0 for Milwaukee

Don't know when the Cubs last won in Milwaukee, but it has been a while.  Before they started to really stink in 2009, the Cubs used to dominate in Milwaukee and people used to call Miller Park Wrigley Field North.  So it goes.

Anyway, Saturday's game can be summed up in two words, Chris Volstad.  As we have noted before in these pages, this guy really stinks.  Lots of people think something can be done to tweak his style and stuff so that he can recover his form.  Listen, this guy has no form to recover.  He has always been a mediocre pitcher.

I know everyone says the Cubs still had to get rid of Zambrano, but I still regard trading Z and resigning Wood as major mistakes, irrational moves that maybe, to give Epstein and Co. the benefit of the doubt, were dictated by ownership.  I certainly hope so.  I mean, Zambrano was a powder keg and his fastball had slipped, but the thing is, he knows how to pitch and he has made adjustments.  His ERA in Miami, despite some tough luck getting games blown by Heath Bell, is under 2.00.  Enough said.

Friday's game was a winnable game for the Cubs and they were a little unlucky to lose it after 13 innings.  Marmol had two strikes on Hart before he had to be removed in favor of Bowden who promptly blew the lead.  Still, the Cubs came back to take the lead again before the Hart homer in the ninth tied it.

After that things just got strange.  I guess this game was another illustration of how baseball lifers can tie themselves in knots with their "strategies".  After the game, both managers bemoaned the fact that had their players just been able to execute a simple, fundamental sacrifice, etc.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  The sacrifice bunt is one of the dumbest and overused plays in baseball.  It almost never makes sense and you can prove this statistically.  Maybe it makes sense in the late innings when you want to keep your starter in the game.  Maybe.

Anyway, when you think about it, it really makes no sense in an extra inning game for the visiting team.  You have three outs then before the game passes out of your control.  The home team, on the other hand, has the same three outs, but if they fail to score, the game just extends another inning.  Under these circumstances, why would you want to give away one of the three precious outs that stand between you and defeat?

So in almost every frame after the ninth, each team put the leadoff man on base and proceeded to haplessly fail to bunt him over.  In one case, Brenly remarked that it was just impossible for Ian Stewart to succeed in bunting the runners over (in this case, men at first and second) given the defense the Brewers had deployed even if he laid down a perfect bunt.  Of course, Stewart laid down a perfect bunt that resulted in a force out at third base.

The question is why managers consistently manage this way.  I think it is really a matter partly of stupidity and partly of fear.  These guys have drilled into their heads the idea that in extra innings you play for one run.  Fine.  But they also are haunted by the idea of reading in the papers the next day about how if they had just bunted the guy over in the top of the inning, they would have given their team a chance to win, and, now look what happened, they didn't bunt and then the other guys won it in the bottom of the inning, etc.

So, last night the Brewers won it in the bottom of the thirteenth when Castillo hit the first two Milwaukee batters, bringing up Aramis Ramirez who cannot bunt and never bunts.  So Ramirez gets a single and Hart wins it with a grounder through a drawn-in infield.  Nobody remarks on how this inning played completely against the strategy adopted by both managers in the five predecing half-innings, instead remarking how unfortunate it was nobody could lay down a sacrifice earlier which might have blah, blah, blah.  Go figure.