is inconsistent. Without Zambrano, the Cubs have a big hole in the rotation and a hole that is not likely to be filled from within. Personally I have no problem with rehabilitating the former star, but the likelihood of that happening is pretty much directly related to who is chosen to become the new GM and manager.

More than likely, Zambrano wins his grievance and the Cubs either seek to unload him and agree to pay all or most of his salary next season or they reach a buyout arrangement and he becomes a free agent. Anyway you figure it, this creates a big question mark for next year and an immediate need for a starter.

This will be a major problem all around as there are no real high quality starters in the free agent pool next year and a trade for a Garza-type pitcher would decimate an already weakened minor league base. Not much on the horizon from the farm either, unless Nick Struck can make a big leap forward.

Ryan Dempster has a player option for next season. Dempster at this stage of his career is a #3 starter and not a very reliable one at that. He has pitched pretty well of late, but that is always his pattern and when he is bad he is very, very bad. In my opinion, he is getting a little long in the tooth. The Cubs should have thought about trading him this season, but they have missed the opportunity.

Dempster has one of those classic Jim Hendry deals where he has a player option for next year worth around $14M. Dempster is a big Hendry guy and the departure of the former GM might lead him to think about opting out. Previously, it was widely assumed this would never happen and that Hendry might very well negotiate an extension. If I were Dempster’s agent, I would try to get a one or two year extension and if not I would take a hike. If I’m the Cubs, I stick at the current contract, which has already vested, and let him make up his mind.

The question you have to ask about Dempster, and Zambrano and Wells also, is how much they have been affected by the simply awful fielding and hitting team the Cubs have deployed behind them. Dempster has lost a little bit off his fastball and his breaking stuff is not as sharp. Long term, the Cubs are in a comparable position with Dempster as they were with Ted Lilly last year. They decided then, quite wisely, that Lilly was not going to re-invent himself or get any better. Dempster is not going to re-invent himself either, nor is he going to get any better. The difference is that he is in control. Depending on how well he finishes out the season, if Dempster does opt in, the Cubs should think about trading him in the off-season anyway.

Matt Garza is under team control for a while. He has pitched well after a rough start, much better than his stats indicate. Though I would not consider him a genuine ace or #1, on an improved team or at least a team that routinely makes routine plays, he is the anchor of the staff right now. Whether it was worth trading four of your top ten prospects to obtain him is another question altogether.

Randy Wells hasn’t lived up to the promise of his rookie year. In his defense, he had a great spring, but then was hurt after his first start. The Cubs have rushed him back to the rotation because they had no one else to turn to. He seems to be improving a bit lately. Maybe he has turned the corner. The velocity of his fastball is down significantly, but that may be the result of his injury. The Cubs haven’t much choice here. He has got to be in the back end of the rotation next year and they need to hope for the best.

Andrew Cashner was projected as the fifth starter, but he was hurt during a promising first start and has only now been able to start working his way back. He’ll probably come up for an audition in September, more likely than not in the bullpen. The Cubs need to count on him as a starter next year, otherwise they are in even bigger trouble.

Casey Coleman pitched reasonably well in August and September of 2010, but he has pitched badly this year. The speed of his pitches and his pitch selection is about the same. One difference is that teams are not swinging as much as last year, which means either he is not throwing strikes or they have figured out that he is not throwing strikes or near-strikes. Whatever it is, Coleman is a finesse pitcher and this season he has lacked finesse. He needs to go some to be a viable alternative in a starting role next year and he needs to show that in the coming month or so he will be in the rotation. I’m not expecting much here.

Rodrigo Lopez and Russ Ortiz. Bye-bye to both, maybe Lopez for long relief.

The Relievers:

Samardzija, Russell, Wood, Marshall, and Marmol have shown good signs and they form the basis of a good to excellent bullpen. I expect Grabow to be let go and good riddance. He can easily be replaced. Most of the failings and blowups from the pen can be attributed to the injuries and lack of deep outings from the starting rotation. These guys have pitched way more innings than you would expect them to pitch, which accounts for some of the decline in their performance.

I question how long Wood will stick around. He still has good stuff when he is used properly, but he signed at a discount. The selection of a new GM and manager will test his allegiance to Chicago and the strength of whatever assurances he has of a place with the organization after retirement. He could make a lot more money elsewhere. Losing him would leave a hole unless Samardzija were to step up to the eighth inning role.

Some people, including Samardzija himself, have thought about him as a potential starter. For my money, this is a bad idea. His generally good performance this season has been a real surprise. I wouldn’t rock the boat.

People have also suggested moving Sean Marshall back into the rotation. This idea bears serious consideration. Marshall is arguably the best all-around pitcher next to Garza on the team. He has a starter’s variety of plus pitches, a great curve, a good slider, and his fastball velocity has improved over the course of his career. His fastball on average is around 5mph faster than when he came up.

The Cubs rotation problems look so bleak right now that this is a move that might pay off. Russell could always move into Marshall’s current role, especially if Wood comes back and Samardzija continues to improve.

On the Farm:

The Cubs brass knows more or ought to know more about their prospects than any fan who does not see them day to day. Judging just on stats, there isn’t much there to provide immediate help. Most of their touted prospects, like MacNutt, have had indifferent success. Whitenack, their best AA prospect, has had Tommy John surgery this year. One intriguing prospect is Nick Struck, who has risen meteorically from A to AA and now AAA. He has pitched pretty well at all levels. Perhaps we will get a look at him in September if Quade thinks the team is finally eliminated and his job is done.

The Cubs don’t have a lot to offer in trade for established starters this off-season and what they have in the way of good prospects at the minor league level, they ought to hang on to and promote. They might be able to get pitching prospects who are near major league ready for veteran position players they don’t really need. Probably they have missed the boat on this gambit by standing pat at the trade deadline. By all accounts, they might have moved Marlon Byrd for one of Atlanta’s minor league pitchers. I doubt that guys like Byrd or Baker or Johnson would bring the same returns in the off-season and I think Johnson is a free agent then in any case.

The free agent crop of pitchers is very thin. The best is C.J. Wilson of the Texas Rangers who is approaching potential ace status. He is a left-hander, which is something the Cubs could use in their rotation. If the Cubs want to spend some money, and I mean some real money, like Zambrano money for five years, they will want to take a close look unless the Rangers lock him up with an extension. He is 30 years old now, so it has taken him a while to come into his own. Ideally, you would want him to be a couple of years younger to make a five or six year commitment.

The other intriguing pitcher available on the open market is Yu Darvish, a young Japanese right-hander who has put up absolutely dominant numbers. He is very young, 24 or 25, and rumor has it his team, the Nippon Ham-Fighters, is likely to make him available this off-season. There is sure to be a lot of interest from American teams, but the Cubs ought to think about getting into the bidding. They may not have good players, but they are going to have a lot of money to spend.

Two Strikes on Quade

Well, actually more like two hundred. I am trying to get away from commenting on every game or series. This is a lost season in any case, so why bother to repeat the same criticisms and observations over and over again.

In this case, though, the last two games, the Sunday night loss to the Cardinals and last night's shutout loss to the Braves capture the failings of this organization and this manager in a nutshell.

First off, the whole Castro business where he was moping around at SS after he made an error, eating sunflower seeds, and not paying attention. Not what you want your players to do, obviously. Lost in the shuffle, at least for a while, was the fact that neither Quade or his coaches or any of the other players on the field seemed to notice. It was left to perennial snot-nose ESPN color-man and manger-want-to-be-again Bobby Valentine to launch into a long diatribe about the incident for the Cubs to notice.

Quade's reaction was predictable. He called out his young shortstop in typical humiliating fashion and "benched" him for a day so that he might regain his mental equilibrium or some such stuff. Now I am not condoning Castro's on-field demeanor or lack of concentration or the careless errors. What gets me is that under Quade it is the young players who are consistently subjected to public criticism and that such criticism is only doled out after management has experienced a quasi-public humiliation. They are not reacting to the indifference and lack of attention and discipline their players routinely exhibit, they are reacting to the fact that outsiders have noticed it. And have noticed their own lack of attention and indiscipline. Which, of course, is why Quade and his friends should be replaced ASAP.

Last night's game illustrates a similar lesson not learned by Cubs management. They lost 3-0. They left 15 runners on base. Nine hits and, staggeringly, six walks, which, given the famous lack of patience shown by this team, is roughly a week's allotment.

How is this possible, you might ask, and how is it possible similar results have been the rule rather than the exception all year long? A better question would be how is it possible our manager has not noticed this all season long and how is it possible he has not identified the problem, which, in two words, is Byrd and Soriano back-to-back?

Last night, each of these stalwarts left six runners on base. They do this every night. Usually, an astute or casual observer can call the shot. Less than two outs, double play ball or popup on the first pitch, two outs, strikeout. Byrd has 23 RBI batting third or fifth. Soriano is batting .233 with RISP and .225 against RH pitchers. Byrd is batting .204 with RISP. Byrd has hit 98 times with RISP, Soriano 103 times. That's about 30% of their at-bats in each case.

So the question you have to ask yourself is how long is it going to take for even a baseball lifer to figure out that your apparent stubbornness in playing these guys every day and batting them fifth and sixth is a major reason why you rarely score more than three runs in a game and why you rarely win close games?

I don't want to blow my own horn here, but I figured this out before the season began. Actually, it sort of dawned on me early in 2010 in a big way when Piniella was doing the same thing. Quade claims to be a big believer in match-ups. It hasn't worked.

Ricketts Fires Hendry, Forgets to Tell Anyone

First of all, Jim Hendry is gone. That's the good news. At least I think he is. We can never be too certain when it comes to the Cubs. His last, horrifying words, to his interim successor, Randy Bush, reportedly were "Don't forget to hug Albert Pujols for me" or something like that, meaning, I guess, that Bush should do his best to sign Albert to a behemoth contract that will saddle the team with debt for another ten years, or that Big Jim has some kind of thing for... No, no, scratch that, scratch that.

The curious thing about this whole business, leaving aside that it should have happened last October at the latest, is that Ricketts fired him a month ago and didn't tell anyone. It kind of reminds me of several Seinfeld episodes when George or Jerry try to break up with their girlfriends and they won't accept it. The world of Cubs officialdom, where any resemblance to a serious, professional organization has long ago disappeared, tends more and more to the surreal every day.

Imagine this, your boss calls you in and tells you you're through, that he has lost all confidence in you. Then he either asks you to stay on and supervise one or two projects upon which the future of the organization depends, or you ask him to let you stay on and supervise two or three projects upon which the future of the organization depends. I mean, where else on Earth can this happen and then be presented to the public as something you would even admit in your wildest drug or alcohol addled dreams to having done or even thought about?

But that's what happened, at least that's what we are told happened, and, truth to tell, you cannot make stuff like this up, can you?

In any case, Hendry proceeds to oversee a trade deadline scenario where teams make offers on half-a-dozen eminently available players whom Big Jim declares untouchable, household names like Reed Johnson, Jeff Baker, Marlon Byrd, etc., all of whom will undoubtedly have statues commissioned shortly in the Wrigley Field Walk of Fame. The only trade he makes peddles Kosuke Fukudome to the Indians for a bag of balls so that Tyler Colvin can play everyday or so that Mike Quade can immediately bench Colvin, declaring he has to earn his starts, presumably by getting base hits when he isn't in the game.

For the record, here are a few honest suggestions for Mr. Ricketts to consider. Hire someone with baseball knowledge to supervise both the business and baseball aspects of the Cubs. The principal duty of this person will be to fire most of the current leaders of these departments, Crane Kenney, Randy Bush, Mike Quade, and so on and to persuade them to leave right now. This person can then hire an actual baseball GM and let him find the necessary replacements or decide who among the current scouting and player development staff should be retained.

After that, Mr. Ricketts can purchase a private corporate jet if he doesn't own one already. You can still get a good tax right-off on them. He should then spend the rest of his time flying from one Cubs minor league outpost to the next blackmailing the respective city fathers into paying for improvements to baseball facilities the Cubs operate in their domains. Boise, Peoria, Daytona, etc. These places are the places where sophisticated operators like Tom Ricketts can shine. And, most of all, he should just shut up and pay the bills.

The Zambrano Mess

The Cubs find themselves mired in another Zambrano mess. Neither side looks good in the process, and right now Cubs management, to my mind, looks particularly bad. I’ve always defended Zambrano on these pages, mainly because I find him an interesting player to watch and an exciting and human player, very much in contrast to the rest of this team, which is composed of largely colorless and unlikeable players. I’ve always also thought that Zambrano is a terrifically gifted athlete who might be a great player if he could only harness his emotions. So much of his game is based on raw emotion, though, so this is a pretty tricky undertaking.

Everybody knows the story of Friday night by now, though it should be emphasized that the whole business of Zambrano walking out on the team started with the hysterical press conference given by Mike Quade after the game. Quade might have made some inquiries about his pitcher, etc., etc. He might have tried to put a lid on the speculation until the dust settled and his player’s real intentions became clear. Instead he jumped at the chance to magnify the story and burn his and the team’s bridges in the process.

It has been clear for some time that the relationship between Zambrano and Quade is not a good one. The pitcher has been fairly open in letting people know he has not been happy with some of Quade’s decisions as a manager. Frankly, as in many of his previous outbursts, Zambrano has been right in his judgments. Unfortunately, his expression of these judgments lacked a certain subtlety. Beating up your catcher, publically quarreling with veteran players who are going through the motions, and calling out your team for playing like a AAA team and your closer for being predicable in his pitch patterns is not the best strategy to effect change. These things happen every day in professional sports, but they stay in the locker room.

In this case, though, it is hard to believe that the whole soap opera is just a one-off instance of Zambrano being Zambrano. There has to have been more going on behind the scenes than just a lousy outing. Zambrano has pitched awful games before, and, this year, so have Dempster and Garza. Really bad games. I rather think that Zambrano’s over-reaction has more to do with a culmination of events that, at least in his mind, constitute a series of deliberate humiliations that have compounded with his own inconsistent performance to bring matters to a head.

The Cubs have made no secret of their desire to dump his contract. Recently they put him on waivers – not a big deal as many veteran players are put on waivers in August and pulled back on the off-chance someone will bite – and the papers made a big deal about him clearing waivers and nobody wanting him. Several stories made it into the press along the lines of nobody in their right mind wants this guy and the Cubs begged the Yankees to take him and they would pay his entire contract just to get rid of him. These things don’t get published by accident, and they are bound to have taken a toll on Zambrano’s already fragile state of mind.

So Zambrano has a really bad night in Atlanta, very frustrating as it came when the Cubs were on a bit of a roll and he had pitched four pretty good games in July since coming off the DL. He takes a pretty weak shot at brushing back Chipper Jones and gets tossed, after which he compounds his tantrum with a clubhouse tantrum that leads to his cleaning out his locker, etc. He thinks it over back at the hotel and sends his stuff back, but the story has already broken.

You have got to suppose that the Cubs brass jumped on this so hard because to them it seemed a golden opportunity to duck out of their contract and save a bunch of dough. Maybe I’m being cynical here, but they have done this act before, notably when Sammy Sosa ducked out after the last game of the 2004 season. Not to mention the Milton Bradley and Carlos Silva fiascos. If nothing else, they are bad breaker-uppers.

Bottom line though, the cumulative effect of all this nonsense – and I don’t mean to imply that Zambrano is not without blame – is to demonstrate the utter lack of professionalism of the management of this franchise. In this case, it is all about Jim Hendry and his embarrassment at having doled out a large contract that in retrospect has not paid off. At the time the money was justified by Zambrano’s performance, but his subsequent diminution of skills and high-profile meltdowns make Jim look bad. Now Big Jim gets to swagger out and put his spin on matters. Zambrano quit on the team, breached his contract, and so on.

Good luck with that because the rule the Cubs have invoked is pretty clear and pretty tight so there is no way the Cubs win this in arbitration. Even if it takes a while to get a ruling, the union is forced to fight this one and they will almost certainly win. Best case scenario for all parties is that Zambrano agrees to a substantial buyout of the $22M left on his contract, more than half for sure, in exchange for free agency. If the Cubs wanted to bring him back for another chance, I doubt they would have reacted in the same emotional way. Worst case scenario, the Cubs are forced to reinstate Zambrano after a token suspension and they just release him and eat the remainder of this contract. I suppose they might try to bring him back. As a fan, I don’t want him to pitch elsewhere. They have brought him back from worse transgressions, but in this case, it looks as if they have burned their bridges.

You cannot listen to Zambrano’s interviews after Friday’s incidents without feeling sorry for the guy. When you think of it, the Cubs are the only reality he has known. I mean, he was signed when he was sixteen years old. Baseball and the Cubs have been his life. Some players are not meant to be main attraction in the same way that Zambrano has been made the center of attention. When he came up, he was part of a rotation that included Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, as well as Matt Clement, all of whom were in their glory days. Two years later they were all gone, mostly permanently or temporarily disabled, and the mantle of pitching success fell completely on the shoulders of Zambrano. That’s when things started to go south. Even though his on-field decline has been gradual with spurts of real brilliance, his emotional state was a roller-coaster ride.

There is a macho attitude in professional sports. Baseball is not immune to it and it spreads throughout the culture of the sport, from the players and management to the fans and the writers as well. It’s all about being a man and sticking with your teammates and it’s all pretty much crap. If you read about the history of the game and some of the more successful teams and players, you realize how bogus the story is, how many successful team’s clubhouses were thoroughly dysfunctional.

You also realize how many of the icons of the game suffered from what we would classify in the civilian world as mental illnesses or at least serious problems, anxiety disorders, alcoholism, psychosis. I’m not sure why we should expect the world of sports to be that much different from the world of ordinary folk. Half the people you meet every day are likely somewhat unhinged, and the rest are probably on psychotropic drugs to suppress the symptoms.

I read an article recently about how teams and organizations are only now beginning to realize these things and to take small steps toward understanding the players who suffer from these disabilities and try to ameliorate their situation. Joey Votto and Zack Greinke have spent time on the DL due to anxiety disorders. I’m not qualified to diagnose Carlos Zambrano, but he does have issues and his stint with a psychologist who treated him for anger management did result in an 8-0 stretch at the end of last year. You wonder why the Cubs did not try some counseling earlier and why they did not insist on his continuing to receive counseling as a condition of his employment.

I hope that Zambrano gets another chance, if not with the Cubs, then with another team. On a pitching staff with a genuine ace or a group of very talented pitchers, and on a good team that actually plays baseball seriously as a team, he could make a serious contribution. He’s only thirty years old. He’s a terrific athlete. Someone is sure to take a chance and the rehabilitation project could pay off.

Back to Bad

If the last two games are any indication, the Cubs are back to normal. Losing two of three to the Astros is, well, inexcusable. On Tuesday night, they took a certain win into the bottom of the ninth and came out losers after a walk-off grand slam. It seems clear that Marmol is not the same pitcher he was last year. I don't know why managers don't get somebody up when their closer just doesn't have it, but it is really time for a change of strategy here. This train wreck took a long time to develop, and Marmol was in long counts throughout the inning, not at all sharp. He had to work hard to lose the game, coming in with a three run lead.

Today's game proves two things. One is that Coleman is a work in progress, which means the Cubs are going to have to work pretty hard to replace Zambrano and the innings he ate up at his best. The other is that this is a seriously flawed lineup that does not and cannot score runs and doesn't produce when there are men on base. What was it, 0 for 13 with RISP, three innings with runners at third and no outs, no runs? This is par for the course for this team, far more the norm than the brief spurt of the past two weeks.

On that note, it was reported that Reed Johnson was claimed on waivers and withdrawn. What's up with that? I mean, what conceivable purpose is served by retaining a player who, while a productive bench player and spot starter, has no conceivable purpose on a losing team and might, if desired, be easily re-signed in the off season.

Cubs Streaking?

Well, they have won more games lately, something like 12-3 over the last stretch and three in a row since the Zambrano blowup (about which more in a coming post).

I'm not sure why they are winning, although a lot of it has to do with their improved pitching, especially in the bullpen. They are also playing weak or fading teams with the exception of the Braves. They should certainly continue their streak vs. the Astros before returning to reality against the Cards this weekend.

If I am right, look for this mini-resurgence to implode pretty soon. Sunday's game is a good reason for continued pessimism. 18 strikeouts, 4 charged errors (several more in the Ramirez inning that were not charged), no walks, and they still managed to pull it out by some miracle. Like the Braves pitching to Pena with Byrd on deck, I suppose.

During the stretch, though the starters, with the exception of the Zambrano start Friday, have given the team acceptable performances, they have not been eating innings. This has pretty much forced Quade to use the bullpen for a minimum of four innings every day. This is bound to catch up with them. Losing Zambrano only makes things worse.

The Nationals Series

The Cubs took two of three from the Nationals. They got good or acceptable outings from the three starters. This is why they won. They should have won all three, or rather a good team would have won all three.

We are watching what amounts to a replay of last season. After the trade deadline, everybody relaxes. The Cubs pitching, never as bad as it seemed, comes around. Actually, they start to get really good pitching most of the time. The hitters hit just enough to keep the team in the game. Sometimes, actually more often than not, they win games.

Mike Quade, or whoever the manager is, starts to manage for next season, which for all other teams means finding out things about young players and doing some experimenting in what amounts to a lost year. In the case of the Cubs, though, it means managing to save your job, which means playing all your veterans all the time and, generally speaking, not taking any chances or rocking the boat in a way that makes your GM look like a dolt.

This is really my gripe with Quade and Hendry. For example, having traded Kosuke Fukudome to allegedly make room for Tyler Colvin in right field, Quade rarely plays Colvin, preferring instead the veteran Reed Johnson.

I've got nothing against Johnson. He's a good fourth outfielder, a good platoon guy. However, we know that, don't we? What's the point of playing this guy every day? We know that is all Johnson is ever going to be. We also know that the more he plays, the more likely he is to aggravate his chronic back injuries and wind up on the DL.

I'm pretty much resigned to the idea that Hendry will bring back Pena and Ramirez next season. You can make a case for this, but if that is going to happen, you need to figure out where you can improve.

I'm also pretty much resigned to the idea the Cubs are committed to Soto. This one is a little harder to swallow since they have two strong catching prospects at AAA now in Clevinger and Castillo who look ready to move up.

What I don't get, though, is continuing to play guys like Soriano and Bryd every day. Nor do I understand plugging DeWitt and Baker into the lineup, sometimes in the outfield. We know everything we need to know about these guys. We know they are players with limited skills, and we know what these skills are. We also know that in order for the Cubs to consistently succeed in winning games and scoring runs, most if not all of them need to be replaced by younger or faster or better players, whether it is from within the system or through free agents.

Now none of these guys were moved before the trade deadline when the Cubs had a chance. As a result, they are all around clogging up the roster until September, when the Cubs can call up some minor leaguers. This is a shame, because you really want to see what your better prospects can do before the roster expansion date against real major leaguers and not other roster additions.

The Cubs could still deal away some of the guys they know they need to deal away in August. This looks unlikely, though. One thing they could do is to find a way to bring up Brett Jackson, who looks like a can't miss prospect and is hitting over .400 at Iowa. Surely someone in Cubs management has noticed this and has also noticed that there really is no point in keeping Tony Campana on the major league roster when the last thing you need is a professional pinch runner.

Taking Stock After the Trade Deadline

We have seen the trade deadline pass with only one significant move by the Cubs, trading Kosuke Fukudome for virtually no return and no salary savings. I suppose that, since Hendry had stated he would not trade anyone who figured in his plans for next year, all these mopes on the team now figure in his plans for next year.

Fukudome was allegedly traded because he was blocking Tyler Colvin. Come on, whatever you think of Fukudome, he was not blocking Colvin. Soriano and Byrd were blocking Colvin, who might have been part of a three way outfield platoon last season if the Cubs were not afraid of exposing his limitations then.

Since then, the Cubs have experienced a five game losing streak and a seven game winning streak before Sunday’s unfortunate loss to the Reds. Colvin has started only five games since his call up, which makes you wonder what is going on in the Cubs manager’s head. Actually, maybe not, since it is the same calculus that applied to last season. Quade is managing for his job. He is not about to take chances.

What I don’t get is why someone in upper management does not tell this guy whether he is out or in or just plain tell him to play the players that upper management wants to test. Quade talks on and on about playing the matchups. This is just baloney. It seems to be the one statistical set of numbers he believes in, but, of course, it is the least reliable because these pitcher/hitter matchups are almost always based on statistically meaningless samples, like, eight or ten at-bats.

As a fan and a student of the game, rather like last year with Piniella, I just wonder when Ricketts or somebody is going to pull the plug on this whole sorry set of baseball brains. Just put them and their fans out of their misery or just plain announce that you are going to stick with them and let everyone move on.

As far as the current Cubs go, I actually do not have a lot of problems with the Cubs pitching. It looks worse on paper than it actually is, especially if they can straighten out Wells and get Cashner healthy. Even if one of these developments does not pan out, they can always sign a journeyman starter in the off-season to eat some innings. Guys like Jon Garland, maybe an unfortunate example since he is hurt now, are always available.

The real problem with this team is Jim Hendry. The real problem Hendry has is in his evaluation of personnel and his idea of the kind of team he is building. Everybody knows that to win nowadays, and especially in Wrigley Field where even if it is 90 outside, the wind can be blowing in, you need pitching, defense, speed, and balance.

Hendry looks at the Cubs roster and thinks, well, Soto's a pretty good player, he's had some great years and he's not an embarrassment, Pena can take pitches and hit home runs, Ramirez is under-rated when he is healthy, Soriano hits home runs, Byrd hits for average when no one is on base, etc., etc. What he does not understand is that while taken individually, they look OK, taken as a team they are actually less than their component parts.

I think that is because the assumption with Cubs management is that all of these guys will produce to the maximum of their individual strengths and that their weaknesses will be somehow compensated for over the course of the season. Actually, I think you have to assume the opposite, that your veteran players are going to perform more or less the way they have always performed throughout their careers and maybe worse as they get older. So if you put together a group of players with largely the same set of growing weaknesses and diminishing strengths, you get a team like the Cubs, a team that is actually much, much worse than the sum total of its parts.

Right now the Cubs have five veteran players in the situation I described above. At least three or four have got to go for the team to win consistently. It just seems unconscionable to me that Hendry did nothing to speed this process before the trade deadline even though teams inquired on at least four of this quintet. It is similarly unconscionable for Quade to continue to play these guys every day and to play the bench players like Johnson and Baker when he knows exactly what they can do and the AAA and AA rosters are stocked with potential replacements about whom the Cubs have no idea how they will compete at the major league level.

Seven Straight

I have to admit it is fun to watch the Cubs when they are winning, and that they are, by and large, playing good baseball. During this streak, we have seen some power and some good innings. The Cubs are having better at-bats, etc.

What really accounts for the improvement, however, is the pitching. Over the last few weeks, even when they were losing, they have been getting good starts from Garza, Zambrano, Dempster, and Wells, and they have been in a position to survive a few clunkers from Lopez. As the starters have begun to consistently go deep into games, the bullpen looks much better.

All in all, this season seems oddly - well, maybe not oddly, in fact, maybe predictably - reminiscent of 2009 and 2010. Actually, to this observer, it is almost a re-run. Think about it, a well-compensated team of under-achievers hits the trade deadline twenty games under .500 more or less intact despite its obvious weaknesses. The season is over, now it is time to relax. We've seen this show before.

In a way, the Cubs belated revival is probably the worst thing that could happen to them. They were poised for a well-merited shake up from top to bottom, starting hopefully at the top. Now the danger is that, just as last season, they will be deceived into thinking they actually have the makings of a contending team.

Just as last year, Mike Quade will manage as if his life or his job at least depended on it. He will play his veterans every day, etc., etc. The pitchers, who are still the anchor of his team, will very likely come through again. And so we see some off-season tinkering and very likely another re-run in 2012.