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.