The Cubs are sitting at 60-57, now 6 full games behind the Cardinals in the NL Central. The biggest continued reason for optimism is that their remaining schedule pits them against a lot of bad teams and gives them a lot of home games. Problem is, the Cubs are currently in San Diego playing one of said bad teams and have lost the first two with the finale toady. The Cubs took a 1-0 lead into the bottom of the 9th on Friday, only to have Kevin Gregg first blow the save then give up a 3-run homer to take the loss. Afterward, Lou Pinella announced that Gregg would be replaced as closer by Carlos Marmol. I was advocating Marmol as closer on this blog at the beginning of the year, but that seems like a lonnnng time ago at this point? Would Marmol be any better than Kevin Gregg right now? Its hard to say. His ERA is almost a full run lower, but his WHIP is actually significantly higher. He still hasn't been able to find his control for any significant stretch of the season, with a cartoonish 52 walks in 56 1/3 innings (with 11 hit by pitches to go along with them!). Its possible that Angel Guzman would be a viable option, and he has the lowest ERA amongst Cubs bullpen pitchers who have been there for the whole season, though he gave up 2 runs himself in the 8th inning last night.
Really, though, this is a Cubs offense that's expected to put up more than 4 runs in 2 games-- even in a pitcher's park like Petco--which is what its done thus far in the current Padres series. Geovany Soto, Alfonso Soriano, and Ryan Theriot all have OPSes below the league average. Milton Bradley has actually managed to get his slightly above average, in large part by drawing a lot of walks, but still hasn't hit for much power, with 8 HRs and 30 RBI. Aramis Ramirez has continued to hit the ball well since returning from his shoulder injury, but recently had to get a cortisone injection for it and sit out for a few more games. The injury is still going to require off-season surgery, and it seems like any slight tweak at this point might lead to him being shut down for the year. Should that happen, its hard to imagine how the Cubs could recover from it. Jake Fox is the only player who has put up offensive numbers anywhere in the realm of Ramirez, and he's a liability defensively. Largely wasted has been a resurgent year for Derrek Lee. After a few years with a drop off in power numbers, Lee has already hit 24 this year, the most since his ridiculous year in 2005 in which he would've won MVP had the Cubs had a better record.
The most consistent aspect of the Cubs team this year, and the one thing that's prevented the season from going completely off the rails, has been their starting pitching. Recently though, injuries have put a strain on the starting pitching as well. Ted Lilly just came back from a knee injury on Monday and pitched well, though the effort was by the aforementioned 9th inning unpleasantness. Carlos Zambrano is on the DL for the second time this year with a back injury and, in the latest soap opera-like twist for a team that's already made itself really hard to like at times, evidently Zambrano hadn't been doing the abdominal exercises that were perscribed to him because of self-described laziness. This would seemingly be an addition to a pattern that was on display last year, when Zambrano had to come out of several games with cramps because, according to the training staff, he wasn't keeping himself hydrated enough. Zambrano was scratched from the last game he attempted to start before being placed on the DL about an hour before the game, forcing Sean Marshall to make an emergency start, in which he got rocked. Jeff Samardzjia made a spot start about a week or so ago, got similiarly rocked, and is now back in AAA. Tom Gorzellanny, acquired from the Pirates at the deadline, has made three starts since joining the team, and two of them have been good ones, but in the third he allowed 4 runs over 1 1/3 innings and was then taken out after getting hit in the foot with a line drive, although it seemed like the decision had as much to do with his ineffectiveness than his health. The bad starts have required more long relief appearances than the Cubs have needed at any other point in the season, and have subsequently led to a bunch of roster moves to keep fresh arms in the bullpen. Its more than a little frustrating to watch a team with a $100 million+ payroll having to dig deep for arms with such AAA imports as Esmailin Caridad and Justin Berg.
Multiple injuries to key players are going to be tough to bear for any team, but the Cubs' struggles throughout this season nevertheless remain an indictment of the offseason moves by Jim Hendry. The loss of Mark DeRosa continues to be a glaring one. I've written here before that the deal in some ways made sense in that DeRosa was coming off of a career year, and so theorectially trading him would lead to getting the absolute best value for him in return. An article at Fan Graphs recently made the case that it was, in fact, a good deal based on the performances of the three pitching prospects now in the Cubs system. Still, I think it can also be said that it was a bad deal because of the timing in which it occured, when the Cubs are clearly going "all in" in an attempt to win the championship in the next few years. Most of the Cubs' core is either on the decline or will soon be on the decline, and yet all of said players will likely still be in a Cub uniform for the duration of their contracts, which are long and backloaded and will be hard to get rid of. In the past few years, the Cubs' payroll has balooned, and Jim Hendry has signed a number of contracts which pretty clearly overpay players in future years when their production will be diminishing with the hopes of attracting enough top-level talent to assemble a team that can win in the here and now. The DeRosa move, while making some sense on its own merits, wouldn't seem to fit in with the overall direction of the team. In a veritable must-win year, the Cubs lost their best option to back up their best hitter, who has not had a track record of serious injuries such as the one earlier this year, but has been known to require a DL stint from time to time. Really more confounding than the DeRosa trade itself, is Hendry's follow-up move, the signing of Aaron Miles, a utility man who is in the same vein as DeRosa except for the fact that he can't hit. This year he's hitting a putrid .184, and while his career numbers aren't as bad as that, they're certainly nowhere near those of DeRosa, and they're certainly not worth the 2 year, 5 million dollar contract he recieved. If the Cubs don't make the playoffs this year (or if they do, but don't do anything once they're there, again) I'm not sure Hendry makes it out with his job, and I'm not sure that he deserves to.
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