State of the Cubs
Written by ChicagoShrew, Friday June 05 2009
How the Cubs can survive the middle third of this season...
State of the Cubs
It’s June 3rd at about 10pm and the Cubs just avoided another disaster in
In last night’s dominant outing by Randy Wells, Lou Pinella yanked the promising and poised young man after only 83 pitches. Admittedly, Wells had stopped throwing the first and second-pitch lasers that made the Braves look foolish. Once again, the bullpen’s two front men came out with shaky-at-best stuff and made bad pitches in crucial counts. How long can Lou keep relying on Kevin Gregg (?), whose stuff has never really impressed me on a consistent basis. How can the Cubs hope to stay above .500 with Ramirez, Bradley, and Harden not on the field and two seemingly-shaken underachievers in Lee and Soto?
These are the questions that Pinella and this “sale-postponed” team face. The state of this year’s Cubs is oh-so-different than the NL-dominant group carried at-times by Mark DeRosa, now with
-Forget defense; put the big bats in – Let’s see a lineup with Jake Fox at third (I don’t care, make him do it), Fontenot at second, Hoffpauir in right, and Fukudome in center. Bradley is sitting out with after tweaking both legs while giving 63% effort running down to first in this scenario. This is the Cubs everyday emergency lineup, and yes, Soriano hits third…
1. Ryan Theriot – stop swinging for the fences and slap the ball to right field like you’re supposed to.
2. Kosuke Fukudome – let’s see if this guy can keep his average above .280 past the All-Star break.
3. Alfonso Soriano – what if those 54 lead-off home runs were more than solo shots?
4. Micah Hoffpauir – R, L, R, L – a decent hitter, buy maybe a costly defensive trade-off.
5. Derek Lee – May be that no one has the guts to tell Derek himself that he should be hitting here when Ramirez comes back – especially Pinella.
6. Mike Fontenot – Seems like he’s hitting the ball harder and with more consistency than anyone on the team. He should be playing second.
7. Jake Fox – If you’re going to bring him up, use him.
8. Soto/Hill – this is where Soto ranks offensively right now, plain and simple.
There it is folks; I challenge you to come up with a better lineup.
-Kevin Pelletier, “Shrew”
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3 comments
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Not being able to beat the Reds in regulation says a lot in my opinion...but Aramis is the key to this team and is one of the more underrated players in all of baseball. The numbers tell all...
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Tigersfan, the ship hasn't sunk yet, the Cubs are only 3.5 games out and in third place. Still a long way to go!
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I expected alot out of the cubbies this year. It seems like a slowly sinking ship and Pinella can't do much about it. Maybe the return of Aramis will get something jump started by geezous I don't think one man can save this ship, you need like a repair crew of 100 sailors or something, LOL.