Record: 16-9 (10-6 since 11Apr08)
Runs Scored: 145.  Runs Allowed:  105
Team OPS+: 120.  Team ERA+:  116.

What’s Gone Right Since Last Time:

Virtually the entire position roster (Soto, Theriot, Ramirez, Johnson, Cedeño, Fukudome, and Lee) getting or staying red hot.

The team continuing to draw walks at a jaw-dropping rate (113 in 25 games; on a pace to draw 732).

Zambrano keeping it up with game scores of 57, 65 and 68.

Much of the starting staff righting the ship (Lilly with a 43 game score, followed by 60 and 61, Marquis with a 48, followed by 62 and 55, Rich Hill with 58 and 52).

Kerry Wood settling in nicely (7 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 0 HR in 6 appearances).

What’s Gone Wrong Since Last Time:

Not much.

Dempster coming back to earth a bit (game scores of 44, 46 and 61).

Howry giving up a lot of hits and paying for it (7 IP, 10 H, 5 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 2 HR in 7 appearances).

Wuertz with some weak performances after a strong start (5 IP, 8 H, 7 ER, 3 BB, 3 K, 3 HR in 8 appearances).

If there is anything to be concerned about from the last 16 games it’s:

Virtually nothing, but the poor offensive showing in the last two games might be more indicative of what’s to come than the 15 that preceded them.

If there is anything to be excited about from the last 16 games it’s

Virtually everything, with the uncharacteristic patience at the plate suggesting that the offense might be, to a good enough extent, for real.

Record:  6-3
Runs Scored:  49 Runs Allowed:  43
Team OPS+:  111 Team ERA+:  113

What’s gone right so far:

Kusoke Fukudome (.371/.488/.543, and carrying himself with an air of competence refreshing to see in a Cub outfielder)
Derrek Lee (.300/.370/.625—nice to see the power early in the season from a guy not known for his fast starts)
Geovany Soto (.333/.410/.667, and picking up where he left off last year)
Carlos Zambrano (1.32 ERA, with 1 BB and 12 K in 13 2/3 IP)
Ryan Dempster (0.69 ERA in two starts)
Carlos Marmol (1 BB and 7 K in 7 IP)

What’s gone wrong so far:

Alfonso Soriano (.163/.234/.256, a black hole at the top of the order)
Felix Pie (.182/.217/.182, with a tenuous hold on his job)
Ryan Theriot (.250/.333/.281)
Ted Lilly (9.72 ERA)
Rich Hill (5.00 ERA, and didn’t look very good in his quality start)
Jason Marquis (one poor start reminiscent of late last season)
Bobby Howry (8.44 ERA, 1 K in 6 appearances)

If there is anything to be concerned about after just nine games, it’s:

The starting pitching.  I highly doubt that Dempster is for real as a starter, and if Ted Lilly and Rich Hill don’t get their acts together, we could have a problem.

If there is anything to be excited about after just nine games, it’s:

The offense.  Soriano will come around eventually, and there is strong potential for the offense to exceed projections.

Probably the most striking feature is the 13-man position roster’s heavy right-handedness:  the Cubs will have two left-handed hitters starting regularly, Fukudome and Pie, with Pie likely to be in some sort of platoon with Reed Johnson.  This has been something of a trend in recent Cubs rosters.  On top of that, only two of the five bench players hit left-handed (Ward and Fontenot).  With a heavily right-handed lineup, the Cubs have also managed to assemble a pretty weak righty bench: Blanco, Cedeño and Johnson.  I don’t see this being a stable situation, but I think we are starting the season with a bench that will create some problems. Déjá vu all over again.

Interestingly, the roster has exactly one switch hitter.  Guess who?

I’m not happy with Dempster and Marquis filling in the back end of the starting rotation, but it could be a lot worse, and I think there will be opportunities for better options to pitch their way onto the rotation.  Marquis kept his job last season due to some fine performances in April and May.  If he pulls the same thing off this year, I will try to bite my tongue and not complain if he stinks the rest of the season.  Dempster as a starter...well, we’ll see how that goes.  We’ve discussed this “he’s not capable of doing his job, so let’s promote him” strategy already.

But enough kvetching.  There are crocuses up in my front yard, and I can hear a cardinal chirping away outside my window.  The real kind.  Let’s play ball.

Anyway, the regular season was a lot more interesting than the playoff, so as we start our post-mortem, let’s take a bit of a poll:

1. Who was the MVP of the 2007 Cubs?

2. Who had the most negative impact on the 2007 Cubs?

3. What player should the Cubs focus on for the 2008 season, either as a free agent, or by trade?  I’m talking realistically…

4. Who on the Cubs current roster absolutely, positively has to go?

5. What rookieish player will make the biggest impact on the 2008 Cubs?

6. Jim Hendry:  Should they fire him or not?

7. What game represented the absolute low point for the 2007 Cubs?

8. What game represented the absolute high point for the 2007 Cubs?

9. Lou Piniella: Thumbs up, or thumbs down?

10. Biggest pleasant surprise of 2007?

11. Biggest unpleasant surprise of 2007?

12. 2008 Cubs: better than the 2007 team, or worse?

This Division Series could turn out to be a microcosm of the Cubs’ entire season, one where they entered with reasonable hopes, fell far behind, and pulled themselves together and won the division. We’ve seen many of this team’s worst tendencies in these two losses—the flailing mindlessly at the plate, the poorly timed bullpen lapses—but if they have shown any tendency this season at all it’s an ability to snap out of it when they need to.  The Cubs might not be that good, but they aren’t this bad either.

As the game was entering its fourth hour last night, I had had enough and went to bed, figuring that if the Cubs managed to come back from the 8-4 deficit, I would gladly take the outcome for the burn of having missed it.  The Cubs didn’t score again, completing what was overall a pretty sad performance.  For me, it was another one of those “if you’re going to lose like this, you don’t deserve it” disappointments that have come along again and again this season.

The Cubs do match up well with the Diamondbacks in these three games.  Of course, they have to win all of them, but they can only be won one at a time.  It’s time for the 2007 Cubs to be the 2007 Cubs.

Of course, the team was lucky—the 85-77 result from that would usually result in nothing more than a pat on the back and optimism for next year.  But I repeat:  the Cubs played .578 ball for nearly four months.  Selective endpoint or not, that isn’t something we’re used to seeing from a Cubs team, particularly in the last four months of the season.

I haven’t checked the Vegas odds, but my guess is that the Cubs enter this series as underdogs.  If so, I think that makes the Cubs a good bet, who match up well against the Diamondbacks in every way.  The Cubs were the first team in the league to land their playoff berth, giving them four full days to get their starting rotation in order for Division Series.  The Diamondbacks are in good shape in that regard as well, clinching a spot on Saturday.  The Diamondbacks went 4-2 against the Cubs in the regular season, but were outscored by them 19-18.  That appears to have been the modus operandi for Arizona this year, who overperformed their Pythagorean win expectation by a whopping 11 games—over the season they were actually outscored by their opponents 732-712.  The teams appear to have similarly mediocre hitting and quality but unspectacular pitching.  The Cubs are probably a better defensive team overall.  No, the Cubs probably don’t warrant status as favorites, with the home field advantage tipping the scales against them, but I think it’s a very close matchup.

On August 1st, the Cubs entered into a first place tie in the NL Central.  They followed that up with a 3-10 stretch, but they only lost 1.5 games in the standings, thanks to the Brewers stinking it up nearly as badly.  Unless a serious reversal of fortune occurs in the remaining seven days, a possibility I do not discount, I think we can look back at that failure to capitilize as the key failure in the Brewers season.  Since then, the Cubs have not been more than a game behind in the standings.

Since August 1st, the Cubs are a whopping 2 games over .500.  Okay, that doesn’t tell the whole story: the Cubs were not good in August, and have been wonderful in September.  They are now 15-8 in the month, with six games to go.  It will be hard for them to match their 19-8 September of 2003, their best September since 1935, but so far they’ve been a juggernaut.  The Brewers’ 12-9 has not been enough.

Brewers fans are familiar with the story behind today’s loss in Atlanta in the way I am familiar with Goodnight Moon: I know it by heart because I read it almost every night.  They’re losing in dramatic, heartbreaking fashion, although the drama and heartbreak of such losses deteriorates when you see it happen again and again.

But it ain’t over.  The series of events that led to the Cubs’ demise in 2004 was not expected by anyone, and they would not be the first team to blow a 3.5 game lead with 6 games left.

The Iowa Cubs have terrorized the rest of the PCL from the batter’s box.  The AAA club leads the league in runs, home runs, slugging and OPS.  The good news for the parent club is that the .290/.351/.470 team output has largely been produced by younger talent.  The omnipresent challenge for properly evaluating any minor league performance is the issue of context and, unfortunately, the PCL has the reputation of skewing toward hitters. 
There is reason to believe that more is at work here than purely context-driven statistical inflation.  Minorleaguesplits.com lists a league wide OPS of .758 in 2006 but that has jumped to something closer to .780 so far in 2007.  The Iowa Cubs have surpassed the previous two season OPS marks of .752 and .734 with an impressive .821.  Demolishing the ball has not been an annual tradition for the Iowa Cubs.  They have dramatically out-produced previous incarnations as well as the present competition. What’s more, the hitters have produced despite playing in a pitchers’ park (973, 985, 980 park factors the last three years).  There is good reason to hope for the position players at the upper levels of the system.  The lower levels of the system?  Not so much.

Felix Pie:  .372/.418/.600 in 180 ABs

Pie has drawn 15 walks at Iowa this year which represents a bit of an improvement but nothing to get too excited about.  Of course, it’s difficult to expect a player to develop patience when he’s pushing a .400 batting average.  Felix does not have a whole lot to gain from the minor league experience at this point.  Sure, it’s better to get him the plate appearances at Iowa than splinters in his butt in Chicago but it’s high time the Cubs addressed the outfield situation.  They already have lefty outfielders who can’t hit so it’s worth the young guy’s aches and pains at the plate to leverage the defensive advantage of a bona-fide center fielder.  I don’t think it’s a stretch to believe that over the course of a full season Pie could be as much as 25 runs better than Jacque Jones when you consider glove and arm (BPro does rate Jones as slightly above average in center but my eyes don’t agree).  I think it would be a stretch to say that Jones’s hitting, a line of .205/.245/.309 to date, would signify a comparable difference at the plate.  Barring a deadline deal, I think it’s time to put Pie in the majors to stay.

Geovany Soto: .336/.406/.573 in 241 ABs

Soto has been an average-ish hitting catcher up to this year.  The difference in 2007 has been a solid jump in power: one homer per 20.9 ABs as compared to a homer for every 57 at bats last year, and a double for every 12.7 ABs in 2007 against one per 16.2 in 2006.  The Cubs have a catcher who has shown power, patience, and the ability to hit for average.  A team boasting a catcher OPS of about .600 should be very excited to have somebody with these numbers in AAA.  The downside of his terrific season is that Soto isn’t particularly young for the level (baseball age of 24) and he’s repeating.  Koyie Hill never hit like this… until he batted .320/.360/.477 in 128 ABs for Iowa this year.

Eric Patterson:  .294/.358/.476 in 391 ABs

This is in line with Patterson’s career minor league performance up to this season: .298/.367/.465.  Eric has developed fairly steadily and I see no reason to disbelieve this batting line as an accurate indicator of his current talent level.  Unlike his older brother he takes a decent amount of walks (39 this year) and doesn’t strike out too much (only 65 for the season).  That looks like a future major leaguer - with the exception of his 11 errors.

Scott Moore: .266/372/.517 in 286 ABs

The inevitable trade of Scott Moore has sapped my enthusiasm for him.  That’s a nice line and he shows some rare patience for a Cubbie farmhand but he strikes out a TON (88 times in 2007 - and it’s no aberration).  He still may be the best bet for left handed hitting outfield filler if injuries bite Chicago in that particular area.  He’s also the best bet to be in a different team’s system come July 31.  Hopefully the Cubs can see some return on their dollar because 23 year old left handed hitting third sackers who show an ISO of .250 at AAA don’t grow on trees.

Ronnie Cedeno: .360/.424/.543 in 247 ABs
I have real difficulty believing in his 10 home runs based on what I’ve seen of that swing.  Cedeno is never going to hit for much power and doesn’t really work the count so he’ll need to show some serious batting average at the major league level to be an offensive plus.  The Cubs already have that player with the advantages of a little more patience at the plate and far fewer miscues in the field.  Cedeno has been called up to fill in for Cesar Izturis.  The good news for Ronnie is that he won’t have large shoes to fill.

Matt Murton: .326/.397/.551 in 138 ABs

Murton is doing a fine job in Iowa and he’s proven the ability to hit at the major league level.  The disappointment is that his power has not improved as many of us had hoped.  That huge SLG is padded by a high batting average and a good number of doubles.  His home run rate is nearly identical to that of Eric Patterson and Geovany Soto.  It’s tough to be a regular for the team when you’re a poor left fielder who rarely hits it out of the park.

The Tennessee Smokies boast three hitters with any appreciable number of at bats who are slugging over .400: Matt Craig, Josh Kroeger, and Jake Fox.  The first two would be interesting if they weren’t Matt Murton’s age and the third would be interesting if he could be used at catcher.

Daytona

Tyler Colvin: .306/.336/.514 in 245 ABs

I suppose there is something to be said for a 21 year old putting up an .850 OPS in high A ball but Colvin has not shown patience of even the most minimal kind.  Ten walks is (Corey) Pattersonian.  The power and average are moderately encouraging so it’s hard to be too disappointed at this early stage.  BA ranked him 4th among Cubs’ prospects to start the season which was a tad ridiculous.  Lots of tools and little substance.

Sadly, Colvin is by far the best hitter down in Daytona.  22 year old shortstop Nate Spears is showing some improvement by posting .261/347/.349 and 23 year old SS/3B Kevin Reynolds is hitting a more respectable .282/.318/.486.  Brian Dopirak has 11 home runs.  That’s an exceedingly strange career arc.  Outfielder Ryan Harvey has spent almost the entire season off the field due to a hamstring injury.  That is never a good thing but particularly damaging to the career of a highly regarded talent with little production to match.  He really could have used the plate appearances.

I wouldn’t bet the farm on the Cardinals being out of it, but I think most people see a two horse race as we head across the straightaway.  I’d like to think a bit about what the two teams’ strengths and weaknesses are as we get into the second half of the season. The picture I’m seeing is sort of Yin and Yang between the two teams.

Scoring runs: Cubs probably underachieving a bit, Brewers overachieving a bit

Despite the usual drivel we heard about the prospects for the Cubs’ offense prior to the season, those who were paying attention saw a lot of question marks, and it turns out that the skepticism was warranted. Clearly, the Brewers have had the better offense overall. The Cubs are seventh in the league in R/G at 4.55, while the Brewers are second at 4.89, with the Brewers playing in a less hitter-friendly environment.  The difference is probably worse than that.  The Cubs’ EqA is at .256 compared to .271 for the Brewers.

However, while I think the Brewers have the better offense, I think they’re likely to regress down a bit, while the Cubs might do a bit better.  I love Fielder and Braun, but I don’t expect them to keep up such torrid performances.  On the other hand, Rickie Weeks should be doing better, so who knows, maybe the Brewers will continue having one of the best offenses in the league.  The Cubs really don’t have any everyday players blowing their projections out of the water, so if anything I expect them to improve offensively.

Allowing runs: Cubs probably overachieving, Brewers underachieving

The Cubs are fifth in the league with a 4.23 team ERA.  Milwaukee trails them at 4.41.  Despite the many badly timed bullpen implosions we’ve witnessed, the Cubs relievers have an ERA almost identical to that of the starters.  Of course, the Cubs bullpen has been a problem, while the starters have been a pleasant surprise, to say the least.  I think the bullpen problem is likely to solve itself, and judging by recent activity, that is already happening.  While the relief has been shaky, the starters have been something just short of brilliant.  The Cubs have four starters on a pace to throw more than 200 innings, and received only three starts this season from a pitcher now sporting a below-average ERA.  This represents a huge turnaround from the Trainwreck of Ought-Six, but is this pace likely to be maintained?  I think the answer is no.  There are 121 pitchers in MLB that have thrown at least 70 innings up to this point.  If you rank them by BABIP, ALL FOUR of the Cubs top starters are in the lowest 20: Jason Marquis (.247, 6th lowest), Rich Hill (.257, 8th), Carlos Zambrano (.272, 18th) and Ted Lilly (.272, 20th).  Maybe there are other factors at work, but this looks to me like a completely unsustainable state of affairs.  Milwaukee, on the other hand, shows the opposite trend.  Ben Sheets (.277 BABIP, 27th) has not seen too many balls fall between the defenders, but you can’t say that for Claudio Vargas (.307, 71st), Jeff Suppan (.319, 92nd), Chris Capuano (.323, 96th) or Dave Bush (.331, 107th).  I’m willing to believe that the Cubs have a very solid defense that helps their pitchers on balls in play, while Milwaukee is not so strong in that department, but it’s not enough to explain this discrepancy.

Overall, I think you have to like Milwaukee’s chances for the rest of the season.  Their offense might not be as good as it has been so far, but I expect them to do a better job keeping their opponents from scoring.  Likewise, I think the Cubs will see more runs from their opponents, with some prospects for improvement in their offense.  The smart money is on the Brewers, but as things regress to expectations, IF they regress to expectations, the Cubs could easily come out ahead.  Whatever happens, it looks like we might have an actual race to watch, and that’s a good thing.

Anyhow, a couple of quotes from Lou over the past couple of days have caught my eye.  First, Lou said this about Michael Barrett:

“It has been a tough couple of weeks [for Barrett],” manager Lou Piniella said Wednesday. “I have confidence in him. I’m going to rest him a little more.”

Then, he said this (and I’m going to completely ignore the Zambrano story in that link):

Piniella said he will give Jacque Jones a brief “rest” to try to get him to relax

Both guys are having off years, and I know we’ve had plenty of threads saying we need to dump Jones (and more have been creeping up about Barrett since the “incident").  Does Lou think less playing time is the answer?  Since both are on the wrong side of 30, are they not as healthy as they should be on a day-to-day basis? 

I find it a little odd that Lou is talking about resting Jones right after Murton gets demoted.  Part of that was because Murton needed more playing time, which now seems available at the big league level.  I guess it means more playing time for Floyd.  And to be fair, Floyd has been the best of the bunch offensively so far.  But Floyd also needs regular rest, IMO, to stay healthy. 

Of course, these problems are mostly Hendry’s fault.  But what is the fix?