Chicago Cubs Baseball

Every Sunday during the Chicago Cubs baseball season I’ll try to issue a report card, assessing the week that was from a long distance point of view.Here’s the report card for the week of April 9 to April 15:

Weekly Record: 1-4
Season Record: 4-8
Only the Chicago Cubs can turn Adam Everett into an A-Rod and Kyle Lohse look like Roger Clemens. But that’s how the week began and ended for the Cubs. And it wasn’t much better in between.

Everett’s two-run, eighth-inning homer off Bob Howry spoiled the Cubs’ 2007 Wrigley Field debut, while journeyman and one-time Cub draft pick Lohse silenced the Chicago bats in a 1-0 Cincinnati win today.

In between, a game was postponed by snow, the Cubs blew a five-run lead in a 6-5 loss, and later Cubs’ manager Lou Piniella blew his cool. “I can start to see some of the ways this team has lost ballgames,” Piniella said after the 6-5 loss. “I can see it. We’ve got to correct it obviously. This game here is one that got away from us that really shouldn’t.”

For Cub fans it was a typical week, watching Cub hitters spoil great pitching, and Chicago pitchers either digging the team into a hole, or relievers failing to hold leads. As I mentioned in an earlier post, “Welcome to our world, Lou.”

The lone bright spot for the Cubs was another sterling pitching performance from Rich Hill. Either this kid is the real thing or I need to watch more baseball.

Weekly Grade: D
Season Grade: C-

Starting Pitching:
Cub’ lefty Rich Hill is making big league pitching look easy. For the second consecutive start, Hill pitched masterfully, tossing a three-hitter and picking up the lone Cubs’ win for the week.

Hill has a microscopic 0.64 ERA on the year with 11 K’s in 14 innings pitched. The experts projected Hill to be a major league star. Since last August he’s making them look smart.

Fellow lefty, Ted Lilly earns the hard-luck player of the week award. Despite not having his best stuff on Monday, Lilly battled the Astros well enough, only to watch Howry serve up the game-winning gopher ball to Everett.

Today he didn’t fare any better, striking out 10 in losing 1-0 on a two-hitter.

As for Carlos Zambrano and Jason Marquis, sub-par is the best and only way to describe their performances. Marquis struggled with his control in Tuesday’s defeat, while Zambrano’s stuff suddenly went poof in Friday’s debacle.

Weekly Grade: C
Season Grade: C+

Relief Pitching:
Inconsistency continues to plague Cub relievers. As a body of work, the Cubs corps turned in an admirable effort this week. Michael Wuertz and Ryan Dempster have done credible jobs in fulfilling their roles and it was nice to see Scott Eyre shake off last week’s bad outings to look more like his former self.

But lapses at inopportune times continue to cast a pall on the corps. Howry’s aforementioned gopher ball and Wil Ohman’s “Wild Thing” rendition in the 6-5 Friday the 13th house of horrors still leaves doubts whether this crew is up to the task.

Weekly: Grade: C
Season Grade: C

Hitting:
When your ace pitcher leads the team in home runs for the week there’s not much more to be said. That’s the case as Zambrano’s homer was the lone dinger recorded by the Cubs this week.

Piniella blamed the Cubs power outage on the early season’s wintry conditions. Then he didn’t. All I know it was 60 degrees plus in Chicago today and the Cubs still couldn’t push a run across.

Today’s game typified the woeful state of Cubs at the plate. After a lead-off double by Alfonso Soriano and a short single to center by Ryan Theriot, Jacque Jones swung at three pitches out of the zone and Derrek Lee took three pitches in it. Needless to say, the runners were stranded.

Weekly Grade: D
Season Grade: C-

Base Running:
I guess it would help for the Cubs to have base runners in order for me to access it. Nonetheless, Soriano provided enough ammunition to give me a fair evaluation.

Let’s see: Soriano gets picked off second. Soriano gets picked off first. Add last week’s pick off into the mix and that makes three pick offs in 12 games. I wonder what’s the record?

Weekly Grade: C
Season Grade: C

Defense:
To be fair, the Chicago defense didn’t hurt the team’s overall chances for a win this week. Then again, it really didn’t help either.

Cesar Izturis, a former Gold Glove winner, committed three errors in Tuesday’s game, accounting for an unearned run in a 4-2 loss.

One player who continues to shine is Theriot, who filled in admirably at third base in the absence of Aramis Ramirez, who’s nursing tendinitis in his wrist.
Weekly Grade: C
Season Grade: C

Managing:
Piniella got a glimpse of Cubs’ past this last week and he didn’t like what he saw. His mini-tirade after Friday’s 6-5 loss to Cincinnati, showed to me that Lou still has a passion for the game - and for winning.

It beats chomping on a toothpick and scratching the head any day.

Weekly Grade: B
Season Grade: B