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.