Mark DeRosa came into Friday's game against the Rockies hitting .308 with a batting line (OBP/SLG/OPS) of 400/453/853 and an OPS+ of 121. If he were to finish the season with those numbers, he would establish career highs for batting average, on-base percentage, and OPS, and the Cubs would seem to be getting good value for their $4.75MM.

Still, according to another metric, DeRosa has been the least effective offensive player on the '08 Cubs. Fangraphs, a site I refer to and link to often, measured DeRosa's cumulative Win Probability Added before today at -.72. (By comparison, Aramis Ramirez led the team at +2.42 with Kosuke Fukudome second at +1.42.)

Today's stunning 10-9 Cub win over Colorado at Wrigley Field will take its place in the Big Book of Unbelievable Cub Comebacks; it also did wonders for DeRosa's WPA number. DeRo's two-run, seventh-inning homer off of woebegone Rox reliever Manny Corpas which put the Cubs in front to stay, 10-9, increased the Cubs' probability of winning from 40.9% to 76.7% and boosted DeRosa's personal WPA by a whopping .358. It was far and away his most impactful hit of the season.

And many, many Cub fans in every corner of the baseball-loving world, most of whom haven't heard of Win Probability Added, will never forget it.

Aside from owning MLB's best record in light of yet another comeback win Thursday night, the Cubs also own baseball's best run differential. At +88, they lead the pack, by a mile. A country mile. A mile and two-thirds! (The Phillies are second at +56; the White Sox pace the AL at +39).

Also, while baseball's Old Common Wisdom holds that a team's record in close games is very telling—it supposedly reflects a club's ability to execute the fundamentals, proves its adroitness at "small ball," demonstrates the manager's strategic skills, blah, blah, blah—others have argued convincingly that it's in the not-so-close games that a team's superiority (or inferiority) is able to truly manifest itself.

In games this season decided by 3 or more runs, the Cardinals are 15-11. The Astros are 14-11.

The Cubs are 20-5.

Before Wednesday, Dodgers closer Takashi Saito had appeared in 20 games this season, throwing exactly one inning in 16 of them. In those 16 games, he threw a total of 257 pitches, or an average of around 16 pitches per outing.

In the ninth inning of tonight's game at Wrigley Field, however, Saito gave up two walks, a hit, and the game-tying run, and threw 37 pitches. Aside from obliterating that 16-pitch average, that's more tosses than Saito has thrown in any game this season, including a pair of two-inning appearances. In fact, it's more pitches than Saito had thrown in all but two of his 155 lifetime Major League appearances.

But the most compelling fact surrounding Saito's 37 pitches to me is what that pitch total says about the Cubs' approach to hitting this season. On a night when Cub batters looked mostly helpless against Derek Lowe and completely overmatched against Jonathan Broxton, they still retained sufficient patience to accept two walks and let Saito put them in a position to tie the game on Geovany Soto's sacrifice fly.

Nice win tonight. All praise to plate patience!

Over the weekend, reacting to Alfonso Soriano's tragicomic play in left field, Bob Brenly said that he could "throw a dart at the Cub dugout" and be sure of hitting someone who would be a better defensive leftfielder than Soriano.

This frank and colorfully expressed appraisal seems to have made Brenly an instant hero to hosts on Chicago's two sportstalk radio stations. In fact, Brenly is scheduled to appear on ESPN1000 Wednesday afternoon between 2pm and 6pm.

I think Brenly is a first-rate analyst, and it's hard to dispute the essence of what he said, but I hope we're not headed for the sort of circus that ensued when Steve Stone blasted the team on-air during the Dusty regime.

It could only be a distraction to a contending team and lead to bad feelings between Brenly and the team he is supposed to be covering.

Once or twice or maybe eight times during the off-season, I lamented the Cubs' decision to all but count on having Ryan Dempster in the starting rotation for 2008.

Turns out that Dempster has been the team's steadiest starter so far this season next to Carlos Zambrano. Through Monday's victory over the Dodgers, Dempster is 6-2, 2.56, his strikeout and groundball rates are up, and his walk and line drive rates are down.

Monday afternoon's win, in which Dempster allowed Los Angeles just one run over seven innings, was especially fortuitous, coming after the back-to-back, extra-inning, bullpen-sapping losses to the Pirates over the weekend.

Though the Cub offense was mostly quiet Monday, that hasn't generally been the case when Dempster has been on hill: through 11 starts, the Cubs are averaging 6.82 Runs/Game per Dempster start. That's slightly more offense than they're providing for Zambrano (6.45 R/G) and much more than they're delivering for Ted Lilly (5.0 R/G).

One other way to gauge the starters' contributions to the Cub cause is to look at the team's won-loss records in games pitched by the respective starters:

Dempster, 8-3
Zambrano, 7-4
Lilly, 6-5
Marquis, 4-5
Others, 5-4

There's no doubt that Dempster has benfitted thus far from an artificially low Batting Average Against on Balls In Play (.216) and the Cub defense has been sterling behind him (.785 DER before today's game), but even discounting Dempster's numbers based on those factors, the veteran has more than earned his keep as a starter, and the Cubs would definitely be in a much less advantageous position right now in the NL Central without him.

As well as Carlos Zambrano has pitched so far this season, his effort tonight in the Cubs' 12-3 win at Pittsburgh—7 IP, 2 ER, 6 H, 6 K, 1 BB—was hardly exceptional. The now 7-1 Zambrano's performance at the plate was another story. His four hits were a career high and marked the first time since 1964 that a Cub pitcher had collected four hits at the plate. Lew Burdette was the man with the magic bat in July of '64, going 4-for-5 in a 13-4 thrashing of the Giants.

Interestingly, just four years earlier, in June of 1960, another Cub pitcher, Don Cardwell, rapped four hits in an 11-5 win over the Braves.

I was surprised to see that according to the Baseball-Reference Play Index, since 1956, pitchers have managed the four-hit trick 29 times, and Arizona's Micah Owings accomplished it twice last year, in games just five weeks apart.

But I wonder if Micah Owings can snap a bat over his knee.

Read the latest from the lunkhead manager of the Cincinnati Reds.

Jim Edmonds wasn't the reason the Cubs lost two of three in Houston, but neither did he do anything to punch up his team's relatively meager offense the last two nights.

On Wednesday, with the Cubs already leading 3-0 in the opening inning, Edmonds failed to bring in Geovany Soto from second base with two outs. Then, in the seventh inning, one out after rookie Micah Hoffpauir had opened the frame with a double, Edmonds lifted a harmless fly ball to right field.

In 15 AB over four games, Edmonds has produced two singles and no RBI. In honor of the newest Cub's non-accomplishment in the runs driven in category, here is a list of the 10 Cub non-pitchers since 1960 who accumulated the most at-bats in a season without earning even a single RBI.

1. Matt Alexander ('74), 54 AB
2. Cleo James ('73), 45 AB
3. Tom Lundstedt ('74), 32 AB
4. Rick Wrona ('90), 29 AB
5. Gene Oliver ('69), 27 AB
6. Alex Grammas ('63), 27 AB
7. Bo Porter ('99), 26 AB
8. Augie Ojeda ('03), 25 AB
9. Jerry Tabb ('76), 24 AB
10. Enrique Wilson ('05), 22 AB

Edmonds currently ranks 21st on this list. I rate him a strong possibility to crack the Top 10, maybe even the Top 5. But long before he has a chance to rob Cleo James's place in Cub history, I think Edmonds will have been asked to clear out his locker at Wrigley Field.

---

Earlier today at The Cub Reporter, I pointed to this piece by Dayn Perry of FoxSports.com, who sees the possibility of clouds forming on the currently sunny Cub horizon. (He wonders about the true quality of the Cub pitching staff and whether or not Carlos Marmol will be pitched to death before he and his teammates have a chance to be fitted for World Series rings.)

Jay Jaffe, writing for the New York Sun, is more optimistic in his forecast of the rest of the Cubs season, citing weaknesses in the other NL Central teams as just one reason to feel good about the Cubs' chances of doing grand things in 2008.

At the end of each week since the season began, I've tracked the Cubs hits that were highest in Win Probability Added (WPA) for that particular week. (Note: this exercise is only possible because of the brilliant FanGraphs site.)

Forty-six games into the season, here are the five Cub hitters with the highest cumulative WPA for 2008:

1. Ramirez, 1.35
2. Fukudome, 1.27
3. Soto, .89
4. Soriano, .71
5. Lee, .59

The five lowest? Well, that would be:

1. Pie, -.44
2. Blance, -.19
3. Edmonds, -.18
4. DeRosa, -.13
5. Fontenot, -.12

At least as measured by WPA, Pie earned that ticket to Des Moines. And what can be made of Edmonds? Monday's miraculous catch aside, he's hasn't done much in his first three games as a Cub—two singles in 12 AB, plus a walk. Edmonds also hit into a key double-play in the seventh inning of Tuesday night's loss, as the Cubs were trying to overcome a 4-2 deficit. That was a -.118 event in WPA terms, all by itself.

In case you're wondering how the Cub leaders (and laggards) compare to the rest of the National League, here are the NL's current WPA pacesetters:

1. Berkman (HOU), 4.09
2. Burrell (PHI), 3.23
3. Pujols (STL), 2.01
4. N. Johnson (WASH), 1.52
5. Holliday (COL), 1.49

And here is the bottom of the barrel:

1. Bard (SD), -1.61
2. Francoeur (ATL), -1.54
3. Kouzmanoff (SD), -1.48
4. Milledge (WASH), -1.18
5. A. Jones (LA), -1.17

By the way, Padres shortstop Khalil Greene is just behind (ahead of?) the Dodgers' Jones at -1.16, which means San Diego currently has three of the six lowest-rated players in the NL. With the kind of season that team is having, I imagine there are a whole bunch of categories in which the Padres are down on the lowest rung.

On his pre-game radio show Monday night, Lou Piniella said he felt the need to start cutting back on the number of appearances by his two ace relievers, Carlos Marmol and Kerry Wood, and start finding opportunities to use Jon Lieber and Chad Fox.

As you know if you watched the 7-2 win over the Astros, Lou went 2-for-4:

Wood did get to rest, and Lieber did get to pitch (1 2/3 scoreless IP in relief of starter and winner Ted Lilly). But Fox remained idle, and Marmol was forced into action in the home half of the eighth, and it was nasty duty, at that. The Cubs were up 5-2, the Astros had men at first and third, none out, and Tejada, Berkman, and Lee were due up. A pop out, a strikeout, and a ground out later, the Astros were taking the field, and the lead remained safe (even safer after Aramis Ramirez's two-run homer in the top of the ninth). Another Marmol masterpiece.

Speaking of Ramirez, he and Derrek Lee went a combined 5-for-10 with 3 RBI on Monday night. This was a big turnaround from the weekend series against the Pirates, in which R. and L. went a combined 0-for-22. In fact, over the course of the just concluded homestand, the Cubs' two big sluggers didn't do much slugging at all.

Ramirez hit .257 with no homers and 4 RBI, Lee hit .171 with an OPS of 556, and yet the Cubs won 8 of 10.

Of course, over that same 10-game stretch, Alfonso Soriano hit .524/1.150/1674 (OBP/SLG/OPS) with 7 HR and 16 RBI, and lifted his batting average from .191 to .296. And Mark DeRosa hit .514/.645/1159. Fukudome, Soto, and Theriot, while posting less spectacular numbers, all held their own, so the offensive falloff by Ramirez and Lee didn't pose much of a problem.

Depth. It's good.

Tuesday morning update: So much for Chad Fox helping to shoulder the bullpen load. Fox has been placed on the 15-Day Disabled List after developing elbow tenderness. According to the Tribune...

Fox said trainer Mark O'Neal told him "it could take a week, it could take two weeks, it could take two months. Who knows?"

Fox's spot will be taken by Jose Ascanio, whom the Cubs acquired this past off-season from Atlanta in exchange for Will Ohman. Ascanio had a 2.29 ERA and 9 saves in 16 appearances for the I-Cubs.

And speaking of the I-Cubs, they've placed Rich Hill on the 7-Day DL as a result of back spasms that caused him to be pulled from a start last Friday, but Lou Piniella doesn't think the back spasms are serious, or maybe even the real issue at all. Again, from the Tribune...

“I don’t think it’s serious,” Piniella said. “Probably more of a mental break than anything, I’d assume. That’s just my assumption. [The break] may not be bad. It might be the best tonic of all. But I haven’t heard anything wrong of a serious nature, anything fundamentally wrong with his back.”

The Cubs' 7-4 win over the Pirates Friday afternoon was their seventh without a loss this season and tenth consecutive win against the Bucs dating back to '07.

A cynic could argue that the Cubs' 27-17 record would be a much less impressive 20-17 without all of those wins against the NL Central's proverbial punching bag. Of course, the Pirates, who stand at 20-22, would be 20-15 minus their encounters with the division-leading Cubs.

Consider too that the first two games between the clubs this season were 12- and 15-inning games which could well have been won by the Pirates, and Pittsburgh's relatively surprising start begins to look borderline impressive.

And if the Pirates are borderline impressive and the Cubs have beaten them seven times in a row, well, I think you're justified in telling that cynic to go to hell.

Looking at the live box score of today's Padres/Cubs game, I was struck by how many elements in it looked completely preposterous.

Play along, and decide which of the following is the freakiest of all, because I can't:

• Ryan Theriot hitting over .300
• Ronny Cedeño hitting over .300
• Henry Blanco hitting over .300
• Theriot, Cedeño, and Blanco all hitting over .300
• Ryan Dempster delivering an 8 1/3-inning start
• And striking out 12
• And walking 1
• And lowering his ERA to 2.35
• And improving his record to 5-1
• The Cubs starting a centerfielder named Jim Edmonds
• And yeah, it's that Jim Edmonds

With this afternoon's 4-0 shutout, the Cubs are 25-16, which is the second-best record in baseball.

Compared to the other items in this post, that seems positively mundane.

Late word from Wrigley Field Wednesday night, as reported by Paul Sullivan on the Trib's Hardball blog, is that Jim Edmonds, pending the results of a physical, "is expected to be in a Cubs uniform Thursday afternoon."

If the new Cub is in the starting lineup for Thursday's game, he will be facing former Cub Greg Maddux, who will be starting for the Padres against Ryan Dempster.

The irony is obvious: Cub fans will presumably be rooting for a formerly hated opponent to succeed at the expense of a still beloved, former Cub.

For the record, Edmonds has gone .263/.282/.500 against Maddux in 38 AB's, with 2 HR and 4 RBI.

Cubs.com also notes that Daryle Ward is suffering from a bad back. If Ward has to go on the DL, lefthanded-hitting 1B/OF Micah Hoffpauir could be summoned from Iowa. Since reporting to the I-Cubs on May 7th following recovery from a pulled muscle in his rib cage, Hoffpauir has gone 9-for-27 with 2 HR and 10 RBI, 9 of them coming in just two games, Monday and Tuesday night.

As Mike Wellman pointed out at The Cub Reporter, that's more RBI in two games than Matt Murton had produced in 23.

“He told me...when you make a mistake, especially a big mistake, get rid of it. Cause what you’ll end up doing is reminding your fans each and every day of the mistake that you made. as well as your ballclub will end up (starting to lose) games because of that mistake."

— Padres General Manager Kevin Towers,
explaining to XX Sports Radio in San Diego
how long ago advice from Jack McKeon
led him to release high-priced veteran
(and apparent new Cub) Jim Edmonds

(Link from Gas Lamp Ball)

Under a front-page headline so large it precluded proper coverage of the paper's latest sweepstakes winner or the R-Kelly trial, the Sun-Times Tuesday morning shouted, "ZELL NO!" meaning that Sam Zell will not be selling Wrigley Field to the Illinois Sports Facility Authority and will instead "(plan) to package the Cubs and their landmark stadium in a private transaction."

The article by Fran Spielman and David Roeder continues:

...sources said Zell has rejected the state's proposed terms because it relies on a novel and untested financing plan: the sale of individual seats at Wrigley as if they were condominiums. The idea is called equity seat rights and has been advanced by Chicago area business executive Lou Weisbach, who has applied for patent rights on it.

Zell, Cubs Chairman Crane Kenney and their advisers have concluded that the equity plan and its tax ramifications would violate both the Internal Revenue Service code and the rules of Major League Baseball, the sources said.

Both Dave Van Dyck in the Tribune and Gordon Wittenmyer in the Sun-Times have written that the Cubs are considering signing veteran centerfielder Jim Edmonds once he clears waivers on Wednesday. Felix Pie would presumably be sent down to Iowa to create roster room for Edmonds, who was released by the Padres this past weekend after hitting .178 in 90 AB's.

According to Wittenmyer's article on Monday...

"...multiple Cubs sources said the team plans to pursue Edmonds, and one said Edmonds has told his agent to talk to no one before he talks to the Cubs."

A four-time All-Star, Edmonds played six season with the Angels, before he was traded to the Cards in March of 2000. The Cardinals shipped him to San Diego this past off-season in a trade for a minor leaguer.

In Edmonds' 16-year Major League career, he has smacked 363 home runs, including 32 against the Chicago Cubs, the most Edmonds has hit against any one opponent.

Injuries and age have exacted a heavy on toll on Edmonds: since 2004, his annual OPS+ has fallen from 170 to 137, 110, 88, and in his brief time with the Padres this season, to a ridiculous 38.

Ducksnorts, a Padres blog written by Geoff Young, one of the best MLB blogs I've come across, had this to say about Edmonds following his release.

So much for Jim Edmonds. Ducksnorts readers projected him to hit .255/.338/.418, with the most pessimistic of us pegging his OPS at a limp 645. Sadly, the former All-Star didn’t even come close to those meager numbers, finishing his Padres career at .178/.265/.233...and, more importantly, looking lost in center field.

Edmonds has been released, and his spot on the roster taken by Jody Gerut, who presumably will see most of the action in center field. This is a gutsy move considering that Gerut has 26 big-league games under his belt at the position, but such is life when you don’t have a contingency plan for your 38-year-old, badly faded superstar.

The Cubs may sign Edmonds and he may not contribute anything to the 2008 effort and be gone before he has even left a stain. The most compelling aspect of this story to me is that Felix Pie has proven himself to be of such low value to the Cubs that they would even consider such an acquisition.

After going 0-3, 9.16 in his first four starts this year, Ted Lilly continued to scratch his way back to respectability on Friday, allowing just one earned run and three hits over seven innings as the Cubs beat the Diamondbacks, 3-1, at Wrigley Field. The veteran lefty improved his record to 3-4 and has now lowered his ERA by about 40%, though it's still a puffy 5.24.

Impressive, too, this afternoon was Lilly's striketout count. He whiffed 10 Arizonans, including outfielders Chris Young and Justin Upton three times apiece. It was the 11th time in Lilly's 10-year career he fanned ten or more hitters. That's 11 times out of 202 starting assignments, or one 10-strikeout game for every 18 or so starts.

The other Ted Lilly rarity today was the RBI single he lined into centerfield in the fifth inning, which drew the Cubs even with the D-backs at 1-1. Since Lilly spent the vast majority of his career before last season in the American League, he only had 105 at-bats before this afternoon. Those 105 AB had only produced 6 RBI. After today, the numbers stand at 107 AB and 7 RBI or one RBI for every 15 or so at-bats.

An uncommonly good day for Ted Lilly all the way around.

According to the Win Shares calculations by the good folks at The Hardball Times, Geovany Soto leads all Major League catchers in WS, placing just ahead of the Twins' marvelous Joe Mauer. Dave Studeman also points out that Soto has nailed 38% of the runners attempting to steal against him while making just one error.

As pointed out at cubs.com, Alfonso Soriano has hit safely in 12 of his last 13 games. True enough, but in the same 13 games, Fonsie is hitting .250 overall with a .298 OBP, a .423 slugging percentage, and 12 strikeouts in 52 AB.

If Soriano keeps a scrapbook, I'm thinking that none of these past 13 games are likely to find their way onto any of the pages.

With Wednesday's one-sided loss at Cincinnati, the Cubs have dropped 9 of 13 games and have now failed to win any one of their last five series.

The dark time began two weeks ago, during the second of two games in Colorado. In the last of the eighth inning, an error by Ryan Theriot opened the door to a two-run Rockies rally, a 4-2 Cub defeat, and a split of the teams' two-game set. Since then, the Cubs have dropped two of three each to the Nationals, Brewers, Cardinals, and Reds.

As for today's mess, Jon Lieber became only the second Cub pitcher ever to serve up four home run balls in one inning. (Phil Norton was the other, back in 2000.) That's bad enough, but the fact that two of the longballs were hit by former Cubs Paul Bako and Jerry Hairston, Jr.—Bako's was a 400-foot-plus shot—really underscores how weak Lieber's performance was.

Lou Piniella was non-commital after the game regarding Lieber's possible future in the starting rotation.

"We don't need to make a decision right now. We'll think about it and see what we can do."

With Scott Eyre coming off the DL this weekend, my guess is that Sean Marshall will get the ball the next time the fifth spot in the rotation rolls around.

And speaking of fifth starters, the Cubs' third-starter-turned-fifth-starter-turned-Iowa-Cubs-starter, Rich Hill, had his first minor league outing Tuesday night. As Mike Wellman reports at The Cub Reporter, it wasn't great.

Ten years to the day since he pitched nine innings, allowed one hit, struck out 20, and was the winning pitcher, Kerry Wood pitched one inning, allowed one hit, struck out two, and saved a win for Carlos Zambrano.

Wednesday marks another anniversary. It's 5 years and 285 days since Jon Lieber's last start as a Chicago Cub, that is, until 11:00am Wednesday morning, when Lieber, assuming Rich Hill's spot in the rotation, pitches against the Reds' Edinson Volquez in the finale of the road trip.

Tonight in Cincinnati, the Reds found a way to end their five-game winning streak and the Cubs found a way to give up five unearned runs in a 5-3 loss. Cubs.com reports that losing pitcher Ryan Dempster (6 IP, 4 H, 7 K, 1 BB) was "the first Cubs pitcher to give up at least five unearned runs and no earned runs since Greg Hibbard was charged with six runs, all unearned, on July 11, 1993, against Houston."

Eric Yelding and Candy Maldonado were the culprits in '93; Mike Fontenot and Mark DeRosa made the back-breaking errors tonight. Fontenot compounded his failure in the field by getting thrown out at the plate in the top of the ninth after an almost-wild pitch by Reds reliever Francisco Cordero. At the time, the Cubs had the bases loaded and there was just one out.

"That play in the last inning is aggressive, but not in a two-run game," (Lou) Piniella said. "You almost have to be assured that you can fall down and still score. If it's a one-run game, different story. It happened, what can you do?"

When Derrek Lee grounded out to end the game, the tv camera flashed to Piniella in the Cubs dugout. He looked too disgusted to be angry.

As you probably know by now, Rich Hill was sent down to Triple-A Iowa in the wake of his nightmarish performance Friday night, Sean Gallagher was summoned from the I-Cubs (and pitched well in Sunday night's 5-3 loss to the Redbirds), and Jon Lieber was named the starter for the Cubs' Wednesday afternoon meeting with the Reds.

If, based on the previous post, you, too, guessed that Lieber's joining the rotation would be the first of the three events to occur, you're a winner!

Please claim your prize on the way out.

Lou Piniella pulled Rich Hill from the first inning of tonight's game at St. Louis before he had given up a hit, but after he had walked four Cardinal hitters and forced in the first run of the evening. Coupled with Jon Lieber's mostly successful relief work this year (three scoreless innings of relief tonight at this writing, lowering Lieber's ERA to 1.93), Kerry Wood's third blown save of the season on Thursday, and Piniella's blow-up at a question asked by Jesse Rogers of WSCR in the post-game press conference, I'm wondering which of the following will occur first:

• Jon Lieber takes Rich Hill's turn in the starting rotation
• Carlos Marmol is given a save opportunity ahead of Kerry Wood
• Piniella goes truly berserk at a reporter

My guess is they will happen in the order I've listed them, but I think they'll all happen in the near future.

One of the benefits of watching and writing about baseball strictly for fun instead of doing so for a living is that I can choose not to dwell on the grisly details of a game like today's. Instead I am free to avoid the game reports, walk away from the computer, read a book, or listen to non-sports talk radio, which is what I chose to do a little earlier tonight. I turned on "All Things Considered" on NPR, just in time to hear the local anchor tell me that "...in sports, the Cubs blew a three-run lead and lost to the Brewers today at Wrigley Field, 4-3."

Damn that sports-obsessed NPR!