I'll weigh in Sunday night with thoughts on the Cubs opener in Cincinnati.
For now, as I get back into the swing of things, I wanted to commend Deadspin for skewering Major League Baseball and its latest monument to hypocrisy--MLB's own hypocrisy--something called The Civil Rights Game. I was struck by the irony of the film montage produced and aired by ESPN before the St. Louis/Cleveland exhibition game, a piece that featured, however briefly, Ty Cobb, one of the game's most infamous racists. Deadspin and the New York Daily News found far greater hypocrisy in another aspect of the contest. You should read their analysis.
Bud Selig should also read it.
Major League Baseball will go dark for the next six days in accordance with the commissioner-mandated "Pre-Opening Day Naptime." No exhibition games, no personnel moves, no controversies involving managers and their teams' former star pitchers.
How lucky for me that this would happen at the exact time I'll be taking a one-week vacation and a one-week break from posting here at A Hundred Next Years!
As for the events of this past weekend, Wade Miller did a fabulous impression of a pitcher who deserves a spot in someone's starting rotation, Mark DeRosa did a fabulous impression of Brooks Robinson, Kerry Wood took the mound for the second time in three days as he possibly competes with Angel Guzman for the final pitcher's spot on the Cub roster, and Baseball Prospectus predicted that this is the week the Cubs and Carlos Zambrano will agree on a five-year contract extension for $80-$90 million.
That last bit sounds like a clear violation of Selig's Naptime decree to me, but if it keeps Z in a Cub uni for five more years, it would be worth the punishment.
Hope you will return to this page when I do, next weekend.
Intoxicated Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa was found asleep at the wheel and spent the night in the Palm Beach County lockup.
Former Cubs manager Dusty Baker was asleep at the wheel much of the past four years and is now working for ESPN.
(Photo from thesmokinggun.com)
Earlier this week I talked to an acquaintance who works for the Cubs, and I was surprised to hear that along with all of the big-money player moves this off-season, the Dawn of McDonough has seen some genuine changes in the mood and manner in the Cub offices.
My friend says there is now a seriousness and a feeling of accountability among the staff that wasn’t characteristic of the Andy MacPhail years and that many employees, even lifers, are quite unsure where they stand as Cubs President John McDonough reshapes the organization.
These are good developments, I think, and insecurity, at least in limited doses, can be a powerful motivator. Whether it’s by his words, his actions or sheer intimidation, if the new Cub president creates a more determined, more efficient, more effective organization, he will have succeeded in one, important aspect of his new position.
One other observation on this JMcD front:
Though I have looked all over for it, I can’t find any official announcement from the Cubs that McDonough had shed the “Interim” part of his title. The closest I have found is this story at cubs.com, in which the writer casually mentions that, “the interim title is gone now…”
That sort of thing is normally worthy of a press conference. Perhaps the club felt the dramatic, end-of-the-season gathering at which MacPhail’s resignation and McDonough’s ascendance were announced was enough. Or maybe after the $300 million investment in player salaries this winter, the Cubs could no longer afford to spring for Diet Coke and cold cuts (sportswriters LOVE free food and drink).
Or maybe the decision to not celebrate McDonough’s full-fledged presidency reflects the fact that the job was McDonough’s to start with and the only reason for the interim tag was to avoid the appearance that he might have lobbied for the job or somehow undermined MacPhail.
We’ll never know for sure and most fans don’t care, but in the upside-down, media managing world of the Chicago Cubs, I think it’s always fun to talk about.
(P.S. If you’re aware of an official announcement of McDonough being named President, please let me know and I will retract the preceding five paragraphs…but I really did look for the story.)
Congratulations aren't exactly in order, but at sportsillustrated.com, Jim Hendry tops Jon Heyman's list of 10 GM's on the proverbial hot seat. The article doesn't blast Hendry's performance so much as it expresses empathy for the pressure on a GM trying to lift his team out of very deep, dark doldrums.
There's nobody who worked harder than Hendry this winter in lining up talent. Some could claim some of the Cubs contracts seem player-friendly (few around baseball look like bargains, though potentially, I'd count Piniella for $10 million over three years and second baseman Mark DeRosa for $13 million among them). Or they could quibble that Hendry would have been better off locking up ace pitcher Carlos Zambrano earlier, especially before Barry Zito broke the bank in San Francisco to the tune of $126 million; although, with agent Barry Praver in town now, there's great optimism there'll be a new five-year contract in place for Zambrano by around Opening Day.
Then this:
Putting all that aside, the Cubs should be a lot better, maybe by as many as 20 games from the 66 they won last year. In a division that was won last season with 83 victories (by the eventual world champion Cardinals) and still looks wide open, the Cubs should have by far the best everyday lineup and could easily steal it. Old Cubs hopefuls Kerry Wood and Mark Prior suffered spring setbacks, and Piniella says that they need to "shore it up defensively" and need a good year from their closer, Ryan Dempster. Yet Piniella asserts, "I expect us to have a darned good team. Our fans are going to enjoy this team."Others in the Top 5...or Bottom 5, depending on your point of view:
"We were in last place," Hendry says, "so we have a lot of people to pass." But if they don't pass a few, Hendry knows his time may expire.
2.) Bill Bavasi, Mariners
3.) Bill Stoneman, Angels
4.) Jim Bowden, Nationals
5.) Dave Littlefield, Pirates
A couple of fascinating articles at The Baseball Analysts, wherein Dan Fox and Neal Williams attempt to grade third-base coaches by quantifying and then comparing their skill at waving runners around the bases.
I won't even attempt to describe the methodology here, except to say that in the first of the articles, Fox and Williams ranked the 2006 Third Base Coaching Class by a metric called Equivalent Hit Advancement Runs or EqHAR. That is defined as "the contribution of baserunners above and beyond what would be expected in opportunities they have for advancing on singles and doubles."
The 2006 leader in this statistic was Angels third-base coach, Dino Ebel. Bill Dancy (Phillies), Doug Mansolino (Astros), Tom Foley (Devil Rays), and Gene Lamont (Tigers) rounded out the top five. The Cubs' now former 3B Coach, Chris Speier, was way down the list at 24th, having made a negative contribution per the analysts' calculations. Speier, however, was six positions ahead of the White Sox' Joey Cora, who held the bottom spot.
In the second of their articles, Fox and Williams fine-tune the statistic to better separate the coaches' responsibility for runner advancement from that of the runners, themselves. Again, you should consult the source for details.
In any case, with this adjustment, Cora, who, after all, had the likes of Joe Crede, Paul Konerko, and Jim Thome shlepping around the bases, rises all the way up to 11th; the Cubs' Speier drops to the very bottom. The reason for Speier's fall is that the Cubs "performed quite well in non-coach opportunities." In other words, Cub runners actually did better in those circumstances where Speier wasn't a factor than where he was.
Finally, the writers apply their yardstick to all Major League traffic cops between 2000 and 2006, and there, at #13 in a list that is 74 coaches long, behind Juan Samuel and ahead of Jeff Datz, sits the Hawaiian Windmill, Wavin' Wendell Kim. Speier comes in at a feeble 73rd.
I enjoyed the articles thoroughly, though it is impossible for me to reconcile Kim ranking so much higher than Speier. Maybe it's that, after watching Kim send all those runners to certain doom in his time with the Cubs, I would have found anyone to be a relief. You know, it's like the old joke about the benefit of hitting yourself in the head with a hammer:
It feels so good when you stop.
At Baseball Prospectus (subscription required), Will Carroll weighs in today on the latest injury to Kerry Wood:
The Cubs are waiting for the initial swelling to leave (Wood's triceps) area before determining how long Wood will be shelved, but anything over a couple days puts his active status for Opening Day in jeopardy. Wood was due to work long relief for the Cubs, though many think his early-season limitations would have handicapped him in even that role. The team wasn't rushing him into the closer role or even a setup role as many expected, preferring to allow him to get comfortable with the lack of routine in the bullpen. That's still the plan, assuming this latest injury doesn't push him too far back. Early indications are that he'll miss about a week.
Mark Prior, meanwhile, threw four innings against Double-A hitters at Fitch Park on Friday and while Carrie Muskat and the headline writer at cubs.com found things to be positive about, Al from Bleed Cubbie Blue and Arizona Phil at The Cub Reporter had completely different takes.
This passage stood out in Al’s report:
Prior threw four innings, fifty-nine pitches (only a little more than half of them, thirty-two, were strikes). He walked two, hit a batter, was constantly behind hitters, gave up two hits and no runs to a team consisting of players who will wind up spending this year playing for Tennessee and Daytona (some names I recognized: Dopirak, Fontenot, Spears, Simokaitis). The outs were hit fairly hard, and it was just not very impressive.
And later…
It's a shame. Here's a guy who was called "the greatest college pitcher ever", compared to Tom Seaver, and dominant in the National League in his first full season in 2003. Now he's barely hanging on to his baseball life.
All in all, a wonderful job of reporting by Al. It’s a shame he was reporting on a car wreck.
Per Chris De Luca's story in Wednesday’s Sun-Times, the race for the fifth starter’s spot seems to be between Wade Miller and Angel Guzman. Neal Cotts will pitch long relief and Mark Prior will wind up in a city (Chicago? Des Moines?) and capacity (Starter? Reliever?! On the Disabled List?) to be determined. But Larry Rothschild says Prior is healthy.
''It doesn't always look like it because he is pushing balls and things like that, but he has felt pretty good all along. And that's the key. If he keeps pushing it that way, it will all come together at some point. We'll just keep working and try to get him over the hump.''
Miller wasn’t brilliant in Tuesday’s start against Arizona, allowing two runs and five hits in four innings, but Lou Piniella seems to suggest the job is now Miller’s to lose. Says the skip, “(Miller) hasn’t done anything here in spring training that you don’t like.”
Also on Wednesday, the Tribune’s Dave van Dyck reported that Alfonso Soriano appears to have landed the center field job, with Piniella coming thisclose to saying Soriano will definitely be there on opening day. “I didn’t say that, but it looks like it. I haven’t seen anything to tell me he cannot play center field.”
Throughout this spring training, Piniella has offered frank judgments of his players—a marvelous relief from four years of Dusty double talk—so I want to be encouraged by the fact that Lou is able to see Alfonso as a legitimate center fielder.
Still, I have the feeling that where Soriano and center field are concerned, Lou is simply crossing his fingers and closing his eyes a bit. As he acknowledges in van Dyck’s story, “With the logjam we have in the outfield, (this is) the best possible scenario we have to start the season.”
In other words, it might not be a great or even good idea to turn a terrible second baseman turned borderline left fielder into your starting center fielder, but barring other developments, it’s the best the Cubs can do.
Through Tuesday...
Spring record of Neal Cotts, ex-White Sox, longshot to become Cubs' 5th
starter: 7IP, 17 hits, 10 runs (6 earned), 3 strikeouts, 0 walks, 7.71 ERA
Spring record of David Aardsma, ex-Cub, longshot to make White Sox' 25-man
roster in any capacity: 5.2 IP, 11 hits, 8 runs (7 earned), 4 strikeouts, 3 walks, 11.12 ERA
The Cubs cut 14 players Monday, leaving 44 on the spring roster.
Among those shipped out were Jeff Samardzija, who gave up just 1 run in 5 innings in Mesa and was sent to Class A Daytona; infielder Brian Dopirak, 2-for-11 with 2 RBI, who was sent to Double-A Tennessee; and left-handed reliever Clay Rapada, 5 earned runs in 3 innings, and infielder Scott Moore, who struck out in his only 2 plate appearances and made 2 errors in the field. Rapada and Moore were sent to Triple-A Iowa. Moore quickly got on Lou Piniella's bad side when, the day after making those 2 errors at third base, he told the Cub coaching staff he had been playing hurt.
Not much of a formula for impressing the new boss.
The other 10 Cub players sent a-packin' Monday were non-roster invitees, and all were returned to the Cubs' minor league camp. They included pitchers Jason Anderson, Sean Gallagher, Adam Harben, Ben Howard, John Webb and Randy Wells. Also moved were infielders Mike Kinkade and Eric Patterson, who seems to play second base a lot like an outfielder, plus actual outfielders Tyler Colvin and Chris Walker.
Speaking of minor leaguers, Mark Prior will get a chance later this week to pitch to a whole bunch of them. It's hardly a death knell for Prior's career as a Cub, but when you're running behind Wade Miller and the still very raw Angel Guzman in the race for the fifth starter's slot, you're a long way from good.
Thursday’s Chicago Tribune carried news of the arrest of five people, including Michael Ligue, 18, of Blue Island, on charges of aggravated discharge of a firearm following a Sunday night shooting in Chicago Ridge.
Ligue is the son of the lavishly tattooed William Ligue, Jr., who made an international name and reputation for himself in 2002, when he and another reprobate son jumped onto U.S. Cellular Field so they could assault 54-year-old Royals first-base coach, Tom Gamboa.
The elder Ligue received a five-year prison sentence in 2006 for violating probation in the Gamboa case.
The shooting in Chicago Ridge stemmed from an altercation involving the girlfriend of one of Michael Ligue’s friends. The five people arrested allegedly drove to Chicago Ridge and fired shots from their car at a 21-year-old man tangentially involved in the dispute.
At the time of his arrest, Ligue was free on bail from a previous marijuana arrest. He is being held in Cook County Jail on $200,000 bail.
Considering Ligue’s age, criminal history, current Cook County sentencing guidelines, and Bill James’s work on aging patterns in baseball, young Ligue figures to be out of prison and eligible to make his U.S. Cellular Field debut just as he’s hitting his prime.
Now, a first for A Hundred Next Years: a guest column written by California Phil, who is of no relation to, but a great admirer, of Arizona Phil at The Cub Reporter.
23 years. It’s been 23 years since the magical and tragic Cubs season of 1984. That's not exactly a milestone anniversary, but considering the recent Jim Carrey bomb and, more importantly, the uniform number of both Michael Jordan and Ryne Sandberg, it seems appropriate enough. Oh, and did I mention that the famous Sandberg Game was played on June 23rd, my 23rd birthday?
Okay, enough with the numerology crap. I was thinking about the Cubs this morning, which was better than thinking about work, and it occurred to me that back in the day--or at least in 1984--spring training trades seemed to be made more frequently than they are today. I’ll leave it to Rob Neyer to confirm that’s really true. What I do know to be true is that the Cubs won’t make another blockbuster deal before this season starts and that on March 26, 1984 (although I’m sure it was finalized on the 23rd), the Cubs dealt Bill Campbell and Mike Diaz to the Phillies for Bob Dernier, Sarge Matthews and Porfi Altamirano.
Was Dernier to Matthews what Sandberg was to Bowa, a throw-in who turned out to be the real steal of the deal? Not exactly, but in one fell swoop, the Cubs filled in two-thirds of their outfield and the batting order positions before and after Sandberg.
The trade was significant for other reasons. The ’83 Cubs' most frequent outfield alignment featured Leon Durham in left, Mel Hall in center, and (Bobby) Keith Moreland in right. The trade allowed the Cubs to move Durham to first, where he would achieve fame in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and made possible the trade of Buckner to Boston for Dennis Eckersley. Dernier and Matthews joined Moreland in the outfield, facilitating the trade of Hall, who, along with young Joe Carter, would fetch Rick Sutcliffe from Cleveland.
With the Cubs, Dernier was nicknamed “Deer,” a playful if unimaginative take on his speed and last name. He fiddled with his batting gloves when Nomar was just a pup, and the way he would adjust his batting helmet before settling into the box almost seemed to be an homage to a previous Cub leadoff hitter, Don Kessinger.
Dernier was a speedy leadoff man and centerfielder, and, along with Sandberg, he formed the "daily double" atop the Cubs batting order. Make no mistake, the 1984 Cubs won because of Sandberg’s MVP season and a veteran lineup that scored a lot of runs, as well as the pitching of Rick Sutcliffe, Steve Trout, Dennis Eckersley, Lee Smith, et al. Still, one can’t help but think the ’84 Cubs wouldn’t have had the season they had without Bobby D.
Dernier’s OPS was .718, he succeeded on a pedestrian 72% of his stolen base attempts and though I have a memory of him logging a .300+ batting average that season, he only hit .278. Still, Dernier actually garnered MVP votes in '84, the only season in his career he would do so. (For the record, he finished 16 spots behind his MVP teammate, Sandberg.) All in all, it was a magical age 27 season for Dernier.
As a young Cub fan, I grew up with Kessinger, Beckert, Williams, Banks and Santo so set in the lineup that my 8-year-old mind could not even conceive of a day when that lineup would change or those players would age and retire. Dernier, however, seemed to come and go in the blink of an eye. The truth is, he was a Cub from '84 through '87, before he returned to the Phillies as a free agent, eventually ending his career at age 32, his speed and ability to get on base apparently gone. By then, the Cubs had made it to another NL Championship Series, with both the centerfield and leadoff positions manned by Jerome Walton, who ironically, according to Bill James's Similarity Scores, was the player most similar to Dernier at age 27.
Now, Dernier works as a minor league instructor for the Cubs, and he was recently asked to tutor Felix Pie on the art of base stealing. Maybe some day, Pie will play one more game than Dernier, a Cubs' NLCS-clinching victory that will carry the team into a World Series.
I am guessing that if that were to happen, somewhere Dernier would be smiling. Not me. I’d be crying like a baby.
I was ambivalent about Joe Morgan, The Player. I hated the team on which he became a superstar, the Big Red Machine, but it wasn't because they were hateful. It was just because they were so much better than the Cubs.
Back then, it was a singularly sobering thing to see Morgan step to the plate against your team. He ran like his pants were on fire, and he could hit the ball a mile. And when he wasn't clubbing long home runs to left, center and right, he was hitting line drives. In my mind's eye--hardly 100% accurate, but still--I cannot picture him popping up or hitting a dribbler back to the mound, especially if the game was at a potential turning point.
I could even overlook that chicken wing, elbow flapping business of Morgan's as just a benign eccentricity, unlike Sammy's home run bunny hop, for instance.
After Morgan retired, he became an announcer, eventually landing beside one of my favorites, Jon Miller, at ESPN, and the more I heard Morgan in that capacity, the less ambivalent I was. Morgan's hallmark is a kind of condescending white noise that's bearable so long as you don't actually pay attention to him. (Tim McCarver, by contrast, offers condescending noise which is flat-out inescapable. Point to Mr. Morgan!)
In time, ESPN chose to elevate Morgan to personality status and so, gave him a regular Q&A column at espn.com, which, for all I know, he still has. It was there that I saw how Morgan's condescension was flavored with a bitter refusal to embrace anything that even resembled new ways of thinking about our 150-year-old favorite game. Morgan's rejection of every tenet expressed in Michael Lewis's Moneyball was unequivocal...and hysterical. So, too, is a misunderstanding he has clung to that the book was written not about A's General Manager, Billy Beane, but by him. Surprise, surprise--Morgan is no fan of Billy Beane.
(Mike Carminati of Mike's Baseball Rants used to reprint Morgan's Q&A columns, juxtaposing Morgan's answers to fans' questions with his own. Alongside Morgan's pigheaded bluster, Carminati would offer reasonable answers rooted in logic and supported by fact, with the occasional acidic dig at Joe. The effect was delicious, and for as long as Carminati wrote them, those pieces were among my favorite Internet treats.)
A few years back, when the Baseball Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee assumed its current, non-functional configuration, Morgan became the committee's de facto spokesman, owing, I suppose, to his high visibility slot at ESPN. In this role, the Ol' Elbow Flapper has failed to perform at even replacement level.
To be clear, I do not hold Morgan personally responsible for keeping Ron Santo out of the Hall of Fame. A reader at The Cub Reporter even suggested last week that Morgan had actually supported Santo's candidacy in each of the past three Veterans Committee votes. (I haven't seen this confirmed anywhere else.)
My issue with Morgan is his arrogance and defensiveness with the press, his complete lack of grace, and his obvious failure to respond to his Veterans Committee role by demonstrating any sense of scholarship. (In a radio confrontation with Bruce Levine of ESPN 1000 in Chicago a couple weeks ago, Morgan admitted he was unqualified to pass judgement on any of the non-players eligible for the Hall of Fame in the most recent vote.)
In short, instead of acting like a conscientious caretaker of one of his sport's greatest treasures, Morgan comports himself like a bouncer trying to keep the rabble out of his club.
For all those reasons, it is a pleasure and a privilege to add Mr. Morgan to the Enemies Of The Blog List. He will be installed posthaste in the #2 position.
The fact that he is behind, not ahead, of Mr. Hamilton says more about my contempt for Milo than words ever could.
Congrats, Joe. Your t-shirt and membership card are in the mail.
Jason Marquis channeled a young Mark Prior on Tuesday, a day after Mark Prior channeled, oh, say, a young Bill Bonham.
In the Cubs 3-2 victory over the Brewers, Marquis pitched three scoreless innings, striking out two. Thanks to an effective sinker, Marquis retired six other Milwaukee hitters on groundballs. In five innings this spring, the former Greg Maddux protege has allowed just one run. (When you stink, you're an ex-Cardinal; when you're gold, you're a former Maddux protege.)
Ryan Dempster also pitched well, giving up a hit and no runs while striking out two in one inning. Micah Hoffpauir hit a game-winning homer in the bottom of the ninth to break a 2-2 tie.
Please note author's conscious avoidance of "walk-off homer."
The Cubs' spring record now stands at 2-3-1. Nice to pick up that point for a regulation tie with Oakland on Saturday, but it stinks that they wouldn't allow us to play a 5-minute sudden death overtime or go to a shootout. Let's just hope the potential point we missed out on doesn't hurt us in the Norris Division standings come playoff time.
The Cubs spotted the Mariners a 4-0 lead this afternoon in Arizona before storming back to win 6-5. Felix Pie had three hits, Kerry Wood (1 inning) and Ted Lilly (2 innings) held Seattle scoreless, and Mark Prior continued to scare everybody nearly to death.
Lou Piniella pulled Prior just one out into the second inning. Throwing mostly in the low- to mid-80s according to Paul Sullivan of the Tribune, Prior gave up four hits (three doubles), three earned runs and two walks; at least Clay Rapada now has some company in the Ridiculous ERA Club.
This morning's Tribune carried a story under the headline, "Sweet Lou turns sour on Cubs." Later Monday, Sullivan wrote a story about a team meeting called by Piniella before the team boarded its bus to Peoria to play the Mariners. The head in this case was "Cubs reality hits Piniella 'in the face.'" The jist of both pieces was the same: Piniella has already seen enough to concern him and he's not going to sit idly by while the team plays poorly, even if it is just Spring Training.
"You never know what to expect when you come in," (Piniella) said. "You come in as positive as you can (be), and rightfully so. Then reality starts hitting you in the face a little bit, and you have to adjust to it accordingly.
"But I'm very positive about our team. We're having some problems right now, but that's what spring training is for. But we've got some work, believe me."
Obviously, one and all hope that Prior and his inability to return to major league form aren't among the problems. Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus, writing before Monday's game, was even bold enough to imagine a world in which Prior was hale and hearty.
One odd bit of information to come out of Cubs’ camp was that the team may demote Rich Hill, who is probably their second-best starter, should both Mark Prior and Wade Miller be available to start later in the year. Set aside for the moment that Prior and Miller have been simultaneously healthy for about 20 minutes since 2004, making this something of a theoretical exercise. Who in their right minds would look at Wade Miller and Rich Hill and decide that they actually prefer Miller?After today's effort, it's hard to imagine Mark Prior having a hand in pushing anyone into an Iowa Cubs uniform. (Miller, on the other hand, pitched respectably in his first spring start, Saturday against the A's.) The best hope for now is that Prior will wake up tomorrow with nothing beyond the usual, day-after soreness and be ready for his next start and that long, probably bumpy climb back to productivity.Hill abused Triple-A last year to the tune of a 6-to-1 K/BB and more than 12 strikeouts every nine innings. With the Cubs, he struck out 90 and walked 39 in 99 frames, with a high home run rate (one every six innings) in the bad news department. Miller hasn’t thrown more than 91 innings since ’04, and has 84 strikeouts and 65 walks in 112 2/3 innings the past two years. I don’t think he’s a terrible pitcher—if healthy, he deserves a chance to start for someone—he’s just not the pitcher that Hill is, and any starts given to him instead of Hill push the Cubs further away from October.
Over at The Cub Reporter, Arizona Phil delivers another of his sterling, personal accounts of Cubs spring training action, a report on today's 9-6 Cub loss to the Angels in Mesa.
Whereas yesterday's ugliness had mostly to do with poor Cub glovework, today's chief offense was allowing the Angels to score five times in the fifth inning and run up an 8-3 lead after the Cubs had built up a 3-0 margin in the game's first three innings. Young Clay Rapada, a sidearming lefty reliever, had to face seven consecutive right-handed hitters to start the fifth, and it was ugly. Arizona Phil has all the details. All I'm going to say is 67.50 ERA.
The bright spots in today's loss included the hitting of Matt Murton, who went 3-for-3, including a second-inning home run and 4 RBI. Overall, six regular position players--Soriano, Izturis, Lee, Ramirez, Murton and DeRosa--started the game for the Cubs, and they went a combined 7-for-15. On the mound, starter Carlos Zambrano, Bob Howry, young Sean Gallagher and Will Ohman combined to hurl 6 scoreless innings with 6 strikeouts and no--as is ZERO!--walks allowed. In fact, even Rapada, Neal Cotts, and Angel Guzman, who were all tagged for runs, avoided issuing any walks.
The Cubs will visit the A's in Phoenix on Saturday, then host the White Sox on Sunday.
I listened to less than an inning of the game via the Internet(s) Thursday afternoon, and owing to some otherworldly technical problem, the audio stream would come over just fine for a few minutes, then repeat itself in tact. (Refreshing the browser straightened things out.)
I encountered this same, strange problem with both the feed from WGN and the one from KNBR in San Francisco. The funny thing is, if I had listened to KNBR first, I would have realized what was happening right away. However, listening to Pat and Ron, I at first figured the wholesale repetition was a planned part of the broadcast. Maybe a new comedy bit the lads had cooked up in honor of the new season.
I happened to be listening during the game’s pivotal stretch, the top of the 6th, when Cub third baseman Scott Moore made two throwing errors, first pulling Derrek Lee off the bag on a ground ball, then throwing wide of Ryan Theriot at second, causing Theriot to pull his foot off the base and miss out on a force play. Theriot thought the ump blew the call, and Jon Miller said if it had been a regular season game, he imagined Lou Piniella would have stormed onto the field to raise holy hell. A mistake on Piniella’s part, I would say. He needs to get back in base-throwing shape BEFORE we get to the games that count.
Also, in the top of the 6th, Matt Murton was replaced in leftfield by Buck Coats. In my mind, Coats would have to hit .700 to justify his position on the 25-man roster. Otherwise, you’ll have people laughing at the fact that the Cubs have a reserve outfielder with a porn star name.
We don’t need to give anybody another reason to laugh.
I turned on the White Sox radio broadcast yesterday and yummy as it was to hear the Sox getting their brains beaten in, 12-4 by the Rockies, it hardly sated my appetite for baseball. (Ed Farmer really needs to find another line of work.)
Today in Mesa, however, the Cubs take the field at 2:05 CST against the Giants with Jason Marquis facing Barry Zito. Lou Piniella's batting order will have Soriano leading off in center, followed by Murton in left, Lee, Ramirez, Barrett, Jones, DeRosa, Izturis and Marquis. All in all, not a bad looking lineup.
I hope to hear at least part of the game and post some thoughts late Thursday or early Friday. Since I started this site in November, this will be the first time I've had an actual game to write about.
I'm not sure I'll know how to handle it.
