Nine Innings of Reflections

After a fairly lengthy layoff – call it time on the DL if you will—I find little has happened with the Cubs…either on the field or off the field. The misery that this season has generated, and the lackluster response to unmitigated failure make it one for the record books.

I would recommend the sale of trendy T-shirts saying: “I survived the Cubs season of 2006” although I’m not yet sure I’ll survive it. And more importantly, I’m in no real mood to have “fun” with the ineptitude, rigidity and disregard for baseball fans that this management continues to display long after the ship has hit the iceberg and the passengers have fled.

Not even the biggest cynics among us could have imagined a management so contemptible of its frustrated fans and inactive in response to such a season. With the National League as bad as many of us suspected, it’s almost difficult to create a team with a payroll of $95 million heading into the All-Star break 20 games under .500.

To catch up a bit, here is a full baseball game of personal reflections about recent happenings – or lack thereof – on the North Side of Chicago.

Inning 1: Anything Positive to Say?

It’s very difficult to find much of anything positive to comment on when reflecting on recent happenings with the Cubs.

But I wanted to open with a fan thought that has little to do with on-the-field performance, statistical analysis or any prognosis for the future.

Let me very quickly give kudos to Ryan Dempster for comments he made after blowing a heartbreaking game against the Sox a few weeks ago. I choose to open with Dempster because one of the most infuriating experiences of Cub fandom in the Dusty Baker era has been witnessing excuse-making, blaming, finger-pointing and tantrum-displaying by this manager and his team.

Dempster was a devastated, angry player following giving up a death dinger to A.J. Pierzynski, but his post-game comments made me take notice. He said his play has been “embarrassing” and not excusable, and he accepted full blame. I immediately was struck by how unusual it is to hear a player for a Dusty Baker Cubs team respond to failure in this way, and how antithetical this impromptu press conference was to any of the ones that I’ve heard Dusty Baker give in the last three years.

If nothing else, I hope Dempster rights himself in the second half, which doesn’t necessarily mean I think he’s the best choice for the closer role when games mean something again.

Inning 2: Kerry Wood’s Quiet Goodbye

If Kerry Wood has pitched his last game in a Cubs uniform, which now is a distinct possibility, it will leave fans with serious disappointment over the unfulfilled promise of a stellar career and a long-time anchor for the Cubs starting pitching staff.

Having said that though, I’ve heard an awful lot lately about how over-rated Wood was, how he “choked” during the big games and how he never became what the Cubs had counted on.

I only agree with the last piece. His lack of durability – the repeated stints on the DL – came as crushing blows to the Cubs at various times during various seasons. When Wood was on the field, however, he was hardly “vastly over-rated” and I don’t accept that he had a tendency to “choke” the big game away. He clearly was gassed and mismanaged during game 7 of the NLCS in 2003, which came only a week or so after he almost single-handedly ushered the Cubs to their first post-season series win in an eternity.

Wood too often battled control problems when he was on the mound, which prevented him from becoming the ace pitcher that management and fans expected. When he pitched, he could be frustrating to watch because of self-made problems, but he consistently (consistently when he was able to pitch, that is) was one of baseball’s more difficult pitchers to hit against

The 20-strikeout game against the ‘Stros elevated expectations, no doubt, but talk about that game being suicidal for his career doesn’t fit for me. He didn’t end with a crash because he had a spectacular once-in-a-lifetime nine innings in May of 1998. Had Wood not pitched that masterpiece, the organization still would have counted mightily on him. He was thought of as a star waiting to happen with or without that game. He still would have performed under three managers who abused him. He still would have rigidly refused to change his mechanics when it was in his best interest to do so.

Wood is a strikeout away from 1,300 career Ks, and he has let up 875 hits in 1,128 innings. He has a 3.68 lifetime ERA with a career whip of 1.26. When he pitched, which wasn’t nearly enough, the Cubs had a reasonable chance of being in the game. That’s what makes the possible end of his Cubs career so disappointing – not because he was so over-rated or such a choker.
If Wood recovers from his injury, accepts an incentive-laden contract at a much-reduced salary, and Cubs management makes sure to acquire pitching as if he were not with the team, you won’t hear me complaining about giving this guy another chance. But I think it’s more likely that he’ll try to get his career going again…somewhere else.

Inning 3: An April Illusion
Among the most disappointing aspects of this season for me is the way Greg Maddux not only came down to Earth after a beautiful April but crashed into it. It’s clear Maddux has no future as a pitcher on this team. And, in what may be a minority position, I’m just not quite convinced that Mad Dog has had this tremendous impact on the team’s young pitchers as I’ve heard over and over again.
Sean Marshall and Carlos Marmol are certainly among the few bright spots in 2006, but are we all convinced that Maddux has played such a key role in their developments as we so often hear?

And if that’s the case, was Maddux taking days off when Rich Hill and Angel Guzman and Jae Kuk Ryu and Jerome Williams pitched this year?

No one is a bigger fan than I am of Greg Maddux. But if Maddux can bring this team something valuable in a trade, and I’m not sure he can, it would be in the Cubs’ interests to respectfully tell him why the trade must be made.

Yes, the Cubs owe Maddux complete respect. However, a team 21 games under .500 trading Maddux away to a pennant-contender is not disrespectful if handled in the right way.

What has me most angry though is how we keep hearing from our general manager that this team owes Dusty Baker and Greg Maddux, etc. the right to remain in Cub uniforms. More than anything else, Hendry owes fans a hint that this organization is urgently preparing to make changes and distance itself from the puke we’ve seen on and off the field all year long. If the departure of Baker and/or Maddux (not that I equate the two…) help this club for the future, then that’s the only thing that should be weighing on the GM’s mind right now.

Inning 4: The Press Conference That Wasn’t

Jim Hendry was going to evaluate the team over the All-Star break to decide what changes needed to be made. Four days later, Hendry voiced support for his manager and wondered where rumors of his firing began.

I’m not sure anyone – and I mean anyone – could have envisioned what a miserable and self-delusional GM Hendry has become. He built up a glowing reputation by getting the Cubs out of bad, seemingly impossible contracts (hello Todd Hundley) when he first became GM. But we’re now watching a wreck, an executive who is rigidly locked into one way of thinking and doesn’t appear ready to acknowledge “the plan ain’t working.”

It’s clear to many that Baker and his coaches should have been dismissed a long time ago. But if Hendry disagrees, then what good does it do not to sign Baker now—not that I would be anything but angry about that decision.  What gets me is that he says he’s doing what’s best for the Chicago Cubs. How is not making a decision one way or the other about Baker best for the Cubs?

This is a lost season. The second-half should be used for developing young players and bringing better understanding to the organization about how to build for the future. Those goals could very well be at odds with a manager who has to win to keep his job. That’s a situation that is not best for the Chicago Cubs – it’s best for a sheepish executive not willing to make a decision when the time is right for it.

Inning 5: A Season Under This Regime

The idea that Hendry still needs to evaluate Baker and this team is, of course, so ridiculous it asks fans to turn off brain cells. Remember that 2006 does not reflect the first year of Baker and this set of coaches. If we go back to the last 162 games under the same manager and the same coaches, we’ve seen the Cubs lose 95 times.

That includes a 16-13 September when there was no pressure and little to play for. We’ve seen well over the equivalent of a season of big-market losing baseball, of a team that plays and thinks poorly.

Hendry needs more time?

Innings 6 and 7: Jacque and Juan

Those of us who were not enthusiastic by off-season acquisitions of Jacque Jones and Juan Pierre may be catching some flack now that both players appear to have turned their seasons around to some degree.

But this misses the point.

I was against both pickups – especially Jones – but never because I thought Jones was a terrible player or that Jones and Pierre would play at the level they did the first two months of the season. Both players under-achieved in these opening months – even to many who opposed acquiring them.

Jones is now batting over.300 and his offensive output is somewhat better than I would have expected. But the problem with his signing is that it’s for relatively big money and he’s locked in for two more years at a power position. The Cubs need major upgrades. A mediocre right fielder cuts off one big opportunity to upgrade.

And let’s not oversell this turnaround by Jones even though his OPS right now is a career best .861. He’s on pace to hit more home runs than expected – upper 20’s—but he still strikes out a lot and has been terrible whenever a lefty is on the mound. (OBP .235/SLG .385/OPS .621). That’s a platoon player if you ask me. And his defense has been less than I expected.

Juan Pierre has resurrected his season to a degree with a decent June and July. Now his OBP is .318. Truth is, what we’ve seen of Pierre lately is a bit closer to the Pierre I thought the Cubs had acquired.

But the Cubs gave away promising pitching prospects to get Pierre who was coming off a bad year. And as Pierre has grown older, he’s become more streaky – in part because he doesn’t rely on walks to achieve his OBP. He needs hits and lots of them.

The Cubs are now talking about signing him beyond this year, and I truthfully don’t have much of an answer as to what the alternative would be. But the big question is this: If Pierre is in center and Jones is in right in 2007, exactly where does the team target in the everyday lineup for massive improvement?

That leaves left field and second base by my count.

Inning 8: Is This Unprecedented?

I must confess that I don’t follow other sports like I do baseball so I’ve started to ask friends this question: Have we ever seen in any professional sport what we’re seeing in the upper offices of Wrigley Field this summer?

This is what I mean. This is a team in a big-market town with a payroll of $95 million or so. The team crashed and burned in the middle of last year. Is there any comparable example of a team that has been this bad for this long with this kind of a payroll and in this kind of a market that has not made a single serious move with its executives, managers and coaches?
My friends could not come up with an answer off the top of their heads but said they’d think about it. I still haven’t heard from them.

Inning 9: Back in the Game

I wanted to apologize for the lack of activity at times on this site. Ross has carried the load heroically when he can, but we don’t have to look far for an example to know that a team needs depth.

When I accepted the offer to contribute here, I was very explicit in saying that there would be stretches where I would not be available to post. So I apologize for the lack of activity at times and tip my hat to Ross for keeping the game moving without much help in the lineup or on the bench. We are working to see if we can provide a bit more punch to our roster.