14 runs later, and the Cubs have their first September victory, not that there weren't a few speed bumps along the way.  Jason Marquis - who, for one night, has earned the nickname "The Stopper," stepped up and pitched 2 run baseball into the 8th inning, striking out only 2 to his 5 walks, and he hit a homerun to boot.  Speaking of homeruns, Marquis wasn't alone in his quest to injure a Reds fan in the bleachers - Mark DeRosa hit his 20th of the season, and Alfonso Soriano hit his 25th, 26th, and 27th.  Fonz, we love you.

In fact, the Cubs managed 18 hits and 4 walks tonight while scoring 14 runs in total.

And they still managed to scare the crap out of Cub fans!

The final 2 innings of the night were not exactly easy.  The Reds scored 8 of their 9 runs with 5 outs remaining in the game, including a 9th inning Granny by Jolbert Cabrera off of Carlos Marmol, who will only be tagged for 1 of the 4 runs.  Having made it more interesting for himself, Marmol then buckled down and had a fairly easy time getting the last 3 outs of the game, Corey Patterson excluded.  And, like that, the Cubs have ended their slide, they maintain a 4 game lead on the second place Brewers, I can now stand to look at their schedule again, and they have a chance of winning the 3 game set against the Reds tomorrow night.

I know a lot of people are sick with this team.  It very quickly became a roller coaster in the last week after the Cubs had given us a month of smooth sailing, and if I haven't mixed my metaphors enough, they finally managed to hit the breaks tonight after having fallen off a cliff.   But, c'mon, be honest Cub fans, you're still worried that there's more space to fall.

If I were to take a survey of our loyal Goat Readers, how many people out there right now believe the Cubs will somehow find a way to miss the playoffs?

How many people think they'll slink in as wild carders?

How many people believe they'll be swept out of the first round?

How many people are aware that, with 20 games remaining, the Cubs have the best record in the NL?  I mean, that's how good they've been this year.  They lost six games in a row and they are percentage points away from having the best record in all of baseball.

For the last month or so, many of us - this blog included - have directed our gaze toward a nice, round number that no Cubs team has seen in more than 70 years.  Achieving that win would be a tremendous accomplishment, a point of pride that few Cub fans can recall experiencing as most who were alive the last time it happened now battle dementia, senility, and/or incontinence.  

And, yet, 100 wins means exactly this in reality: Dog Piss Jones.  100 wins means nothing.  It should not be the goal.  With 20 games remaining, the Cubs are capable of achieving it, but should it even be a minor concern?  Maybe this ridiculous losing streak was a blessing in disguise.  Maybe it will have served as a reminder to the team that they are not invincible, they still have to actually play to win, and rather than strive to achieve cool-yet-irrelevant goals like a 100 win season, maybe they can now focus on the two most important things: entering the playoffs with home field advantage and beating the ever-loving shit out of every team they come across once they're there.

I know some of you have abandoned ship.  Rather than risk another painful crash landing, you have pulled the ripcord and you are floating off to the safety of disconnection.  Have fun over there.  Enjoy the football season.  Hockey and basketball start soon.  There's a new episode of House on TV next week and you can already get the first episode of Dexter online.  

Me, I bleed Cubs baseball, and I will be there until the end, be it in the first week of October or the last.  And believe me, the enjoyment or the sorrow that I will experience when the last out is made this season will be enough for me and ten others.  I've got you covered.  I'm collecting all the forks you've stuck in this team throughout the season, and I promise that you'll get them all back when it's over.

But it's not over.  Anybody who believes otherwise is ridiculous and afraid.

Right now, I don't even want to look at the Cubs.  I just don't want to think about them, not until they start winning again. 

So, instead of talking about last night's game and how incredibly depressing it was, I'm going to look at two lines in particular.   That of Ted Lilly and Jon Lieber.

Jon Lieber: 39.2 IP, 8 ER, 1.82 ERA

Ted Lilly: 159 IP, 4.02 ERA.

That would be the seasonal lines of Lilly and Lieber if they'd never faced the Reds this year.  Lieber has surrendered 16 hits to the Reds in his work, 8 of which could not be contained by the ballpark.  He's only given up 2 homeruns to non-Cincinnati teams.  I almost smell a conspiracy here.

While last night's loss was certainly another blow to the confidence of Cub fans everywhere, considering the way the Reds destroy Lieber and Lilly, it seems as though it was a perfect storm of pain.  Now, here's the thing - the Cubs bench coach Alan Trammall has an important job.  Part of that job is knowing the splits and numbers of his players against their opponents.  Alan needs to pull aside Lou and say "so, uh, about Jon Lieber and the Reds ..." because, like Lou's addiction to Howry, he seems to derrive pleasure in watching Liebs get hammered.

Anyway, I have a very, very strong feeling that we're going to see one of two things tonight.  We will see a) an easy, reassurring Cubs victory or b) Lou Piniella go temporarly insane on the baseball field.  Something will give.   

It's been written that, on days when he's not pitching, Carlos Zambrano shags fly balls in the outfield and throw them back in left handed. It turns out that the Big Moose is ambidextrous and, in the right circumstance, he'd love the opportunity to play the outfield on days he's not pitching. He'd just catch the ball with his right hand and throw it back in lefty.

He just might have the necessary stick for the job. In 482 career at bats, Zambrano is batting .241. That's not great unless you're a pitcher, but it could perhaps be successfully argued that players who don't bat regularly struggle more than players who bat daily. What's more impressive is his 16 career homeruns. Zambrano may just be capable of improving on that .241 career average, had he the chance to bat 500 times in a season. However, if it's true that limited plate time negatively effects a player's batting statistics, it would be hard for the Big Moose to do much better than he's done this year. Essentially, there have been 24 games this year in which the pitcher has been the most productive hitter on the team - the games Zambrano has started. Rather than give you the cold numbers, I'll give you the projections:

In 550 at bats, Carlos would have 196 hits, 31 doubles, 8 triples, 24 homeruns, 94 RBI, and he'd be batting .357 with a .928 OPS. Maybe the ol' Zambino photoshop was even more appropriate than it first appeared:

Perhaps the one factor detracting from Carlos's quest to be a hitter is his lack of patience. In all those career at bats, Z has a whopping 5 walks. That's Dunston/Patterson territory. However, it's conceivable that he's currently taking the "make 'em count" approach and is more aggressive than he'd be if he was hitting every day.

He certainly made 'em count today. Carlos was 1 for 2 with a homerun against the Reds, while also pitching 7 innings and giving up only 1 earned run off of 6 hits and 4 walks. His homer was the last run the Cubs scored, and it was also the difference in a 3-2 ballgame.

It remains concerning that Carlos has bouts with wildness, although my personal belief is that he was merely trying to get the Reds hitters in trouble with Dusty Baker. Rumor has it that the Reds have a "bench 'em if they walk twice in a game" policy, and for tomorrow's game, Chris Dickerson would've at the very least been flipped in the lineup with Corey Patterson, had C-Pat not drawn a walk in the 7th.

Offensively, the Cubs managed 6 hits and 2 walks of their own off of Josh Fogg and company. Fogg only went 4 innings and threw 60 pitches. I'm convinced that either Dusty got confused and thought it was the 8th when he pulled him, or he's planning on starting him again on Sunday. Apart from Zambrano's homer, the other two Cubs runs came from a DeRosa solo shot and - go figure - a Derrek Lee double play that also scored Alfonso Soriano.

One other thing worth mentioning is that Kerry Wood struck out 2 to get the save, and Carlos Marmol gave up his first earned run in over a month and his first hit since the end of July.

Series Recap: Taking 2 of 3 from the lowly Reds somehow feels like a disappointment. The Cubs should sweep these chumps, right? However, they are now 78-49, they've gone 13-5 this month, and tomorrow they host a team that's even worse than Cincinnati before traveling to the armpit of Pennsylvania to pummel on another crappy squad.

In other words, I'm not complaining, not by a long shot.

Current Record: 78-49
Position in the NL Central: 1st place, 5.5 games in front of Milwaukee and 8 ahead of St. Louis
Best Possible Record: 113-49
Worst Possible Record: 78-84
On Pace For: 99-63
Magic Number: 30, as powered by CubsMagicNumber.com

 

 

Sorry Cub fans, but apparently our team won't be winning every single game from now until the playoffs.  It appears that even at Wrigley Field, the Cubs will lose from time to time. 

Ted Lilly lost for only the 4th time since his terrible start to the season, although he pitched well.  Lilly went 7 innings, and gave up only 2 hits and 2 walks while allowing 2 earned runs and striking out 7.  His ERA is down to 4.25 after this game, and I remain confident that he'll someday settle south of 4 on the season.

Offensively, while the Cubs walked 5 times, they only managed 3 hits and 1 run.  (Somewhere, Dusty is shouting "see!  I told you so!")  

Alfonso Soriano allegedly cost the Cubs the game by failing to catch a flyball.  There are a few insane Cub fans out there calling for the Fonz to be benched for Scrappy White Player Reed Johnson, but as previously mentioned, those fans are nutso.

The thing about Soriano is this - yes, his defensive miscues are always concerning.  He sometimes loses focus on the bases and gets picked off.  But for now, his pure talent surpasses his few flaws, and while he may be a stupid baseball player, he's not a selfish one.  Perhaps someday, when his talent can no longer cover his flaws, the Fonz will be hated, but until that day comes, he's a hugely valuable asset.

The Cubs play the rubber game tonight.  Carlos Zambrano has reportedly been working himself into a red rage for the last two days in preparation for this outing.  He needs a win.

Thank you again, Dusty Baker.  Thank you for insisting on using Corey Patterson and Paul Bako with regularity.  (My personal theory is that you keep them - and other ex-Cubs and Giants - on the team so that, before games, they can encircle you and wistfully reminisce about the good ol' days, when you used to win.)  Thank you for you stubborn belief that walks clog the bases, on account of how it's called hittin', not walkin'.  Thank you for your apparent lack of concern regarding things like scouting, splits, and match-ups.  Thank you, but I'm still beyond angry that the Cubs wasted three years of my life by insisting that you were somehow a competent manager.

Baseball has got to be the most philosophical of all the major sports.  You don't often hear about a football coach starting a player based on a "gut feeling."  But, in baseball above all others, there remains not just a fine line between managing with statistics and guts, but there still exists a flat-out resistance to trusting numbers over antiquated human intuition.  On this blog, we tend to walk the line.  We've got Colin, who uses numbers very wisely and well, and then we've got ... well, the rest of us, who spend half our time with our fingers in our ears and our eyes closed, shouting "not listening! not listening! not listening! la la la la!" and the other half of the time saying "ooooh, math!  la la la la!"

To be fair, as valuable as they really are, I insist on arguing that there is a point where pure numbers aren't enough.  For example if we relied on statistics alone, then without a moment's doubt, you want the guy with these numbers to be your closer: 33.1 IP, 33 Hits, 6 BB, 5 ER, 25 K, 1.18 WHIP, 1.35 ERA.  Only there exists a mental side to the game.  Maybe it's more obviously there in baseball, where a guy has 162 games to succeed or fail, as compared with football where he plays 16, or even basketball and hockey where they play 82 times.  Regardless, that guy with those numbers, let's just call him LaTroy Hawkins.2004, it turns out that he doesn't want to be a closer.  It turns out that the mental aspect of the game, the mind-blowing pressure of getting the last three outs with no room for error can be too much for a guy like LaTroy.  But I digress - the vast majority of the time, you want that guy with the 1.35 ERA as your top reliever.*

(*Only some people might argue that you want your top reliever setting up the closer.  Baseball can really make a body dizzy, eh?) 

In Dusty Baker's world, baseball is heavy on the gut and light on the brain.  Dusty's gut tells him that you put your center fielder at lead off, your second baseman in the #2 spot, and your best hitter in the #3 spot.  Okay, maybe your center fielder walks about as much as your crippled grandfather, but so long as he's speedy, he bats leadoff.  If it was good enough for that team Dusty once played for along with HANK AARON, then it's good enough for that team that Dusty Baker manages.  Consequently, in a world where every stat is increasingly weighed more heavily, and in a league in which every smart manager looks for all possible advantages, Dusty gets left behind in the ... well, in the dust.  In other, fewer words, Advantage Cubs.

Advantage Cubs, not that Rich Harden needed it.  When Harden is zeroed in like tonight, no team in baseball is going to get much going against him.  In this case, Harden went 7 innings, he gave up 2 hits, and he walked - shocker - 0 Reds while striking out 10 of them.  The Reds lack of patience, mixed with Harden's lack of control problems, allowed Rich to exit the game having thrown only 94 pitches.  The Cubs held only a fragile 1-run lead, but apparently teams that don't work pitching counts tend not to come back from deficits late in games.  Consequently, Carlos Marmol pitched another inning of no-hit ball (I believe he is now up to 11.1 straight) and Kerry Wood entered in a no-save situation to finish the Reds Mortal Combat style.  (In Lou's - and Wood's - defense, it was a save situation when Woody started warming up in the pen, but the Cubs offense came alive like Frampton in the bottom of the 8th).

Offensively, the Cubs nibbed at the Reds all night long.  Cueto didn't do badly keeping them stymied; he only gave up 4 hits and walked 2 in 7 innings - and 111 pitches - of work.   Yet, hardly an inning went by where Cueto wasn't in trouble.  The Cubs had 2 runners on in the 2nd, Mark DeRosa hit a leadoff double in the 3rd, Ryan Theriot hit a leadoff double in the 4th, Geovany Soto hit a leadoff triple in the 5th, and the only time the Cubs turned an opportunity into a run was when Harden bunted Soto home.  

Point of fact, Harden's bunt and Soto's score was awesome.  Geovany played some great heads up baseball tonight.  His triple happened because of a lot of hustle and smart base running, and he scored off the bunt because he very effectively shadowed Edwin Encarnacion at third, making a speedy charge for the plate after Harden's bunt was scooped and tossed to first.  More impressive still, Kosuke Fukudome, who'd walked earlier that inning, wound up on third base from first while Soto slid home.  Contrast that with Alfonso Soriano, who was picked off at first for the second time in a week.  The Cubs aren't as bad at base-running as they were in Dusty's day, and in fact they are clearly fundamentally sound enough to make things happen, but the Fonz needs to keep his head in the game.  Repeated pick-offs reak of loss of focus.

It looked as though it was meant to be a close game until the 8th, when the Cubs busted it open.  Derrek, Aramis, and Kosuke all drove in runs while railing on Lincoln and Bray.  All told, the Cubs scored 5 on 8 hits and 3 walks, and they are now 29 games over .500.  But, best of all, both Milwaukee and St. Louis lost tonight, putting the Cubs 6 and 8.5 games ahead.  Chicago is now tied with Tampa for the best record in all of baseball.  

Two years ago this month, Cubs fans were in misery. Despite a gut-wrenching end to the '04 season and in spite of a depressing '05 season, Jim Hendry had insisted on letting Dusty Baker play through his contract with the Cubs. Well before August 19th, 2006 rolled around, Cubs fans had known that it was a hopeless, futile cause.

On that day in that season, the Cubs beat the Cardinals in 10 innings to, uh, improve to 53-69 on the season. Yep, the Cubs were 16 games under .500, and it was about to get a lot worse. Apparently satisfied with their late-inning triumph, the team proceeded to flop over and die. They'd lose 18 of their next 21. That's right, they'd go 3-18 following that win. Kind of makes you wonder how in the hell Carlos Zambrano had managed to win 16 that year.

"Oh, we suck. We suck mightily, we are flawed and we are very harmless to the rest of the league," lamented Goat Writer Rob in a post on August 17th of that year. "It can be said in some quarters without immediate fear of rousing the Manteno Whitecoats that with the speed and fielding up the gut, the power on the corners, and the surprising level of success of some of the baby pitchers we've been casting out there as bait, that there is Hope for Next Year, given the Right Trades and Free Agent Signings. (Like either or those will ever happen, but bear with me here)." Turns out he was right, even as he expressed his skepticism.

Jim Hendry would somehow keep his job, even while Dusty Baker was chased out of town by angry fans wielding weaponry. I was not alone in expressing tremendous disappointment in Hendry's return. However, driven by the go-get-'em philosophy of a new team president and the never-to-be-underestimated desire to save his own skin, Hendry and the Cubs opened the coffers and proceeded to acquire players who would almost immediately turn the Cubs into contenders. Meanwhile, Dusty - the guy Hendry wouldn't fire - sat behind a desk with ESPN for a season, spouting wisdom that even befuddled certified geniuses like John Kruk. And yet, despite exposing an entire country to his keen baseball mind, Baker managed to land another managing job.

Now, we are taken full circle. Baker has returned to Chicago for the last time this season, and he will be facing a team that is, in many ways, the antithesis of the group of losers he managed. Where Baker favored veterans at the expense of promising rookies, the Cubs are now a team where every player makes meaningful contributions. Where Baker made decisions that baffled, the Cubs now play with precision and order. Most importantly, where Baker brought out the worst in his team and failed to make the slightest positive contribution, the Cubs are now managed by a guy who seems to do everything right.

Dusty Baker, Cubs past, meet Lou Piniella, Cubs present and future. It took Lou a couple of months to fix the mess you left him, but since June 2nd, 2007, the Cubs have gone 139-94, which is the best record of any team in baseball in that time. Meanwhile, in their first season under Baker's leadership, the Reds are whatdoyaknow, 55-70. Pretty much on par for Baker.

Two years ago today, the Cubs - an already bad team - embarked upon a losing streak that was epic, but not unexpected. They narrowly avoided a 100-loss season. This year, the Cubs - an already great team - may very well be on the brink of a winning streak that is epic, but not unexpected. If they do, if they can, then this time they should not fall short of 100.