andcounting – Page 10 – Obstructed View

Can’t-Lose Thursday: Random Points of Hopefulness

The Cubs can’t lose today.

Nary a single Cubbie appendix has ruptured.

Starlin Castro hasn’t been put in timeout yet.

Alfonso Soriano leads the league in homers.

Wrigley Field hasn’t had chunks of itself fly off in several months.

Albert Pujols‘ free agent value has tumbled to $299 million.

No new Nicolas Cage movies are being released this weekend.

It’s been over 24 hours since a Cub got put on the DL.

Derrek Lee is playing for a winning team comprised almost exclusively of ex-Cubs.

Chris Archer’s career with the Rays is entirely unimpressive thus far.

Starlin Castro.

No reports of any Cubs having dinner.

I haven’t heard a word uttered from the Ricketts family since the season started.

The plan to have 163 starting pitchers vie for the fifth starter position is finally paying off.

I’m pretty sure the Reds will lose eventually.

I’m not so sure the Astros will ever win.

It’s only April.

That last point hasn’t been lost on Kosuke Fukudome.

Carlos Pena being out of the lineup means not having to hear Keith Moreland pronouncing his name like it rhymes with La Niña.

Obstructed View merchandise has yet to sell out (even if we have).

The bullpen test has been scrapped in favor of the starting rotation test.

Jim Belushi is nowhere to be seen.

87,827,230 views already.

If you buy tickets for the cheapest seat in Wrigley, there’s a good chance a Wrigley Field Ambassador will offer you better ones for free.

A new episode of Parks & Recreation is only a week away.

Derrick Rose. He’s not a Cub, but he’s good for everyone.

The Cubs beat writers have apparently run out of ideas for running players out of town.

It’s baseball . . let’s see what happens!

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5 Cubs Trends Sure to End

The Cubs are five games into the 2011 season, so naturally we know everything we need to know about this team. But for anyone who thinks the sample size isn’t quite large enough to draw conclusions, I just want to correct a few lies the opening weekend may have told us. For the record, I wrote this before today’s game, so some of these trends have already been corrected slightly by reality.

1. Starlin Castro will not post a .563 wOBA. The kid is good, but not 1941 Ted Williams good. I’m as guilty as anyone of expecting too much from Castro, and I should shut up about him right now. He’s got a lot of talent: a sweet swing, great range, a rocket arm, and deceptively unaverage speed. But until last month, he wasn’t allowed to drink alcohol in the United States. Having a great opening weekend is great for his own confidence, I guess, but it’s also the kind of thing that sets the hype machine into overdrive. High expectations are great for manufacturing hope and optimism until they aren’t met. Suddenly the same sunshine, rainbows, and unicorn crowd turns into a soulless mob of zombies. Please don’t eat Starlin when he comes back to earth. (Which apparently hasn’t happened yet.)

2. The stands won’t stay empty at Wrigley. Monday’s reported attendance was the lowest since 2002. It was also a big fat misuse of the word attendance. There was about a 5:1 tickets sold to butts in seats ratio. But don’t expect that trend to continue, at least not to that extreme. People will come to Wrigley when school lets out and the weather warms up (and the competition rises to a level above the Pirates and Diamondbacks). It won’t be wall-to-wall sellouts. Maybe no true sellouts. But you can expect the sea of empty green seats to dwindle into sparse puddles no later than mid-May.

3. Marlon Byrd won’t hit .146 all year. This isn’t just about a five-game sample. Since the end of the 2010 All Star break, Byrd has posted a slash line of .255/.311/.348. But that’s still a pretty small sample. Going back to the beginning of the 2008 season, his numbers are a bit more respectable: .289/.347/.452, good for a .349 wOBA. Not exactly stellar, but nowhere near as miserable as he has looked of late. I expect him to return closer to his career numbers. (He did have a .315 BAbip over the last half season, though, so it’s not like it’s just luck.) (And now he’s back to being the Wyrd.)

4. Matt Garza and James Russell will not each post a negative FIP. I just have this feeling that won’t happen. At least one of them will fail to shatter the all-time best FIP for a season. Let’s keep it real. (See what I mean? James Russell is no longer on pace to strike out every batter he faces.)

5. The Cubs will not be a .500 team. I started writing this before the game today, so I have no idea if the small sample will skew positively or negatively, but the Cubs just don’t look like a team that will be able to score enough runs to win half the time. You don’t need me to tell you that. Except for @wpbc, who specifically asked me to say it. Or, more specifically, that it won’t be an enjoyable experience. There will be parts that I think you’ll enjoy. But overall, as the man in black once said, Get used to disappointment. (Just not today.)

6. BONUS: The new Obstructed View line of shirts, hats, and assorted crap will not last. Supplies are limited. If you don’t buy your new Cubby Bear facepalm shirt now, you might never get one. And if you never get one, you’ll never be the cool ironic hipster doofus Cubs fan you were meant to be. And if you never become the cool ironic hipster doofus Cubs fan you were meant to be, somwhere, some puppy is going to get kicked. So, you know, check it out and stuff.

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Ten Things I Shouldn’t Have to Tell Cubs Fans (But I Do)

I had the pleasure of seeing the Cubs on Opening Day yesterday along with Julie and Deb of Aerys Sports and Ana from Accidentally Sexy, and a lot of cool people* willing to get soaked and chilled in order to show us a good time.

But along the way I came into contact with more than a few Cubs fans who, apparently, haven’t left the house in awhile. My judgment could be way off, because I don’t get out of the house that often either. But my recollections of normal human conduct (using the broadest imaginable parameters of that term) make me think we Cubs fans as a group lose our minds a little bit when baseball starts.

I know people say it’s a common trait among all sports fans, but I don’t care about other sports fans. A billion wrongs don’t make a right. If all the other teams’ fans jumped off a bridge, would we do it too? As long as you live under my roof, you’ll do as I say. You probably don’t live under my roof, though, so do as you please. Who am I to tell you how to live?

A hypocritical double-talking curmudgeon, that’s who. Get off my lawn and abide by this list of painfully obvious advice that more than an isolated group of Cubs fans refuse to heed.

10. The train is not a bar. Every destination I headed to yesterday had an atmosphere of loud music and loud talking. That’s not a complaint. All the places were fun and full of people intent on having it. But the train is not one of those places. It’s full of people going to work. They want a little peace before their days really start sucking. I know you’re with your friends. But respect the environment you’re in and try to adapt to it. Because the train is not a bar, which leads to the next fact you already know:

9. Seven in the morning is a little early for drinking. In Public. Every train at every ungodly hour of the morning on any rail leading to Chicago yesterday included Cubs fans already on their second beer. Too early. Right?

8. This is not the year. Unless you mean this. In which case, THIS.

7. The old-fashioned mystique of Wrigley is gone. This actually isn’t all that obvious, but it was the product of a conversation I had with one of our hosts, Chelsea the Cardinal Fan. After the game she noted that at Wrigley, you really have to pay attention to the game to know what’s going on, but at Busch, you’re kind of bombarded with the names, stats, and pictures of the batters, replays of the action, and lively music to keep the excitement up. It made me realize that’s a mixed blessing at Wrigley. Sure, it makes the purists happy that our attention has to be on the game itself. But that’s the problem. Cubs fans’ attention doesn’t have to be on the game. It can be on anything they want it to be. It creates the opportunity for Wrigley to play host to a baseball-themed party.

If you’re complaining that Cubs fans should pay more attention to the game, you might ask that the Cubs do a little bit more to remind them they are at a sporting event. Replays, loud music, and ginormous video boards just might help more than you think.

6. Outside your apartment isn’t the best place to berate your significant other, and at the top of your lungs isn’t the best volume at which to do that. Okay, I don’t know if these people were Cubs fans, but they live right next to Wrigley. This is more just a general word of advice to all.

5. If you can’t stand anymore, you probably shouldn’t drink anymore. This is just being practical. Two girls should not have to carry their guy friend away from Wrigley. They’re going to miss their train.

4. Keep your gigantic flabby belly safely covered by the friendly confines of your t-shirt. Please.

3. When looking at the schedule for ideas about what game you should attend, don’t look at the dates where they play the Pirates and say, “Well that looks like a game we can win.” It’s not.

2. Don’t boo Starlin Castro. Not that anyone did. But you should like this guy too much to boo him. This is for future reference when he makes six errors in a game. Still, don’t boo. Just murmur. Murmuring is okay.

1. Hope is a dangerous thing. Tell ’em, Red.

*My deepest thanks go out to our gracious hosts and new friends: Azeeza, Patrick, Ashley, Javier, Erica, and Chelsea the Cardinal fan. I had a great time, and I can’t thank you enough.

Continue reading “Ten Things I Shouldn’t Have to Tell Cubs Fans (But I Do)”

Opening Day in the Time of Cholera

It’s Opening Day in Major League Baseball, one day before the Cubs officially begin to toy with our hopes in earnest. So I thought I’d take this opportunity to brace myself for the plunge into denial with a look at the reasons we keep coming back to this team, reasons that really aren’t unique to the Cubs at all.

Contrary to whatever I might say in jest, the Cubs are a Major League Baseball team. It’s true, I checked. And Major League Baseball players play this game at a level most of us can only dream about duplicating. The Cubs, all of them, are fun to watch because they’re good at baseball. On the scale of MLB teams (a scale of Astros to Yankees), they’re not great. On the scale of how well we wish we could play (a scale of Al Yellon to Al Pujols), they’re all much closer to Pujols than to Yellon. It would be even more enjoyable to watch a team that was closer to the Yankees than to the Astros, but it’s still great because it’s still Major League Baseball.

And any baseball can be fun to watch. I’ll watch a minor league game. An independent league game. A Little League game. If there were still sandlots, I’d watch a game of rundown if there was nothing else to do. Baseball, even losing baseball, is fun to watch.

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11 Scandalous Predictions for the 2011 Cubs

By scandalous, of course I mean stupid. Earlier in the offseason I made 103 predictions that won’t happen in 2011. That was pure nonsense whereas this is pure speculation. Huge difference. Some of these could actually come true. And they’re not all optimistic.

11. Brett Jackson will see the majors by June. I don’t know why. I only added this at the last minute because I forgot I said there would be 11 of these things and just did ten.

10. Starlin Castro will hit 25 homeruns this year. He leads the team in homers this spring with 4. That means nothing, but it supports this optimism, so I referenced it. But I’m still rather confident about this prediction. I love his swing. He seems to put the barrel of the bat on the ball with ridiculous consistency. He’s going to get a boatload of at-bats thanks to playing every day and taking very few walks. Combine all those factors, and I expect to see a lofty (but not gaudy) homerun total for the kid.

9. Andrew Cashner will flirt with 20 losses. This isn’t to say Cashner will have a terrible season. I think he’ll actually pitch reasonably well. But I think we’re going to see him consistently yield big innings in a lot of games. Not so much that he’ll get sent down or into the bullpen. Three runs here. Four runs there. And with an offense that could really struggle, I wouldn’t be surprised if Cashner became the hard luck starter who just gets even less run support than the others.

8. Mike Quade will keep his job. Jim Hendry won’t. Tom Ricketts has yet to make any severe, sweeping changes to the Cubs organization. He has tinkered with things, run some promotions, and planted a noodle here and a Toyota sign there. But the face of the team itself has undergone only minor changes from season to season. After 2009, the biggest change was dealing Milton Bradley. After 2010, it was lifting the interim tag off of Mike Quade (even that was the most minor change the Cubs could make, keeping the guy who was already there). Should the Cubs fail to contend, I don’t expect wholesale changes. I do expect one change: Jim Hendry will lose his job. Quade will get at least another half season to hope the ship turns around with him on it.

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Mike Quade Has Tiger Blood. Hooray?

There are two basic schools of thought about Mike Quade’s recent comments on Carlos Silva: 1) Mike Quade is the greatest, toughest, smartest son of a gun in baseball; 2) Mike Quade is a verbose, no good, sucker-punching fool. There is no in between. Of course there is still only one school of thought on Carlos Silva: he’s fat ugly, mean, and terrible at baseball.

I guess I’m a little slow, because I don’t understand what got Quade’s scalp all smudged. Let’s take another look at what has been said of late, and let’s see if we can get to the bottom of who’s the awesome stud and who is loco. Here’s what Silva said after the announcement that Andrew Cashner would be the team’s 5th starter and Silva was invited to invest in rentals in Iowa a half hour after he was told he was pitching well:

“I’m like, if you have to say something, be straight,” Silva said. “[Cubs pitching coach Mark Riggins] has to learn he’s in the big leagues now. There are no kids around here. . . . The way he laid it out, it was like, I don’t know what he was trying to do.

“He was like ‘Man, you’ve been throwing the ball good, you can pitch, all of that, blah, blah, blah. If you go out there to Triple-A and throw some games to continue building, to continue getting better.’ I was like, ‘I don’t need to go there. I’m ready to go. I feel good and I’m ready to pitch.’

“Then he told me there was not going to be a spot in the rotation or in the bullpen either. He should have started with that first, and then say you’re strong (throwing) in the bullpen.”

“Say what you have to say and say it,” he said. “Don’t say people are competing for a spot because it wasn’t true. Nobody was competing for a spot. They already had their rotation done. It was very clear.”

I emphasized that last part because I hope it was true. But all in all, it’s not at all shocking. It’s a classic example of someone who copes with the reception of bad news by blaming the messenger and the method of delivery. I would have felt better about losing the lottery if the spokesmodel wasn’t so smiley about it. Or I wish you would have told me sooner or You couldn’t have waited for a better time to tell me? And my personal favorite, Following the Cubs would be a lot less depressing if it wasn’t for the crappy beat writers. We all do it. Carlos shouldn’t be proud of his comments, but they weren’t that bad.

Then we got Jim Hendry’s reaction to Silva complaining about how he was informed he was out of a job:

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Ten Myths About Obstructed View Debunked

Since the announcement of the repeat of the end of sports history and the dawn of a newly discredited day, I’ve heard a lot of nasty rumors about what Obstructed View will be like. Mostly it’s a bunch of lies and obvious misrepresentations, so I just want to clear the air right off the bat. If you’re going to fom opinions about this blog, I sincerely hope you do it based on what you see for yourself, and not what you hear from Tim via DM on twitter unsubstantiated hearsay. I’ll just start tossing out myths and shooting them down.

Myth #1: Obstructed View is just a way to coerce Berselius, Aisle 424, and And Counting to spew MB21’s polluted cynicism and cultish groupthink to a broader audience than ACB.

That’s patently false. We’ve all been parroting MB’s views for quite a long time, and this won’t draw half the audience that ACB did.

Myth #2: And Counting and the other contributors will lose their individual personalities when they merge their work into one venue.

Seriously, I think it’s hilarious that people think we have personalities.

Myth #3: The guys at Obstructed View are completely full of themselves as evidenced by the massive amount of hype and self-promotion.

That was all just a pretty elaborate charade to give us an excuse to openly pretend we were Disney princesses.

Myth #4: Obstructed View will turn AC and Aisle 424 into stat nerds.

I can only hope. But apparently you can’t put hope into a spreadsheet. I do plan to learn to watch games using only Microsoft Excel, though.

Myth #5: Obstructed View will turn Berselius and MB21 into heartstring-tugging booger joke peddlers.

Fart jokes and fascist tea party spokesmanship is the new name of the game. Get your stories straight, leftist liberalistas!

Myth #6: Berselius is actually just MB21’s Fight Club alter ego.

I don’t know, I guess that’s possible.

Myth #7: All the memes and commenting subculture from ACB will migrate to Obstructed View.

(dying laughing)

Myth #8: There’s a link you can click to see everyone who has ever looked at your twitter profile.

That’s insane. It’s gotta be a hoax. But . . . what if it’s not? It kills me that I can’t know this. Do you know how much time I spend on twitter wondering who’s really following me? Don’t ask.

Myth #9: Obstructed View is going to be the greatest Cubs blog out there.

See now that’s just a trick. Using greatest and Cubs in the same sentence is a recipe for all sorts of deception. You gotta be smarter than that, people. We have high standards of critical thinking over here in our new home.

Myth #10: The Cubs will contend in 2011.

Okay, I lied. I made that myth up. No one’s saying that.

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2011 Cubs a Pretty Blank Slate

I haven’t heard anyone not named Carlos Silva complain about Andrew Cashner being named the Cubs’ 5th starter. I’m still waiting for a yet-to-be-discredited Cubs blog to erupt in rage over Marcos Mateo making the roster. Nobody seems all that bothered to see Silva go, and if you’re looking to find someone who is, I’m sorry to disappoint you. But I’m not dancing for joy, either.

The experience on this Cubs squad is shockingly limited. To some people that’s reason for excitement, maybe because it makes things like projections easier to dismiss. Starlin Castro could be as phenomenal as we hope. Tyler Colvin could improve upon last year. Cashner could prove he’s much more than a back-of-the-rotation guy.

Or they and their fellow Cubbie brat pack members could prove that they are really young and unreliable.

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