Archive for the “The NL Central” Category

What’s impressive about the fact that the Cubs followed up an unusually strong April with an equally dominant May is that May started with a very inauspicious 2-5 start. The difference is that they finished April losing four of their last six games while they finished May hotter than Josh Hamilton’s old crack pipe; indeed, the only truly rough stretch this team has endured thus far has been in that period from April 24th through May 7th when the Cubs went 4-9.

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Clearly, the St. Louis Cardinals are at the top of every Cub fan’s Hate Chart (everyone else has Hate Charts too, right?). Which NL Central team is number two, though? I’m assuming everyone is exactly like me and at least respects the Pirates and the Reds, so the Astros and the Brewers are going into the Fukudome.

VS.

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Making the decisions of when to hit-and-run, when to pull a struggling pitcher, and how to construct a lineup aren’t easy, and those decisions are the ones for which MLB managers get paid the big bucks. The actual process of managing, though, isn’t hard. Put nine guys in a lineup in some kind of order. Try to have a pitcher in there somewhere. Make sure the guy who bats ninth in the lineup always bats right after the guy who hits eighth in the lineup, even if you’ve switched the guys around. Not hard at all, really.
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Rick, Rick, Rick.

Look. I understand you’re supposed to write what your editor wants you to write. Actually, I don’t know that at all. I’ve never spent a day at a news desk. Shoot, I’ve never even taken a journalism class. I just know that the common defense for a columnist’s idiotic ham-handed pseudo-hype that passes for a column has always seemed to have been “he’s writing what his editor wants him to write” in which case you’re told to hype the shit out of some early-season series in May that coincidentally happens to be against Arizona. If so, then it sucks to be you.

But maybe that’s not true. Maybe you have complete freedom to write whatever you want to write, like the peanut-gallery douchebags like me do. If that is the case, then good god man. You’re a bigger hack than I feared. This steaming pile that you wrote last Friday, prior to a three-game series in early May? Simply hack-tastic.

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12-6 really has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? No matter how you represent it the Cubs are off to a good start, and I don’t think anybody would have been too despondent had they lost today. As bad as Pittsburgh is, it’s always hard to beat any team six times in thirteen days. Taking five out of 6 from the Pirates and sitting at 11-7 would have been acceptable, considering that some–okay, “some” might be a rather charitable choice of words, considering the past twenty-five years, so let’s say “quite an assload of”–seasons had seen the Cubs hitting the end of the month of April with fewer than eleven stinking’ wins Wait–why have I wasted so much time on so much mind-numbingly bad baseball again?

Anyway, aside from being one game better than 11-7, there’s a feeling of symbolic dominance in a 12-6 record. The Cubs have won twice as many as they have lost. The ole’ .667 clip. It’s quality, dammit. Pardon the expression, but 12-6 is a quality start.

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For the first time since he ruined my life from 2004 through 2006, Dusty Baker will be back in Wrigley Field this Tuesday. In honor of his return, I suggest that Lou Piniella coach this week Dusty-style. Here are my suggestions:
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In honor of the happiest time of the year, they have made today, April 3, Armenian Appreciation Day. It’s noted on Geocities, so it’s got to be true. It’s no secret that I’m fiercely proud of my Armenian heritage, so much so that I sensed shenanigans when HJE went out the other day? Hmm, a site dedicated to re-employ an Armenian-American goes kaput just as the current Cubs manager fell to 0-2 and in panic shuffled his lineup. Sweet Lou felt the pressure of Skip Johnson breathing down his neck, but the campaign to get me back in the Cubs dugout went down. So, I placed a couple calls. One was to this profane guy called Bad Kermit. Turned out it was the wrong one. The second call was to the artist formerly known as “M R.” Amazingly, his crack legal defense team hadn’t shut down Hire Jim Essian! (I think his crack legal defense team was out at the Purple Hotel with the federal government’s star witness.)
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Am I the first one to use that headline? God, I hope so. Anyhow, thanks to the rain, my DVR (despite being set to record The Tenth Inning and Reba) only recorded the first eight innings. I understand some people are flinging themselves from rooftops because the Cubs lost one extra-innings game. Wow.
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I’m not going to lie. I haven’t been too pleased with the lineups Lou has proposed this week. Despite his fascination with Ryan Theriot at the top of the lineup, though, Lou is still the cream of the NL Central managers. If you look around at the rest of the NL Central’s skippers, you’ll find some real dogs. After watching Dusty Baker mismanage his team for four years in Chicago, and then watching Ned Yost do what he could to hand the Cubs the NL Central pennant last year, two doofuses really stand head and shoulder above the rest.

So why not put the two of them into the Fukudome, and see which one leaves?

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With all of the time we spend here pointing and laughing at Dusty Baker, one might come to the conclusion that we harbor an unhealthy obsession with the man. I suppose this may be true. Considering his tenure here, where he fooled us all with that first surprise season, which only served to insure that we would spend the next three seasons slowly realizing the guy before us was a platitude-dispensing fraud and his approach to baseball was about as proactive as Europe’s handling of Nazi Germany prior to September 1st, 1939, one could be forgiven for devoting more time than normal to closely following what bullshit spews out of the guy’s mouth.

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