What Cub fans should do the next 2 days.

Those Cub fans who have tickets to the games Saturday and Sunday vs. the Sox should find a Sox fan and sell them their ticket. Fae value, for a profit, whatever. Wouldn't it be great if on the Fox game of the week at Wrigley, 100% Sox fans? Trib would still have their money, but it would be embarrasing to MacFail, Hendry, and company if all Sox fans in the stands at their ballpark. Imagine Josh Lewin lisping his way thru a speech about how bad the Cubs are that the Sox fans have taken over, or pompous ass Thom Brennaman railing about how much the Cub orgainization sucks, and the proof is in the field and in the stands? Maybe those idiots would be embarrassed into making changes.

These might be reasons that we are the doormats of the National League:

1. We get swept on a homestand and this is what they worry about:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/cs-060618piven,1,5495984.story?coll=chi-sportsnew-hed
"McDonough, while noting that Piven has been a loyal Cubs fan and friend to the team, was disappointed and issued an apology. "I don't know if professional adrenaline took over, but we don't ever want to introduce profanity into the seventh-inning stretch," he said. "

I guess he wouldn't like my version that says "if they don't win they can go f... themselves.

2. Looks like Kerry Wood's arm may have fallen off for the last time as a Cub.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/cs-060620cubsbrite,1,2000541.story?coll=chi-sportsnew-hed

"Naturally, Woody wants to pitch," Baker said. "He's a little distraught about it. He wants to pitch very badly. He wants to help us get back in this thing. It's a natural reaction, not to be real happy about this."

I'm sure if he does come back, that's exactly how he'll pitch. Matter of fact, that must be a requirement to manage, coach, play or pitch for the Cubs - to want to do it very badly.

3. We're rubbing off on the umpires:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/cs-060620cubsbits,1,3238780.story?coll=chi-sportsnew-hed
"Umpire Jerry Crawford left Tuesday's game before the first pitch after experiencing lower back tightness "
C'mon Jerry, cowboy up already! At least our guys make it through at least a half inning.

Like 2 Ships Passing Each Other In The Night In Opposite Directions

It's really hard to believe that just 3 years ago, the Cubs were, repeat after me, "5 outs away", and the Detroit Tigers seemed to be 5 light years away, after looking in on this weekend's debacle. I gotta admit, I was laughing when Granderson homered off Prior to start the game, and I yelled out in my living room, "F... You, Mark!" Just think, we waited 3 months for Bubble Boy to throw that garbage.

You don't need a pair of eyes to see how bad they are,Just look at the numbers!

I found this link on the internet of someone named John Beamer:
http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/story/2006/6/10/5206/85178#readmore

Those of us who watch or listen to the Cubs on any kind of regular basis weren't really shocked by this:

"Which team on the senior circuit has the the worst offense? The Marlins? The Pirates? No -- you'd be wrong on both counts. Try Dusty's dream team: the inimitable Cubs. You might think that the basis for this less than Einsteinian conclusion would be ocular judgment. Actually it is not. It is an analysis of cumulative VORP over the first third of the season. "

Personally I just used ocular judgment. But I also came to the same conclusion.

"I told you that you'd be shocked."

Not really.

"Let's take some time to put the Cubs' 5.6 VORP in to a little perspective. VORP, or Value Over Replacement Player, essentially measures run value per out over and above a marginal level. As indicated in the nomenclature of the statistic this marginal point is replacement. Replacement is usually defined as a AAAA level player, who is available for the major league minimum salary. So what a loose interpretation of VORP is telling us is that if we were to dump the Cubs' starting line-up and call-up a bunch of minor league talent then the Cubs would only be 6 runs, or half a win, worse off!"

I've seen or heard enough 3 up, 3 down innings to be convinced of this. But let's go on:

"Still 10.1 is a terrible score and the reason for this is that there are a bunch of everyday players who are nothing short of atrocious."

No doubt about that.


"It is tough to single out any of the stragglers but on a second glance one entry is particulalry egregious. I present to you Juan D'Vaughn Pierre, who this year is earning an eye-boggling $5.75 million. Pierre has 268 plate appearances this season -- the most on the team -- and he has contributed a VORP of -6. That is $5.75 million for half a loss; so unless Pierre becomes Andruw Jones and more with the glove it is an utter waste of money (and for those who are wondering FRAA places Pierre as average with the leather)."

Good thing we only traded 3 of our top pitching prospects for Juan 4-3erre.

"Stars such as Neifi Perez, Jerry Hairston and Henry Blaco all contribute negatively to the team. Come on, small sample size aside, even Greg Maddux has an offensive VORP of 1 this season!
What about when we include pitching?"

I was going to fix Blaco to Blanco, but Blaco describes it better. Sadly in the Dusty/Hendry mindset, these 3 guys are stars.

"Adding them together and the Cubs are an astonishing 40 points of VORP shy of the second worst team in the NL. On a VORP per $ payroll basis the Cubs are comfortably bottom. Vive l'offense de Cubs!"

Now wait a cotton-pickin minute. $95 million don't go as far as it used to.

"Yeah, Derrek Lee leads the Cubs in cumulative pNRAA. Did I mention he has fewer plate appearances than Neifi Perez has outs? And for the final kick to the cranium, the Cubs Team EqA is only .237; .007 above replacement level...as a team. I don't think a healthy Kerry Wood and Mark Prior will do much good if they need to win 2-1 everytime."

That's OK. They won't be healthy. At least not for long.

Anyway, nice analysis John! Assuming you are a Cub fan, it must have been very painful to look at.

I Guess We Got The Whole Barnyard After Us:


The Google Ad on this page is currently pointing to StubHub.com. I wanted to check it out and I found this interesting item in the ad:
"The curse of the cow lives on, but the enthusiasm and loyalty of Cubs fans everywhere does as well"
OK, I know the whole Mrs. O'Leary story, but since when did a cow get added to the supposed billy goat curse? Maybe the Cubs should be nicer to farmers or something. Anyway, if there is anyone who visits my site, I wouldn't be opposed to you clicking on the ad. And, if you have to see the Cubs in the worst way, buy your tickets thru stubhub.com. Maybe I'll make more money that way.

Kerry Wood - Whose Fault Is He?

Well, Kerry is back on his favorite hiding place, the DL. In fact, he may be the first player in major league history who is on a disabled list that isn't hurt. Maybe he's just tired after his first 4 or 5 starts, and needs to rest, you know, kind of like in The Godfather when Sonny was in charge and said he was sending Fredo to Las Vegas for "a rest". But enough about that for now. The real purpose of this is to look at his career and try to figure out where he went off the track. The way I figure it, there are several culprits.

1. Kerry Wood himself. After his 20 K performance in 1998, it looked like the Cubs had a legitimate superstar. However, it hasn't quite worked out that way. It seems like he never has learned the nuances of pitching, and feels like when he pitches he must strike everyone out. This has led to consistently high pitch counts and put his managers in a tough spot. You would think that pitching on the same team with Greg Maddux, he might pick up a few pointers on getting a few more groundball outs, but not so. Of course, since Maddux has been back, Wood has been hurt most of the time.
2. Dusty Baker. Unfortunately when put in a tough spot with pitch counts, Dusty almost always seems to err on the side of not enough caution. It has been documented numerous times on the number of 120+ pitch outings Wood and others have had while Dusty has been manager. While it seems like Dusty is best known for burning out pitchers, they probably wouldn't have made the NLCS without Dusty overusing Wood and Prior. So that points to:
3. Jim Hendry. Maybe had Hendry done a better job of staffing a bullpen in past years, or getting players that can get on base with more regularity, Dusty could have saved Wood's arm a little more often.
4. Jim Riggleman. A lot of people look at him for abusing Wood in 1998, but actually, at that time Riggleman caught flack for taking Wood out in the 6th inning of a lot of games,which when he did it was because of high pitch counts.
5. Don Baylor/Mack Newton - This would have been a good idea had they done it right. Baylor hired Newton to be the "attitude and flexibility" coach, or something like that. He was there for spring training, and the positive approach he preached seemed to be a positive factor in their good start, along with the stretching he had them do in spring training. But as usual, the Cubs did it half-assed, and instead of being with them all season, he would "pop in" once or twice a month and put them thru stretching drills when he was here. That didn't play as well as the season went on, and he was looked on as kind of an intruder later in the season. How do I tie this to Kerry Wood? Because he challenged Baylor on making his pitchers do this stuff in August, the late Oscar Acosta was fired by Baylor at the end of the season. Of all the pitching coaches in Wood's career, Acosta seemed to have the best connection with Wood. Wood seemed to throw more quality pitches in that timeframe than under any coach before Acosta, and certainly hasn't approached it since he's been under the tutelage of:
6. Larry Rothschild - For a pitching coach with such a great reputation, he certainly hasn't seemed to do much for Cub pitchers. It seems like they've done more nibbling, issued more walks, and been injured under his watch more than any other Cub pitching coach. When Kerry has been healthy, he hasn't been effective. Gotta be a connection there.

My conclusion is that each of the above has contributed to his downfall, along with others such as his high school coach who used him in both games of a doubleheader in the Texas state playoffs, and Andy MacPhail/Ed Lynch for not surrounding him with better players. In my opinion, though, the biggest blame falls to Hendry for not bolstering the offense, Rothschild for not having him be more aggressive and figuring out how to tighten his throwing motion to avoid injury, and Wood himself, for not learning how to pitch more efficiently. I'm sure next year, when he's with Texas, or Houston, or the Yankees, he'll reach his potential that he should have reached in Cubbie blue. Just one more star player that we screwed up.

Why we, the Cub fan, boos our favorite team:

Some old business:

This link from some guy named Pierce from May 30:
http://www.cubshub.com/article.php?story=2006053014272261
Contains this gem: "A season under the sun at Wrigley wasn't enough. Now the Wrigley Faithful wanted more. Gone were the glory days of the power hitting superstar. Gone were the days of beering, cheering and leaving when the beer ran dry. Wrigleyville was no longer the season long party that we had known and loved. Now it was a business."
and this:
"From that day, the day of game six, Cubs fans have been a different type of fan. We are no longer the fun loving bunch that we've been known to be. Now we are the title hungry fans that Wrigleyville has never seen. We want a title and we need another playoff run. Cubs fans are like junkies, and we need a playoff fix.This has clouded our judgment. We have become so angry over disappointing moments that we have become "boo birds". Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with being a "boo bird" but we've taken it too far. If a player makes a mistake we boo. If a player strikes out a couple of times people boo. We have become everything that most of us despise. We've become nothing more than Yankees fans in Cubbie Blue."


Well, Pierce, there is one HUGE difference between us and the Yankees - the Yankees have AVERAGED about one pennant every 3 years since 1921, if not better than that. Meanwhile, it has been OVER 60 years since the Cubs have won a pennant, not to mention 98 years since we won a World Series. That means that if you figure the youngest age a person would remember his team winning a World Series is probably about 5 (and I doubt he would remember too much at that), any person less than 103 years old would probably not remember the 1908 World Series champion Cubs. For that matter, 66 is probably the minimum age of someone who remembers the 1945 World Series. So we ain't exactly spoiled by success.
I'll tell you something else, Pierce. To me, it doesn't matter who you choose to blame for Game 6 -Steve Bartman, Prior, Baker, Gonzalez, Farnsworth, Sosa, Alou, or for Game 7 - Wood,Veres or anyone else, once they blew an almost certain pennant in 2003, we Cub fans felt cheated. Maybe in your Pollyanna world that is wrong, but I figure they owed us one after that. The fact that they haven't delivered makes most of us madder and madder. They choked in the 2003 NLCS, they choked the last week of 2004, and they flat out sucked in 2005 and it looks like 2006 is more of the same taste of shit. Also, the White Sox World Series victory in 2005 is their bad luck,because that raises the stakes that much more. We have also watched the Cubs come up with about 6 new ways to generate revenue that hasn't translated into paying top dollar for the elite free agent. So if we go to the games and they play like crap (in its many forms) we will boo them. Many of us won't go, or watch them on TV, if they play like crap. Too bad there are enough stupid people who run out on February 15th to buy all the single game tickets. Not me - not until they make a serious attempt to win the World Series.