Chicago Cubs Baseball

After a second straight year in which the Chicago Cubs’ bid for a World Series berth came to a swift and bitter end, manager Lou Piniella and general manager Jim Hendry concluded changes had to be made.

The Cubs were too right-handed at the plate, Piniella claimed.  The bullpen was too erratic.

An overhaul wasn’t just necessary.  It was required if Chicago Cubs baseball was ever going to make it out of the first round of the NLDS.

So changes were made and Piniella got his wish.  Left-handed outfielders Micah Hofpauier and Joey Gathright, along with switch hitters Milton Bradley, Aaron Miles and Koyie Hill were added as position players.

The bullpen got equal treatment in the off-season.  Of the Cubs’ seven-man bullpen Carlos Marmol is the lone full-time holdover from 2008.

Yes, changes were needed according to Piniella and Hendry, and changes were got.  But what has all this change wrought?

The short answer is not much.  After today’s drubbing at the hands of Arizona and with each passing game, the Cubs look more like a team on the edge of baseball’s abyss than two-time defending Central Division champions.

How desperate does the situation appear to the gentleman in the grandstand?  You know it’s bad when Alfonso Soriano starts calling out his team’s character.  Which is exactly what he did yesterday and what Piniella did today.

”We just play nine innings, and what happens, happens,” Soriano said. “We don’t play nine innings and try to get wins. The last two years, I saw more hunger to win.”

Soriano’s right.  The 2009 Chicago Cubs look and play like they’d rather be anywhere else but here, depending on where here is on any particular day.  The team is closer to starting back at square one than three-peating as division champs.

Of course it doesn’t help when the three and four hitters, Derrek Lee and Bradley, are hitting .316 collectively with one home run apiece and 11 combined RBIs. Or when this season’s bullpen makes last year’s group look like a model of consistency.  Today, for example, four relievers combined to issue seven walks and five runs.  And that was in just two innings.

“We’re not going to be able to just go out there and play without intensity and go through the motions and think we can win baseball games, I can tell you that,” said Piniella, “and the quicker that sinks in, I think, the better.”

Or what, Lou?  What do you really expect?

This is the team that Piniella and Hendry have molded since Lou’s arrival two seasons ago.  He has a lead-off hitter (Soriano) who leads the team in strike outs and a 6-foot-5, 240-pound first baseman (Lee) with warning track power.  The key off-season acquisition, Bradley, would rather complain about the unfair treatment of the Chicago media that get himself ready to play a full season without injury and a closer, Kevin Gregg, who simply can’t pitch.

Brace yourself Cubdom.  It’s going to be a long, long season.