A Rough Start

Gold-numbered jerseys?  Check.  Gold-logo emblazoned hats?
Check.  Mandatory around-the-neck gold bling?  None (yet).

Inconsistent offense, shoddy bullpen work highlight first 10 games


It wasn't surprising that many assumed that the 2012 Cubs would struggle on the field.  It probably was surprising, however, that they got off to such an early start at that.  The first homestand, which saw the Cubs host the Nationals for three games and the Brewers for four, started 1-5 for the Cubs as they struggled to find a winning formula.

The Monday night game was not without its highlights, such as Bryan LaHair's monster home run onto Sheffield Avenue early on, but Chris Volstad's shaky start and Shawn Camp's atrocious relief appearance (three earned runs in one inning) spelled doom in a 7-5 loss.  It was a competitive ballgame, however, as Starlin Castro batted in the bottom of the ninth with the tying and winning runs on base.  A John Axford slider then ended all hopes of a comeback.

Tuesday night was a different story.  Paul Maholm, who has now been torched in both of his starts, had allowed six runs by the third inning.  Even the platoon catcher, Jonathan Lucroy, hit a home run. This game left little chance for the Cubs.

Yovani Gallardo and Ryan Dempster had a surprisingly intense pitcher's duel in the Wednesday game.  Gallardo allowed only a first-inning sacrifice fly to Castro, while Dempster held the 1-0 lead until a two-run homer by the other platoon catcher, George Kottaras, gave the Brewers the lead for good in the seventh.

And just like that, the Cubs had lost the first three games of a four-game series and started the season 1-5.  Pretty depressing stuff.  But this, my friends, is the wonder of rebuilding.  The team will be bad, but there are sure to be signs of life.  One such sign came Thursday as the Cubs shut out the Brewers 8-0, a real team effort as six different Cubs knocked in runs.  Matt Garza was even one pitch away from a shutout.  In fact, he got his pitch - an easily-fielded comebacker to the mound - and he promptly fired it into the stands instead of making the easy, 45-foot throw to first base.  Manager Dale Sveum yanked him unnecessarily, and Garza was robbed of the Cubs' first complete game of the season.

Bryan LaHair gets a round of high-fives after hitting the first
Cubs grand slam since October 2010.

The Cubs even broke out the bats for the second straight day in a row, and at a great time.  Those St. Louis Cardinals, decked out in gold-logo'd hats and gold-lettered jerseys just in case anybody forgot that they won the championship last season, were looking for an easy win over this weak Cubs team on their Opening Day.  They didn't get it.  First, rain rained on their parade.  Then, the Cubs rained on their parade.  After a lengthy rain delay of nearly two hours, any Cards fans that stayed looked foolish after a three-run homer by Ian Stewart and a grand slam by LaHair helped give the Cubs a 9-0 lead by the third inning.


Who gave up all these runs?  Why, it was Adam Wainwright.  That's the same Wainwright who, after nearly being the team's ace the last half-decade, missed the entire 2011 season due to injury.  This means he did nothing to contribute to their World Series run even though he is on the team.  So how ironic it was that he was the man to start the game in which they got their World Series rings, wore the glittery gear, and flaunted around pregame in celebratory fashion in front of the second-largest Busch Stadium II crowd ever.  But I digress.


Anyway, the point is that the Cubs did show the ability to score runs.  I like LaHair's power potential; he has two homers so far, one of which went opposite field and the other which left the stadium entirely.  I don't think strength will be an issue with this guy.

The Saturday and Sunday games were a mess.  Volstad imploded in the fourth inning of an otherwise sharp-looking start on Saturday, but the Cubs could never come back from the four allowed in the fourth.  The Cardinals did salvage one win in those odd-looking gold-numbered jerseys.  They had the wit to wear those things for a second game.  Who do they think they are, the New Orleans Saints?  While we're on the topic, is new manager Mike Matheny paying his pitchers to throw at opposing batters (in "kill the head" fashion)?  Probably not, but a concussion did end Matheny's playing career....  Also, in other weird-coincidence news, the Giants wore a similar gold-lettered jersey at their home opener last season as well to celebrate their 2010 World Series championship.  Which team did they host in their home opener?  The Cardinals.

Back to the Sunday game.  That second torching at the hands of Maholm took place on Sunday as Matt Carpenter, some kid who has made a lot of headlines so far, ended up five RBIs for the Cardinals.  The Cubs never really got to Cards starter Jake Westbrook, and the series ended with Friday being the lone Cubs win.  The series started off promisingly, but the end looked like the Cubs team we were expecting to see.

Through these first three series, the Cubs never really showed what their strengths are.  The last guy to make the rotation, Jeff Samardzija, is the only one with more than one win.  The offense scored 18 runs in the first six games then put up 17 runs in the next two.  Kerry Wood's bullpen failures from the first weekend were forgotten in place of a hodgepodge of dismal 'pen work from Camp, Lendy Castillo, and Carlos Marmol namely.  Not to mention Maholm's efforts, which have taken the Cubs out of games practically before they've started.  So far, not so good.  3-7 isn't the end of the world, however, and Sveum has the team playing hard.  The errors are down and the stolen bases are up.  The team certainly has a good swagger, too.

The Cubbies are down in Miami to check out the Marlins' new digs tomorrow night.  Ozzie Guillen will return from his five-game suspension to manage the game.  Just in case the game turns into a Marlins blowout, go online and count as many articles as you can find that mention both Guillen and Fidel Castro written within the last seven days.  Hopefully, though, we can just watch some winning baseball.        

Two Chances, Two Chokes

The game-tying runs allowed in the 8th inning
of the first two games of the season
were allowed by a frustrated Kerry Wood.

Is this the new "Cubs Way" of playing baseball?!  Let's hope not.

You've heard about it all winter.  'Sustained success', 'the right way', 'development', and 'building from within' are just a few phrases that have highlighted a winter of change for the Chicago Cubs.  It may all just be empty talk, but the new Cubs brass even put it in writing with their fundamentals manual, The Cubs Way, which is being distributed throughout the Cubs minor league system.  The effort looks to standardize the way in which prospects are being taught the game throughout all levels of the Cubs system to maximize potential of all prospects and maintaining disciplinary consistency.  However, if the young prospects want to see for their own eyes how the game is played correctly, they ought to stay away from Wrigley Field.  If the first two days are any indication, the major league Cubs will struggle to avoid lines of hypocrisy in 2012.  

Hopefully this will not be the case.  Clearly Dale Sveum was more equipped with the leadership and motivation tools to start his full-time managerial career than Mike Quade was a year ago, and these qualities showed in Spring Training.  So far he has gotten the team much more involved in working on simple yet overlooked fundamentals, including baserunning drills which declared exactly which part of the base the Cubs are supposed to hit when rounding them.  He also got some competition going on to get players more involved. 

Casey Coleman and David DeJesus may not win an award of any type during the rest of either of their careers, but the two gained immediate team respect as they faced off in the final round of the 64-participant bunting tournament in camp.  Coleman swept his way through the pitchers' bracket, while DeJesus did the same in the position players' bracket.  DeJesus ended up winning, but the major reward from this exercise was a sense of accomplishment coming from a fundamental the Cubs needed work on.  

"You're already making me look bad out here.
Vamonos ahora."

After all, these are athletes; they appreciate any added competition to spice things up.  Before it all got started, Tony Campana proclaimed himself as a favorite to win the entire tournament.  He was eliminated in the first round.

The added concentration paid off, as the Cubs brought a winning Spring Training record home with them.  However, the results did not show at all in the first two games of the regular season.  

In the home opener Thursday against the Washington Nationals, Ryan Dempster was finishing up a gem of a performance when he was abruptly yanked with one out to get in the 8th and Ian Desmond on first base.  Enter fan favorite Kerry Wood to hold the 1-0 lead.  A host of problems followed.  Desmond stole second.  Wood walked the next batter, Ryan Zimmerman.  A wild pitch moved Desmond to third and Zimmerman to second.  Wood walks another batter, Adam LaRoche.  After a mound visit, Wood loses another batter in Jayson Werth, whose base on balls forced in the tying run.  

Three consecutive walks spelled doom in the form of lost momentum in this ball game.  Dempster had been living dangerously all day by using the homer-unfriendly winds in his favor, but at least he had controlled the base on balls.  Wood lost it.  Not surprisingly, Carlos Marmol didn't make things any better.  After getting two quick outs in a now-tied ball game in 9th, Marmol allowed a double to Chad Tracy and a go-ahead single to Desmond, scoring Tracy's pinch-runner.  The Nationals took the lead for good.

Don't let the hollering fool you.  The Cubs beat
themselves more than the Nationals beat the Cubs.

A day off on Friday gave the team an entire day to stew about blowing the Opening Day not only of 2012, but of the Theo era.  Apparently it got in their heads, because Saturday's game was hardly any better.  The Cubs again held the Nationals down for most of the game until the 8th in a 4-2 game, when Mr. Wood got the first two outs before allowing a solo homer to Danny Espinosa, bringing the deficit down to one.  Then Zimmerman singled, then LaRoche singled, and then Wood was yanked to avoid further damage.  Who was brought in to replace him?  Marmol.  Remember, this is still all with two outs.  Marmol walks Werth, loading the bases.  Finally, Tracy puts the Cubs out of their misery and sucks the life out of the stadium with a two-run go-ahead single.  

These three rallies - two of them when the Nationals were batting with two outs - are pretty much the trademark of the last year's team.  The bullpen was a strength last year, but the hovering frustration of a lack of focus was the most bothersome aspect of last year's team.  Wood immediately took the blame for blowing Opening Day and cited zero excuses, but then it happened again.  We love ya, Kerry, but that's not gonna get 'er done.  Whether it was keeping their eyes on the ball or throwing to the right base, the Cubs lacked in baseball mental fitness last year.  The new management regime made this their primary goal in the offseason, but the early results have disappointed.  Let's hope this doesn't become a trend.

    

End of An Era?

No, Ron Gardenhire can't pitch.  If you ask
me, he shouldn't be managing anymore either.

Where is the blame on Ron Gardenhire for the Twins recent failures?

The media has recently cooled off on the Minnesota Twins.  Thank goodness.  For a while there, the feel-good Twin Cities franchise was driving me insane.  With constant postseason appearances despite a changing supporting core, the Twins represented MLB's equivalent of the Dallas Mavericks.  The knock on the Mavericks for all those years, however, was that they were always just there - a high-seeded playoff team but never actually great enough to win a championship.  Of course they shocked everyone in 2011 by actually the job done, but the Twins are definitely not about to do that.

For the latter part portion of the 2000s and into this new decade, the Twins gained a disproportionate amount of attention as a favorite small-market team of East Coasters.  Why?  Well perhaps the fact that the Yankees played the Twins in the ALDS four times between 2004 and 2010 helped New Yorkers notice that this team had talent.  The Yankees won all four series, but they had seen enough to respect the Twins.

No catcher in the game today is worth
$184 million over eight years.  Besides,
Joe Mauer's Head and Shoulders
endorsements are more than enough
to cover the utility bills.

And instantly, they became overrated.  Joe Mauer's fluke MVP season in 2009 earned him back-to-back covers on the MLB: The Show video game series and a monster, badly-overpaying contract extension.  Mauer, the catcher, became the hero on a team lacking one.  The Twins won most of their games because they were a team that played fundamental baseball during the regular season, only to watch themselves get destroyed in the playoffs as more talented teams came barreling through.  The 2008 Twins, for example, didn't have any starting pitchers earn more than 12 wins, and yet five of them earned at least 10.  And yet, they got to watch the White Sox come down the stretch in September and beat them in a one-game tiebreaker for the division title.

Manager Ron Gardenhire was given much of the credit as to how a team with relatively little star power could play with such a strong collective baseball intelligence on the field.  However, there is the fact that they never won anything in the playoffs.  Ron Gardenhire took over as manager in 2002 and produced immediate results as the Twins made it to the ALCS.  However, they haven't gotten there since and never really made a big push for the World Series.  The Twins of 2003, 2004, 2006, 2009, and 2010 all lost in the divisional round. Meanwhile Gardenhire got all this credit for successfully operating a small-market team and maximizing value out of his players.  However, these strategies never held up as stronger teams that simply had more talent strutted past them each fall.

Target Field is more of a challenge to left-handed hitters than
taking a walk is for Alfonso Soriano.

The Twins haven't been nearly as good of a team since they opened Target Field in 2010.  They did win the Central in 2010, but were swept by the Yankees in the ALDS (surprise) despite having home-field advantage.  The team imploded in 2011, however, as the new ballpark's dimensions caught up to them and the their lefty sluggers - namely Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Jim Thome, and Jason Kubel - suffered horribly.  The four hit only 31 homers combined on the season despite having all hit at least 25 in 2009 (Thome did it with the White Sox).

The power outage and/or foolish dimensions of Target Field are not Gardenhire's problems, but his problem is that he did not make necessary adjustments to get the offense going.  The team's RBIs leader, third baseman Danny Valencia, had 72.  He also just watched as his formerly-good pitching staff, which clearly resembles a 'groundball' staff, struck out less batters than any other team while allowing the second-most runs.  In 2010 the Twins allowed the fifth-fewest errors in MLB.  In 2011, they allowed the third-most.

In all facets of the game, the team completely reversed trends negatively while sliding 31 games in the standings between the two years.  This is not the type of season a manager should be able to keep his job from.  When your team goes from a 94-win team to a 63-win team, any defining managerial characteristics you used to pride yourself on have diminished and then look preposterous as your team gets crushed harder than Milton Bradley's stress ball.

The Twins enter 2012 with Gardenhire still at the helm, yet very low expectations to live up to.  This core of Twins players - focused around an overpaid catcher, oft-injured first baseman, and a hodgepodge of mediocre starting pitchers - has made its last playoff run.  Therefore, an era in Minnesota Twins baseball has ended.  It's time for the captain to abandon ship while there's still hope for another to redirect it, and redirect it into rebuilding mode.