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.
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