Author: andcounting

Cubs Think No One Is Better Than James Russell

It’s not that the Cubs think no pitcher in baseball is better than James Russell. They just think that it’s better to have no one as their fifth starter than to have James Russell occupy the position.

Bruce Miles has the story. It’s not a particularly huge revelation by Mike Quade, since he’s only committing to this four-man rotation until May 14, a span that includes two off days and will put little to no additional burden on the pitching supergroup of Ryan Dempster, Carlos Zambrano, Matt Garza, and Casey Coleman. I don’t know that either Randy Wells or Andrew Cashner will be anywhere close to ready to start by then. I doubt it. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see another bullpen-led effort the next time the 5th slot rolls around.

My only real reaction to this news is that it would take a significant amount of luck for the Cubs to climb any closer to contention by the end of May. And I’m actually fine with that, because it’s rather entertaining to watch some of their young players develop. Seeing this year’s hopes end soon could bring even more exciting (yet still unreliable) young talent up from the minors, and I’d welcome that with open arms.

Continue reading “Cubs Think No One Is Better Than James Russell”

Brett Jackson on Talkin’ Baseball

This past Saturday Cubs prospect Brett Jackson spoke with Bruce Levine and Fred Huebner on their weekly radio show Talkin' Baseball. You can <a target="_blank" href="

  •  

">download the episode as a podcast or listen online. He's a pretty good interview, so it's worth a listen, but I wanted to post a small portion of what he had to say about what he's working on in AA with the Tennessee Smokies. For the time being, it looks like the Cubs think of him as a leadoff hitter.

I'm really trying to learn everything about being a leadoff hitter. Take that in and make that part of who I am. So far I'm really enjoying it.

Levine then asked him how he's approaching the leadoff role without losing his approach as a power hitter.

Not a lot changes. The first at-bat of the game is really a big leadoff spot, and in that at-bat I like to see a lot of pitches, which works to my advantage later in the game and puts me in a good position to get pitchers in [counts] I want to be in. I don't change a lot as far as how I swing and how I like to drive the ball and hit the gaps and even put it out of the park. I do like to battle at the plate and be a guy that gets on base, steal bags, and score runs, but at the same time I'm looking for a pitch to drive.

I don't know that there are any gigantic revelations in the interview, but he does talk about life in the minors, the prospect of getting called up, and the difference between training camps under Lou and Quade (not surprisingly, he preferred the camp where he got to play a ton and hit the crap out of the ball). The Jackson interview begins at the 1:14:00 mark of the podcast.

Continue reading “Brett Jackson on Talkin’ Baseball”

Starlin Castro, Get Your Act Together

Starlin Castro's Awkward Sliding Show

Starlin Castro is the best player the Cubs have, but he does some idiotic things on the baseball field that are going to destroy the Chicago Cubs if he doesn’t learn to stop.

I don’t care about his fielding. He could make an error a day every day for the rest of the season and I wouldn’t really mind. If he doesn’t hit another homer all year, I won’t care. Crawl to first base on a pop-up. I won’t say a word. But please, oh please, Starlin, if you can change one thing about your game, make it your inability to approach a base without scaring the crap out of me.

Tell me you’ve noticed this. When Castro slides into a base, he begins his slide about six feet too late. Maybe he believes what Kevin Goldstein said about his speed and is genuinely shocked at how soon he arrives at the base, I don’t know. But it’s ridiculous, no matter which scenario unfolds: the cleats jamming into the base at near top speed; the awkward contortion act as he reaches back for the base on the overslide; the fingers, face, and gut all plowing over the bag until only his toes claw at the very edge. 

I’m not worried he’s going to slide badly into outs. I’m worried he’s going to put himself out of commission.

Call it hustle, fine. He’s more worried about getting to the base before the out than he is about arriving safely. Gritty. Gutsy. Dirty. Whatever. He’s going to get hurt and badly if no one teaches him better sliding technique. Still, that’s a gradual process, I guess. What really bothers me is the lesson that should be ridiculously easy.

Run through first base, Starlin.

At first it was kind of cute. Castro slams on the brakes the moment after he touches first base on a close play. I don’t know why. Is it his signature move? Is it so he’ll be better prepared to bolt to second if the throw gets away? Is it because he just can’t wait to see what the umpire’s call will be? Dunno. But it’s stupid.

In Sunday’s game, I’m pretty sure it cost the Cubs an out. Castro was out at first on a double play that, replays showed, should not have been. Castro beat the throw to first, but as he screeched to a halt and turned, he watched the umpire make the mistaken call. I don’t know if Starlin’s refusal to run hard through first slows him down at all prior to touching first, but I do think it may play tricks on the umpire’s eyes. Or maybe an ump or two just doesn’t like that he does it and calls him out on close plays on principle. I don’t really care. That’s not a big deal.

Seriously, I don’t care about the handful of outs that may or may not be at stake or the bad lessons Castro might be teaching our children. Mostly I’m worried it’s going to lead to him getting hurt. We saw last week Castro slipped and stumbled over a wet first base as he tried to stop. We saw Castro more recently lunge into first base on a close play (he was safe) as he brought himself to a halt. He didn’t get hurt, but it was more dangerous a play than I’d like to see.

Running to first base shouldn’t be that much of an adventure. Run past the base, Starlin. The rules allow for it. Really, it’s cool. You don’t need to stop two feet after first base, and you might want to slide a little sooner than two feet in front of second.

It’s no mystery that Starlin Castro is my favorite player, but I’m sick of his reckless tendencies around the bases. It shouldn’t be that hard to teach him. Everything I heard from Cubs coaches is that he’s an excellent and eager student of the game. I’d hope his next good lesson in sliding comes from Bobby Dernier and not from a stint on the 60-day DL.

Continue reading “Starlin Castro, Get Your Act Together”

Measuring Heart: A Scale of 1 to Santo

Executive Chairperson-in-Chief via Proxy cum Laude slash Editor’s note: I offered the chance to pick a post topic in exchange for American Idol results. Emily came through for me and picked the topic “Santo!” I found it to be a perfectly timed suggestion. Thanks, Emily, for not forcing me to compromise my already discredited journablogistic integrity.

I’ve heard it said that heart cannot be measured. I call BS. I can measure heart. I can see it on display. I can admire it in ample quantities. I can even put a number on it: 10.

santo_flag_cubs

How much explanation do you need for this? When Cubs fans talk about heart, we can agree almost universally that Ron Santo is the gold standard. He was the epitome of toughness, courage, loyalty, resilience, and enthusiasm—all the elements comprising that ethereal quality we call heart. Cubs legend Ron Santo had it all. On the scale of heart, Ron Santo was a perfect 10.

We can agree without much debate that Ron Santo had heart, but before we go measuring this or any other player or team on the Santo scale, let’s be clear about Ron Santo’s accomplishments in the field of gutsiness.

Ron Santo was a gifted athlete. He put up monster numbers, Hall of Fame worthy numbers (as mb21 states eloquently and convincingly). Ron Santo being talented really doesn’t have much to do with heart. He was, as the saying goes, good at sports. Ron Santo excelling at a Hall-of-Fame level while battling diabetes at a time when not a whole lot was known about treating diabetes? That shows heart.

Ron Santo tirelessly working to raise money for JDRF, even after he passed the point when diabetes research could no longer help him? That’s heart. Continuing to face every day with a smile even as diabetes robbed him of his legs, bit by bit? Diabetes may have shortened his career, it may have taken his legs, and it eventually took his life, but as long as he lived, Ron Santo never allowed diabetes to diminish his heart. His love for life. His love for people. His love for the Cubs.

He gave of himself to help people who suffered like he did, whether they suffered from diabetes or just suffered from wanting the Cubs to win. But let’s not confuse those two struggles, okay?

Continue reading “Measuring Heart: A Scale of 1 to Santo”

Expand the Playoffs ASAP

Major League Baseball should add more playoff teams. Now. And they shouldn’t stop at just one more wild card team. They might as well add two and force one of the division winners to prove themselves with an extra postseason round. 

Bud Selig reiterated this week his belief that the playoff field would expand to ten teams as early as 2012. The wild cards have proved they belong in the postseason. Since the wild card was introduced in 1995 (technically 1994, the year MLB proved that having zero teams in the playoffs was a bad idea), wild card teams have a 139-133 postseason record (.511). That’s a pretty decent sample size. The wild card concept (and playoff expansion in general) was originally greeted with much skepticism, but thus far the teams first place forgot have fared better in October than their divisional-champion opposition.

Their success shouldn’t surprise us. A wild card team can easily have the second best record in the league, and that was the one of the initial justifications for adding them: ensure that the team with the second-highest win total reach the postseason. Adding another wild card will make it impossible for the team with the third-highest win total to miss the playoffs. That’s good, I guess, but it’s not enough.

Adding one wild card per league and one extra postseason series is a way of making the lesser teams in the league earn their place in the later rounds. It rewards, in theory, teams that have proved their worth by winning their divisions. The problem is, history has shown us that division winners as a group are slightly inferior to wild card teams. Isn’t that what the 139-133 record tells us? So shouldn’t at least one divisional winner have to play its way into the divisional round of the playoffs? I believe so.

This weird mini-round pitting wild card against wild card threatens only the other wild card teams. The same wild card teams that have, as a group, shown they belong in the postseason just as much as the division winners do. They shouldn’t be penalized for the fact that MLB’s divisional alignment is stupid. But they will.

I know a lot of people bemoan playoff expansion because it waters down the field. Well, in the past that hasn’t been the case. It also makes the playoffs more exciting for more fans. Cal Ripken and the homerun boom have been credited for saving baseball after the 1994 debacle, but playoff expansion gets too easily dismissed as a savior. Expanding the postseason makes October more interesting. It makes the pennant chases of September fun to watch. It even makes August, July, and June more bearable knowing that the definition of contention is broad enough to include almost anyone.

Especially as Cubs fans, that should come as a welcome innovation.

Continue reading “Expand the Playoffs ASAP”

Ten Things I’d Be Happy Never To Hear Cubs Fans Say Again

I don’t want to presume to tell you how to be a fan, but . . . here I am doing just that. I’m just trying to be helpful. And like so many other people whose attempts at helpfulness produce nothing but aggravation, I’m willing to take that risk for you. I’m a giver.

What I want is for you to enjoy being a Cubs fan and to avoid looking stupid in the process. That’s not to say I don’t look stupid. It’s too late for me. Save yourself. If you start by eliminating these expressions from your personal Cubbie lexicon, you’ll also be saving me a couple thousand facepalms a week. 

10. Player X needs to step up.
In basketball, sure. But in baseball? Players step up when they’re told. It’s your turn to hit. Go step up. If it’s not, sit down and find a new cliché. If a player has a bat in his hands, he should try to be as productive as possible. If he’s wearing a glove or a mitt, he should try to prevent runs from scoring. A baseball player’s duties in any given moment are pretty well defined for him. The guy who tries to do more than he can is either trying too hard or wasn’t trying hard enough to begin with. Either way, stepping up is an indicator of stupidity in baseball. 

9. This loss is on Player X.
There are virtually no instances in which one player acts completely independently so as to determine the outcome of a single play let alone the entire game. For every batter who strikes out, there’s a pitcher who bests him. A pitcher can’t just give up 8 runs in the ninth; he needs the cooperation of his defense and the opposing batters to yield that result. Baseball is a game made up entirely of confrontations. Every showdown has at least one winner and at least one loser. To place the outcome of a game on one player is to ignore the efforts, failures, and victories of everyone else involved. And that’s dumb.

8. Booooo. 
I just don’t get this one. It’s just funny that there are still people who actually cup their hands around their mouths, lean back, and say the word Boo. Educated, evolved human beings. I don’t get it.

Continue reading “Ten Things I’d Be Happy Never To Hear Cubs Fans Say Again”

Cubs Player Power Rankings

There are plenty of places you can go to read team power rankings for all of Major League Baseball. I believe most respectable bloggers and journalists are required by the code of moot speculation to incite as many arguments as possible by haphazardly or systematically arranging the teams from best to crappiest. 

Two things prevent me from doing that: a) I’m discredited and therfore not bound by the blogger codes of conduct, and b) We all know the Cubs are wallowing at the bottom of any but the most randomly created rankings anyway. So instead, I’ve set out to rank the Cubs players.

I used a complex formula incorporating projected player value and season data combined with intangibles factor and adjusted for fun-to-watchedness and how much the player as a person inspires and/or annoys the crap out of me. It’s a pretty advanced method, I won’t bore you with the details. I’ll just get straight to the rankings.

1. Starlin Castro
He’s really, really, really good at sports. Allowed to eat dinner on a regular basis. 

2. Carlos Zambrano
Zambrano is never boring. Quite the opposite. Not only does he have a pitching arsenal entirely his own, he’s got personality. And personality goes a long way.

3. Carlos Marmol
Dude is filthy. I have no idea if he’s a complete jerk or nicer than Mr. Rogers, and I really don’t care.

4. Geovany Soto
Geo could be higher on this list if he were producing this year, but as it is there are very few hitters I would rather see at the plate than Geo right now. And by very few, I mean Starlin Castro.

5. Alfonso Soriano
All you really need to know about the 2011 Cubs is that Alfonso Soriano is in my top 5 favorite players right now.

6. Marlon Byrd
Marlon got off to a very brief rough start, but now he’s hitting about as well as he was in spring training, and also showing he is not to be messed with. Don’t let the perma-smile fool you. He’s one bad hombre.

7. Ryan Dempster
Dempster is boring good. Not his best work so far this year, but he’s still much better than what we’ll see from the 3 starters slotted behind him and Z in the rotation. And during the Stanley Cup playoffs, I needed a Canadian to rank pretty high.

8. Sean Marshall
Like mb21, I expect Sean Marshall to disappoint us this season, but really, how many Cubs from the past three seasons (including this one) can you name that you have zero complaints about the entire time? After Sean Marshall, it gets pretty difficult to come up with names.

9. Kosuke Fukudome
It’s April, yeah, so Kosuke should maybe be even higher on this list. I like him. He’s consistently above average in right field. He is nursing a sore hamstring, but he’s part of the better-than-Pujols committee in the leadoff spot.

10. Andrew Cashner*
The kid is on the DL now, which sucks, but the nearly six innings we saw from Cashner were inspiring.

Continue reading “Cubs Player Power Rankings”

Obstructed View Merchandise: A Dream Come True UPDATED

Every 1.8 seconds, a child in the Chicagoland metropolitan area makes a wish—and not just any wish. A wish to see the Chicago Cubs play on the hallowed ground of Wrigley Field. For the lucky ones, that wish is granted without a second thought. But not every child has two parents with six-figure salaries.

Some children have bigger problems than deciding between club box infield or dugout box. Some children’s parents have to pay doctor’s fees instead of box office convenience fees. Some children have no parents to misguidedly lead them into the bleachers. For most of these kids, the wish of seeing a game in Wrigley Field is a long shot at best. All they can realistically hope for is to catch a few innings on the radio in the orphanage or in a hospital room in between operations.

Here at Obstructed View, our sight line might be blocked by the Wrigley Field I-beams. Our vision might be obscured by our own palms that cover our faces in disgust. But we will never turn a blind eye to the dreams of children whose hearts are set on cheering on the Chicago National League Ball Club.

These kids might not have the greatest family backgrounds. They may not have the best health. They may not even have hope. But as long as they have $10 in discretionary income, they have a friend in Obstructed View.

Continue reading “Obstructed View Merchandise: A Dream Come True UPDATED”