Chicago Cubs Tickets

So is Lou Piniella killing the Chicago Cubs or are the Chicago Cubs killing Lou Piniella?

Is it Lou’s fault that he cannot seem to motive this roster to achieve more than a pathetic record of 60-55 (as of August 15)? Or, is it the Chicago Cubs collective fault that they are putting more and more stress on a nearly 66-year-old heart?

The one undeniable fact is that the Chicago Cubs have a lot of talent yet have not been able to dominate the NL Central. I do not care if the St. Louis Cardinals are having an improbable year when they are supposed to be in rebuilding mode, the Cubs and their $134.8 million salary should be able to easily win this dreadful division.

It seems like every week I get to view another clip of Sweet Lou losing his cool, damning the team for its utter lack of effort. This seems to be a team that can only beat the teams they are supposed, the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates of the National League. Once it is called upon them to beat a team they could potentially see in the playoffs (the Philadelphia Phillies) or a team that stands between them and the wild card (the Colorado Rockies), the floundering begins.

Piniella is going to be beyond the accepted age of retirement on August 26th and I think if the team does not seem to pull things around by his birthday then the front office should have pity on this man and let him go. I do not care if it is his fault or not (I am including everything, including the inability to win playoff games, when I talk of fault).

I do not want to see his face turn a fiery shade of red in September if the Cubs are still playing like they just do not care. I do not want to see him keel over as the Cardinals or the San Francisco Giants as Milton Bradley returns to April form after a great tease in August. I do not want to see Piniella clutch his right arm as Alfonso Soriano takes a big worthless hack at a breaking ball as his average drops closer and closer to .200.

I am not only being a compassionate human being when I say these things. I am also being a little bit selfish. The Cubs already have one curse bestowed upon Wrigley Field and they do not need to add another. Do not think for a second that a man as volatile in nature as Lou would not bring some sort of pagan plague upon the Cubs if they caused his demise.

If he did the Cubs attempt to defy history would be only more difficult. I have no doubt that a curse from Lou Piniella would bring anything less than 10 times the pain the Curse of the Billy Goat has wrought.

So, if the Cubs still suck by the end of August let’s avoid the name calling and the general acid atmosphere that presented itself once Dusty Baker lost the confidence of the fans and the front office and simply let the man leave the team in peace.

The Cubs are in first place. Finally after a first half full of disappointment the team got it together and is in the midst of a hot streak that may just be the key to turning this season around. But, wait a minute, is this recent 11-4 run for real or is it simply a mirage.

Let’s go back to the beginning of this streak, the four game series against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cubs went 2-2, winning the second and third game of the series and outscoring the Cards overall. However that run margin was only +2 as the Cubs scored 19 runs and the Cardinals scored 17.

The next series was against the Washington Nationals. This ended in a four game sweep with a ridiculous scoring margin of +15. The Cubs scored 26 runs and the Nats only managed to put 11 on the board.

Here is where things get interesting though. The Nationals are a decent offensive club, ranking ninth in runs scored (which is actually better than out guys, ouch). So this is not a case of simply beating a team that came into the series 26-61 (meaning we should beat them), but the Cubs managed to hold Washington well below its normal run production. Still those were the Nationals.

The next series against the Philadelphia Phillies did not go the Cubs way. The Phillies won the series 2-1 and outscored Chicago 19-12. If we were truly on a hot streak wouldn’t we be able to take the series from the hottest team in the National League? Compare this to the series with St. Louis and suddenly the last few series do not look so amazing.

The next series is a series sweep of the Cincinnati Reds. Once again, like the Nationals series, this series does appear to be too special. The Reds are a team that struggle to score and they, shockingly, struggled to score against Chicago. The Cubs outscored the Reds 18-10 overall.

This appears to be a case of beating the teams we should (which is always good) and staying competitive with the teams that are being competitive with us. If the Cubs can take three out of this four game series with the Astros (who have been pretty good these two months), then perhaps the team really is onto something special.

Then again, if they are able to split the series things are not so bad either. This is the NL Central, so beating the teams we should beat and remaining competitive with the teams at our level may just be enough to win the division.

The Chicago Cubs have been awful in the first half of the season. They have one of the best pitching staffs in the National League yet the offense has failed on a scale only the San Diego Padres and the Cincinnati Reds can match.

Who knew getting rid of Mark DeRosa and adding Milton Bradley would result in a team that ranks 15th out of 16 teams in runs in the NL? Well, plenty of people mentioned that messing with the team chemistry too much could be just the impetus the Cubs needed for self-destruction. Then again, you could argue that the Chicago Cubs organization is so fragile that one dropped Old Style could set off a disastrous chain of events that would rob the team of a World Series…again.

The season is not beyond saving though. The Cubs are 43-43, tied for third in with the Houston Astros in the National League Central. They trail the St. Louis Cardinals by only 3.5 games. The Cards were supposed to be in rebuilding mode this year not pennant chase mode, so there is still a chance things could go south for them in a hurray.

Before dreaming about the demise of the Cardinals, the Milwaukee Brewers, and the Astros, the Cubs need to find out what is wrong with the batting lineup, and firing the batting coach is not the answer.

The good news is that Aramis Ramirez has returned this month after being out since early May. He was swinging a hot bat, hitting .364 before the injury. If he can get his swing back that would be a great beginning.

The other good news is that Lou Piniella seems to have finally accepted that Alfonso Soriano and his .298 on base percentage and 82:29 strikeout-to-walk ratio do not belong in the leadoff spot.

The even better news is that Derrek Lee found his power stroke, amassing 17 homeruns in 74 games. This means he will surely at least end up with at least near 30 homeruns for the season. The bad news is that when he hits for power he hits right about where he is right now, at .280. On a team with a couple of players that can make contact that is ok, but he is on the Cubs and is the second best everyday player in the lineup, hitting 39 points better than the next guy, Kosuke Fukudome.

The highly lauded off-season acquisition Milton Bradley continues to disappoint, hitting .243 and only driving six balls out of the park. The biggest concerns for Bradley were his attitude and his ability to stay healthy. Right now I am kind of wishing that he would land on the DL so we could see if he is the cancer ruining this lineup.

I am as dumbfounded as Pineilla, but am a little hopeful that a little tweak to the hitting could result in a minor jump in run production. All this team needs is a slight run increase to give the pitching, which is fourth in the NL with a 3.83 ERA, the support it needs to make a serious run at leaving the Houston Astros behind, blowing by the Milwaukee Brewers, and catching up to the St. Louis Cardinals.

I am confident that all hope for pennant baseball at Wrigley Field is not that far beyond this team’s reach and that this first half has merely been one long slump. The pitching is there, now all we need is to find out what is haunting the hitting.

Now that Randy Johnson reached the 300-win benchmark there have been murmurs of a stat finally not within the grasp of any player any time soon or even ever again. Years after the home run record, either for the season or the career mark, went from implausible to possible to pending to Barry Bond, I have to say that no stat in baseball is ever unattainable.

Johnson proved that himself as Buster Olney wrote for ESPN on June 4th. Johnson had a mere 64 career wins at the age of 30. Over the next 15 years he won 236 more games, picking up five Cy Young Awards and a co-World Series MVP in 2001 in the process.

Olney even went so far as to provide a list of players with more wins under the age of 30 than Johnson. One of those seven players listed was the Chicago Cubs Carlos Zambrano. It would be nice to see the Cubs have the next guy. It may be our only claim to fame considering I feel like it might be more likely we would have a guy have 15 dominant seasons before we are able to put together a team able to even make it to the World Series at this point.

The question is can Zambrano win the now games 200 games standing between him and that illustrious list of baseball’s best pitchers? Zambrano is a hot head on the mound that shows his emotions flamboyantly in the mound and on various inanimate objects in the dug out. He is also a fire baller that reaches 99 miles per hour on a four-seam fastball and relies on a heavy sinker that keeps the balls in the infield grass instead of in the basket at Wrigley Field. His other pitches- his sliders, his split-finger fastballs, and his changeup- all compliment his fastball reputation.

Right now he still suffers from a questionable pitching control on the mound, but so did one Randy Johnson. Though Johnson is likely, according to Olney, to have one of the lowest pre-30 win totals among the pitchers in the 300-win club, Zambrano is only 28 and already has 100.

Johnson had the advantage of not only a great work ethic, but also a 6 foot 10 slender frame that helped him confuse batters with his release point and that could take more toll than a pitcher with a heavier frame (such as Zambrano) thanks in large part to developing speed through form and not just pure physical power.

Zambrano is tall (6 foot 5), but also a little bit heavy (255 lbs.). I do not see Zambrano being able to handle the strain on his joints if maintains his current weight and throws with his current ferocity the same way Johnson could. Remember, Zambrano sat out a few games because of a tired arm. If he begins to work now on dropping a few pounds and maybe learning to fine-tune his control, especially on his slider and changeup, suddenly this Tanzanian devil could become a little more Maddox-ian in his game strategy and not throw himself out of a few starts each season.

One of the things that made Johnson such an improbable case was his sorry pre-30 win total. Zambrano does not have the same problem. There are no 20-win seasons (I think the small number of 20 win seasons and the rarity of players with multiple 20-win seasons is what worries baseball experts), but there is a healthy average 15 wins per season when he is healthy and a starter for the entire year (he began splitting time between relief and starting). Fifteen wins seems to be the magic number to average to reach the 300 club.

If Zambrano can get a few 20 win seasons he could have a real chance at attaining 200 more wins in the next 13 to 15 seasons and all the experts who doubted that the current game of baseball could elicit another 300-game winner could begin to cast doubt on a whole new generation of Major League pitchers.

Zambrano is not alone in his potential to prove the experts wrong. The current list of active wins leaders from Baseball Reference.com has a few guys capable of reaching the win mark as well, such as guys like C.C. Sabathia and Roy Halladay. While Olney is right in noting that making evaluations of a pitchers end career win total while he is not even 30 is ludicrous, it is equally ludicrous to discount those players.

The point is that no record should be deemed unreachable, especially in a game like baseball where records, even long-standing records, live to be broken. The league even seems to thrive on that reality, wholeheartedly embracing the movement that shattered the home run myths.

What is going on? Is this Bizzaro-Chicago? Why would Jake Peavy choose to play in U.S. Cellular instead of Wrigley Field (the stadium is nicknamed “The Cell”)? Why would he choose to go out in the Southside after the game instead of the Wrigleyville (are our female fans not hotter in their thongs and bikini tops)? Why would he choose to go a team struggling like the Cubs without the talented roster to turn things around?

Sadly our stockpiling of players left little to trade to the San Diego Padres. Sadly, we may have to listen to jeers from Sox fans as they propel themselves from fourth to first in their pathetic division. We have to comeback and overtake the St. Louis Cardinals (23-17) and the Milwaukee Brewers (25-15). The Sox merely have to make up six games to over take a team with a sub-.500 record (the Twins), the Royals, and the Detroit Tigers.

Even worse, our pitching and our hitting have been awful. We have a decent WHIP, meaning that we are pretty good at keeping players off the bases, but once they get on we cannot keep them from reaching home. Our EAR is 4.42, good for ninth best in the NL.

Our hitting is atrocious. He are hitting .251 and are only driving in 4.81 runs a game. We are neither powerful (a slugging percentage of .416) nor are we fleet of foot (20 stolen bases). About the only thing we are is lucky that we are only three games out of first place.

Nothing about the team makes sense right now, all the talent in the world and a simply average record despite bad pitching and worse hitting. Is this the price we pay for a couple of morons placing a decapitated goat head on the statue of Harry Carey or is the price we pay for high hopes and expectations for a team that has continually disappointed?

These woes (our record) and these insults (Peavy to the Sox) are difficult to bear and difficult to not take to heart. If anything, we are priming a new generation of baseball fans that bleed blue for years of headaches and heartache.

The lingering chill that has hung in the air in Chicago, reluctant to release the city by the lake for its annual two weeks of spring weather, seems to have attached itself to the cherished Chicago Cubs. After a little over two weeks of play, the team is a moderately healthy 8-6, but is sickeningly in fourth place in the typically uncompetitive National League Central Division.

At first glance that fourth spot, right behind the Pittsburgh Pirates seems like a travesty, but lest we not forget the team has 148 games to make up that two game difference that separates the Cubs and the first place St. Louis Cardinals. In fact a nice three game sweep of the series this weekend at Busch Stadium could turn this whole pile around in the early season division standings.

A quick gander at the stats shows that the Cubs bats, mighty as they can be, have been stuck in a slumber. In the National League, the team ranks 11th in team batting average, eighth in runs scored, and 11th in slugging. Still the patient bats have held enough outside pitches to come in fifth in on base percentage. The pitching has been rather average. With the seventh best ERA, the team has a strong eight quality starts in the first 14 games, but just a woeful three saves.

The major offseason acquisitions have not exactly been stellar. Switch-hitting right fielder Milton Bradley has a single hit in nine games. He is sitting out tonight ice his balls, and perhaps his ego.

It is not an encouraging sign to see the player with a history of putting in half seasons on the bench with a lingering groin injury, but it is even more off putting to listen to the player known for volatile outbursts begin to crack under the pressure already. According to ESPN, Bradley has not spoken to any non-Cubs media outfits in a week and is throwing around allegations that the city’s media is trying to get him to snap.

Unfortunately for Milton, this is Chicago, not New York, so his accusations sound pretty preposterous. Fans and sports writers here tend to revere our high-profile athletes. The sports writers of this city have stood behind Brian Urlacher despite his reticent stance with the beat reporters and his tweaked back that seems to have cost him a step. The simple fact is that a World Series win is much better for business than a player out of control.

Kevin Gregg has already lost the closer spot to Carlos Marmol thanks to a 6.43 ERA and five walks in seven innings. This is once again proof that spring training stats mean nothing. I am just happy Piniella made the change this early on. I am not too sad about letting Kerry Wood go. He is struggling as a member of the Cleveland Indians with a 5.06 ERA, though he has three saves to his credit.

The players left over from last year are beginning to show some promise. Ted Lilly has been the one Cubs starter to really impress. He is 2-1 with a 2.41 ERA. Carlos Zambrano may have had some disparaging comments about Wrigley Field and a slightly inflated ERA of 4.85, but he has pitched 26 innings in four starts. Considering that last season his arm was suffering from exhaustion, this is a nice way to start the year.

Alfonso Soriano joins Aramis Ramirez, Ryan Theriot, and, yes, Kosuke Fukudome as .300 hitters. In fact, Fukudome even has shown some power with three early home runs. Soriano has five, but 16 strike outs as well.

The season has just begun and the Cubs team does not appear to be hemorrhaging anywhere, so I am pleased to rekindle hopes that this could be the year to break the curse, mutilated goat head or not.

This did not take long. Not but two days before the Cubs season opener against the Houston Astros, Carlos Zambrano makes incriminating comments about replacing Wrigley Field. The regular season did not even begin this time and we Cubs fans may have already seen the season unravel with an ill-thought comment by our ace pitcher. The comment came after a two-game exhibition to break in New Yankees Stadium before the New York Yankees start real play.

Yes, according to the Associated Press story, Zambrano let these blasphemous words fly from his mouth:

“You wish that Chicago’d build a new stadium for the Cubs.”

Zambrano, of course, came before the media the next day and quickly ran to the sanctuary of the misquoted. According to Big Z (via the Chicago Tribune and Paul Sullivan’s company blog), he said:

“I said anybody wants to have a new ballpark. As a player, you feel like you’re trying to be more comfortable. As a player, you want to have the greatest ballpark in the National League, or the big leagues. As a fan, we should stay there. I don’t have a problem with Wrigley Field. That’s what I said”

He will still start the season opener against the Houston Astros, and I am sure he is glad he is playing in Texas instead of in Chicago where fans might pelt him with slush balls after downing a dozen $6 watery Bud Lights and breaking the seal over some horse troughs.

The most interesting thing is that he is not completely out of line. As the stadium’s bio will inform visitors, the stadium was built in 1916. Perhaps it is time for something to be done. Perhaps it is time for us to let a little of our desire for nostalgia and tradition go for a few modern conveniences.

These modern amenities do not include the martini bars, massage parlors, housed gift shops along the bleachers, and whatever else they have at U.S. Cellular Field. Modern conveniences might mean something as simple as bathroom facilities not out of the old west or seats that can actually fit a modern human being.

The average American male is now five-foot nine and we will not even get into the average girth. I cannot find proper statistics for men back at the inauguration of Wrigley, so I am making an assumption based on hearsay that the average man was about five foot six.

The other modern amenity that I truly do care about is finally breaking with the Curse of the Billy Goat. According to CubbiesBaseball.com, Billy Sianas uttered this damnable phrase after he and his stinky-ass goat were kicked out of the 1945 World Series game:

“The Cubs ain’t gonna win no more. The Cubs will never win a World Series so long as the goat is not allowed in Wrigley Field.”

Every attempt to break the curse, from bringing a goat onto the field on Opening Day in 1984, 1989, 1994, and 1998 to bringing a goat to a Cubs game at Minute Main Park in 2003 in Houston and being denied entry, has failed. While Sam Sianis seems to believe that the owners of the Cubs have to truly embrace goats at Wrigley Field as opposed to just using them for PR, some believe the answer is much more expensive, but much simpler. Move.

A new stadium would take the Cubs away from Billy Sianas’s curse. It would also give fans and players a little more comfort while watching the game. Yes the joy of watching baseball in a stadium that truly allows fans to focus on baseball and not pretty girls in short shorts and bikini tops on the Jumbotron would be sacrificed. The neighborhood, something that has become as apart of a day at Wrigley Field as the game and stadium itself, would have to suffer losing the team or losing some very expensive land for a new stadium. Fans could get used to ivy along the walls and flags whipping in the wind at a new location, and I am sure, in the end, they would not mind adorning the outfield of the new digs with a pennant flag for a World Series victory.

Sometimes Sweet Lou can pull out a few surprises and his latest came yesterday when he named Kevin Gregg closer. Many of us expected the fireball hurler Carlos Marmol, but apparently Gregg last two seasons in Florida, in which he complied 61 total saves, and his run-less performance this spring training won over Piniella.

Most fans that I know were expecting Carlos Marmol to be pitching the ninth with his mid-90s fastball and multi-faceted slider that can be a straight slider, a curveball, and a sweeping breaking ball that taunts right-handed batters when sharply breaks down and away. He did not help his case by allowing four earned runs in the same 8.1 innings and hitting five players in the process.

Purely on a numbers basis over the last two seasons I would still favor Marmol. Marmol had a 2.68 ERA last season in 82 games with 114 strikeouts in 87.1 innings. Gregg had a nagging left knee injury and finished the season with a 3.41 ERA (his best as a closer) and only 29 saves in 38 chances. He was summarily replaced as closer for the Florida Marlins by Matt Lindstrom before the Cubs even traded for him.

I must admit that these numbers are for two different roles though. Gregg was a closer. He had those numbers under pressure in the last innings of games. Marmol was a key pitcher down the stretch, but was only middle relief. Not all great middle relievers can handle the pressure of holding the ball at the end of the game. Marmol’s difficulty controlling his fastball that crop up every once in a while make him suspect when it comes to pressure.

The reality is that there is a long season ahead and if Gregg performs poorly he can easily be replaced by Marmol. Historically, though, it seems like almost every team that goes to the World Series and wins has had its bullpen in order, especially when it comes to the closer.

Last season the Philadelphia Phillies had Brad Lidge saving 41 games without a blown opportunity and with a 1.95 ERA. In 2007 Jonathan Papelbon had 37 saves, only three blown saves, and a 1.85 ERA for the Boston Red Sox. There have been winners that have won in the past without a solid closer (the St. Louis Cardinals in 2006 with Jason Isringhausen and 10 blown saves), but those teams tend to be surprises and the Chicago Cubs are not going to shock anyone with their roster.

Piniella has won more World Series than I have (one as a manager and two as a player with the New York Yankees) and is a much more respected name in baseball than I am hiding behind a Cubs blog. So, though, I hesitate, I put my faith in Piniella’s decision. However if the Chicago Cubs are splitting the closer role by midseason I am claiming I called the disaster, something I saw coming after continuing to see Neal Cotts pitching for our bullpen.

Remember earlier this decade when there was a state of emergency in the American state of basketball. Well, apparently the state of baseball can be added to that list of sports where our dominance is far more of a domestic perception than an internationally-renowned reality.

Yes, Sunday Team USA failed to make the WBC championship game. In 2006 the United States did not even place in the top four. This time they waited until the semifinals before bowing out. Japan beat the United States 9-4 and will play Korea in the championship.

This year’s story was far from one of redemption. It was one of injuries and one in which American pitchers posted a 6.12 ERA, good for the second worst for the eight teams that made tournament play.

The Boston Red Sox starter Daisuke Matsuzaka dominated on the mound for Japan and the Tampa Bay Rays Akinori Iwamura hit the RBI triple in the fourth inning that was the key to the five-run inning that pretty much put the United States away. Roy Oswalt served up the embarrassing inning and was stuck with the final loss for team USA in 2009.

The weird thing is that I am not hearing any clamoring for pitchers like Tim Linecum, Jake Peavy, Cliff Lee, or Roy Halladay to step up and save the pitching. I was surprised at first that I even found it difficult to muster some sort of tone of condemnation that we were embarrassed in the second consecutive WBC.

It all seemed to make very little sense until I remembered my discussion over the weekend with my Sox friend Scott. He noted that while I may complain about the length of the NBA season, the 162-game schedule is just right for a sport like baseball that is truly a game of minute differences in averages.

Basketball is a fluid game with a focus on quickness while baseball is a leisurely game. One can look to George Carlin for a terrific analysis of the game during his bit comparing the game with football.

Baseball and its law of averages do not fit nicely into a single elimination playoff or a hastily played round-robin tournament. The game needs to be played over a matter of a few months at the very least for a playoff to even feel right. Talking about an international competition for three years is not the same.

Perhaps the best way to appease the global murmur of disapproval over the use of the term World Series is to hold an exhibition with the champions from each league. Then the playoffs would have a nice lead in, instead of a couple of weeks of games before March Madness steals the baseball tournament’s thunder.