Jackson & Villanueva

The Cubs finally landed a genuine free agent starter in Edwin Jackson, as well as another potential starter in Carlos Villanueva.

Jackson throws hard and had a decent year with the Nationals last season.  He is not dominating, but he does eat innings.  He projects as probably the #3 starter for the Cubs, behind Garza and Samardzija.  Anyway, he signed for four years and has a no-trade clause, so this figures to be his longest stay with a single team since his early years with the Tigers.

The only quibble I have with this kind of signing is that it is more a striving for competence rather than excellence.  The Nationals, who are genuine contenders and have an excellent team, passed on Jackson, presumably because they had better options and actually wanted to win the pennant.

Villanueva is another competent pitcher who had a decent year with the Blue Jays, who similarly passed on bringing him back.  His best years were in a long relief role and I would have projected him there with the Cubs were it not for the story he has been promised a shot at 30 starts in Chicago.

Assuming Scott Baker and Matt Garza begin the season healthy, that kind of leaves Feldman and Wood in the bullpen.  The Cubs look to be making similar competent not glamorous signings to fill out the bullpen, reportedly zeroing in on J.P. Howell as a middle reliever.  I'd have liked to see them acquire another lefty or give Wood a shot.  The only other lefty is Jeff Russell who looks to be the left-handed setup guy.

So there are some things to be encouraged about.  By and large the pitching looks better.  Still going to be a long season, though, unless they do something about third base and the outfield.  The Giants can win with just pitching and defense because their pitching is dominant.  In the Cubs case, well, they look pretty anemic and do not project to score many runs.

Down to the Wire Again

From recent reports, it looks as if the Cubs are finalists in the quest for the services of the much-traveled Edwin Jackson, kind of a consolation prize for missing out on the Anibal Sanchez train.  Hard to figure out what happened with that deal, other than that Sanchez always wanted to sign with the Tigers and used the Cubs for leverage, or else the Cubs were never that close to a deal.  Another theory is that the Chicago press, anxious to see some glimmer of life coming from Addison and Clark Streets, however faint, broke the news prematurely and queered yet another deal.

Who knows?  Who actually cares?  Neither one of these guys is an impact player, though Sanchez right now is clearly the better pitcher.  If the Cubs land Jackson, it means two things.  One is that you have to seriously question a person's judgment if he prefers to tie up his career for three years with the Cubs when he could spend the same time with the Rangers.  The other is that the Cubs are kind of convinced they can build a representative team around pretty good pitchers like Samardzija and Garza and, in this case, Jackson.

Good luck with that if you are saddled with a team that doesn't score runs.  They kind of followed that strategy during the Hendry years and came close in 2007 and 2008, the difference then being they scored runs then and they had an ace in Carlos Zambrano who at least some of time lived up to his billing.

Meh

So far this off-season the Cubs needed to address so many problems you can only begin to list them.  First off, starting pitching.  Then the bullpen.  Then you kind of realize you have no third baseman and one of the worst offensive and defensive outfields in all of baseball.  Finally the bench.

How have they done thus far?  Meh.

Right now the starting rotation consists in one guy coming off his first full season in the rotation (Samardzija), two decent starters coming off injuries (Garza and Baker), and two proven mediocrities (Feldman and Wood), of whom only one seems to have a significant potential upside (Wood).

To bolster the bullpen, the Cubs re-signed the free agent Camp (meh) and added the Japanese free agent Fujikawa, a genuine plus.  Marmol now becomes somewhat superfluous.  Russell is the only other guy in the pen who adds anything.

As far as the outfield and the bench goes, pretty much nothing.  The Cubs picked up Nate Schierholtz on a one-year deal.  This guy has been a reserve all his career, so he can hardly qualify as a game-changer.  Plus his performance so far leads one to categorize him as a left-handed platoon player pure and simple who doesn't get on base.  This probably leads to the less than thrilling conclusion he will platoon with Dave Sappelt in right until the Cubs conclude someone is ready to come up from the minors.

Soriano is still on the team in left field.  DeJesus, I suppose, will start the year in center with Jackson back at AAA.  Jackson has supposedly reconfigured his swing in an effort to bring his strikeout rate below 50%.

Navarro was a good pick up to back up Castillo at catcher, but, beyond that, there isn't much depth.  Looks like they will go into the year with Luis Valbuena at third even if they sign the non-tendered Ian Stewart.

To be honest, this team looks a little worse on paper than last year's going into the season.  Hard to be optimistic, isn't it?

Feldman

Looks like the Cubs search for genuine mediocrity has hit the jackpot once again.  The Cubs announced this morning they had signed Scott Feldman, formerly a kind of glorified swing man with the Texas Rangers, to a one-year deal, presumably to be their fifth starter.

Statistics guys (see Fangraphs) think he is a sleeper, but you've got to wonder.  Sure, some of his stats look good or comparable to Brandon McCarthy's, but come on, this guy gives up a lot of runs and his LOB percentage is next to last in baseball.

So, lets see, last year the Cubs started out with a rotation of Dempster, Samardzija, Maholm, Garza, Volstad, with Wood and Wells in reserve.  They were on a pace to lose around 90 games before the trade deadline.  After disposing of Dempster and Maholm and losing Garza to injury, they were able to hit the 100 loss plateau.

This year right now they go into the season with a rotation of Samardzija, Wood, Baker, Garza, and Feldman.  Do the math.  This is a 90 loss rotation and 100 assuming the Cubs trade Baker and Feldman at the break and maybe Garza as well.

Really, though, the problem with this team is not just pitching, it is hitting.  These guys do not get on base and they do not score runs and they strike out all the time.  Nothing so far in the off-season improves the offense.  The Cubs are set at catcher, first base, second base, and shortstop.  You can even argue for a little improvement as Rizzo enters his first full season and Castillo is a significant improvement over Soto.

But after that, this team has a weak bullpen, no bench and glaring holes at third base and center field.  Not to mention sub-par production in left and right field.  Some people think Soriano and DeJesus had productive seasons in 2012.  They did not and they are not championship players.  I have to eat a little crow on my assessment of Soriano as I expected him to be finished, but this guy is an out 70% of the time and a strikeout a quarter of the time.

So the truth is that next year right now looks as bleak as last year.  Sorry to have become a nay-sayer this soon, but if there is a master plan, I don't see it.

Odds and Ends

This is shaping up as another rather blah off-season for the Cubs who seem content to rest in mediocrity.  They signed their only free agent, the mediocre middle-reliever Sean Camp who had an up season at age 37 last year.  He's cheap and expendable, but the history of guys like this is to follow a good season with lots of appearances with a truly awful year when they cannot get people out at all.

The Cubs did pick up Donner Navarro as a backup catcher.  This is a good signing.  He can hit in a backup role and he will not embarrass his team defensively.  They also unloaded the useless Jeff Brigham for a Rangers prospect in Barrett Loux.  Loux has been hurt nearly his entire career, but could be a good starter were he to remain healthy.  He went 14-1 at AA last year.



For all the talk of pursuing starting pitchers, the Cubs have been pretty quiet.  I'd like to see them go after Brandon McCarthy for one.  He has a lot of upside if he has recovered from his freak injury last year.

I was a little sad to see Bryan LaHair released to play in Japan.  I never thought he got a fair shake with any of the teams he played for.  When the Cubs decided he could not hit left-handers, he seemed to lose his mechanics altogether.  I wonder why they never tried him at third base.

The Cubs really need to rethink their strategies with respect to free agency.  The market has become both more rational and more irrational.  By that I mean the impact or potential impact players are usually higher risk guys who sign long-term for exorbitant prices.  The rest of the market is usually composed of mediocre role-players, David DeJesus types or worse, players around whom winners are not typically built.  Fewer players with exceptional talent who are eligible for free agency the first time are hitting the market because they are getting locked up in longer term extensions.

The real values in terms of impact players increasingly come from foreign leagues.  On this topic, the Cubs are apparently one of several teams to make an offer to the Japanese closer Kyuji Fujikawa.  This guy is very good and would be a great acquisition.  In the process, he would free up Carlos Marmol to move back to setup or for a trade.

Now if only they could dump Alfonso Soriano.

Scott Baker

The Cubs signed Scott Baker, formerly of the Minnesota Twins, to a cheap one year contract today.  I can't say anything bad about the move, and it seems consistent with the strategy of the new regime to look for short-term bargains with a relatively high upside.  Baker was a pretty good middle of the rotation guy before he hurt his elbow.  He missed all of last year to Tommy John surgery.

The only gripe I have so far is the Cubs continue to miss out on the genuine impact guys who become available.  I'd have to argue there are no real major league impact guys going in free agency this year.  Greinke and Hamilton have obvious flaws.  Last year there were, I think, only two, Fielder and Pujols, neither of whom the Cubs pursued, for obvious reasons.

The foreign market is now where the genuine impact players are lurking, and, so far, the Cubs have not cashed in there either.  Last year they missed out on Cespedes and Darvish, though they did obtain Soler, who is a much longer term prospect.  This year they have struck out on the Korean pitcher Ryu, although the two Japanese high school prospects, much longer term prospects, are still potentially available.

I'd like to see this team start acting a little more like a major market entity and less like a bottom feeder Pirates/Royals type franchise.  Patience among the fans is starting to wear a little thin.  We all know that Epstein and Hoyer are great talent arbitragers, but I'd like to see them concentrate on building a major league team.

This is Getting a Little Weird

So this week we saw yet another aborted trade from the Epstein regime.  It is hard to figure this one out.  Apparently the Cubs pulled the deal off the table, either because they did not actually have Marmol's written consent or because they got cold feet over Haren's injuries.

Haren, at his best, was a proven major league pitcher who would eat a lot of innings and could sometimes be a dominant force.  In 2012, however, he slumped a bit, spending some time on the DL with back problems.  He seems to have lost 3-4 mph off his fastball by season's end.  So he was a risk, but a cheap one for a one year deal.  Marmol, on the other hand, is a major league level closer who has proved himself a bit less than reliable over the last two seasons and who carries a heavy contract into his contract year.

Everybody on the Cubs boards and blogs thought this was a great deal because if Haren regained his form, he could be peddled at the trade deadline for big-time prospects.  First of all, lets remember the Dempster debacle.  Secondly, this is a hell of a way to build a team and one that, on balance, is rarely if ever successful.

The truth is that both these players are rentals or will be at the trade deadline and that you don't get big-time can't miss major league prospects at the deadline for rentals.  And big-time can't miss major league prospects are what the Cubs want and need.

Actually, you might argue that a good closer has more value at the deadline than a starter in terms of putting a genuine contender over the top and that a team that is in contention is more likely to roll the dice and give you top value in return.  I would certainly advance that argument.

Maybe the Cubs brass figured this out or maybe they had second thoughts on Haren's physical condition.  Other than that, this potential deal was and is nothing to write home about in terms of building a winning team.  Even if the concern is arbitraging bits of talent, the deal is kind of a wash, other than providing yet another illustration of a sad lack of competence and direction for this accursed franchise.

World Series and Other Thoughts

The Giants look as if they are headed for a sweep of Detroit and even if they don't put it away Sunday night, the thing is pretty much over.  The Giants don't look that good on paper, especially offensively, but they have great pitching and they are excellent defensively.  Another thing - and this is something the Cubs should note - these guys do not strike out much at all and they usually put the ball in play.

Under the radar, the Cubs have released or out-righted off the 40 man roster many of the worthless minor league mopes who populated the team's bench and, in some cases, their regular lineup through a large part of the season.  This includes - hooray! - the insufferable Chris Volstad, whom the Royals picked up off waivers right after the event.  Right now the Cubs have seven open spots on the 40 man roster, which, to my mind, presages some interesting moves.  We all know they need at least two starters and a third baseman, so one wonders if they might be a little more active pretty shortly in both the free agent and foreign markets.

Bob Brenly

Sad news that Bob Brenly is leaving the Cubs TV booth.  I've thoroughly enjoyed Bernly's commentaries over the past eight years and will miss them.  I hope the Cubs come up with someone who is equally knowledgeable and honest.  I sure hope it isn't Kerry Wood.

It's hard to say now whether he was pushed out or just left for greener pastures or a job closer to home.  Watching truly awful baseball here since 2009 might be a factor as well.  Or it could be that he feels uncomfortable in the booth with his son advancing through the Cubs minor league system and potentially reaching the majors sometime in the future.  He has said as much in the past, although, to be honest, Michael Brenly hasn't shown too much beyond some early success in low A-level ball to project as anything more than a good defense/no offense sort of catcher.

Playoff Baseball

I'm not a big fan of the new playoff format.  Don't like the one game wild card setup.  Don't like the five game first round.  Like it even less with the 2-3 format starting at the home park of the team with the worst record.

Having said that, fans were treated to some excellent and exciting baseball through the first rounds.  Far and away the best series matched the Yankees and Orioles, two powerhouse AL East rivals who were completely throttled by superior pitching, but managed to play five tight games before the Yankees advanced on the shoulders of C.C. Sabathia.  The Tigers also advanced largely on the strength of their ace Justin Verlander.

In the NL, the Giants topped the Reds.  There is little doubt that in a short series, pitching matters more than anything else, and the Giants have probably the deepest rotation in baseball right now.  The biggest blow to the Reds chances was losing Cueto in the first game.

The last series to be decided saw the Nationals produce an epic choke in the ninth inning of the deciding game.  They managed to blow a 6-0 lead in the last two innings.  Don't think I've seen a team disintegrate like that since the 2003 Cubs.  You have to put a lot of it on the closer Storen and Johnson's sticking with him through five batters trying to get the last out.  Storen and his catcher showed no confidence.  Once they got the Cardinals hitters down two strikes, they just started nibbling and pitching away from their own strengths.

The last game kind of points up my earlier opinions on the wild card setup.  Under the old rules, of course, the Cardinals would never have made the playoffs.  To my mind, it is a little off-putting to see a team that lost their division by 9 games advance.  As far as the Nats go, you have to wonder how much second-guessing there is going to be respecting the decision to shut down Stephen Strasburg with a month left in the season.  Strasburg would have had two starts in this series, one of which the Nats lost.

Something the Cubs should take note of in their pursuit of good enough pitching.  Good teams usually have ace pitchers, at least one, and nowhere is the value of the dominant starter more demonstrated than in playoff baseball.  Sooner or later the Cubs are going to have to develop or acquire such an arm through free agency.  I don't see anyone reaching free agency who fits that role in the coming off-season, but when there is one, the Cubs need to jump no matter where they are situated in the long-run plan.

End of the Road

I have to confess that I am always a little sad to see the season end for the Cubs, no matter what the circumstances.  This year was a really hard one for Cubs fans to stomach despite the assurances that there was a grand plan and that things would eventually get better.  Lets face it, this was the fourth consecutive season of watching absolutely awful baseball on the North side.  Enough already.

Having said that, the last game was entertaining and provided a thrilling ending that gave some vindication for those of us, myself included, who have felt that the Cubs use of Bryan LaHair in the second half of the season was a little perplexing.  LaHair hit a home run early in the game, then watched as Sveum favorite Sean Camp blew a three run lead in the eighth inning, and finally came through with a game winning bases-loaded hit in the bottom of the ninth.

Through the post-trade deadline portion of the season, the Cubs chose to bring up some young players and play them whether they were failing or not.  Of course, only one of them was worth bringing up, Anthony Russo.  The others, mainly Josh Vitters and Brett Jackson, were not ready for the major leagues.  Welington Castillo looked a little out of his depth early on, but showed enough progress to give fans some hope.  The pitchers were not exactly spectacular.  Raley and Rusin have a ways to go, Jaye Chapman projects as maybe a mid-game reliever.  The rest failed to show even a modicum of promise.

Early in the year, Epstein and Hoyer were adamant in not bringing up players until they were satisfied they were in a position to succeed.  All of a sudden, this development theory was thrown out the window.

It used to be the case that players were not brought up unless they merited promotion, at least not before September.  The Cubs seem to have promoted some players merely to demonstrate to them just how bad they were, presumably in order to encourage them to make adjustments in their batting or pitching style.  It may have worked for Russo last year with the Padres, but I really question whether this whole strategy makes any sense at all.  More like learning to fail.

I did make it out to one last game Monday night, the 100th loss.  Painful is putting it mildly.  Usually I have to be dragged out of the park no matter how bad the game or how uncomfortable the surroundings and weather.  This time my wife had to persuade me to stay until the end.

The picture above. of the Dixieland Band, was the highlight of the evening.  Just no effort at all.  The usual Sveum lineup alternating marginally competent players with certain outs.  Houston's pitcher threw something like 90% low nineties fastballs with no movement.  Cubs hitters just kept swinging and making easy outs.  Berken pitched surprisingly well for the Cubs, though he was pitching against a lineup of AAA players less likely to score a run than the Cubs.  Sveum managed as if it were the seventh game of the World Series, pulling his starter in the middle of the fifth inning, trotting out pinch hitters and double pinch hitters, etc.

Valbuena, who according to Dale Sveum is one of the bright spots in the organization, had a bad inning in the field, failing to even try to field a slow roller down the third base line and then ducking when a Houston batter hit a scorcher directly at him for a "triple."  On this play, perhaps illustrative of the Cubs current malaise, Soriano took so long to run over and dig the ball out of his glove that by the time he was ready to throw home, the cutoff man Castro was practically standing next to him, but Soriano passed it on to him anyway instead of hitting the next cutoff man in line.  All this resulted in Houston scoring their second run and pretty much sealing the Cubs fate.

The Cubs fired third base and infielders coach Pat Listach right after the final game.  Listach was one of the few remaining holdovers of the Quade/Hendry era.  He was credited with helping Barney adjust to second base and become a premier infielder.  On the other hand, he seems to have been unable to work the same magic with Starlin Castro, not to mention the merry-go-round of third basemen who seem to have no idea what they are doing.  Rowson, the interim hitting coach, will probably be demoted back to the minor league instruction role.  I mean, he has certainly done nothing to improve the Cubs batters performance this year.  The Cubs were last or next to last in virtually every batting category this year, bested, or worsted, mostly by the Astros who managed to lose six more games than Chicago.

Epstein and Hoyer and Sveum were all out giving interviews and advising fans that there were plans, make no mistake about it, and that big things would be happening, but not too soon.  Not, in fact, for a very long time.  More about this later, but for now, suffice it to say that this was a bad team, a very bad team even by Cubs standards.  In fact, I doubt that even the teams they had in the fifties when I was a young kid were this bad.  At least they had Ernie Banks.

More on the Cubs "plans" in another post.

Learning to Lose

I was actually out at the game last night.  It was a tense and close game up until the 7th inning when the Cubs made three errors, two on one play, to blow the game.

Rather a shame. Samardzija pitched pretty well except he needs to understand that he doesn't have to try to strike out everyone and run up the pitch count in the process.  Deep down, I knew that sooner or later the Brewers would scratch out a run and that there was almost no chance the Cubs would even threaten to do so.

This happened in the 7th when Samardzija misplayed a bunt by Nyger Morgan and then threw the ball away.  After Jose Segura singled him in the game was as good as lost, but the Cubs managed to put the seal on things by botching up a stolen base with two egregious errors. First there was a wild throw by Castillo that Castro played off to the side.  Then there was a really dumb attempt by Segura to advance that should have resulted in an out but instead led to a misplay by Valbuena to let a pretty good Barney throw go by.  Naturally, Samardzija was watching the play instead of backing up third, allowing an insurance run to score.

When you are actually out at the park, you see a lot more of just how badly this team is playing, both in the field and at the plate.  This season there have mercifully fewer defensive breakdowns such as last night's, but that doesn't mean they have played well at a fundamental level.  Now granted there are a lot of young kids here and the team is rebuilding and all that, but really you would suppose that by the time you make it to the big leagues after playing organized baseball for nearly a decade you might at least have some notion of where you are supposed to throw the ball and who should be positioned as the cutoff man and a whole host of other little things.

Just as an aside, Soriano actually appeared to reintroduce the infamous hop on one flyball he caught last night, and, of course, to my recollection, never threw the ball accurately in the direction of the appropriate base or cutoff man once.

What's disappointing here is that there is virtually no discernible progress through the season.  This is especially the case with the hitting and the strikeouts, which are just plain inexcusable for a major league team.  Last week, the Cubs struck out 38 times in the Brewers series in Milwaukee.  In this week's series, the number is 41.  That's better than a ten plus average per game.

Not to be entirely negative, the Cubs did manage to pull off a nice come-from-behind windblown win in the bottom of the ninth today, stringing together several lengthy at-bats.  Soriano's flyball over a drawn-in outfield was a rare example of successful situational hitting for this team.

Incidentally, the photo above shows Starlin Castro getting ready to strike out with a man at first in the 9th inning last night on a pitch that was probably at leat a foot outside the strike zone.  To his credit, though, he had a really nice battling at-bat in today's ninth inning that ultimately resulted in a single that drove in a run and kept the rally going.

September Comes Early

September call-ups have arrived early for the Cubs, not that they had much choice.  They are 5-17 since the trade deadline.  We've already noted that the Cubs collapse since that fated day really has not had that much to do with the overhaul of the pitching rotation.  That overhaul was dramatic, but, by and large, the youngsters they have brought up have not pitched all that badly.  Rusin and Raley, in particular, have shown some promise, and Germano has done a creditable job.  Volstad is Volstad, but then no one would have expected any better.

This team still won't work the count or play baseball.  So they just do not score runs consistently.  I haven't seen a lot to be confident about so far among the new Cubs who seem determined to hit a home run or strike out no matter the circumstances.  Brett Jackson might become a good hitter if he could control the strikeouts, which, right now, make Tyler Colvin look like Pete Rose.  Welington Castillo, to my mind, looks like the only one of these youngsters who is ready to play at a major league level now.  Vitters might make an interesting platoon in left field with someone like Bryan LaHair, but he is not a good third baseman and looks to be the farthest away from the majors.

The Cubs probably did the right thing in signing Castro long term, especially as they seem to have gotten a favorable deal and they can still trade him.  I'm not sure what it is about young players who come up now, but they seem to have one or two physical skills, but no real baseball sense.  They are just unfinished and it takes a lot of coaching, quality coaching, to get them where they need to be for a team to contend in the long run.  So far I haven't seen real evidence of this coaching taking effect since the regime change.  This has to be the most disappointing aspect of the new era of the Cubs under Epstein and Hoyer and Sveum.  This team is still worse than the sum total of its individual components.

Just watched Starlin botch up two double-plays in the same inning, giving the Rockies the lead.  So it goes.

Speaking of the Epstein legacy, it looks like the Dodgers are out to spend as much money as they can and to reconstruct the infamous 2011 Red Sox, acquiring most of the Epstein "mistakes" in the process.  I put mistakes in quotes mainly because of Adrian Gonzalez, whom I still regard as a premier first baseman and pure hitter.  Gonzalez is probably worth the haul of over-rated minor league talent the Red Sox are likely to acquire in the mega-deal.  Of course, the rest of the baggage the Dodgers are taking on kind of means you are really paying Gonzalez upwards of $50 or $60MM a year.

Just as an aside, we finally have found out the secret of Melky Cabrera's remarkable improvement, as well as Bartolo Colon's comeback season.  Not exactly edifying, and the case of Cabrera, some monumental evidence of terminal stupidity as well.

Back to the Cubs.  Just so we all know, Dale Sveum is frustrated as well.  Good news.  However, right now the Cubs are following the Astros/Pirates/Royals model and you kind of wonder how long they can get away with it, considering they have the most expensive tickets in baseball in terms of the likelihood of seeing a win, and really, I think, the second most expensive tickets in baseball straight up.

Cubs Winless since Trade Deadline

The Cubs lost their sixth straight last night to the lowly Padres whom they swept at Wrigley Field a while back to stop another woeful losing streak.  I guess we can expect this sort of performance from here on out, though, to be honest, none of the losses would seem to stem from the trades they made which largely shed veteran pitching.

Two of the losses were to lefties, so you might argue that the departure of the the right-handed platoon players Johnson and Baker could have affected the outcome, but, really, the Cubs always lose to lefties anyway and the presence of either of these guys in the lineup does not seem to matter much one way or the other.

As far as the pitching goes, the starting rotation is a mess, but actually Samardzija probably pitched the worst game of the six.  Volstad pitched unexpectedly well, as did Germano.  Coleman pitched badly, but no one expected him to do well.  Wood pitched two decent games without any support.  With Garza out probably for the season, Cubs fans cannot expect much in the way of pitching from here on out.  Perhaps the rookie Raley will provide some hope tonight.

Which makes things especially depressing because the real reason they have lost six straight is they don't score runs.  They have scored twelve runs in this stretch, an average of two per game, and six of those were Sunday in a tough walk-off loss to the Dodgers.

In this respect also, things are not likely to get much better.  Jackson and Vitters were promoted to the team, though only Jackson seems poised to play every day.  Jackson had a nice debut game Sunday, but struck out four times yesterday.  Vitters hasn't shown much so far and it seems likely that Sveum will platoon him with one of his favorites, Luis Valbuena, who, last time I checked, was hovering around or below the Mendoza line.

Another reason for lack of hope seems to be the odd decisions Sveum makes with his lineup.  It took him the better part of three months to settle on a steady set of platoons and a consistent batting order and bullpen rotation.  So the Cubs had, at long last, a pretty good July.  This whole process was wrecked by the trades and call-ups, so it is going to take him a while to get his head screwed back on.

Last night we had the strikeout machine Jackson batting leadoff and Castro in the five hole, both, in my opinion, not the best spots for their respective talents.  If you are stuck with players who are impatient and do not get on base and, in general, have very little or no idea of situational hitting, the lineup is very, very important to maximize the slim chances of scoring runs.  Again, in my opinion, though stats will back me up on this, Sveum is not very good at this and this is likely to lead to a lot more losses than even this flawed team merits.

Speaking of disconnects between upper management and management at the field level, I read where Bryan LaHair, who was finally showing signs of snapping out of a two month slump, will find it hard to get any playing time after Jackson's promotion.  Am I missing something here?  I mean, granted that LaHair has slumped since his promising start, but he is 29 years old.  He belongs in left field, at least on a platoon basis.  Right now he or any other outfielder is blocked by two players who do not figure to be part of a winner.

DeJesus is 32 years old and strictly a journeyman platoon player with a .261 average.  It is hard to envisage this guy as anything other than a placeholder and even harder to see him as a major contributor to a winning team.  Soriano has been showcased throughout the season in a desperate attempt to get someone to take him off their hands even if they continue to pay his salary.  Every day Soriano shows why, despite his decent stats, he has no idea how to play baseball and is a menace in the field even when he catches the ball.  But these players will play every day in preference to a player who might have the ability to contribute as a left-handed power hitter for several years to come and costs you virtually nothing.  Shouldn't you at least try to find out if he can be straightened out, or are we dealing with an advanced case of Quade-itis?

Further Notes on Ryan Dempster

I don't always agree with Steve Rosenbloom.  As a matter of fact, I almost never agree with the feisty Tribune pundit.  This time, though, I have to say he has written a pretty accurate column.

One additional reason he might have cited for Dempster's rather gentlemanly treatment by Epstein and Hoyer is this.  I think they felt they had to let the fellow listen in on the conversations with LA management to finally convince him there was no interest in him by the Dodgers, there was no deal there, and there never was any.  Just as a further note, one wonders where on Earth Dempster's agent was during this whole fiasco and whether the guy ought not to let him handle matters of this sort in the future.

One game does not a season make, but I note that old Demp got lit up big time in Texas Thursday night, 8 runs, 9 hits, 2 homers in 4.2 innings.  He wasn't throwing strikes either, only 59 of 103 pitches.  Left trailing the Angels 8-7, but the Rangers came back to win a wild one 15-9.  Welcome to Arlington and the American League.

Dempster Finally Traded

My guess is that Dempster is going to be pretty sorry he didn't take the Braves deal and that the Cubs were unable to work out a deal with the Dodgers who were unwilling to offer anything of value in exchange.  The main reason, I think, is that he is likely to get lit up big time in that awful little stadium where the Rangers play baseball.  Lets face it, the wind howls out to left center there and the average temperature is like 100 and it is the American League.  So good luck, guy, you are going to need it.

I've got nothing personal against Dempster, but I do think he overplayed his hand.  He's had a good season thus far, but, on the whole, he is a middle of the order rotation pitcher on a good or even half-decent team.  Given the fan reaction, justified or not, the Cubs more or less had to trade him for what they could get and Dempster had to approve any reasonable deal.

The initial reaction to all the deadline trades the Cubs have made is somewhat underwhelming, but, lets face it, they didn't have much to sell, and that includes Garza who, should the Cubs be determined to deal in the off-season, is going to be worth much more then if he rescues an up and down year.

I've become more and more convinced there are three kinds of trades that are made.  One type is the exchange of players of similar perceived talent and experience.  You can think of these as trading seasons or years.  A good example from the last off-season was the Cashner/Rizzo trade.  In these trades, both sides are often better off.  At bottom, they are a good test of front office judgment of talent and assessment of need.

Then there are the uneven trades where years or seasons are traded for accomplished talents.  Teams nowadays, probably because of salaries and contracts at stake seem to overvalue their veteran assets as well as their prospects.  Most of the deadline trades involve dealing veterans for players who are likely to equal or approach the value of the veteran exchanged in one or more years.  Obviously, the fewer years you give up, the better off you are and the less risk you take.

So far Epstein and co., at least until the trade deadline, have concentrated on obtaining equivalent or short term risks in exchange for the players they have dealt.  I'm thinking here of the Marshall/Wood and Colvin/Stewart deals.  I'm rather convinced they deviated from this plan out of necessity at the deadline, simply because they couldn't do any better, especially with the rules and the personalities involved.  Here I have in mind the aborted Dempster/Delgado trade which would have been something of a coup.

Just to follow up on this line of thought, Maholm, the best player they traded, is still a soft-tossing lefty who is a back of the rotation starter.  Johnson is a useful but aging role player.  Soto has been a flop since his rookie season.  Dempster is a rental and getting a little long in the tooth.

In return, the Cubs got a potentially very good pitcher in Vizcaino who is admittedly a project because he is hurt.  They got two other pitchers who throw hard.  They have major league potential but do not project out as impact players.

Actually, the players they got from Texas look like more legitimate higher ceiling prospects.  Christian Villanueva is a third baseman with some pop and Kyle Hendricks is a pitcher who has pretty good numbers in A ball.  Unfortunately, all these guys are a little further off than one would like them to be and anything can happen.

The return for Dempster, though, is better than they would have got had they let him finish the season and they did not have to risk making a qualifying offer he might have taken.

One disappointment, however, was the failure to move Soriano.  Maybe they can do it as a waiver deal, though, as his contract is likely to scare any potential claims.

A Belated Tribute to Ron Santo

The Cubs held another belated Ron Santo Day Friday after his enshrinement in the Hall of Fame last Sunday.  I wasn't at the stadium, but from the replays, it looked like standard issue tributes that featured Ron's family and some of his former teammates.  Which is OK I guess.

I always liked Santo as a player, although he was not the superstar that his teammates and now fellow Hall-of-Famers Banks, Williams, and Jenkins were.  His stats compare favorably and even more than favorably with the best third basemen of that era.

Santo was apparently not the funny, nutty uncle persona he affected in the radio booth during his playing days, and this somehow seriously affected his election chances during the period immediately after his retirement.  That and the fact he took a long hiatus from the game, something like fifteen years until he returned as the radio color man.

I was living overseas for many of Santo's best seasons, from 1966 to 1971, so I wasn't able to closely follow the Cubs then, when, arguably, they had their best teams.  Still, I never have been able to figure out why, with a roster full of really great players like the aforementioned Hall-of-Famers as well as other stars like Ken Holtzman and Randy Hundley and Don Kessinger, the Cubs were never able to win a Division title.  That might have had something to do with the difficulty of electing him to the Hall as well.

Santo fought a courageous battle with diabetes and its complications throughout his life and never seems to have lost his courage or his sense of humor.  Most fans now know Ron from his days as the somewhat demented press box companion to Pat Hughes.  This act was no doubt amusing, but, in a sad way, its current exploitation shortchanges Santo's achievements and personality and genuine knowledge and appreciation of the game.

His posthumous election adds yet another note of sadness to his life and career.  Too bad he was unable to enjoy these days.  Rightly or wrongly, I think it meant more to Ron to be recognized for his abilities as a player than as a person or a personality.

Reaction to Latest Trades

The Cubs traded reserve outfielder Reed Johnson and starting pitcher Paul Maholm to Atlanta for two minor league pitchers, one of whom is on the DL recovering from elbow surgery.  I wasn't surprised to see Johnson go.  He is a solid enough platoon player who can help a contender.  He seems to play well only for the Cubs these days, but, although he was an important cog in the Cubs outfield platoons and a good pinch hitter, his value to a team like the Cubs was pretty limited.  Maholm was a little more of a surprise, as he has settled in to become, arguably, their most consistent pitcher of late and he is a pretty cheap middle of the rotation kind of guy.

In return the Cubs got a AAA reliever in Jaye Chapman who throws pretty hard but walks a lot of people and a guy who was one of the Braves top pitching prospects until he had Tommy John surgery this spring.  This is Arodys Vizcaino, who is the key to the deal.  He is said to be rehabbing well and is expected to be on schedule to be healthy by spring training next year.

All in all, a risky business, but the Cubs brass must be pretty high on him to pull the trigger for this sort of deal.

The Cubs also dealt their everyday catcher Geovanny Soto to Texas for a fringe minor league relief pitcher, Jacob Brigham.  I'd have expected to get more in return for Soto, but he is having another bad year, so this just looks like a salary dump.  Actually, all three players will take $9 or $10 million off the books for next year and maybe a third of that for the remainder of the season.  Perhaps the front office is considering plowing this cash back into a subsidy to anyone who will take Soriano or Dempster.  Soriano reportedly nixed a deal to the Giants.

More later.

I'm sure this is not the last deal that is in the works.

Further Adventures of Little Ryan

Who evidently had a bad day what with all the attention he was getting because he wouldn't consent to a trade to Atlanta and then that mean old Dale Sveum took him out of a game in which he pitched OK but not well enough to win so he had to attack a drink dispenser and throw a juvenile tantrum and then go off and give a news conference where, if you look carefully, he did not apologize to the fans or his teammates or the manager, but instead asserted a blanket right to get pissed off about things in general.

I can't figure this out, but how is it the Cubs always seem to get brats like this and sign them to awful contracts.  Was it just Hendry, or do other teams have the same issues but just less attention?  In any case, this whole affair has turned into quite a mess.

All this puts Epstein and co. in a bit of a pickle.  They had worked out a pretty good trade for a middle of the rotation rental starter who is more likely in the long run to give you the kind of game he pitched yesterday.  If the Braves are indeed out of the running for Demp's somewhat overvalued services, the Cubs are left with a choice of taking lesser value from the Dodgers or letting the peevish star finish out his contract, receiving nothing in return at the end of the season unless they risk offering Dempster about $12MM to get a supplemental draft choice should he opt out.

That's a real risk because he might just take them up on the offer and they are stuck with him for another season.  Actually, I don't expect much out of him for the remainder of the year just because of all the controversy surrounding his supposed departure.  Cubs fans, as Dempster has somewhat belatedly discovered, are not that good at weighing all the ins and outs of this kind of dispute.  They are simply Cubs fans, not fans of particular athletes unless you get down to players of the caliber of Ernie Banks or something.  So fans now perceive that the Cubs could have taken a step toward the golden future by acquiring the highly valued Randall Delgado.

Everything now hinges upon the future for the true loyalist.  Thus Dempster will more than likely discover his true destiny as a pariah.  This incident will dog his every step while he remains in a Cubs uniform.  Few players can handle that sort of stress.  Judging by his post-game performance yesterday, Dempster is not one of them.  So look for a steady deterioration of skills through the rest of the year and a steady diminution of his value on the free agent market.  The Cubs would be well-advised to get what they can now and put this episode behing them.

Dempster Not Traded?

I have to confess that unlike most Cubs fans, I have never venerated Dempster as a pitcher or a person.  I'm also a little surprised that Dempster has had such a good season thus far even though he has been disabled twice.  I had pretty much written him off.

This latest display of petulance, however, certainly gives the lie to all the team player propaganda that is usually disseminated by the media with regard to what a great guy Demp is.  Dempster surely must realize that he is not a part of the Cubs future plans.  They reluctantly accepted his exercise of the player option Hendry gave him for 2012 and they have made no secret of the fact they have no intention of signing him in 2013 and every intention of wanting to trade him now at the height of the market.

I know that Dempster prefers to pitch for LA, but he has apparently listed Atlanta as his #2 choice.  I'm not sure why the Cubs are even talking to LA about anyone.  The Dodgers have a weak and depleted farm system not much better than the Cubs.  Their prize prospect, Zack Lee, is well regarded, but he has only recently been promoted to AA and he hasn't pitched very well there.  Lots of things can happen in the two years or so it will take him to reach the majors.  The Braves, on the other hand, have got a lot of talent in the minors that is on the verge of promotion.

Word is that this matter will be resolved this afternoon one way or the other.  Perhaps it is time for Epstein or Hoyer to sit down with Dempster and explain some things like, hey, how can you be surprised about a trade rumor when that's all anyone in the Chicago press has talked about for a month and we didn't leak the thing, but we're talking about two months here, not the rest of your life, and you are going to a playoff contender.

Plus, of course, the Cubs could get nasty and petulant as well.  If he remains with the team, they are in a position to influence his value as a free agent in a big way and if they have no interest in this value, they could certainly diminish it greatly.

Dempster Traded

News has hit the wires that Ryan Dempster has been traded to the Atlanta Braves in exchange for the young Braves pitcher Randall Delgado and possibly other prospects.  If this is so, it rather confirms the thesis propounded on this blog, that Epstein and co. are looking for players with potential who are at or near major league level of play and that he is not engaged in a total rebuild from the ground up, as some have contended.

Delgado is a legitimate major league ready prospect who has pitched reasonably well in his brief trials with the Braves this season.  He is 22 years old, which is a big plus for the Cubs in terms of his potential development.  He was considered the #3 prospect in the the highly regarded Braves organization.  All in all a pretty good deal for the Cubs.  More analysis later when the terms of the deal are confirmed.

The Marlin Series

The Cubs continued to play well this week, taking two of three from the Marlins.  Maholm pitched a terrific game on Thursday.  I wonder if the Cubs are thinking of trading him as well.  He is and has been a journeyman pitcher, not exactly an impact player, but he could be useful to a contender down the stretch and he is pretty cheap as pitchers go, with a team option for 2013 as well.

We went out to the game Wednesday night.  Quite a good game, very tight until the Cubs blew it open in the seventh by putting together a nice series of at-bats.  Samardzija turned in what can only be described as a gutty performance.  He had nothing, or at least nothing he could command, but he did hang in there and keep the game close, 1-1 when he left.

The lead picture was taken sometime during the Cubs seventh inning rally.  The picture above when the rains came.  Needless to say we were soaked on the way home.

The Home Stand

I've been a little tardy in keeping up with the Cubs on their recent stretch of baseball which, by and large, has shown belated signs of life.  The Cubs are 12-4 since they brought up Anthony Rizzo, or at least since they said they were bringing him up.

Which is probably a strong argument in favor of the influence an impact player can have on a team both in terms of his contribution and the psychological effect of confidence he brings.  I think Rizzo has had this kind of influence, but we should note that the Cubs still don't score enough runs and that the real reason for this is they just don't get on base enough.  DeJesus is an acceptable lead-off hitter (.354 OBP), but Castro, although he hits for a high average, just doesn't get on base enough and doesn't make productive outs.  So the three, four, and five hitters get fewer chances to put up so-called crooked numbers than they should.

Still, at least the team is providing entertainment.  Mostly this streak is the result of solid, really good pitching.  The Cubs have scored sixty runs in the twelve victories, but the most revealing stat in the string of wins is that they gave up only eighteen runs in their wins.

With respect to the improvement of their pitching, the impact player here seems to be Travis Wood, who has established himself as a pretty solid starting pitcher over the course of the last month or so.  That and the stabilization of the bullpen with Corpas, Camp, Russell, and Marmol turning in pretty effective work.

It is kind of ironic then that all the trade talk seems to center around trading two very good pitchers, Matt Garza and Ryan Dempster.  Don't misunderstand me here.  The Cubs will and should trade Ryan Dempster.  Dempster is 36 years old and despite his having his best season since 2008, he is a free agent the Cubs have no intention of extending who has been on the DL twice already this year.

Garza is another story, however, and the Cubs would do well to think this one over very carefully.  Good rich teams like the Cubs are extending guys like Garza, not trading them for uncertain prospects.  In my mind, the replacement cost is pretty high.  For two reasons really.  Teams are not giving up their best AAA and AA can't miss pitchers.  Secondly, if the guys you get don't pan out right away, you are back on the free agent market looking at the Paul Maholms of the world or signing guys just like the guy you traded for more money.

Fun Diversion

This isn't about the Cubs, but it is an amusing baseball science speculation.  What if a pitcher threw a pitch at nearly the speed of light?

http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

Let’s set aside the question of how we got the baseball moving that fast. We'll suppose it's a normal pitch, except in the instant the pitcher releases the ball, it magically accelerates to 0.9c. From that point onward, everything proceeds according to normal physics.:
The answer turns out to be “a lot of things”, and they all happen very quickly, and it doesn’t end well for the batter (or the pitcher). I sat down with some physics books, a Nolan Ryan action figure, and a bunch of videotapes of nuclear tests and tried to sort it all out. What follows is my best guess at a nanosecond-by-nanosecond portrait:

New Lineup

You wonder if Dale Sveum has finally looked at the numbers his team has posted against lefties or he got a phone call from the higher-ups, but, in any case, the lineup today against the Astros lefty Happ looks like a rational one.  I mean, the Cubs are 4-17 playing the awful right-handed lineup and guys like Baker who routinely play in the platoon splits aren't exactly blowing things away.

The Cubs are 22 games under .500, 13 of which are accounted for by their special right-handed platoon even though only roughly a fifth of their games have been against lefties.  Quite an achievement.

The Cubs finally got a good start out of Paul Maholm and they played a good game to win 4-0.  Of course, they should beat teams like the Astros, who are really just a glorified AAA team.  I was glad to see LaHair go 3 for 4.  He's been in a protracted slump through June, which is complicated by the fact that he hardly ever plays given the number of lefties being thrown at the Cubs.

Rizzo's Debut

Went out to the game last night to see Rizzo's debut.  Above is a photo I took as he approached the plate for the first time as a Cub.

Rizzo had a good night, a single, a double, a hard hit out in four tries.  He may have been the recipient of somewhat generous official scorer's decisions.  The ground ball in the first was hard hit, but clearly misplayed by the Mets shortstop, who, incidentally, has misplayed nearly as many chances as he has successfully fielded.  The double also was a bit of a gift from the scorer, as he would not have made second had the Mets center-fielder thrown to the right base.  Still, he hit the ball hard and played well defensively.

So far this series has been a clinic on how not to play the game, especially from the Mets point-of-view.  On Monday night, they played two pop-ups into triples as well as muffing several chances in the field.  Last night, although they were charged with only one error, they really messed up quite a few plays.  Maybe they are in a funk right now, but you kind of wonder how they are still over .500 in the NL East and actually sort of in contention.

The Cubs were kind of lucky to win Tuesday's game.  I'm not sure what has happened to Randy Wells.  He just seems to have lost all confidence and command.  The first three innings plus were agonizing.  I read this morning that he had been DFAed, which is a shame.  He looked really good his rookie year and his peripheral numbers were just as good in his second, but since then things have turned sour.  You wonder whether he may have come back too soon from the injury at the start of 2011.

Bend Sinister

Same old story.  The Cubs dropped three straight over the weekend to the Diamondbacks.  We already commented on the first game.  Sveum managed to put up the same idiotic lineup twice in the series even though only one left-hander started for Arizona.

These days it doesn't much matter anyway.  Get a runner to third base with no outs and the opposition has the Cubs hitters pretty much where they want them.  Also, getting a left-hander up just stretching in the bullpen seems to strike such terror in old Dale's heart that he will allow mopes like Baker and Johnson and Mather in to take their licks while more capable players continue to sit.

I can't figure it out and it is rather past the point of trying.  The fear of left-handedness seems to extend to the point of our own pitchers as well.  James Russell has been one of the most consistently effective relievers on the team this season and most of last.  He is, however, rarely used in tight games.

Witness yesterday when the Cubs trailed 3-1 in the eighth inning.  A serious team uses their closer or next best pitcher to keep it close.  Sveum instead brings on Manny Corpas to put the game out of reach before calling on Russell to put out the fire.  Then in the ninth with two men on, Sveum chooses to let LaHair sit and end the game with the slumping Clevenger.

Not the first time we have seen such tactics.  I cannot decide whether Sveum and the Cubs are afraid of left-handers, even their own, or he has no confidence in any of his players, so he chooses to protect the ones who may have a future from failure by not giving them a chance to try.  Either way, it is hard to watch.

The Cubs announced the long-awaited promotion of Anthony Rizzo to the major leagues. Starting Tuesday, of course, because the Mets will start a left-hander on Monday night.  What a bunch of wimps these guys are!  I wish Rizzo well and I think he is a genuinely good prospect, but don't expect any miracles here or even that he will play every day.  I mean, what with the sinister tactics these opponents employ.

Looking over the probables for the games coming up before the All-Star break and you cannot help but be afraid, very afraid.  Looks like seven of the thirteen probable starters are left-handers.  Hide now.  Don't watch.

Just as an aside, I notice that Marlon Byrd received a fifty day suspension for testing positive for a banned substance.  In this case, it is a drug used to mitigate and disguise steroid effects.  Can't say I'm surprised.

Not to Belabor the Point

However, maybe we need to do so.  Here's Dale Sveum's post-game "explanation" of why he stuck with the all right-handed lineup against the emergency Arizona starter last night, along with some editorial background provided by Tyler Emerick of the MLB website.

Cubs manager Dale Sveum said he could've changed the lineup if he wanted to, but he opted to stand pat against Collmenter, whose tomahawk-like delivery is a unique arm angle for hitters.

"Just a few minutes before the lineups were exchanged," Cubs manager Dale Sveum said when asked when he found out about the switch. "I had time to change it. It was more of Collmenter, [whom] we had no prior history against, none of our hitters had faced him. He's so funky, he's a guy you need to face three, four or five times before you get a good reading on that arm slot."

Collmenter, who entered the game with right-handed hitters batting .212 against him and lefties hitting .346, ended up throwing four innings, surrendering just three hits and a run.

Huh?  What?  I mean, hold on a second there.  I mean, what on earth is this guy talking about?  This is the same Josh Collmenter who started the season in the Arizona rotation, but was demoted to the bullpen because his ERA after four April starts was over 9.  Who still hasn't got his ERA under 5?

Evidently some major league hitters have figured him out, especially the left-handers who were hitting nearly .350 against him.  So the expectation, at least in Sveum's mind, is that figuring this out is something beyond the Cubs hitters, so we might just as well stick with the awful lineup card he had submitted because, what the hell, nobody could possibly produce a quality at-bat against this guy anyway.

Wow!  Upon this foundation, the future of the Cubs is being built.  I seriously wonder how long this is going to go on before fans just tune it out.  Maybe they already have.

Am I missing something?

OK, so the Arizona starter, a lefty, cannot get loose. The Cubs had virtually an all right-handed lineup going. However, he is replaced by a righty. Dale sticks with the original lineup anyway. This is the same lineup that is 3-15 and never scores a run. So is Sveum just dumb or didn't he notice, or just plain lazy? Whatever! Welcome to the new Cubs, just like the old Cubs.

The Sox Series

The Cubs blew away the White Sox in Game 1 Monday night and were themselves blown away in Game 3 when they were shut out by the slumping Gavin Floyd.  In between, they played a very nice game to defeat Jake Peavy 2-1 on Tuesday.

The Cubs may have obtained a keeper in Travis Wood, who came over from Cincinnati in the Sean Marshall trade.  He has improved with each outing and he is young enough to have a higher ceiling than the rest of Theo's recent acquisitions.  I wish I could say that Randy Wells has snapped out of his pitching funk, but he seems to have lost his command as well as his confidence.  I suppose he is worth another spot start, especially in view of the alternative, the dreaded Chad Volstad.

I liked the new lineup, which basically consisted of moving LaHair up to third and also into right field, evidently in preparation for an immanent promotion of Anthony Rizzo.  Some speculate he will be activated this weekend against the Diamondbacks.  Despite the calculations that he would fall short of the roster time needed to advance his free agency any time he is brought up now, I rather think they are going to wait at least until the home stand, more or less because Dale Sveum is loathe to play left-handed hitters against left-handed pitching any time at all.  The Diamondbacks are scheduled to start lefties Friday and Sunday.  I expect they will sit Bryan LaHair for these games as well even though he deserves a chance to play every day.  What have they got to lose.

A Sorry Excuse for a Baseball Game

Yesterday night, fans were able to see two teams that Theo Epstein built, his former Boston Red Sox and current Chicago Cubs, match up.  It wasn't pretty.

Incidentally, if you read the Boston press, you will find that he has accumulated just as much bile there as he has stockpiled patience and faith here.  A tale of two cities.

To give Boston its due, they are pretty banged up.  That having been said, their hopeless incompetence in letting the Cubs tie the score in the sixth inning was an appalling display of ineptitude that was only equaled by the Cubs performance through the rest of the game.  I mean, I don't remember ever having seen two guys cover second base on an easy double play chance for the pitcher and neither one catch the throw.

It's probably not worth cataloging the Cubs incompetence through the rest of the game except to note that it is has become the rule rather than the exception and it is not getting any better.  Which, of course, is the real problem.  Needless to say, we saw a continuation of the utter futility of this team against left-handed pitching.

Some choice quotes from Dale Sveum on the lefty issue:

"You can't even try to do what we do against left-handed pitching," Sveum said. "It's very difficult to have those kind of numbers and slugging percentage and everything like that against left-handed pitching on a consistent basis."

"It's the same story -- a left-handed pitcher, we were getting beat constantly on the fastball," Sveum said. "That's the bottom line. It wasn't like he was doing a whole lot else besides throwing a lot of fastballs." 

OK, Dale, we know it's a problem, but you still keep trotting out the same mopes against lefties with the same results.  Try something different.  And, if you are getting beat by fastballs, then maybe you should consider that the primary theory behind the lefty/righty platoon is the advantage that pitchers have in throwing breaking balls to same-sided hitters and the advantage hitters have in hitting breaking balls thrown by opposite-sided pitchers.  Fastballs present no advantage either way.

Actually, the Cubs and Dale Sveum are now absolutely terrified at the prospect of facing left-handers.  In the wild sixth inning during which Boston misplayed nearly every chance but escaped with allowing only one run, the Cubs stuck with the right-handed hitters simply because Boston had a lefty warming up in the bullpen.

Just as an aside, the Cubs had an opportunity, down three runs, to use Bryan LaHair as a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the ninth with men at the corners, but chose instead to allow the veteran Reed Johnson to strike out against a right-hander.  Go figure.

A few years ago, under Lou Piniella, the Cubs were employing the same tactics with the same players and the same results.  It was discovered then that the Cubs did not have a left-handed batting practice pitcher and never practiced against left-handers.  If my memory served me correctly, they went out and got someone to throw batting practice left-handed, not that it eventually had any effect on their performance.

I listened to a bit of the national play-by-play both Saturday and Sunday.  Both teams of announcers were wondering when Cubs fans would get sick of watching this painful excuse for a baseball team and when Theo and company would start to feel some heat.

I have got to say that the one thing that surprises me is that all the fans and media have bought into this long-term rebuilding process and have cut Epstein so much slack.  I'm all for clearing out the deadwood and building the team, but you have to understand that fans have a legitimate expectation that a rich team like this that charges some of the highest ticket prices in MLB would field a team that would at least provide some modicum of entertainment.

I'll have more to say on the subject in subsequent posts.

The Homestand So Far, Thoughts about Trading Pitchers

The Cubs lost two out of three to the Detroit Tigers.  For some reason, the series set an attendance record for a three game midweek series, filling the house, mainly with Detroit fans, for each game.  The Red Sox series this weekend is likely to do the same, although the split might be a bit more equal.

As to the Detroit series, the Cubs won the first game thanks to the generosity of the Tigers defense.  I can see now why they are not in first place in the AL East.  Their outfield defense is pretty good, but their infield is just plain awful.  After the first game, the Cubs were just outclassed, blowing a 4-1 lead in Game 2 and succumbing to Justin Verlander in Game 3.  Travis Wood turned in a gutsy performance in that game.  I've always thought that among the Epstein/Hoyer acquisitions thus far, he might have a future.

In the first game of the Boston series, Dempster again turned in a sterling performance.  I've never been a big fan of Ryan Dempster, but this year he does seem inspired, perhaps by the fact it is his contract year and that another year like the previous two and he is likely out of baseball or back in the bullpen.

The Cubs were a little lucky to beat the Red Sox 3-0 yesterday.  The Red Sox are fielding a pretty makeshift team these days what with all the injuries to key players.  Dice-K walked the bases loaded in the first and the Cubs picked up two runs on Clevenger "double", a pop fly that dropped in front of an indecisive Scott Posednik, the fastest blockhead ever to play left-field.  I take it as a measure of the Bosox desperation and the sheer awfulness of Marlon Byrd that they brought this guy up to play through Carl Crawford's injury time and released Byrd.

Later on, Ryan Dempster "tripled" to right field when Adrian Gonzalez, whom the Red Sox are forced to play in the outfield to get Ortiz's bat into the lineup at first base, made an ill-advised try at a diving catch on a blooper.  DeJesus drove him home with probably the only solid hit the Cubs managed all day against Dice-K.

Everyone is agog with the trade rumors swirling about the Cubs veteran pitchers Ryan Dempster and Matt Garza.  I fully support the idea that Dempster should be traded.  He is having a career year and he is a free agent next year at 35.  Some contender will overpay for his services through the balance of the season and they will likely be disappointed.  Even in his prime, Dempster has never been a playoff or stretch run talent.  The Cubs should get a good return for Dempster, hopefully in return for a solid pitching prospect who is likely to be ready next year or a third baseman fitting the same category.

If they go for younger prospects, they are taking a bigger risk.  These trades that are made to flesh out the farm system rarely pan out and even the ones made for guys close to the majors rarely yield equal value.  That's one reason the Cubs should think twice about dealing Matt Garza, a proven major league pitcher who should not be considered expendable even on a team that is as weak as the Cubs.  Guys like Garza get traded by poor teams that cannot afford to pay them.

If you look at some of the recent blockbuster pitcher trades, you will understand what I am getting at.  As a general rule, one should never trade good younger pitchers who are under team control.  Take the Cubs acquisition of Garza from Tampa Bay.  Arguably, the Rays could not afford to pay Garza even in arbitration and they were pitching rich, but what they got in return, even though it depleted the Cubs system of prospects, was the equivalent of a bag of baseballs.  Archer, the pitcher, has been a bust.  Sam Fuld is a serviceable fifth outfielder.  Chirinos and Guyer have had a cup of coffee at the big league level, and Lee, the Korean shortstop who was supposed to be a can't miss star, is languishing at the AA level, unable to hit at all.

The Nationals acquired Gio Gonzalez from the A's for four genuine prospects.  Two of the pitchers, Cole and Peacock, have put up bad minor league stats.  The other, Milone, has pitched about as well as Travis Wood in the majors.  The catcher, Derrick Norris, may be a major leaguer in time.  Gonzalez, on the other hand, is a star and a major reason the Nats are in contention.

The Cubs should only hope they would get as good a haul as the Padres landed for Matt Latos.  Even there, the primary player, Yonder Alonso, has been mediocre this year.  Volquez, the pitcher, has been a flop.  Boxberger, the reliever, has been unimpressive at AAA.  The real prospect here, Yasmani Grandal, has shined at AAA.  He might be the redemption for this deal.

My point, I guess, is that the idea is to build a winner in the majors, not to stock the farm system as an end in itself.  If you have a good player under team control in his late twenties, the odds are with you if you keep him.

Yes!

Maybe somebody reads this blog after all.  News just breaking the Cubs have fired Rudy Jaramillo.  Guess someone in the front office was not so satisfied with the team's approach.

Good News and Bad News

The Cubs had an off-day today before a week of interleague play at home where they cannot use Soriano at DH.  Aside from winning a game behind Ryan Dempster on Sunday, the good news is that they appear to have succeeded in signing the highly touted young Cuban outfielder Jorge Soler.  He is at least a year or two away from the majors, but he appears to be a solid young talent.

The bad news is the Cubs are happy with their approach at the plate, at least according to Rudy Jaramillo.  Lets hope they do not let Rudy anywhere near this Soler kid.  There are some guys who manage to hang around major league baseball for a long time and achieve an outsized reputation in the process.  Jaramillo is one of them.  Lets not forget that the Rangers went to the series in the two years after Jaramillo's departure.  Since his arrival in Chicago, the Cubs batting statistics have steadily deteriorated.

If you don't believe me, take a look at this year.  The Cubs rank 27th of 30 major league teams in runs scored, OBP, and bases-on-balls, moving up to 26th in OPS.  They scoot up to 6th in hitting into double plays.  I could go on and on, but you get the picture.  So far the Cubs have scored 222 runs in 60 games, a little over a third of the season.  That's an average of 3.7 runs per game.  They are on a pace to score just about 600 runs if they are lucky, which is not just bad but awful.

Anyway, Rudy is pretty happy with the Cubs approach at the plate.  So what is wrong with this picture and why is he still on the staff?

As Bad as Bad Can Be

The Cubs and Brewers managed to trade blowouts before the Brewers took the rubber match on Thursday.  As usual, the Cubs fielded their right-handed lineup of losers.  They only got into the game when the Brewers removed Randy Wolf.  This gave Sveum leave to insert some left-handed hitters and to take the lead behind Bryan LaHair's two-run homer.

Sveum chose to rely upon his new favorite has-been reliever, the well-traveled and incompetent Manny Corpas.  Corpas quickly blew the lead, setting the stage for the 10th inning heroics of Norichika Aoki, who hit his second home run of the day.  Aoki looks like a diminutive version of Kosuke Fukudome in batting style.  Until Thursday, his only homer was an inside-the-park job.  Go figure.

The Cubs, Astros, Padres, and Twins are the four worst teams in baseball right now.  So far the Cubs have been able to master only the Padres this year.  Which tells you a lot.  Maybe more than you need to know.  Is this team built to lose?

Friday night's game was a nip and tuck affair.  The Cubs bullpen managed to blow a 5-2 lead and lose again in the tenth inning.  Even when they score runs, the Cubs usually score these days as a result of home runs.  Home runs are nice, but if you just score when you hit home runs, it is usually an indication not of a good offense, but a flawed one.  In the case of the Cubs, it is a team that just will not take base-on-balls.

Here's Dale Sveum's quote on his management of the bullpen, particularly the decision to leave Sean Camp in the game for the tenth inning after he had blown a lead in the ninth.  I thought that Epstein and Hoyer had put their managerial candidates through a rigorous in-game strategy grilling as part of the selection process.  Guess I was wrong.

"I went with the two best guys I've had all year," Sveum said. "Once we battled back, with Russell and Camp, you're going to ride them to whatever their pitch count is. They're the two best guys we've had. All season long, they've gotten the job done. One of them had to be on the mound as long as he could go."

Duh!  I mean what is this guy thinking?  I've watched a lot of baseball games and one observation I can make is that when a relief pitcher has a tough, game-on-the-line inning like Camp did in the ninth, he never comes back to give you another quality inning.

The ninth was a stressful inning for Camp and that should have been it.  He gave up a single and a triple to the first two guys he faced then.  He did well to get out of it with the game tied, but you do not have to be a genius to realize that he would not do it again.

He didn't.  A walk, a sacrifice, and an infield hit set the stage for Willingham's solid game winner.  As soon as I saw Camp take the mound in the tenth, I knew it was over.  So did the Cub players.  On the game winning hit, nobody moved a muscle.

Just as an aside, is it just me or was there something peculiar about the defensive alignment on that play?  The Cubs brought in Mather from left field to be a fifth infielder.  From the replay, though, it looked as if the Cubs were playing two third basemen.  Stewart and Mather lined up within a body length of each other, and neither one was guarding the line.  Not that the result of the play wasn't a forgone conclusion anyway.

Soriano Tops Cubs 2-0

It's a shame to see the Cubs waste a good effort by Travis Wood by some really sloppy play and the usual incompetent batting.  First off, the hitting or lack thereof.  Barry Zito averages four or five walks per start, but you wouldn't know it from the Cubs aggressive approach.  Once again, we saw the right-handers of doom play with the exception of Tony Campana and Ian Stewart.  I actually like Stewart in these situation because he will take pitches.  So will DeJesus and LaHair.  Even though they do not have good averages against lefties, they are better than the awful alternatives, especially Double Play Baker.

On the subject of these matchups, I'm getting a little tired of seeing Tony Campana play.  I know I suggested that the Cubs try him leading off for a bit, and I still think it is a defensible idea.  However, this guy is really short and he hits from a crouch, so how come he cannot take a pitch.  He cannot disrupt a game unless he reaches base and they play him now at virtually little league depth, so his only consistent chance is to try to coax more walks or wait for mistakes.  Instead he is swinging at 3-1 70 mph curveballs over his head.

The real problem Sunday, though, was Soriano.  On Saturday, I thought Garza was going to break a bat over his head when he played a popup into a double and cost Garza the game.  Alfonso was at it again Sunday.  In the fifth inning, he broke up the no-hitter by misplaying a very catchable line drive into a double.  Later in the inning, Koyie Hill dropped a throw at the plate that would have gunned down the runner, giving the Giants all the runs they needed.  Just to add some insurance though, in the eighth, Soriano nonchalanted a single to left with the runner going, looked over the ball for a second or so and then delivered it to second base, thus allowing the runner to score easily from first.

The Giants scored four runs over the weekend against Cubs pitching, three of which were the result of Soriano's incompetent play.  Earlier this year, I commented on Soriano's seemingly improved play in the outfield despite his worthlessness at the plate.  He has come back to Earth on defense.  Some of this is not just the result of not knowing how to play baseball, although that is a big factor.  His knee is obviously bothering him.

But that brings up an interesting question.  The Cubs are evidently showcasing him or hoping against hope that he will look like a major league player so they can agree to pay somebody $50MM plus to take him off their hands.  A laudable goal, but the thing is that other teams have scouts too and they have surely noticed that he can barely walk.  This dramatically limits the market to AL teams who want a right-handed DH of questionable abilities.  They better move this guy quick.  Usually, Soriano has a pretty decent start to the season and starts to tail off dramatically in June before he hits bottom in July.  This was in years when he was OK.  They are going to have to bail on this guy really soon or else put him on the DL and have his knee repaired.

Mea Culpa

I left off in the middle of the Wednesday game, won in heroic fashion by a walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth by, of all people, Darwin Barney.  Actually, Barney is on a bit of a roll and he was the sparkplug of the entire homestand.

Anyway, the victory had very little to do with the right-handed lineup that I hate so much, which provided a reliable loss against a really good left-handed pitcher Friday night in San Francisco.

Sveum actually changed it up Friday night, playing Campana in CF and letting Clevenger catch.  Campana had a first inning hit, but otherwise did nothing whilst Clevenger was clearly overmatched.

What I really don't like about this lineup, aside from not giving the opposing pitcher a different look every now and again, is that, for some reason, none of the Cubs right-handed hitters show any patience at the plate, whereas their left-handed hitters generally do. The same was true last year when Fukudome and Pena were the only guys who worked the count.

So what happens here is that you put in right-handed hitters like Baker and Johnson and so on who ought to hit lefties but do not, instead making quick outs.  You also sacrifice defense, especially when Baker plays.  Last night he messed up two foul popups, although it did not matter in the outcome.

Last night's game, besides the messed up popups, involved several eccentric decisions and plays, not that, despite the Soriano three-run homer in the ninth, the Cubs were ever really in contention.  One was the weird steal attempt by Starlin Castro who stopped cold just before second base, allegedly because he thought he heard a foul ball.  This seems like baloney because he never actually looked back toward the plate.

The ninth inning after the homer was a bit of an adventure.  LaHair hit a pinch-hit double.  This prompted the first of several odd moves.  Ian Stewart was sent in to run for LaHair.  Now the idea that Stewart is a superior base-runner is news to me.  He proved it on the next play when Barney hit a soft groundball to the third base side that he beat out for an infield hit.  Stewart remained rooted to the spot at second base when the third baseman and pitcher both had to move out of position in an attempt to field the ball.

Stewart's baserunning error determined the outcome of the rally.  The Giants put in a left-handed pitcher, knowing the Cubs only right-handed bat on the bench was the truly awful switch-hitting Koyie Hill.  Sveum chose to stick with Clevenger, who grounded out weakly to first base, advancing the runners.

You'll never know whether a baserunner would have scored from third on the grounder.  It kind of brings up another objection to the righty-lefty lineup juggling.  At the end of the game, the manager is pretty much left with only left or right-handed choices to pinch hit.  Poor ones at that.  In this case, Sveum had Stewart, Hill, and DeJesus.  Hill cannot hit anyone.  Stewart and DeJesus have been bad against lefties all year, batting under .200.

Anyway, Sveum was in a box there, but I think if he had it to do over again, he might have managed it differently.  I hope so.  Tonight's another chance.  It should be a good matchup between Garza and Cain.

More of the Sveum

So the Cubs break out with an 11-7 windblown victory Monday.  Today, however, they face a mediocre left-handed pitcher, which, of course, means the right-handed lineup of doom.

We noted yesterday the results of this lineup, but some guys can't figure this out, can they?  There is some sort of truism linking the repetition of the same action in the expectation of different results as a form of mental illness.

It's the fifth inning now and the Cubs are down 1-0.  The wind is howling out, but short of the Cubs knocking out Eric Stultz and turning over the lineup, this game is probably out of reach already.  Hope I'm wrong.

Twelve

By now, pretty much everyone agrees the recent skid is due to the perennial Cubs problem, not scoring runs.  Which, of course, is due to their whole approach at the plate which is characterized, in the main, by terminal impatience and dumbness.

Not to belabor the obvious, but this is really a dumb team and has been for years.  Lets take Garza, who in addition to not being able to throw the ball to first base, has now become afflicted with ideas.  Apparently, Garza thought that he could fool the Pirates by sneaking in a couple of change-ups, his fourth best pitch, when he was throwing upwards of 95 mph all day.  All of them got deposited in the seats, resulting in seven unanswered runs.

But not to worry, Garza is now aware of this and thinks, on balance, these pitches were not a good idea.  The thing that is bothersome, however, is how he was even allowed to throw these pitches in the first place.  I had always supposed that the catcher was in control of the game, kind of like in Bull Durham when Crash Davis comes out and tells Nuke that he is doing the thinking, not Nuke.

The point here is not to just make a joke, but to note that the Cubs decline is coincidental to the spate of injuries to all the Cubs legitimate catchers.  Not that Soto, Castillo, and Clevinger are in Yadier Molina's league, but the catcher is so important in controlling the game, and it just seems the Cubs are sadly deficient in this respect.  For example, the Marmol situation.  Sure, he doesn't like to throw his fastball, but somebody has to make him do it, and that duty, I'm afraid, belongs to the catcher.

The other instance of terminal dumbness has to do with the lineup.  I had some hopes when Epstein and Hoyer took over that we would see some change of philosophy here, but unfortunately we got Dale Sveum at the helm.  Sveum seems sadly out of step with what one supposed was to be the prevailing approach of the front office.

I don't want to beat this to death, but somebody is supposed to be looking at numbers.  Here's an interesting set of numbers.  The Cubs have one of the worst batting averages against left-handed pitching in all of baseball.  They invariably start a right-handed hitting lineup against lefties.  Their record this year is 1-9.  Draw your own conclusions.

The thing is that when he explains all this, Sveum sounds like a replay of Quade who sounded like a replay of Lou Piniella.  I don't expect this team to contend, but you can at least pretend you are able to think your way out of a paper bag.  Right-handed hitters are supposed to have an advantage against left-handed pitching.  Cubs right-handed hitters, however, clearly do not.  Time to stop pretending that a superficial generalization has anything to do with real world performance and maybe dig a little deeper. 

Has Sveum Lost the Team Already?

Listening to some post-game analysis and browsing through some blogs and on-line sites, it is apparent some people are wondering whether the Cubs manager has just lost the team this early in his career.  He has certainly lost the fans, and I have to say it is just possible he has lost the team as well.  If so, it is something of an achievement.  It took Lou Piniella two and one-half years, and Quade three months or so if you count his audition in 2010.  Two months might be some kind of record.

The Cubs lost their twelfth in a row today at Pittsburgh and there were precious signs of life on the bench, in the field, and in Sveum's head.  Once again, the anemic right-handed lineup that cannot hit left-handed pitching.  With predicable results.  Another great throw by Matt Garza on the second play of the game.  OK, I could go on and on.

Here's the thing, though, this team was approaching respectability when the wheels came off in St. Louis on May 17.  Paul Maholm pitched badly in this start, but the Cubs came back to tie the game at 6 going to the bottom of the ninth.  The Cubs put Rafael Dolis, who had then for some unaccountable reason been designated the closer, in to pitch.

Matt Holliday singled.  After Dolis struck out Craig, Freese grounded out to Stewart, but Holliday advanced to second base.  Sveum could have and should have walked Molina intentionally.  Instead he decided to pitch to him.  He moved the second baseman Barney over toward the middle of the infield.  Molina hit a sharp grounder directly to the spot that Barney had vacated.  Barney got a glove on it but it got by him and the game was over.

They haven't won since, nor have they shown much interest in winning.  Sveum has avowed that he would have made the same move again, that he wasn't going to think about the what-ifs, and so on.  He didn't linger on about thinking and analyzing decisions.  What happened, happened.

OK, I can see the positioning move being unlucky.  What I can't see is pitching to Molina, which even Brenly avowed at the time was dumb.  I don't have any evidence of this, but the players can see this stuff too and it is not too far-fetched for them to make the logical conclusion that their leader is more or less brainless.  That and the fact that this team is built to lose and you get a twelve game losing streak.

Ten and Counting

The Cubs losing streak hit ten yesterday night.  The Pirates, who make rather a specialty of not scoring runs at all, managed one run off Ryan Dempster.  Actually, the run scored early in the game rather fittingly off a muffed double play grounder straight at Ryan Dempster, which, of course, he messed up, managing finally to get one out on the play.

There are three things that have characterized this latest streak.  One is the fact that Cubs pitchers simply cannot field their position and make routine plays when they count.  I don't know what it is, but it is getting a little tiresome to watch Matt Garza throw wildly to first or Ryan Dempster get the ball stuck in his glove every time he fields a ground ball.

The Cubs tried desperately to give the Pirates more chances, including two errors by the seemingly useless Adrian Cardenas, but their opponents resolutely refused to take advantage.

The second trend here is, of course, the lack of timely hitting.  For a while, when LaHair was not mired in a terrible slump, the Cubs could count on getting an intelligent at-bat from at least one player.  It is not that the Cubs don't get men on base, although they could get more men on base if they were more patient.  They had twelve base-runners last night and left eleven on base.  The other, Joe Mather, was picked off.

What happens is this.  Once they get a runner on base, they change their whole approach.  The result is consistent failure.  Last night, they were 0 for 12 with runners in scoring position.  The thing is that this seems to be something of a Cubs trademark.  No matter who is on the team and who is playing, sooner or later, you get the same result.  Are these guys just dumb or what?  Anyway, go figure.  It's just there and it seems to be contagious.

The third consistent feature of the streak is strategy.  This obviously has to do with what happens when men get on base.  The obvious solution, for Sveum, is to give up an out.  What you are saying there is that you do not trust your hitter to put the ball in play as either a base hit or a well-directed grounder.  The obvious question and the obvious message is, why, then, is this guy batting?

Last night, the Cubs got a runner on base in the top of the ninth.  Unfortunately, Koyie Hill was due up.  Hill, is, of course, an automatic out.  So Sveum has Hill bunt into a force play.  Johnson, then, comes up and delivers a hit to right field.  Now the question arises, why wasn't Johnson pinch-hitting for Hill with the Pirates closer on the ropes?  Not that it mattered, as DeJesus and Castro struck out to end the game.

It goes a little deeper than just inning management, though.  At another level, there simply is very little thought given to the batting order.  I won't even mention the infamous all right-handed lineup that is guaranteed not to score runs ever.  But last night, we got the long-awaited shuffle that moved Castro out of the #3 spot.  Castro hit second, Mather third.  Why Mather would hit third is a matter of some conjecture, but I suppose it beats a blank.  Campana, who is a threat if he manages to get on base - and he actually gets on base more often than Castro - was promptly benched.  This is probably because Stewart is hurt and Cardenas, not Mather, was slotted to play third.

Having Campana in the lineup would have exceeded the unwritten Sveum rule that, if possible, everyone playing against a lefty should bat right-handed, whereas, one can never have more than four left-handed hitters in the lineup against a right-hander, presumably to assure balance.

Now I know it is hard to fill out a lineup card with placeholders, which is essentially what the Cubs team is right now.  And that is especially hard when all three of your major league catchers are hurt.  But there needs to be some thought involved.  One suggestion might be to hit Campana first on the odd chance he can get on base.  DeJesus is patient enough to give him a chance to steal.  I suppose you could have Mather hit third if you wanted, but Castro should drop down to sixth where he might relax and also provide some protection for Soriano when he doesn't make the third out.  Barney could bat seventh, after which it is pretty much nothing until one of the regular catchers can come back.  Just a thought, in any case.