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| Monday, February 12 | |||||||||
| Chicago Cubs Special to ESPN.com | |||||||||
What went right? Despite a lot of nonsense generated by his manager and one of his teammates, and despite a bumbling attempt to trade him, Sammy Sosa had a great year. He led the league in home runs with 50, and posted the best on-base percentage of his career (.406) because of a career high in unintentional walks (72) as well as a career-high batting average (.320). Up until September 1, Jon Lieber was having a great year, but he had also thrown a career-high number of innings by then. By their own lights, Ricky Gutierrez, Eric Young, Joe Girardi and Damon Buford had nice seasons. What went wrong? Perhaps nothing better reflects how the Cubs perceived themselves or how competitive they were than the attempt to rush Kerry Wood so he could pitch in May. It didn't help him or them. A slow start made general manager Ed Lynch the fall guy for an organizational strategy that hadn't worked in the previous five years. He might have been the chief architect of the league's oldest lineup and a bad defensive club, but he also wasn't solely responsible. The same spots that always draw the most moaning and weeping in Wrigleyville were the usual problems: third base was manned by another collection of non-Santos; the bullpen was bad from the start, but that was mostly self-inflected by inexplicable decisions to sign, carry or promote pitchers like Brian Williams, Matt Karchner and Danny Young. After that lot pitched their way off the roster, the bullpen was much better off with Todd Van Poppel, Steve Rain and Tim Worrell. Ismael Valdes was a forgettable disappointment. Girardi and Buford held regular jobs. In retrospect, the critical decisions were: 1. Hiring Don Baylor to manage. Baylor went out of his way to show who's boss on his first day on the job, publicly sniping and belittling Sosa. Things only got worse from there, and Baylor seemed to spend most of the year in a state of surprise that nothing he was doing made the Cubs contenders for anything more than fifth place. Despite playing in Wrigley Field, a historically exceptional hitter's park, Baylor had the Cubs lead baseball in attempted bunts and successful bunts, and the NL in sac bunts by position players. Don Baylor is partially correct about something he's constantly telling people: somebody on this team is a distraction. 2. Going with the same game plan that might have worked once in five years: sign old mediocrities, pray everyone has a decent season, and hope to luck into the wild card. This wasn't really much of a plan five years before, when they were doing bold things like trading for solid but hardly game-breaking talents like Luis Gonzalez and Scott Servais, and it still wasn't much of a plan in 2000. The fascination with 1998's wild card seemed enough to convince the organization they were doing things right, instead of just screwing around. Looking ahead to 2001 Three key questions 1. Will they trade Sosa, or won't they? (See below.) 2. After this winter's shopping, is the pitching staff better? Jon Lieber, Kevin Tapani, Kerry Wood and even Ruben Quevedo have all been pushed harder in the last year than seems prudent. Tapani has pitched tired or hurt each of the last two years, Lieber was worn out before the end of the season, Wood was worked pretty hard for a very young (22 going on 23) starter coming off major surgery. Among the free-agent pickups, Jason Bere is a journeyman at best, but at least Julian Tavarez did some interesting things in last summer's late audition as a starter. The bullpen is supposed to be better after spending money on a closer (Tom Gordon) and another lefty (Jeff Fassero), but those two aren't sure things. 3. Is the farm system even more loaded than the more-heralded system on the South Side? Jim Hendry's player development program is the best the Cubs have had in more than a decade. Corey Patterson is already on the tip of most people's tongues, but Hee Seop Choi isn't very far behind. It isn't hard to jump to the conclusion that they might be the best pair of hitting prospects in any organization, the Rangers' Carlos Pena and Kevin Mench included. The Cubs have several interesting prospects at shortstop and third base, and some talented young pitchers.
Rondell White. This is a pretty simple pick, in that White has the advantage of moving from the miseries of Montreal to the sunny sudsy fun of Wrigley Field. Even if White is as fragile as he was while playing on turf, don't be surprised if he makes the Cubs look very, very good for getting him for just Scott Downs. Can expect to play worse The established performance levels for guys like Damon Buford and Joe Girardi are already so low that it would hard to say they'll be worse in a way that will make much difference. Picking either of them would be mean-spirited as well as blatantly obvious -- if they play, they're likely to be among the league's worst hitters at their positions. More seriously, Jason Bere's going to be bad news in his Chicago comeback. Projected lineup Eric Young, 2B Ricky Gutierrez, SS Sammy Sosa, RF Todd Hundley, C/1B Rondell White, LF Either a Matt Stairs-Ron Coomer platoon at 1B, or Bill Mueller, 3B Either Bill Mueller, 3B, or Joe Girardi, C Damon Buford, CF Rotation Jon Lieber Kerry Wood Kevin Tapani Julian Tavarez Jason Bere Closer Tom Gordon if he can pitch, and maybe Kyle Farnsworth if he can't. Baylor spends almost as much time publicly criticizing Farnsworth as he does Sosa, so if Gordon is still hurting, just about anybody could end up getting saves. A closer look Will they trade Sammy, or won't they? Everything about the Cubs and this coming season revolves around this question. Sammy Sosa is still one of the best hitters in the game. With Sosa, the Cubs could field a relatively potent lineup, especially if they keep Todd Hundley at catcher and work Julio Zuleta into the first-base picture. But without Sosa, they'll have a hard time scoring enough runs to be competive in Wrigley Field even if everything turns out well with their pitching staff. Keep in mind that since the start of divisional play, the Cubs have won the division twice: 1984 and 1989. Both times, they led the National League in scoring. In 1998, their other high-water mark, they finished fourth in a 16-team league, and still needed a few breaks to finish one game ahead of the Mets and to beat the Giants in a one-game playoff. Many of the Cubs' winter moves have been geared towards improving their offense. They signed Hundley, and they should be able to get more than 74 plate appearances out of Rondell White this summer. They got Matt Stairs, and while he's not the player he was three years ago, he's also not Brant Brown. They picked up Bill Mueller relatively cheaply, and while he won't make people forget Ron Cey, let alone Ron Santo, he'll also make a perfectably acceptable regular. However, the Cubs also have sunk a considerable amount of money on guys like Joe Girardi and Damon Buford. As long as the Cubs have Sosa, Don Baylor will be limited to playing him in right field, thus crowding Stairs into the first-base jumble. Having Stairs and Ron Coomer at first may not make people think of Mark McGwire or Jeff Bagwell, but it will make it more likely that the Cubs play Todd Hundley at catcher more than first, pushing Girardi to the bench. That house of cards crumbles if they trade Sosa. Sure, it might create more opportunities for guys with futures, whether it's an up-and-coming star like Corey Patterson or a solid hitter like Roosevelt Brown, but it's more likely to create more incentive to move Stairs to right and Hundley to first, and get the backup catcher they're paying an awful lot of money off the bench. Add in Baylor's proclivities to use his outs a bit too freely, and you could see a pretty major swing from a solid offensive club to a bad one, all hanging on whether or not Sammy Sosa is a Cub. Baylor has a well-established preference for mediocre veterans, which meshes well with the Cubs' standards of the last six years, and it doesn't take a major leap of faith of see the possibility that a Sosa-less Cubs team could revolve around respected veterans like Girardi or Coomer. So it seems like a pretty straightforward proposition: if they keep Sammy Sosa, they might have a chance at scoring a bundle of runs. If they trade Sosa now, they probably won't score a bundle of runs. If the Cubs are on the fringes of contention in the NL Central (and unlike the Brewers or the Pirates, there is at least the possibility), they might keep Sammy through the end of his contract. If they aren't in contention, there will be all that much more incentive for Baylor to renew his public campaign to move Sosa, which is a fool's errand on a couple of levels. First, Sosa is a 10-and-5 man who has said he doesn't want to go. The payoff he and his agent are holding out for in exchange for waiving his right to bar a trade is that his new potential employer would give him the contract extension he wants. But how many teams are willing to do that, going into a possible labor war that might assess all sorts of punitive schemes for larger payrolls? There is the incentive of Sosa getting an opportunity to join a playoff team down the stretch; Mark Grace blew off the opportunity in years past, but Sosa might not. And would it really be worth unleasing Baylor to make Sosa's life as unpleasant as possible, thus making Sosa willing to leave without getting a contract extension? Would that really reflect well on the organization? Second, although I'm probably more favorably inclined towards prospects than most, we've seen a lot of prospects-for-stars packages end up bitterly disappointing for the team that got the prospects. That alone is almost enough to let you forgive Andy MacPhail for his caution when he tried to assemble his list of demands from the Yankees last summer. Third, there is the chance that this could be a meaningful season for the Cubs. No, really. Chris Kahrl writes for the Baseball Prospectus team. Their 2001 edition is now shipping. To order, click on their Web site. | ALSO SEE Cubs minor-league report Rogers: Hope lies ahead for Cubs ESPN.com's Hot Stove Heaters Season in review: Chicago Cubs | ||||||||
Nothing will hurt the morale of a ballclub more than repeatedly blowing leads late in game. Over the last two years Chicago's bullpen has been pathetic and lost a bunch of games they were winning after the sixth inning. The bullpen lost 35 games last season. Only the Phillies' bullpen lost more games.
While the Cubs won't contend this year, it's important that they stop losing those games to gain some confidence. If Tom Gordon is healthy and can sew up games it will go a long way toward helping the morale of this club.