A traveling circus
Take a look at the morning standings. The Chicago Cubs are 10 games under the .500 mark playing away from Wrigley Field. Even teams with the best home records would struggle to overcome a .368 winning percentage on the road. The Cubs are probably not even good enough to finish at .500 if this kind of play on the road continues.
While much was made of the Bradley/Piniella soap opera this weekend at US Cellular Field, much of that was a distraction from the real obvious issues that are presenting themselves. Simply stated, this is on the players. Jim Hendry and Lou Piniella do not hit baseballs, they do not catch baseball’s and thankfully they don’t pitch them. So while many decide to blame Piniella and Hendry for the play on the field, I’m not in that camp.
The Cubs (even without Aramis Ramirez) put out a starting lineup on a daily basis where four of the eight position players were all stars just last season. On most days the starting outfield consists of three 2008 all stars. The under performance of these 4 players (Soto, Soriano, Bradley and Fukudome) is to blame for where this team finds itself.
Still many have decided that the Chicago tradition of blaming the management is a better option than pointing out the obvious poor play of the Cubs offensive players. Yeah sure, Hendry shouldn’t have traded Mark DeRosa, but honestly do you think he would make up for the poor play that is all around the diamond on this club? Hendry’s hands now appear to be tied by the never ending sales process, but he did his job this offseason. He built the best team he could, a team that was the prohibitive favorite to win this division running away.
We can question Lou’s handling of the bullpen, but we all knew that was not his strong suit when the Cubs hired him. Of course we can get into the Lou’s not throwing bases argument, or the fact that he has lost his fire, or he’s on some sort of retirement tour. All of that shit is mindless crap put out by a press and a fan bases that has to realize that a manager looks stupid when his offense goes anemic. It doesn’t matter if it’s Casey Stengel or John McGraw managing, if his offense ain’t scoring runs he looks like a bad manager.
The issue is as clear as this bright blue Chicago morning, it’s the Cubs offense. Bradley is an absolute trainwreck in the lefthanded batters box, Soriano has been in the biggest slump of his career, Soto hasn’t put the idea of a sophomore slump to rest. Unless the veteran talent starts to hit, there really is little use in watching this in hopes of some sort of season saving surge. At some point the blame has to go where it belongs on the ballplayers.
wpbc
jackfsu
jeremyt32
Well said, WPBC. The mob is already turning its torches and pitchforks toward Piniella.
oog
June 29, 2009 at 9:52 am
it’s the tradition around here oog, these people don’t know any better. piniella is the best manager this team has had since i can remember, and now everyone wants to make him out to be senile.
at some point the fanbase and the media need to deal in facts.
the facts are:
-this team sucks on the road.
-this team hasn’t hit.
-this team is miserable hitting with RISP.
-players expected to produce big time (bradley, soriano, soto) are not.
Tough to manage a team when all of that shit is happening.
wpbc
June 29, 2009 at 10:19 am
They just want to create characters. They don’t understand the sport if it doesn’t fit a narrative. Piniella’s an enabler. Zambrano’s immature. Ramirez and Soto and Soriano are lazy. Bradley’s a hothead. DeRosa plays for the love of the game. Wood’s a hero. Theriot is scrappy. Some of it may have evidence to support it, but that’s quite irrelevant.
What I don’t understand is why people come up with this stuff if it just makes them miserable all the time. Maybe it’s the hounds in the media who really create and sell these archetypes, and close-minded folks just follow suit. I mean, why should sports fans be different than any other mob of people easily whipped into a fervor.
/Rant.
oog
June 29, 2009 at 11:04 am
oog, i guess everyone is searching for a bigger reason as to why the cubs suck. instead of just saying that these players are not producing they have to make it into some sort of morality deal. lol. it’s really rather amusing, why can’t we just accept that the cubs are not as good as expected? that happens in sport. instead we’ll hear all of the shit you outlined above, in the end as you say it’s irrelevant what’s true and what’s not…many fans will believe this shit.
wpbc
June 29, 2009 at 11:38 am
Why can’t it be a little bit of each?
The players aren’t meeting their projections,
The manager seems to hold different players to different standards,
and the General Manager gets to spend 70 gazillion dollars and walks away with only one playoff series win.
Seems to be a complete crapfest on all levels from my view.
JDNoce
June 29, 2009 at 9:41 pm
I just don’t think it is JD. Don’t get me wrong everyone is entitled to their opinion on the matter, but I just don’t think when you look at the ownership situation, Hendry could have done much more. He maxed this thing out for every dollar he could since it was announced that they were going to sell the team prior to 2007. In my view he did his job. As far as Piniella goes, I just struggle with the criticism. He did a great job managing the same ballplayers the last two seasons. What has changed? The performance of the players. Not much he can do.
I’d love to sit and blame them for everything and say that they should be fired and all of that shit, lord knows that’s all I did in 2005 and 2006. But it would be disingenuous of me to do so now. I don’t believe for a minute either of them are at fault. I just don’t. Again, that doesn’t mean I’m right and your wrong or any of that blog bullshit, this isn’t a my way or the highway type of thing, it’s just my opinion…and my opinion is it’s a bunch of very talented players under performing BIG TIME.
wpbc
June 30, 2009 at 7:08 am
the vast, vast majority of avid chicago cubs fans are too stupid to understand or too maudlin to accept baseball as it is without viewing it through the distorting prism of a narrative artifice. without the derivative serial drama of fantasy roles being played out on the stage at wrigley field, most of them could not be bothered.
it’s all quite silly, of course — the truth is that luck, good or bad, determines most of the output. but most folks can’t accept that life outcomes aren’t fairly strictly the result of human will — it’s too disempowering and scary to contemplate. it’s much easier to believe that one man’s will, if it is “true” and “good”, can bend god and nature to most any outcome. so that’s the fantasy, though it’s fucking laughable on a minute’s contemplation.
you’re dead nuts, ccd, as usual. the cubs are failing this year where they succeeded last year because of random variance. not sure why so many find that hard to accept.
i give credit to piniella as well. milton bradley was a hypernarcissistic turd when he was hitting, and he’s a hypernarcissistic turd now. you don’t hit like he does and get kicked to the curb every year unless you are. i personally don’t care much as long as he hits. but piniella has to lay down some law about the limits of narcissism on his team if he’s to avoid the dusty baker bullshit we had with moises alou slamming the bat down after every called strike and farnsworth sleeping in the clubhouse. good for him. things aren’t going well, but piniella is still captain of the ship — which is how it has to be if they’re going to close those four games over the next three months.
gaius marius
June 30, 2009 at 8:15 am
lmao. that was bad? what about todd walker complaining to stone and chip that they didn’t give out cool nicknames like hawk harrelson? i loved that!
lol, not as nuts as you think. let me tell you a secret gm, i hardly watch this club anymore. i occasionally turn on pat and ron when i’m in the car or the garage to listen for a few innings, but that’s about it. i like to listen to ron and pat like they were a bad talk show. (kind of like fernwood tonight)
yeah, not to go all karma on you, but for all of the good stuff that happened to this club last year, there was bound to be some evening out this year.
wpbc
June 30, 2009 at 8:52 am
it really is odd behavior by bradley, but is was to be expected. i think we mentioned when the cubs signed him that if he got off to a bad start it would be bad. well that’s what happened.
i still think many of the issues with bradley go away if the team is winning. they are magnified when the team is losing. that’s just the way that it goes. still i hate to think that less than a year in his signing is a failure. there is still half a season to go and at least next year before we judge the deal.
all of that shit aside, it is his play that really worries me. he has been awful in the lefthanded batters box. his bat speed doesn’t look to be there. with a player with his track record of injuries, you start to wonder if something is wrong with a wrist, shoulder or hand. he’s just not swinging very good from that side of the plate.
wpbc
June 30, 2009 at 9:16 am
i like to listen to ron and pat like they were a bad talk show. (kind of like fernwood tonight)
Oh, Patrick…
Props for the Fernwood Tonight reference. Fred Willard does not get nearly enough burn, IMO.
As for the team, well, what can you say? There’s been a ton of bad luck at the plate, even with Bradley. I’m hoping that there’s enough time left for them all to turn it around. And if they don’t, that there’s no overreaction from the front office in the offseason.
The guy who worries me is Soriano. Not that I’m qualified to judge, but he just don’t look the same this year. I wonder if he’s playing hurt, and that’s affecting his performance.
dkiddoo
June 30, 2009 at 11:29 am
I spotted New Glarus at Rayan’s Discount Liquor. 1532 W Montrose Ave.
dan
June 30, 2009 at 11:34 am
thanks dan, i’ll make a run over there.
wpbc
June 30, 2009 at 11:41 am
They serve it Quenchers, I have been told.
oog
June 30, 2009 at 7:56 pm