Hi there Internet idiots.  It’s Andy’s Uncle Marty again.  Just so you know, I appreciated that some of you agreed with my last column that Andy’s hatred for Ryan Theriot was wrong, pitiful, and probably latently homosexual.  Theriot’s a good kid.

My shift at the Chrysler assembly plant is back on part-time, so that still gives me plenty of time to watch Cubs games when I’m not building a Dodge mini-mini-van that none of you will ever buy.

So I wanted to give you my impressions of the team so far.  But then the Cubs made big news by moving fat Carlos Zambrano to the bullpen.  So I’ll write about that instead, but since I know you all wanted to know what I think about the Cubs in general, I’ll condense my remarks down a little.

They stink.

OK, now the Zambrano thing.  I’m not going to pretend that Zambrano was a great pitcher last year.  He wasn’t.  And his first start in Atlanta this year was pretty pathetic.

But whoever decided that the best way to use one of the best starting pitchers in the National League (you read that right…we’ll get to it in a minute) is to put him in the bullpen so he can pitch one inning two or three times a week is a goddamned idiot.  And any of you who think this is a good idea are just as dumb.  This move is indefensible.

A lot of people want to say that Zambrano was bad last year.  But that’s stupid, too.  He wasn’t bad.  He was hurt.  Twice.  And so he didn’t pitch as much as he usually does.  He made 28 starts, the first time since 2003 that he didn’t make at least 30 of them.  He had a 3.71 ERA.  He had more innings pitched than hits allowed, he struck out 152 guys in 169 innings and he had an ERA plus of 119.

What the hell is ERA plus?  Andy and some of those Nancy-boys he plays with one the Internets like to throw confusing numbers around.  But ERA plus is one I can understand.  An average pitcher’s ERA plus is 100.  Anything over that is good, anything under it is bad.  Even last year, when some of you dopes thought Zambrano was bad, his ERA plus was 119.  So he wasn’t bad.

He’s never been bad.  He’s a 28 year old pitcher with a career record that’s 37 games over .500, a career ERA of 3.51 and a career ERA plus of 127.  He hardly every allows a home run.  Even last year when he was “bad” he gave up 0.5 per nine innings.  In 2004 he led baseball with 0.4, so 0.5 is pretty damned good.  And baserunners can’t steal on him.

He pitched at least 200 innings six years in a row, and the last two, even with disabled list trips in each season he averaged more than 170.

The Cubs asked him to get in better shape for this season.  So he did.

The Cubs asked him to try to handle himself better on the field, and he promised to.

And yesterday, the Cubs asked him to go sit in the bullpen while four guys who aren’t as good as he is take turns in the rotation, and he did.  But he’s selfish, right?

He was good enough to be their opening day starter, and then after three good starts in a row they told him to go sit on a stool in the dugout and help Jeff Samuldjian braid his hair or whatever they do down there while the real players are playing in the game.

I can tell you what.  If my foreman came to me and told me that four people who aren’t as good at my job as I am are going to do it so I can go do something less important, I’d have shown plenty of maturity.  I would have maturely told him to go fuck himself.

I’ve been a Cubs fan for a long time, so I’ve seen them do some pretty dumb shit.  But this is the dumbest thing they’ve ever done.  So I have no problem writing that if you think this is a good idea then you are one sorry ass dumbshit.  I can’t decide whether to demand you go find some other team to root for, or if I should go do it myself.

You can’t make your team better by having one of your best pitchers pitch less.  It’s just plain stupid.

Now I don’t think Lou Piniella is stupid.  I think he looked at the horrific shit that Jim Hendry has given him for his bullpen and figured the way to prove how lousy it was was to make this move and try to force Hendry to make a move.  But that’s just my thought.  It could be that Piniella’s gone completely senile and he really thinks this is a good idea.  If he does he needs to retire, right now.

As for Hendry?  He’s an idiot.  Everybody talks about how hard he works.  His job is to assemble a baseball team.  And he’s pretty bad at it.  I don’t give a damn if he’s on the phone 20 hours a day.  If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can be on the phone 23 hours a day and it isn’t going to do you any good.

This team is a complete mess.  They are terrible on defense.  They are terrible on the bases.  They hit like shit.  The only guys who can pitch are Dempster, Marmol, Marshall, Wells and Zambrano and their answer is to have Zambrano pitch less?  Screw these guys.  They obviously don’t know what they’re doing.

If the new owners had any balls, they would get Piniella and Hendry together and say, which one of you thought this was a good idea?  And if either of them says they did, then they get fired right there on the spot.  If neither of them say it they get fired, because one of them is lying, since it happened.

Here’s what you need to know, and remember this.  Carlos Zambrano is a good pitcher.  He’s a good starting pitcher.  Those are pretty damned hard to find, and it’s why they were so excited to pay him $90 million to do it.  And now, they think they can fix the team by having him not do it?

What a bunch of fucking idiots.