One of the surprises this year has been the consistent performance of Jason Hammel, whom I admit I did not hold in much regard, especially after a pretty awful spring training. He pitched another gem on Sunday to salvage at least one game from the Brewers.
Of course, everyone expects the Cubs to trade him at the deadline along with Samardzija. This, as readers of this blog will note, is a strategy I cannot grasp.
Taking just Samardzija into account, it has taken the Cubs six years to develop Samardzija into the pitcher he is today. It makes some degree of sense to acquire a player that another organization spent some years to develop to the point of becoming a sure-fire major league talent the following season, but, in the main, the Cubs have received players in exchange who are similar projects of three or four years duration. I don't get it.
It is a measure of the disgrace this franchise has fallen to that players now regard getting traded as some kind of prison break they must work toward. Here's a link to a Gordon Wittenmyer article on the subject.
Some relatively predicable developments that are occurring earlier than usual in another seemingly lost season:
- Even though the Cubs main problem is failing to score runs, they have gone to the 13 man pitching staff in the aftermath of the Ruggiano injury. The bench was notably short of options in Saturday's loss.
- The Cubs continue, in the main, to score runs only when they hit home runs. I suppose this is because when they bat, they try to hit a home run all the time or else because they have no idea how to hit based on the game situation and every now and then they get lucky.
Anyway, they make for very boring viewing and I can only imagine what the clubhouse must be like after all these years of hopeless defeat.
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