April 9th, 2008
The Cubs look every bit as good as advertised, yet their chances of winning the NL Central have dipped slightly in the season’s first two weeks. That’s because one of the reasons everyone picked the Cubs — because they played in baseball’s worst division, aka Comedy Central — turns out to be a flawed premise. The Brewers have the best young lineup in baseball. Closer Greg Gagne, whom the Brewers somehow paid $10 million to after a disastrous half season with the Red Sox, has blown two of his first three saves chances. The bullpen remains the Brewers’ biggest weakness. But if Milwaukee relievers don’t fall apart and ace Ben Sheets stays healthy, the Cubs will have to win more than 90 games to win the division. From here, it looks like the supposed worst division in baseball will be the ONLY division in the NL with a pair of 90-win teams.
April 9th, 2008
Yesterday, The Cub Reporter released a list of all-time Cubs Killers (some obvious: Adam Dunn; some not: Dante “Shrek” Bichette). The list is all well and good, but it doesn’t mention any pitchers.
That being the case, I’d like to nominate Pittsburgh’s Zach Duke as Cubs Killer pitcher. Fittingly enough, he is making his ninth career start against the Cubs today.
Ever since Duke’s 2005 big league unveiling, the left-hander has frustrated Cubbie lineups. In 8 starts (6 at Wrigley) for 55.2 innings against the Cubs (his most against any team), Duke has a 4-2 record with an impressive 2.10 ERA (his second lowest against NL teams).
But it’s not as if Duke has been overpowering: from 2005-07, the Cubs still have hit a reasonable .268 with 7 hits-per-game against Duke (the Cubs hit .264 against lefties in the same time frame) and have kept his strikeouts-per-game (1.84) under his career average (1.89, prior to 2008).
The Cubs’ problem? Try Duke’s 2.31 strikeout-to-walk ratio against the North Siders (his career average is 1.86). From 2005-07 the Cubs drew a measly 2.7 walks-per-game; but against Duke, they couldn’t even muster the patience for two a game (13/8=1.6). Not good (or surprising) for a team notorious for failing to manufacture runs.
However, so far this season, the Cubs are improving their patience at the plate (29 drawn walks in 7 games) and already lead the league in OBP versus lefties (.471). If the Cubs keep that pace up for the rest of the season, the name “Zach Duke” might start sounding as intimidating as “Daisy Duke”. And that’ll put a smile on anyone’s face.
April 9th, 2008
Let’s hope the Cubs play better tonight than they did Monday. A win is a win, but you can’t continue to play poor fundamental baseball and win consistently. Ryan Dempster gets his second start of the year. Let’s hope he’s as effective as he was in his first one.
Brewers are off to a fast start at 6-1. Cubs can’t afford to let them get too far in front. Comebacks like last year’s are hard to repeat.
The mailbag feature on chicagocubs.com has a lot of interesting items this morning. Carrie Muskat, who writes for MLB.com, used to work for the Register Star.
Carrie and I also worked together at the Champaign-Urbana Morning Courier, a newspaper that went under in 1979. Other alums of the Morning Courier include Reed Schreck, who covers the Bears for the Register Star, and Dave French, a longtime Register Star sports writer who moved to Florida in 1998. French died in 2006.
