Worse Than You Ever Thought Possible

The Cubs were shut out in a doubleheader at New York.  Not all that surprising when you look at the lineups tossed out there.  Here's another piece of unsolicited advice for Renteria: Don't play utility players every day.

Case in point: Tonights lineup contains three utility players, viz., Bonafacio, Sweeney, and Valbuena.  No excuse for this, coupled with all the bunting and the complete lack of plate discipline with men on base and you get a 4-10 start.

Incidentally, the inevitable cooling off of Bonafacio has started a little quicker than even I anticipated.  He is 1 for 21 in his last six starts and 0 for 13 since his rest day last Saturday.

Rain Delay

Lets hope it rains long enough to prevent Jackson's return.  I hate to be negative, but what on Earth the Cubs saw in this guy to give him a lucrative four-year deal, I do not know.

Speaking of poor management decisions, one cannot help but note that the Cubs used Villanueva as a starter in Saturday's game.  After he had pitched badly, they brought in Chirs Rusin to mop up.  Five innings, one run.

Before the end of spring training, there was a big debate as to whether they should bring Rusin north and use him in the fifth starter role until Arietta was ready or go with Villanueva in that role.  Guess what looks like the conventional but wrong decision now.

I only offer these jabs at management because they have uniformly gotten a free pass from most commentators and the established press for the past three years.  There seems to be some thought in their moves, but they sure are wrong a lot and no one ever mentions it in polite company.

Updates

The Cubs managed to pull out an extra-innings victory last night against all odds in a game they had won already going into the ninth.  Is anyone else getting tired of Jose Veras?

The Cubs have a significant investment in Veras whom they undoubtedly intend to flip at the trade deadline just as the Astros did last year.  The problem, of course, is that Veras stinks this year.  Maybe he is hurt.  I don't know.  But to justify the strategy, the Cubs and Renteria will have to risk losing games in order to showcase expendable "talent."

One of the problems I have with the Cubs and have had since the new regime took control is that they are run for the purpose of marketing and acquiring "assets," not, apparently, for winning games or building a team capable of winning games right now, today.

On that subject, it is hard to know whether what we have seen from Renteria is actually Renteria or some sort of front office directed style or just a guy who is afraid of making a mistake, so he makes lots of mistakes and takes care to manage in the most conventional fashion in order to avoid being accused of making mistakes.

In any case, one observation one may hazard is that if a new manager is given a lot of options, even if those options are inferior, he will use them to his detriment.  Hence, all the platoons.  Enough already.  The Cubs left-handed platoon is the weakest lineup the Cubs could field both offensively and defensively.  Moreover, the Cubs have three or four guys who either have some potential or have something to prove, namely, Lake, Olt, Barney, and maybe Kalish.  They almost never play.  Go figure.

On the theory that the Cubs are playing guys who are either established regulars or guys they intend to flip, I suppose this augurs well for their future.  Maybe they are safe.

Some unsolicited advice for Renteria:

• Enough with the bunts.  Bunts are outs.  If you only score an average of three runs or fewer a game, you cannot give up outs.  Last night the Cubs won only because the Cardinals manager made a blunder in allowing Rosenthal to hit for himself and pitch a second inning and because, after a miserably managed inning, Castillo hit a three-run homer.

• Enough with the platoons.  Find a regular lineup and stick to it with only a couple of exceptions like Schierholtz/Ruggiano.  I know that Bonafacio is hot and plays a lot of positions.  As long as he is hot, put him in CF and leave him there until he hits that inevitable 0 for 30 streak.  The alternative is Sweeney.  Come on.

• Figure out the bullpen.  If you do not have a traditional closer, don't pretend you do.  Russell is not the quick out lefty, Wright is.  Is something wrong with Wright, because he almost never pitches and hardly ever in the role he was acquired to fill?  By and large, the bullpen is OK, but has been overused.  Renteria needs to go an out or two longer with effective starters like Wood and Samardzija and Hammel.

I should note that the Pirates series confirmed our earlier observations that there was not a lot of difference between the two teams.  The Cubs went 2-4, but could easily have split or taken the series 4-2 with a couple of breaks and better decisions.  I actually think the Pirates will not be serious contenders this year.  They made very few off-season moves to repair weaknesses and their starting pitching is weaker.  They don't score runs either, much along the lines of the Cubs in that respect.

Breakout?

Well, sort of.  The Cubs did manage to score eight runs Sunday against the Phillies' A.J. Burnett.  Burnett was wild and the Cubs, uncharacteristically, displayed some patience, at least in the two innings they scored runs.  More of this is needed.

Just for kicks I ran some numbers on the number of pitches the Cubs have seen in relation to the number of pitches their opponents have seen this year from Cubs pitchers.

Not surprisingly, the numbers against the Pirates were pretty even.  Actually on opening day, the Cubs saw 154 pitches from the Pirates as opposed to the 128 pitches the Cubs threw.  For the rest of the series, the numbers are pretty even, 258/256, and 129/133.

These numbers confirm the fact that you are dealing with two teams that have a similar approach to hitting and have difficulty scoring runs.  The real difference between the Cubs and Pirates is maturity.  The Pirates have four players - McCutchen, Marte, Martin, and Alvarez - who could find a spot on any roster, plus a dominant bullpen.  The Cubs have an inconsistent bullpen and probably no position players at this stage of their career who could find a spot on a genuine contender.

Back to the pitch count analysis, the real difference with a genuinely good offensive team is revealed by the Phillies series.  The numbers there are much more skewed: 128/171, 122/151, 140/142.  Essentially, Philadelphia saw 74 more pitches than the Cubs in the course of that series, 72 in the two games they won.  Which means really that they had 74 more chances to reach base.

As a side note, the "Welcome Home Carlos Marmol" award goes to Jose Veras.  Is this guy messed up or what?

5 Games, 8 Runs

That's pretty much the story of the season thus far.  Looking over the lineups so far, I cannot see how the results could be much different.  These guys do not hit basically because, especially in clutch situations, they hit brainlessly.  How much a different approach can be taught is an interesting question.

The lineup today is basically just every left-handed hitter Renteria can find.  One good thing, Castro is dropped to sixth in the order.  Just why anyone considers him a #2 or #3 or even #1 hitter is beyond me.

One bad thing about all the lineup changes and shuffling so far is that no one is really comfortable with his spot in the order or day to day.  Not sure this is a good thing.

I'd like to see more consistency myself.  If Bonafacio stays hot, why not just leave him in CF.  Sweeney is a big zero anyway.  My problem with the way the Cubs are structured now is that the alternatives to players with genuine potential are really just bad.  I mean why not play Olt and Lake every day, for example.

Well, lets see today's game.  Burnett pitches for the Phillies.  Cubs generally do not do well against him.

Say What?

Here's a quote from Theo Epstein (cited in a Gordon Wittenmyer article) about how the 2014 season will be judged by the front office.  I defy anyone to make any sense of this truly Rumsfeldian rambling.

Entering the third year of team president Theo Epstein’s regime, the front office won’t be focusing on whether the team wins more than the 66 games it won last year, Epstein said — or even on identifying so-called core guys for the future.

“I think too much has been made about identifying core guys,” he said. “You can be a good player and not be a core guy.”

The front office will measure this season “just by the progress of our young players,” Epstein said. “Are they in an environment where they can go through some adversity, make adjustments and thrive? Are our guys getting the most out of their ability at the big-league level? Are we putting them in a position to succeed, giving them the support system that they need and also holding them accountable, and holding them to high standards, and creating a winning-type environment?”

I am not at all clear about the notion you can create a winning environment without actually winning more often than you lose.  I suppose the nearest translation here is that we do not have a lot of really good players, in fact we have hardly any, so we are backing off the notion that Castro and Rizzo are the building blocks.  Instead, we are going to continue to lose nearly a hundred games a year and concentrate on nursing along the kind of guys who can tolerate that environment.

I'm sure these guys are smart because they keep telling us they are smart and know how to evaluate young talent and even old talent, but they have been wrong on numerous occasions as everyone in baseball almost surely is, but this kind of gibberish is just beyond comprehension.

Good luck, Rick Renteria.  You are going to need it.

Oh, and, by the way (from Mark Gonzales, Chicago Tribune), we are not going to talk any more about Jeff Samardzija, not ever again, OK.  Because nothing we have said or may say will make any sense anyway.  There.

"We talked about it early in spring training," Epstein said before today's game. "We indulged the questions. Right now we're just focused on the games and just going out and winning." Going on to discuss the team's general approach, Epstein indicated that the club would be cognizant of its place on the win curve in considering its options.

"All contracts collectively form a market and you have to be aware of the market and operate in the market when you're in free agency, and it affects everything you do, to a certain extent. But we have to make smart decisions for our situation, for the situation we're in now and the situation we're going to be in in a few years."

There are known knowns and unknown knowns and known unknowns we don't know anything about, but one thing is certain, we know we are going to lose, so whatever.

Opening Day

The Cubs lost a tough game to the Pirates this afternoon.  Not a whole lot you can say about it.  Neither team has the ability to score runs, so it was just a question of which relief pitcher would make a big mistake first.  In this case it was Villanueva.

Samardzija was much more dominant than Liriano, but it was pretty much for naught.  This does bring up some interesting observations about how the Cubs managed the game.  I rather think Renteria played this very defensively, more or less so he would not be criticized.  I really hope this is not an omen of things to come.

There were a lot of safe choices made that, in the end, turned out badly for the Cubs.  First off was removing Samardzija after seven innings.  He had thrown 89 pitches, which, to my mind, means he had another inning in the tank.  This means that instead of using three pitchers to get through the last two innings, you would only have needed one, a significant thing given the weakness of the Cubs bullpen.  In that case,Villanueva, a spot starter and not a late inning guy, would never have been in the game.

Not to belabor the criticism of handling the bullpen, but facing the bottom of the Pirates order in the tenth, and the first two hitters being left-handed, the move is to bring in Wright.  This turns Walker, the only guy who can really hurt you, to the right side of the plate, where he is a much weaker hitter and has virtually no power.  That or bring in Veras with the idea of getting into the eleventh with the heart of your order coming to bat.

Some further observations, to wit, what's with all the bunting?  There has been enough written to demonstrate how stupid the sacrifice bunt is, but apparently Renteria has not read it.  OK, the pitcher with men on first and second and no outs, maybe, even though it is early in the game.  Of course, the pitcher has to execute the bunt.  In this case, it turned into a double play.

The other two bunts, though, made no sense whatsoever.  Fast runner, Bonafacio, at first and no outs with Lake at bat.  What's the point of that?  And the worst yet, having Castillo bunt after the Valbuena walk.

Renteria clearly likes the platoon thing and the lefty-righty and vice-versa match-up.  OK, I suppose, but none of them worked out to much of an advantage on the offensive side and the move to bat Sweeney, who has never had a clutch hit in his life, for Barney, a tough out late in the game, was inexcusable.  You have to think that substituting a good left-handed hitter makes sense but that substituting a mediocre left-handed hitter is dumb.

Now that I have warmed up about the manager's style, I have got to wonder who filled out the lineup card.  Castro batting third?  Castro hit with men on base four times.  He collected a walk and three groundouts, all early in the count and two of them weak rollers on outside pitches he tried to pull.  The groundout with Bonafacio at third was just an awful at bat.  In that situation, you look for a pitch you can hit in the air, but the problem with Castro in a RBI spot is just his complete lack of situational hitting capacity.

You wonder why these guy lose a hundred games every year.  Losing games like this is part of the answer.