This is why we have such manly love for Carlos Zambrano. The Cubs have entered the “every game is a must win” portion of the schedule and the task of beating snarky little Roy Oswalt to avoid losing a “must win” series was pretty daunting. For a couple of innings, anyway.
Carlos set the tone by humiliating Astros hitters in innings one and two and by homering to right field for good measure. He allowed only three hits and if not for some ludicrous Cubs’ defense (do they play any other kind), would have allowed just one run.
He got some help from his pals, as Nomar hit a homer and E-ramis and Michael Barrett both drove in runs. But the night was all about Carlos.
He was at his frenzied best. Working fast, throwing strikes, screaming Spanish obscenities into his glove for no apparent reason. If Red Sox fans can pass off the eccentricities of their star left fielder as “Manny Being Manny”, we certainly have learned to embrace “Carlos Being Carlos.”
Late in the game he pulled off his most unbelievable feat of the night, sprinting off the mound and picking up a bunt by speedster (good word) Wily Tavares and making a great throw to get him by a half step. The defense, the pitching and homer…is there anything Carlos can’t do?
Other than slide into second base, of course.
Because it’s a Cubs’ game we have to give you the injury report. Nomar left the game early with a sore back. He apparently injured the back in the first inning, and would homer in his next at bat, which to me would imply that Nomar should always play with a bad back. Nomar says it’s no big deal. And if anybody ought to know injuries, it’s Nomar. If you got college credit for rehabing injuries, he’d be Dr. Garciaparra by now.
Lost in the fog of the Cubs’ fifth win in seven games (all coming against the two best teams in the division, and following an eight game losing streak in which they made the current Kansas City Royals look like the first half White Sox), were the near horrific final moments of the game.
Two of our pet peeves showed up at the worst possible time. With one out and one on, Todd Walker turned a double play grounder into a first and second, one out situation with one of his dumb assed “look at me, I’m an option quarterback!” backhanded tosses to second. He never gets anything on them, and this was no exception. Neifi Perez had come in for Nomar and the throw hung in the air so long, Neifi was past second base by the time it got there, making the runner from first safe, and the tardy throw from Walker meant Neifi couldn’t turn it in time to get the runner at first.
The next hitter hit one to Derrek Lee who fired to second with Neifi still on the bag and Neifi threw to first for what should have been the game ending out, except Ryan Dempster was still running to cover first, then couldn’t find the bag (it’s about 90 feet from home, Ryan), then dropped the throw.
You knew at the time, and replays confirmed, that Dempster had plenty of time to get to first…except, you know, he kind of forgot to start running over there. How does this happen so often? When the Cubs pulled that feat off three times in a horrific loss in Philadelphia (by the way, how fun is the winter going to be if the Cubs lose the Wild Card by less than two games to Philly, given the Michael Barrett toss into left loss, and the LaTroy bounced ball off the helmet loss were both against the Phils?), we started counting and came up with NINE times Cubs pitchers were late to first, or didn’t cover at all. Make this one ten.
You can give Dempster credit though, he did get three weak grounders, even if it took all three to get the two outs to win the game.
So now the Cubs are off to Denver, where they will no doubt spend today drinking themselves silly and looking for the Coors Light twins (at least, that’s how I’d spend an off day in Denver), before playing three against the Rockies.
Jerry the Lesser is due to join the team on Friday and speculation is that Matt Murton will get sent to Iowa for 12 days and come back on September 1. I can’t tell you how dumb that is. But I’ll try.
The rationale in the Tribune today (which is always faulty) is this:
The Cubs added a 12th pitcher when Hairston was placed on the disabled list with an injured left elbow and are unlikely to go back to 11 before the weekend series at hitter-friendly Coors Field.
First off, carrying 12 pitchers is lunacy to begin with, but even dumber is that by skipping Jerome Williams’ start tomorrow (which is a whole other kind of dumb) the Cubs will have EIGHT guys in the bullpen. This is just so typical of the Cubs, who cannot grasp change. Scoring is down at Coors Field this year for two reasons. First, the Rockies have no offense, secondly, since the team started using those weird humidores for the baseballs, parks like Comiskey have passed them in the home run frequency ratio. There’s no possible reason to carry 12 pitchers. Send Todd Wellemeyer and his clown shoes (have you seen the size of his feet?) back to Iowa and leave Murton up. With Jeromy Burnitz swinging a wet newspaper at the plate, Todd Hollandsworth basically useless and Nomar now questionable with a sore back, can you really afford to send down a guy hitting .339?
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The Sox have lost five in a row and Ozzie called them together for a team meeting after their 5-1 loss to Minnesota last night to tell them not to panic. Uh, Ozzie, nothing says panic more than calling a team meeting after a loss when the guys are trying to leave to enjoy a rare home off day.
Since their great first half, the Sox are 17-18 in the second half. While that’s not exactly a nosedive, it’s not pretty. They still have ten games left with the Twins who are trying to use the Sox to climb back into the Wild Card hunt, since catching them for the division would take a choke by Chicago of Gene Mauchian proportions. While that might be fun to see, it’s not going to happen.
When the White Sox went to New York last weekend it was enlightening to hear Hawk Harrelson’s red-assed defense of the Sox, given the media’s claims that the three games in Yankee Stadium were going to be a “measuring stick” for the Sox. Hawk was right to be irritated by that. The Yankees are having a mediocre season, so why should the Sox be measuring themselves against an inferior (at least this year) team?
It’s like when Ty Webb was asked why he didn’t keep score and “how do you measure yourself against other golfers?” and said, “By height.”
OK, it’s nothing like that.
But Harrelson’s argument went (typically) all the way past rational.
He said that the Sox had better starting pitching (he’s right), a better bullpen (he’s right, though the Yankees can make it close just because they have the greatest closer in the history of mankind), more speed (he’s right), play better defense (well, everybody plays better defense than the Yankees) and a better offense (woah, there big boy, not so fast).
By any measure, the Sox offense isn’t in the same class as the Yankees. In fact, it’s not in the same class as the 2004 White Sox.
The 2005 Yankees have scored almost 100 more runs than the Sox. They have more hits, more doubles, more triples, more homers, more RBI, a higher team batting average, a higher on base average, a higher slugging average and by virtue of that a higher OPS. The White Sox have struck out more often than the Yankees, walked less and while they have stolen more bases (114 for the Sox, second to the Angels) than the Yanks (62) they do it at a worse success rate (69 percent for the Sox, 75 percent for the Yankees). The Sox do have more sac hits and sac flies, so that must have been what Hawk was talking about.
This has nothing to do with the Sox, but I found this interesting. The team with the best stolen base percentage is the Red Sox. They have been caught only eight times in 36 attempts. In the first half alone, they were successful 24 times in 26 tries. OK, maybe I’m the only one who found that interesting.
Last night, Phil Garner proved that a bad manager (and I contend the Astros win in spite of him, not because of him) can throw huge roadblocks in front of his team.
It happened late in last night’s game when the Astros had a runner at first and Adam Everett at the plate with a 3-0 count. Garner called for a hit and run. If I was Everett I’d have called time out and thrown my bat at Garner.
Here’s why (and Dusty does this sort of thing, though I have yet to see it on 3-0). As a batter you live to bat when the count is 3-0 or 3-1. The reason is that you can pick out one pitch in one spot and if you get it you hack at it, if you don’t you just take it. It’s like a free pitch, or two. By starting a runner, you can’t look for a pitch or a location anymore. Sure, the theory by the manager is that the pitcher has to throw you a strike because if he doesn’t it’s ball four and both you and the runner get a free base. But as a hitter you can no longer take a close pitch. If you do, and the umpire calls it a strike and the runner gets nailed trying to steal, you’re screwed. You take an offensive count and force the hitter to approach it defensively. It might as well be 3-2 now, which swings a huge batter’s advantage to almost a 50-50 shot with the pitcher. It’s this kind of little crap that bad managers weigh their teams down with, that is easy to overlook or even forget. But when it happens, you know it.
