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.