When Lou Piniella agreed to be the manager of the Chicago Cubs, it was hoped that this would be a historic year for the franchise. Thanks to the events of today, I think it will be so.

The "Battery Brawl," Michael Barrett's second heavyweight fight in two years, is sure to take its place in baseball history alongside the famous 1977 Billy Martin-Reggie Jackson confrontation in the first base dugout at Fenway Park. If the Barrett-Zambrano throwdown doesn't quite achieve the infamy of the Martin-Jackson fight, it will be because the latter involved a New York team, one that would go on to win 100 games and a World Championship that very season. Barrett v. Zambrano, by contrast, is just the latest chapter in the comic history of a national laughingstock.

I am disappointed by Piniella's public reaction to the episode, at least to this point. As with so many of the team's failures this season, he seems willing to write it off as just another one of those things that shouldn't happen to a baseball team, but sometimes does. The problem is, like the missed flyballs and the mindless baserunning mistakes and the relief pitchers who thoughtlessly throw 0-and-2 meatballs in key situations, it happens to the Cubs a lot, and that's what the $300 million investment in free agents and the hiring of a high-profile field manager with a first-class pedigree was supposed to address.

I hope today's nonsense leads the Cubs to move both Barrett and Zambrano, neither of whom is signed to a contract beyond 2007 or apparently, is stable enough to make up the foundation of a championship team.

A few minutes ago, Ryan Theriot homered to bring the Cubs to within 5-4 against the Marlins at Wrigley Field. (Michael Wuertz just walked the first two men in the Florida eighth. By the time I finish this post, the game should be completely out of reach.)

Theriot's homer doesn't matter much to me, because I have no confidence in the Cubs' ability to complete the comeback, or if they do, in the ability of their bullpen to hold the lead.

This team doesn't do great things. They bludgeon an opponent now and then, but for the most part, they find ways to lose and to create heartache. (Tonight's second inning was a dandy illustration of ineptitude in action, when Mark DeRosa ran into an out at third base on an infield grounder by Michael Barrett, and then, shortly thereafter, with two outs AND THE PITCHER AT THE PLATE, Barrett got himself picked off second base.)

The Cubs are going to lose tonight and they're going to lose the majority of their games the rest of the season. Jim Hendry handed Lou Piniella an awkwardly configured roster and Piniella appears to have lost his magic dust somewhere between Seattle and Wrigley Field.

I'm disgusted by this team and its tragicomic failures. Friday night's loss at Los Angeles was gruesome; I have no doubt the Cubs will top it at least four or five times the rest of the way.

At least we're going to get a high draft pick next week. We'll probably be looking at a top five or six choice in 2008 as well. And we'll probably screw up both of them.

Oh, look at that: Josh Willingham just cleared the bases and now the Cubs are down 9-4.

Unbelievable.

California Phil reports from the scene of the crime, though his children were spared the sight of any actual carnage:

A conversation I had with the girl next to me at Dodgers Stadium Friday night pretty much summed it up.

The girl was around 7, quite extroverted and friendly, and attending her first ever game. Despite her allegiances, that thought warmed my heart. Seeing my Cubs hat and shirt, she asked the most innocent of questions: why don't you root for the Dodgers?

My stumbling answer had something to do with the fact that I had been going to Cubs games since I was her age. But it occured to me that being a Cubs fan is like being gay--it certainly would be much easier and less heartbreaking not to be, but it's who we are. (I am a Cubs fan, not that there's anything wrong with that.)

As for the game itself, how does the heartbreak come, let me count the ways. It's tough to measure whether it was more disappointing that the Cubs bullpen blew another game, this time following a monumental comeback, or that I wasn't there to witness the comeback in the first place.

You see, after arriving nearly an hour before the start of the game as I secured tickets only at the box office, and 3 trips to the bathroom with my two sons, 3 trips for food or snacks and an inning or two of actually watching the game, my wife suggested that since the kids were tired (as was she) that we should leave - a 7:40 start didn't help. Given that the Cubs were getting whipped, the fact that they haven't hit for a week, and that Dodgers stadium is a nightmare to get out off, I agreed to go.

My younger son reminded me that last year when we left early we listened to the Cubs win from the parking lot. I don't love that going to the game with the family turns me into a Dodgers fan in the sense that I leave early, but family comes first -- the only comforting thought I suppose after tonight.

And that's what again appeared to happen tonight. We heard lots of noise from the parking lot and by the time we got to the car, the Cubs trailed 5-4. Thrilled by the Cubs performance, and feeling like a complete idiot for agreeing to leave, the Cubs completed their biggest inning of the year as told to me by Charile Steiner and RIck (monotone) Monday on the radio. I got home by the 8th and you know the rest.

The staggering totals:

Witnessed in person: Cubs 1 Dodgers 5
Listened to or heard from the parking lot: Cubs 7 Dodgers 0
Witnessed on TV: Cubs 0 Dodgers 4
Sensory totals: Eyes: Dodgers 9 Cubs 1; Ears: Cubs 7 Dodgers 0

The only conclusion I can reach should be obvious, the Cubs are too painful to watch.

(AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian from espn.com)

As they begin their three-game set in Los Angeles later tonight, the Cubs have scored 211 runs this season and allowed 184. That gives them the best Pythagorean record in the NL Central (25-20, just ahead of the Brewers' 26-21).

The fact that the Cubs' Pythagorean mark has exceeded their actual record all season long has been the basis for some optimism from some people, myself among them, who have figured that eventually, things will even out and the Cubs will start winning some of the close games they've been dropping with regularity.

That's the way it is with Pythagorean records: over time, teams that underform against their expected record tend to rise up; teams that overperform eventually slip back to the level their runs scored/runs differential suggests they "deserve."

The problem is, this reckoning doesn't always happen within a single season. Thus you have teams whose good fortune holds out all year long, at which point they make the post-season where, as recent history has shown, anything can happen.

I've wondered for some time if there were traits common to these lucky teams and if it was possible to construct a roster that would be more likely to exceed its projected record than some other team.

Click here for an answer, courtesy of The Hardball Times and author David Gassko.

If you're too riveted by this page to click the link, here's a brief summary:

Based on Gassko's formulas and analysis, 95% of all teams finish with actual records +/- 2.74 wins of their Pythagorean record, and teams that exceed that range on the positive side tend to have especially good bullpens and good managers.

Lou Piniella's track record would suggest he is a good manager, his handling of Ryan Dempster's role on the pitching staff notwithstanding. As for the quality of the Cub bullpen, one can only hope that the recent shakeup that landed Neil Cotts in Des Moines and Angel Guzman and Carlos Marmol in the pen will improve things beyond what we've seen to date. And then the Cubs can go about catching up to Pythagorus.

Not to mention the Brewers.

(Image from top10greeks.com)

Somehow, I hadn't discovered the espn.com baseball preview pages until five minutes ago. Pretty cool. For tonight's Cubs-Padres game, the AccuScore simulation system has San Diego pegged at a 59% probability of victory. (Ten-thousand or more simulated games are played to generate the win probability and individual player statistics projections.) The Padres' Adrian Gonzalez is given an 18.2% chance to hit at least one home run, as is the Cubs' Aramis Ramirez.

Bottom line: I'm already steamed and the first pitch has yet to be thrown.

Chris Young, who is very good and especially devastating at Petco Park--0.44 ERA; just one earned run allowed in 20 1/3 innings this season--is up against Jason Marquis, whose season numbers are still excellent, but lately, much less so.

The Cubnut simulation system, wherein I close my eyes and imagine how I'm going to feel in about three hours, projects an 84% likelihood that I'm going to go to bed tonight very angry, more frustrated with Jacque Jones than ever, and approximately 92% committed to switching this over to a Chicago Fire blog.

I just walked in from a late Little League game--12-Year-Old Athletics, 9; 12-Year-Old Marlins, 7--to see the Cubs are trailing the Padres, 2-1 in the eighth inning. Based solely on the mlb.com report, it looks like Sean Marshall has pitched well and the Cub offense continues to be anemic, though Matt Murton and Mark DeRosa are 5-for-5 at this writing.

Here's my big question of the night:

Why did we have to rehabilitate Kevin Kouzmanoff's season over the last two nights? What has he ever done for us?

Sorry for the lame post, but if the Cubs go on to lose this game, I'm not going to be in much of a creative mood anyway.

Neil Cotts is going down, Sean Marshall is coming up, and Wade Miller is encouraged to have thrown an 88-mph fastball.

That's today's news on the Cub pitching front, though Lou Piniella seemed to be promising much more in the wake of last Thursday's horrific bullpen failure against the Mets.

Marshall, filling the roster spot of Cotts, who was shipped down to Iowa, will make his 2007 Cub debut Wednesday night against San Diego and David Wells.

As for Miller, I must be missing something because I can't find any reports on where he will fit on the Cubs staff. What is apparent is that Miller was quite unimpressive in his rehab starts down in the minors. Proof? The best that cubs.com can say about him is that, in his final minor league effort against the Astros' AAA Round Rock team, Miller hurled an 88-mph fastball "in his final inning of work, a positive indication of both his increased stamina and his finding his comfort zone on the mound."

?!?!?!?!?!

Looks to me like the Cubs are trying to show 29 other teams that they have seven or eight legitimate Major League starters so they can trade the excess for something worthwhile.

Check out The Hardball Times' take on the Cubs' erstwhile ace, Carlos Zambrano. Author Carlos Gomez concurs with the popular wisdom that Zambrano's arm angle is lower than ever before and delivers the video to prove it.

Zambrano had an up-close view--just 60 feet, 6 inches away--of the seven-run, two-out, seventh-inning rally which cinched the win for the White Sox. Of course, the defeat and Zambrano's continued ineffectiveness would have been harder to endure if the Cubs hadn't chalked up such dramatic victories on Friday and Saturday. Even better, the drama unfolded against a backdrop of Ozzie Guillen's meltdown at the feet of another storied Chicago moron.

All in all, it's hard for me to imagine a two-of-three series win feeling more decisive or more satisfying.

Tuesday night, the Cubs return to old-fashioned, intraleague play in San Diego, with Rich Hill going up against Jake Peavy. In nine starts this year, Peavy has only allowed more than three runs once. Hill, by contrast, has pitched to a 5.29 ERA in three starts this month. Looks like a tough beginning to the six-game trip to San Diego and L.A.

Thanks to the genius that is Fangraphs, here's an analysis of Thursday's bottom of the 9th inning. The event is followed by the statistical likelihood that the Cubs would win the game given the score, location of men on base and the number of outs at that point, as determined by historical analysis of similar situations in many thousands of Major League games.

Be prepared to get sick to your stomach all over again:

Ryan Dempster enters game (5-1 Cubs). 98%
David Newhan singles. 95.7%
Ramon Castro flies out to right. 98%
Carlos Gomez singles; Newhan advances to 3rd. 95%
Carlos Gomez advances to 2nd on defensive indifference. 93.7%
Carlos Beltran walks to load bases. 88.9%
Endy Chavez walks; Newhan scores (5-2 Cubs). 79.2%
Ruben Gotay singles; Gomez scores (5-3 Cubs). 66.3%
Scott Eyre enters game. David Wright singles; Beltran scores (5-4 Cubs). 45.7%
Carlos Delgado singles; Chavez, Gotay score (6-5 Mets). 0%

(AP Photo/Kathy Willens from espn.com)

Thursday's loss to the Mets caused me to experience the deepest sense of baseball fan self-pity I've felt in a long time.

I suppose there's some way to tap the magnificent resources of baseball-reference.com or retrosheet.org and confirm that the Cubs have endured more of those kinds of defeats than any other team, but I'm not smart enough to define the parameters of Heartbreak and don't have time to do the spadework.

In the meantime, I feel secure in my belief that my favorite baseball team really has cornered the market on demoralizing, gut-wrenching ineptitude, a monopoly they have held for a very long time and will not surrender any time soon. Maybe not in my lifetime.

Though I wouldn't have guessed this could be so, I felt even lower and even more demoralized today than I did around 3:30 p.m. Thursday. Six-and-a-half innings into Friday's game with the White Sox, I was resigned to the defeat and the blood-boiling frustration of seeing the Cubs lose to a team featuring Pablo Ozuna, Luis Terrero, Toby Hall, and Juan Uribe--all in its lineup on the same day!

Then the unthinkable--the Cub offense came back from a late-inning deficit--was followed by the unimaginable: all of the Cub relievers who stepped across the white line, the middle guys and the closer, were effective in the same game.

Victories have a very therapeutic effect on the self-pitying Cubs fan. A win like today's over the White Sox has a narcotic effect, at least on me. If we could somehow sweep the Sox who, excellent starting pitching or not, are just a mediocre team in a division that's going to eat them whole, the Cubs would stand at 21-21 and would have perhaps regained the momentum they lost on the East Coast.

It wouldn't be enough to convince me the Chicago Cubs aren't destined to be tragic losers for as long as I live, but it would certainly restore a little joy to the summer of 2007.

Eight hours ago, following the Mets' miraculous ninth inning, I was so disgusted I didn't think I would be able to write anything about the Chicago Cubs tonight.

I was right!

This year Major League Baseball is celebrating the 10th anniversary of interleague play, and tonight, the Mets and Cubs and Yankees and White Sox are honoring the occasion by waiting through seemingly interminable rain delays so they can complete scheduled games in front of dozens of wet and/or drunken fans. This is necessary because, in order to squeeze the interleague games into the teams' schedules, intraleague, intradivision opponents like the Cubs and Mets typically visit each other's parks only once during the season, i.e., they can't make up the rainouts on a subsequent trip to town since there is none.

This is just one reason I hate interleague play. Another is the way it devalues the All-Star Game and the World Series. Finally, there is the fact that interleague play is a sin against God and Nature.

I also hate when the Cubs are scheduled to play teams better than themselves. I believe an example of that is playing out tonight and Thursday, as the Cubs complete their visit to Shea Stadium and the seven-game Philadelphia/New York road trip. At the moment, the Cubs are being one-hit by Jorge Sosa. It took Rich Hill 113 pitches to get through six innings, during which he allowed four runs, seven hits, and four walks. And now Neal Cotts is facing a two-on, none-out problem in the home seventh.

I wish it had kept raining.

This will do wonders for the Cubs' record in nine-run games.

Four games into a telling seven-game road trip, the Cubs are now 1-3, Monday night's miserable defeat at Shea marking the latest heartbreak.

The Cubs seem to have mastered the two-out rally, that is, allowing the two-out rally. What tonight's effort lacked in quantity--it may be awhile before the Cubs figure out how to allow more two-out runs than Philly's six-run bonanza in Saturday's seventh inning--it made up for in sheer drama. You can't get more dramatic than when losing the game, right?

The thought that Derrek Lee's neck injury might be serious is unspeakably distasteful, so I won't speak of it. (The sight of Mark DeRosa playing first base stopped being funny around the time Endy Chavez collided with DeRosa's arm on the way to the bag.)

Tuesday night, Carlos Zambrano, who has had only one, maybe two, good starts goes up against the Mets' John Maine, who's had only one, maybe two, poor starts.

It's time for our stopper to start a turnaround.

In the first of seven road contests against the Phillies and Mets, the Cubs failed to bring their 'A' game. Or their 'B,' 'C' or 'D' games. Rich Hill took a stroll down Memory Lane, back to the not so long ago days when he was a lost rookie instead of the staff ace he has become in '07, and Pat Burrell, who seems to punish the Cubs in good times and bad, tuned Cub pitchers up for three hits and 5 RBI.

Moreover, the offensive woes continued. On the heels of the feeble hitting against the Pirates--a piddling eight runs in three games--the bats were good for just two solo home runs Friday night. And we didn't even have Jacque Jones to blame.

Lastly, the Phils turned to Six-Finger Tony to close in the ninth.

That Charlie Manuel really knows how to rub it in.

Saturday afternoon, Angel Guzman faces Freddy Garcia (4-0, 0.60 ERA in four appearances against the Cubs); Ted Lilly goes against Jon Lieber Sunday.

(AP Photo/Rusty Kennedy from espn.com)

I saw my first game at Wrigley this season Wednesday night. I was attending the game with two clients, who, unfortunately for me, were running late and didn't get to the park until 7:30. As a result, I stood at the corner of Addison and Sheffield, trying to follow the game via ESPN Mobile on my cell phone until my clients arrived. I thus lived up to two ugly Cub fan stereotypes: the jerk who can't bother to get to the game on time and the jerk who's obsessed with his cell phone when he should be enjoying the game in front of him.

My clients showed up in time for us to reach our seats in the bottom of the second inning, so we missed Alfonso Soriano's home run, but I saw enough of Jason Marquis to appreciate that when he induces ground balls and walks nobody and has the few hard-hit balls against him directed right at his fielders, he might be a better pitcher than I have given him credit for being.

And as long as Carlos Zambrano continues coughing up hairballs like today's, we're lucky to have him.

At this writing, the Cubs' bullpen is shaming itself in the 10th inning of a game the Cubs should have salted away in the 8th.

As is, I can't commit to either a piece that speaks to the joy of victory, however weak the opposition or flawed the effort, or one that decries the misery of losing to the Pittsburgh Pirates, under any conditions. Ever.

In the meantime, check out the sparkline.

Over the weekend, the Cubs awarded Ronny Cedeno an all-expenses-paid trip to Des Moines.

A year ago, coming off a 2005 season in which he hit .355/.403/.518 at Iowa, he opened the season as Dusty Baker’s starting shortstop.

The year before that, when he appeared to be the Starting Shortstop In Waiting, he was coming off a 2004 season at AA West Tennessee in which he hit .279 with 48 RBI in 116 games (384 ABs).

Since Cedeno was hitting just .097 (3-for-31) when he was sent down this past Sunday, and hit just .245/.271/.339, last year, the obvious question is, what caused Cedeno to lose it? But maybe the more apt question is, what took him so long to return to form?

Through most of his career in the Cub organization, Cedeno has been a terrible hitter.

After a dandy, 52-game debut in Rookie Ball in 2001, when he hit .350/.398/.466, Cedeno was moved up to Class A Lansing for 17 games at the end of the year,. He hit .196.

Cedeno split 2002 between Lansing and short-season Boise, hitting a combined .214/.270/.296.

He played all of the 2003 season at Daytona in the Florida State league and hit .211/.257/.295.

Somehow, Cedeno was promoted to West Tennessee for the 2004 season, where he put together the .279 season mentioned above. Still, as Baseball Prospectus 2005 pointed out, “This was the first season that Cedeno hit anything at all, and even so, his batting average at West Tennessee was pretty empty.” (.328 OBP, .401 SLG, 74 K/24 BB)

Then came the breakthrough ’05 season at Iowa and Cedeno seemed to have cracked the code. Still, as BP 2006 judged, “As a shortstop, there’s little he can’t do…Whether or not he’ll become a better hitter is the question. He has a nice, even swing, but he’s easily overpowered and has no notion of working the count.”

Smart guys, those Baseball Prospectus fellows.

The Cubs beat the Gnats 6-4 after spotting baseball's worst team a 4-0, first-inning lead. The ignominy of that is the fact that a couple weeks back, Washington set a record by failing to score a single, first-inning run in their first 22 games of the season.

The other ouchy aspect of the sour beginning was that, once again, it was our best pitcher, Carlos Zambrano (pictured), who was throwing batting practice to the opposite side.

To his credit, Zambrano settled down after the 35-pitch, opening inning and shut down the Nationals long enough for the Cub offense to get untracked and gain the lead. Speaking of that offense, Derrek Lee is simply and utterly inhuman. He is now hitting .422.

Today's game was the first in what should be--what HAS to be--a momentum-building homestand that will see the Pirates come to Wrigley for three games once the woeful Washingtons leave.

After that, the Cubs will play road series against the Phillies and the Mets.

You know, real baseball teams.

(AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh from espn.com)

I don't have the time to check, but it seems to me the Cubs' record in doubleheaders for as long as I've been a fan has been postively abysmal. Over the years, a split has been like a gift from above; a sweep, simply unthinkable.

(UPDATE: I just made the time to check, going back just five years. Since the beginning of the '02 season, the Cubs have played 13 doubleheaders, sweeping 1, being swept in 5, and splitting 7.)

Strictly speaking, Wednesday was not a doubleheader, but since the Cubs miraculously added two ticks in the Wins column on the same calendar day, I am happy to count it as such. 12-14 feels a whole lot better then the 10-14 the team was wearing after Monday night's defeat to the Pirates.

Jason Marquis continues to be masterful while striking out only a handful of hitters, dangerous stuff if you're a believer in the principle that any pitcher not named Greg Maddux needs to average at least 5.5 K/9 if he is going to enjoy long-term success. But so far, so good.

In the category of non-baseball miracles, or at least, possible non-baseball miracles, there is this hopeful report.

Addendum: In my post Monday night, I referred to Alfonso Soriano's 10-game hitting streak and to his having hit safely in 17 of 18 games through Monday night. Soriano's streak is now up to 12 games and he has reached base in all 20 games in which he's appeared this season, including the 4/22 game at Wrigley against the Cardinals, when he successfully pinch-hit. Derrek Lee, meanwhile, is on an 11-game streak and has hit safely in 24 of 26 games this year.

The Cubs finish off last night's suspended game, defeating the Pirates 8-6. Because the 7th inning took 15 hours to complete, it's easy to forget the terrific comeback in the top of the 7th...but it was refreshing.

Cool the way Dempster intentionally allowed the Pirates to score a run in the bottom of the ninth to improve our record in Close Games.

Now, in the regularly scheduled game, Jason Marquis is up against Ian Snell, who has thrown Quality Starts in each of his five outings in '07. The Cubs have hit him pretty well in the past, however: .286 AVG with a slugging mark of .500. Ramirez has gone 5-for-11 against him.

Also, as you can see, the guy wears his hat crooked, which should be all the reason we need to pummel him.

From Paul Sullivan’s story in Tuesday’s Tribune:

Outfield questions getting to Piniella