Maybe you haven’t heard or been paying attention, but apparently this professional baseball team has been playing games on the North Side of Chicago since April.  I haven’t heard much about it, but after doing some research, it appears these North Side “Cubs” have accumulated a 27-33 record and stand at 3rd place in a weak NL Central despite having one of the highest payrolls in baseball.  Reliable staples of the Cubs lineup like Derek Lee and Aramis Ramirez are hitting .234 and .168 respectively.  On top of that, Cubs “Ace” Carlos Zambrano has bounced from the rotation to the pen and back to the rotation without much success in either role. 

Fear not Cubs faithful!  Even with the team underperforming, the leadership of Lou Piniella will help keep the clubhouse a positive place leading to a turnaround for our beloved Cubbies.  Just kidding, things are worse than ever in the clubhouse.  According to a source from Bleed Cubbie Blue, things are worse than ever:

I have a contact with access to the Cubs clubhouse. He said the clubhouse is a disaster right now (maybe this game will help). He said the latin players, led by Ramirez and Z, have completely walled themselves off from everyone else, to the point that they wouldn’t let them team haze Castro in the typical rookie fashion (carrying bags, etc). He said Ramirez has completely shut down, refuses to practice, and is barely willing to take the field for games. The team never turned on Soriano, despite all his struggles, because he worked his butt off, but the team is turning on Ramirez, because he doesn’t, and doesn’t see a problem with it.

I’m not sure how reliable this is, but it doesn’t surprise me and seems plausible. Ramirez has never seemed to really care all that much, sitting out games with extremely minor injuries and not running out pop-ups or groundballs.  As a numbers guy I always lean towards taking the player with the better stats than the “clubhouse guy”, but this situation has to be impacting the players on the field. 

Hey Lou, where you at?  Isn’t this whole thing supposed to be your department?  Lord knows you’re getting paid enough to at least try to fix it.

All year I have been trying to defend Gregg, and to be honest I still stand by my theory that he hasn’t been all that bad.  He definitely hasn’t been good, but there are worse closers out there.  Either way a change needs to be made, but I almost feel too tired and sick of this shit to try to analyze or even care about it.  The bullpen is such a mess that it might be beyond fixing.  I’m sure Lou will try to give guys “new roles” to help them better succeed, but I doubt that will do much.  Here are what I think the roles should be:

Closer: Guzman

Set-Up Man: Player from another team

Left-Handed Specialist: Marshall, Grabow

Middle Relief: Heilman, Player from another team

Long-Reliever: Marshall, Heilman

Ball Boy: Carlos Marmol

Peanut Vendor: Gregg

Annoying Guy Who Keeps Showing Up to Parties Even Though No One Invited Him: Samardzija

The bullpen thing is only one issue among many.  This division race is over.  I’m usually a guy that stays pretty upbeat about my team’s chances, especially the Cubs.  Unfortunately as they fade farther and farther back in both the NL Central race and the Wild Card, I am becoming more and more skeptical, and angry.  I’m sick of defending Milton Bradley and Kevin Gregg.  I’m tired of Zambrano’s endless drama.  I want to punch Hendry in the face for his off-season circus that resulted in more money spent and worse performance on the field.

And the one man I never thought I would tire of, Sweet Lou has pushed me past the tipping point.  His mismanagement of this bullpen has been glaringly obvious, even more so than his refusal to drop Soriano in the order, preach intelligent baserunning, or make adjustments when big-name players were struggling.  If you are any kind of baseball enthusiast, you have to be questioning not whether Lou’s stubborn refusal to change things that aren’t working may be the sign of an old man that has lost his grasp on baseball and even reality.  The guy has heart, wants to win, and I love him, but his decision-making is piss-poor.  Anyone with half a brain knew it was time to get Marmol out of the set-up role weeks ago, instead of “letting him work it out”.  Its been three months!  Let him work it out on his own goddamn time, when its not costing us leads in the 7th and 8th.

I can’t talk about this anymore.  And to those of you who have my gchat, please don’t IM me to see “what I thought about last night’s game”.  It f#$%ing sucked, ok?  That’s what I thought about it.

I have been busy as hell with studying for the Bar lately, so I haven’t had a whole lot of time to comment on the Cubs current situation.  It’s not that the 8-game losing streak isn’t a big deal, but how they’ve lost has been painful to watch.  Here are a few thoughts regarding the North Side Shitheads that have been on my mind:

• Where are Hoffpauir and Koyie Hill?  They got the start last night and it paid off, but Lou needs to go with the hot (or even lukewarm) bat at this point.  I know Soto and Lee are team leaders, but if they aren’t hitting and the team isn’t scoring runs, its time to make a change.
• Hey Milton Bradley: Shut up.  I’m not saying you’re wrong, in fact you are totally right.  Everyone knows the umps are calling a bigger strike zone for you.  They do it because they don’t like you.  You know what won’t make them like you?  Publicly bitching about the strike zone they are calling for you.
• Is it really time to hit the panic button?  Because if it is, the Cubs should consider two guys that are raking down in the minors.  Jake Fox and Josh Vitters are crushing the ball down on the farm, so why not bring one or both of them up?  I know that would mean we would have to send someone down, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
• If you didn’t see the Harden DL thing coming, you are blind or retarded.
• Someone take Neal Cotts out behind a shed and put a bullet in him.  That guy is just terrible.  I don’t care if we don’t have any lefties, I’m sure there are righties in the pen with better ERAs against lefties than Cotts.  Well I’m not completely sure, but Cotts sucks.  Send his ass down.  I wish we had another starter so we could move Marshall to the bullpen.  Jake Peavy anyone?
• Ok this is a little out there, but did anyone consider moving Soriano to 2nd base and giving Reed Johnson and Micah Hoffpauir some more ABs in the outfield?  I know Fonzy is sub-par defensively, but runs are hard to come by these days.
• Lou Piniella is a great manager.  I mean I love the guy.  I don’t agree with every decision he makes, but he is usually good at managing and motivating his players and he seems to have a pretty good understanding of the game.  That being said, this recent quote from him has got to be a joke:

Modern technology is a wonderful thing for 21st Century baseball managers, who have computerized scouting reports and stats at their fingertips at all times. But sometimes older is better, and after watching his players go back to the video room one too many times to replay poor at-bats, manager Lou Piniella is ready to put his foot down.

“We’ve talked about closing down the video [room],” Piniella said. “But what happens invariably is the pitching coach will go down there from time to time, and so will the hitting coach.

“But if we have to, we’ll close it down for the players, at least during the game. Visualization is a great tool. But at the same time, boy, visualize good things. Don’t keep putting bad pictures in your mind.”

That sort of has a Dusty Baker ring to it, doesn’t it?

• This isn’t really related to the Cubs play on the field, but have you seen the new hats the Cubs are selling?  I think these goofy hats have gone a bit too far.  Apparently it is called the “Watermelon Smoothie“.  I mean the baseball gods cannot be happy about this kind of thing, can they?
• If you would have told me Kosuke Fukudome would be the only Cub hitting over .300 on May 27, I would have laughed and asked you if you drank the acid-laced punch.  Well here we are, and lost in all this horrible horrible shitty 8-game losing streak has been Kosuke’s resurgence this season.  His home run last night wasn’t bad either.
• Is Aramis Ramirez the glue in this Cubs lineup?  I mean ever since he went down it’s like no one can seem to hit.  I’m not sure what his clubhouse presence is like, but just having him in the lineup seems to make the other players around him better.  Hurry back Rammy!

The Cubbies have been playing mostly like shit so far this season, despite many preseason experts and fans picking them to win the National League.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the reasons for their crappiness aren’t really that complex.  In case they somehow escaped you, here are those reasons in no particular order.

The Bullpen Is Terrible: The Cubs bullpen so far this season has been atrocious.  While this should have been somewhat foreseeable after Hendry inexplicably let Woody walk and replaced him with (gulp) Kevin Gregg, the dropoff from last year to this year should not have been so bad.  While Marmol’s slider has still been mostly unhittable, the rest of the ‘pen has been god awful.  With no legitimate lefty, Cotts has filled the role and completely shit the bed.  There is no way that guy has gotten more than 5 outs this season.  Heilman has been okay at best, while Gregg has basically been the nightmare we thought he would be.  You know what would have been nice?  If Samardzija had actually been decent.  Without expecting much from Guzman and Patton (and they haven’t shown much, though not terrible), and Luis Vizcaino essentially kicked off the team by Lou, it doesn’t look like this problem is going to fix itself anytime soon.

Injuries: I’m just going to give you a list of Cubs who have been injured, and you tell me if missing any of these guys might be crucial to the team’s success:

Milton Bradley
Derrek Lee
Geovanny Soto
Carlos Zambrano
Chad Fox
Aramis Ramirez

Although Hoffpauir has stepped in nicely for Lee the last week or so, any team that sustains this magnitude of injuries to many of its stars is going to suffer on the field.  And suffer we have.

Lou Piniella’s Retarded Baserunning Philosophy: We always hear about how the Cubs are trying to be “more aggressive on the basepaths” from Sweet Lou.  Here’s the thing, if the aggressive baserunners are getting thrown out, then it is hurting the team.  Period.  I know a lot of you out there feel that stealing bases and being more aggressive is a good thing even if they aren’t successful all the time.  Here’s what you need to know about that instinct: it’s wrong.  The Cubs are 19/30 on stolen base attempts.  That means that if they had not attempted those 30 stolen bases, the team would actually have scored MORE runs over the course of the last 6 weeks than they did succeeding 19/30 times.  God I hate TOOTBLANs.

Slumpitis: When does a slump become cause for greater concern?  After 6 weeks of the season, that question is becoming paramount.  Derrek Lee, Milton Bradley, and Geovanny Soto (the heart of our lineup sans Ramirez) are hitting .209, .179, and .169 respectively.  All three of those guys showed up on our earlier injury list, so that could be a part of the problem.  Regardless no team that has their 3, 5 and 6 hitters combining for an average below the Mendoza line is going to be able to win any division, even one as crappy as the NL Central.